Global Warming Debate

[Jonathan]

Originally Posted by The Telcontarion

By ANDREW SWALLOW - The Timaru Herald | Saturday, 19 May 2007

"We're all going to survive this. It's all going to be a joke in five years," he said.

"It is time to attack the myth of global warming," he said.

The original link is here

It is one thing to oppose the notion that global warming is man-made, but this meteorologist seems to deny that global warming is occurring at all.

We should all be way past debating global warming's being or not-being. Climate change is a reality supported by overwhelming evidence and we need to focus on how to counter its effects - whether it is man-made or not.

[Lief Erikson]

According to this study, due to human impact on the climate, the number of hurricanes in the 20th century is double that in the preceeding century.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6921695.stm

[The Gaffer]

Thanks for that. It's always hard to make any particular piece of evidence like that stick. How do we know that hurricanes were accurately recorded? etc etc.

However, surely we now have enough circumstantial evidence (the only kind you'd ever have with this giant n-of-1-trial we live on) to believe that it's real and happening.

We've just had record rainfall in consecutive months (June and July, which isn't even over yet).

[Lief Erikson]

Most people seem pretty well agreed that Global Warming is happening, though. There are some who don't agree, but I think most do. The bigger problem by far is finding a solution that will work, in my opinion. Climate change is escalating so fast and is so immense, with such far reaching implications, that solving it would be nigh impossible.

[brownjenkins]

It is impossible in the longrun, especially when you factor in population growth. We could all be efficiency fanatics, and it'll still happen. My guess is that the eventual focus will be innovations on how to deal with global warming, rather than stopping or reversing it.

[Lief Erikson]

That's my opinion too.

[The Gaffer]

I agree: it is going to happen and we are going to have to deal with it. Or rather our children are.

However, I am worried by the idea that we will find a technological solution to it. It taps in too readily to the "do nothing" argument that prevailed until very recently.

I think there is every reason to believe that if we cut down our carbon emissions, we will ameliorate it. To what extent is another question. But to me, there is a strong moral imperative to do what we can.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

I think there is every reason to believe that if we cut down our carbon emissions, we will ameliorate it. To what extent is another question. But to me, there is a strong moral imperative to do what we can.

Well, if there is a "point of no return" after which the environmental forces of cause and effect take over and human activity has little or nothing more to do with it, then that isn't necessarily the case. I'll look up my research for that now and get back to you.

But one could certainly argue that whether reducing carbon emissions would be effective or not, there still is reason to reduce them. That is the simple fact that the world's underground oil supplies are running out. Eventually it'll all be gone and then we'll need something else.

Plus there is the current instability in the Middle East right now. That's another good reason to shift from oil to alternative sources of fuel.

[Lief Erikson]

Here are quotations from one of the articles I have about the point of no return. It doesn't describe the "point of no return" very well though; I'll find one of my other articles. But this one is a highly credible source, so I'll quote what it does say anyway, putting a few things in bolds.

Originally Posted by The Associated Press

LONDON (AP) -- Global warming is approaching the critical point of no return, after which widespread drought, crop failure and rising sea-levels would be irreversible, an international climate change task force warned Monday.

The report, "Meeting the Climate Challenge,'' called on the G-8 leading industrial nations to cut carbon emissions, double their research spending on green technology and work with India and China to build on the Kyoto Protocol.

Originally Posted by The Associated Press

According to the report, urgent action is needed to stop the global average temperature rising by 2 degrees Celsius above the level in 1750 -- the approximate start of the Industrial Revolution when mankind first started significantly polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide.

Beyond a 2 degrees rise, "the risks to human societies and ecosystems grow significantly'' the report said, adding there would be a risk of "abrupt, accelerated, or runaway climate change.''

http://www.livescience.com/environme...ng_050124.html

Originally Posted by New Zealand Herald

Planet a decade from global warming point of no return

LONDON - The global warming danger threshold for the world has been clearly marked out for the first time in a report to be published tomorrow - and the bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already.

http://6 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/s...ectid=10007899

Ah, here we go! Here's a source that says exactly what the "point of no return" is:

Originally Posted by The Independent

A record loss of sea ice in the Arctic this summer has convinced scientists that the northern hemisphere may have crossed a critical threshold beyond which the climate may never recover. Scientists fear that the Arctic has now entered an irreversible phase of warming which will accelerate the loss of the polar sea ice that has helped to keep the climate stable for thousands of years.

They believe global warming is melting Arctic ice so rapidly that the region is beginning to absorb more heat from the sun, causing the ice to melt still further and so reinforcing a vicious cycle of melting and heating.

