The changing debate on global warming
(Photo: clicksense)
It’s changing from ‘is it happening?” to ‘what will be the impacts, and how can we adjust to them?’
Public awareness of global warming has most likely never been higher. The intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report in early 2007 which assessed that humans have been the main force in changing Earth’s climate since the mid 20th Century.
Renowned climate scientist Eric Barron is Dean of the Jackson School of Geosciences at The University of Texas at Austin. Earth & Sky’s Jorge Salazar spoke with Dr. Barron prior to his public lecture on the changing debate on global warming, which he says has shifted from what’s causing it, to what impact it will have on human society. It’s part of the Hot Science – Cool Talks outreach lecture series presented by the Environmental Science Institute and the Jackson School of Geosciences at U.T. Austin.
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global warming should be stoped by us we do this stop it u retards!!!!!
I am a citizen high tech environmental activist, leading volunteers to preserve and improve our ecosystem with doable projects in 32 square miles of NW Austin, using facts and not
theories. I do not buy into the THEORY that man is the primary driver of climate and global warming (GW). I have been a student of solar influences for over 50 years, and scientists have yet to divert me from the overwhelming evidence that the sun drives our
climate, not us. Just like local weather forecasting by our meteorologists using a number of models, which are much improved but still far from accurate in predicting mere days ahead, the multiple models of global climate are imprecise, widely variant, do not back test well, and most certainly cannot predict far into the future with certainty. Politicians masquerading as climate experts shouting alarms of unpredictable calamities should be a red flag to all citizens of the world. Let’s deflate the CO2 inflated media/pol hype, stop the scientific malpractice, and return to common sense. Energy conservation and ecosystem preservation is wise and possible. Everyone can be involved on a local, personal level. Factual, practical education from our institutions of higher learning can lead the way.
Skip,
Can you elaborate about the overwhelming evidence that you are referring to?
Thank you.
Bruce
Yeah I dont think were causing global warming. There just is no real proof. How much has the Earth warmed up? .1 degrees? All scientist believe our Earth had an ice age. Who do they blame it on? Mammoths? Or what other theories do they have. They have no proof they werent there and no one even knows if it happened for sure. I feel like people are just making stories up to scare peopl and they give us little itty proof that doesnt make sense. How could we cause global warming. Were so small so weak. We cant even fly a spaceship past our solar system which is nothing compared to our galaxy. And our galaxy is nothing compaered to the universe. Stories eventually build up and I think this is whats happening to this global warming story.
Dear Bob,
Talking about the circumstances of life as we know it on Earth is not intended to scare people, but to share an adequate understanding of what is happening. If human beings happen to be responsible for “what is happening,” then we can do something about it, I suppose. Making up stories holds no interest whatever for me.
Yes, regarding individual existence, human beings are “so small so weak,” as you put it. A potential problem appears to arise when 6.7 billion people (soon to be 9.2 billion people, in 2050, we are told by the UN Population Division) are working to endlessly expand the production capabilities of the manmade global economy, to endlessly increase per capita consumption of Earth’s limited resources, and the to endlessly grow absolute human population numbers worldwide. When the huge scale and growth rate of these distinctly human activities, now overspreading the surface of our planetary home, are taken together, some scientists are concerned that humanity could be having a profound impact on the health of the environment and the integrity of Earth. Hence, the great value of science, for it provides us with a way of testing reality. Good science is not for storytelling.
Thanks for your comments.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steve,
I think you well articulate the value of science, and I think these words (attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, whether rightly or wrongly) articulate a wise course of action for the human species to take: “Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”
If I were to base my opinion solely on wishful thinking, I really don’t know whether I’d prefer to believe that humans have some influence or no influence over our planet’s climate. Bob claims there is no real proof that human actitvity contributes to global warming. If, by real proof, Bob means absolute proof, he is probably right. Proofs are very hard to come by in science. On the other hand, there’s probably no absolute proof as of yet that human activity doesn’t contribute to climate change, either.
To suggest no credible evidence links the burning of fossil feuls by human beings to increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere – and therefore to global warming – is tantamont to denial. Ice core studies show the cyclic nature of increased atmospheric CO2 levels with increased temperature over the last several hundred thousand years. Historically, CO2 levels in the atmosphere have bounced from roughly 180 to 280 parts per million over periods of many, many thousands of years. In our day, the spike in atmospheric CO2 levels has climbed to over 380 parts per million, which is totally unprecedented in modern geological history. It continues to soar upward.
This unprecedented development is hard for me to ignore.
Bruce
Last night at the ESI lecture, I asked Prof. Barron to share with the audience: What % of the atmosphere is CO2, what percent of the CO2 is man made, and do the models he’s been presenting back test accurately. He did not answer the first part, I think because it would deflate his whole presentation, and on the second part he said the models, when including solar influence and CO2 and other factors (proxy assumptions) they track well but diverge into the future with a prediction of 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C but admitted that there are huge unknowns about how the biosphere adjusts to changes, and that we won’t know for decades if any of these predictions are correct. In other words, keep providing grants from our tax money to keep these research professors employed. Funding has grown from a few hundred millon to over 5 billon annally, so this is now a big business for people like Barron.
One comment Barron made to a question ws that the biosphere adjusts in ways we don’t understand, that there is no impending calamity, and he wished Al Gore would tone down his alarmist rhetoric.
For a better understanding of opposing views to “does CO2 cause warming or does warming cause CO2, and what is man’s contributoin, go to your nearest book store or online and buy the book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming by Cris Horner. At Borders it was in the Gardening/Nature/Ecology aisle.
Read it cover to cover and then let me know what you think. This book is one of many eye opening treatises by competent scientists who see things differently.
We can all do something to lessen our impact on our natural and man made environment, without crippling our way of life or other’s.
I prefer to deal with ecosystem improvements on a local, doable level, one that everyone can contribute to and see the results. The all volunteer group I lead, Bull Creek Foundation, www.bullcreek.net is doing just that in our 32 square miles of NW Austin. There’s plenty of opportunity to do practical things that make a difference. Anyone is welcome.
scameron at austin dot rr dot com
Dear Bruce,
Your views are always appreciated, as are the words of St. Francis. It just so happens that words from the Saint regarding ACCEPTANCE are important to me. They are surely guideposts for human thought and action, in the light of the knowledge gained from good science.
Having said that, let me add that wishful thinking about the role of humankind in the climate change crisis we can already see, dimly visible on the far horizon, matters not one bit. All of us are free to exercise our capacities for wishful thinking or magical thinking or preternatural thinking, or for believing whatever one finds agreeable. Perhaps we can consider these forms of thought as self-interested-thinking. In most instances, all of this is fine.
Under no circumstances, however, are we served well by confusing self-interested-thinking with the thought that is derived from solid scientific observations and good empirical evidence.
At least to me, the scientific consensus proposed by the IPCC is a product of what I like to call good science, not a product of such thinking as we find in fulfilling wishes.
The news from the IPCC about the world we inhabit is forbidding. The unwelcome evidence appears to relate to aspects of stark biophysical reality that have been uncovered by good science and reported repeatedly by IPCC in recent years. If I may say again, the apparently unforeseen news from the IPCC is not good, even though this news is gained from the practice of good science.
I prefer to rely on good science and to eschew wishful thinking when it comes to sharing an understanding with our brothers and sisters about the way the world in which we live works and about an adequate enough grasp of the “placement” of the human species within the natural order of living things.
All the widely agreed to preternatural thinking we see in the world today, when taken together, cannot be favorably compared to even one single thought derived from good science.
From my perspective, we have a remarkably large and loud number of people, many of them are our leaders, who are denialists and naysayers with regard to the science of global warming. They have been doing what they are doing now during much of my adult life. What they are saying and doing, I suppose, is derived from one form or another of self-interested-thinking. At least one consequence of their widely shared and consensually validated way of viewing the world could lead the human community into danger. Let me say more now about what I mean.
Self-interested-thinking is potentially dangerous because it serves to hide the truth of global warming, among other things, as well as “poison the well” of public discourse.
Too many of our politicians, economists, big-business benefactors and the talking heads in the mass media are all “whistling the same tune.” What is even worse is the way they entice many appointees and surrogates to whistle that same tune, too. After all, who can resist offerings of great wealth, power and privileges that accrue to those who go along with what is political convenient, economically expedient, religiously tolerated and socially agreeable. In the face of such temptation, we can readily understand why the scientific gains of the IPCC would be everywhere, in every way, rejected by the denialists and naysayers. The science from the IPCC could forcefully impede their acquisition of more wealth, more power and more privileges.
Not only are too many leaders trying to hide or otherwise deny the good scientific evidence of human-driven climate change, they are also actively involved in poisoning the well of public discourse by strategically disseminating disinformation. And for what? Evermore power, wealth and privileges for themselves and their minions so they can carefreely play out the “conspicuous consumption fantasies” of their “Me Generation” by living large and unsustainably, come what may, having forsaken the future of their children and forgotten how human life depends upon Earth’s limited resources and frangible ecosystem services for its very existence.
It seems to me that the human community is approaching a crossroads: EITHER we will choose to “stay the current course” of endless economic growth, ever increasing conspicuous per capita consumption and skyrocketing human population numbers OR we will find other ways to go forward. If these distinctly human overproduction, over-consumption and overpopulation activities we now see overspreading the surface of Earth are unsustainable, then I am going to suppose we will insist upon some changes in our behavioral repertoire so that sustainable ways of living in the world are proposed by policymakers and adopted by our leaders.
With thanks to you, Deborah, Beverly Spicer and the Earth & Sky community,
Steve