The greatest fear is that the Arctic has reached a "tipping point" beyond which nothing can reverse the continual loss of sea ice and with it the massive land glaciers of Greenland, which will raise sea levels dramatically.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0916-09.htm

Here's another important source. Nasty, and hopefully Dr. Pachauri is wrong, but it's important nonetheless to underline the threat posed by Global Warming to humanity.

Originally Posted by Global-Warming.net

Global warning has already hit the danger point that international attempts to curb it are designed to avoid, according to the world's top climate watchdog.

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC http://www.ipcc.ch), told an international conference attended by 114 governments in Mauritius this month that he personally believes that the world has "already reached the level of dangerous concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere" and called for immediate and "very deep" cuts in the pollution if humanity is to "survive".

http://www.global-warming.net/pointofnoreturn.htm

But then about the cost of trying to prevent Global Warming . . .

Originally Posted by planetark.com

"Scientists who support Kyoto have estimated that emissions cuts equivalent to 30 Kyotos will be needed," said Myron Ebell, director of global warming at the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, which supports "free enterprise and limited government."

He said costs would rise with each new target since companies make the cheapest cuts first. "I can't imagine that any informed person could claim that the total costs will be anything less than astronomical."

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsst...2025/story.htm

I am rather defeatist on the issue of Global Warming, myself. Trying to adapt is the best we can do, I think, and I don't believe that cutting carbon emissions is a workable solution to the mess. But it is necessary anyway, if only due to the fact that the world's underground oil reserves are running out.

[faerie_child]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

I am rather defeatist on the issue of Global Warming, myself. Trying to adapt is the best we can do, I think, and I don't believe that cutting carbon emissions is a workable solution to the mess. But it is necessary anyway, if only due to the fact that the world's underground oil reserves are running out.

That's the problem. People look at the problem, acknowledge the problem, but then decide it's too hard and give up- they just go with it. Animals like dinosaurs and mammoths just went with it after their climates started to change and they died out. The human race could end up like that. We're going to be like Easter Island on a global scale. There's no way to completely stop and reverse the damage we've done, but giving up is (in my opinion) dumb.

[Lief Erikson]

I didn't say give up. I agreed with brownjenkins that it seems a good idea to try to find ways to adapt.

What solution do you favor?

[inked]

Oh, no, there's data from a scientist:
http://www.phillymag.com/articles/sc...nhouse_gasbag/

Oh, no, The Washington Times reports on global warming!
http://www.washingtontimes.com/artic...ON02/108140063

It's even on Fox News, so ...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,293258,00.html

Even National Geographic gets into the act!
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...s-warming.html

There are scientists world-wide who guestion the hype:
http://www.businessandmedia.org/spec...Scientists.asp

Whatever it takes to sell ...
http://www.businessandmedia.org/spec...fireandice.asp

A climatologist from Canada (in toto)
Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide
Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts?

By Timothy Ball

Monday, February 5, 2007

Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn’t exist. And I am not
the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the
truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was the first Canadian
Ph.D. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in
climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the
impact of climate change on human history and the human condition.
Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the
University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the
University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the
World is not listening. Here is why.

What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth
is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the
media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when
scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years
say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one
acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on?

Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of
Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the
history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of
dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an
issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment
Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years
dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend
an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing
weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.

No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but
if we don’t pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a
society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence
that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And,
recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations
sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed
this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something
is wrong?

Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global
cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. “It is a cold
fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important
social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with
for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make
concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves,
our children, our species,� wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.

I was as opposed to the threats of impending doom global cooling
engendered as I am to the threats made about Global Warming. Let me
stress I am not denying the phenomenon has occurred. The world has
warmed since 1680, the nadir of a cool period called the Little Ice
Age (LIA) that has generally continued to the present. These climate
changes are well within natural variability and explained quite
easily by changes in the sun. But there is nothing unusual going on.

Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of
London, Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate
cycles. Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early
1970’s global cooling became the consensus. This proves that
consensus is not a scientific fact. By the 1990’s temperatures
appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It
appears I’ll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major
mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling.

No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal
attacks and makes career progress easier. What I have experienced in
my personal life during the last years makes me understand why most
people choose not to speak out; job security and fear of reprisals.
Even in University, where free speech and challenge to prevailing
wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent.

I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as
libellous, from an academic colleague, saying I had no right to say
what I was saying, especially in public lectures. Sadly, my
experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive
places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they
receive more and more funding from governments that demand a
particular viewpoint.

In another instance, I was accused by Canadian environmentalist David
Suzuki of being paid by oil companies. That is a lie. Apparently he
thinks if the fossil fuel companies pay you have an agenda. So if
Greenpeace, Sierra Club or governments pay there is no agenda and
only truth and enlightenment?

Personal attacks are difficult and shouldn’t occur in a debate in a
civilized society. I can only consider them from what they imply.
They usually indicate a person or group is losing the debate. In this
case, they also indicate how political the entire Global Warming
debate has become. Both underline the lack of or even contradictory
nature of the evidence.

I am not alone in this journey against the prevalent myth. Several
well-known names have also raised their voices. Michael Crichton, the
scientist, writer and filmmaker is one of them. In his latest book,
“State of Fear� he takes time to explain, often in surprising detail,
the flawed science behind Global Warming and other imagined
environmental crises.

Another cry in the wildenerness is Richard Lindzen’s. He is an
atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT, renowned
for his research in dynamic meteorology - especially atmospheric
waves. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and
has held positions at the University of Chicago, Harvard University
and MIT. Linzen frequently speaks out against the notion that
significant Global Warming is caused by humans. Yet nobody seems to
listen.

I think it may be because most people don’t understand the scientific
method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book
“The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.� A scientist makes certain
assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the
assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an
atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It
was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than
before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was
accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law.

As Lindzen said many years ago: “the consensus was reached before the
research had even begun.� Now, any scientist who dares to question
the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in
fact they are simply being good scientists. This has reached
frightening levels with these scientists now being called climate
change denier with all the holocaust connotations of that word. The
normal scientific method is effectively being thwarted.

Meanwhile, politicians are being listened to, even though most of
them have no knowledge or understanding of science, especially the
science of climate and climate change. Hence, they are in no position
to question a policy on climate change when it threatens the entire
planet. Moreover, using fear and creating hysteria makes it very
difficult to make calm rational decisions about issues needing
attention.

Until you have challenged the prevailing wisdom you have no idea how
nasty people can be. Until you have re-examined any issue in an
attempt to find out all the information, you cannot know how much
misinformation exists in the supposed age of information.

I was greatly influenced several years ago by Aaron Wildavsky’s book
“Yes, but is it true?� The author taught political science at a New
York University and realized how science was being influenced by and
apparently misused by politics. He gave his graduate students an
assignment to pursue the science behind a policy generated by a
highly publicised environmental concern. To his and their surprise
they found there was little scientific evidence, consensus and
justification for the policy. You only realize the extent to which
Wildavsky’s findings occur when you ask the question he posed.
Wildavsky’s students did it in the safety of academia and with the
excuse that it was an assignment. I have learned it is a difficult
question to ask in the real world, however I firmly believe it is the
most important question to ask if we are to advance in the right
direction.

Dr. Tim Ball, Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project
(http://www.nrsp.com), is a Victoria-based environmental consultant and
former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. He can be
reached at letters@canadafreepress.com

____________________________________________

How about Australia? ...
Author: Ross Louthean
Posted: Friday , 08 Jun 2007
http://www.mineweb.co.za/mineweb/vie...1959&sn=Detail

PERTH -

Leading Australian academic, author and commentator Professor Ian Plimer considers the groundswell of concern about climate change is nothing more than political hot air and that a major earthquake or volcanic eruption are the real threats to the world atmosphere.

Prof Plimer told Mineweb that the current push on climate change was the new version of the Y2K farce where billions of dollars were spent on compliance and regulatory issues in case computer and digital equipment shut down at the turn of the new millennium, only to be proven a pointless exercise.

“Global warming is not a word of science, it’s a word of politics,� he said.

As a keynote speaker at the Association of Mining & Exploration Companies annual convention in Perth, Prof Plimer said a real threat with the climate change push is that it will impose on Third World and other poorer nations costly climate regulatory measures when the money should be spent on creating quality water, better education and other important matters.

There was a need, he said, for common sense in combating the cacophony on climate change, as science is related to learning and theory that comes from working out what this means, rather than the politically-driven theories that abound, including among issue or politically driven scientists.

There is no scientific evidence that carbon dioxide causes global warming.

Over time the planet will “wobble� on its axis, and over time the sun will generate sun spots, so there have been times where the earth has been far warmer than it is today - an example of this was an abundance of fruit trees near Hadrian’s Wall built in AD 122-30 on the border of England and Scotland.

Prof Plimer, who is Professor of Mine Geology at Adelaide University, said what is clearly misunderstood is that 96% of greenhouse gases are created by water vapour, almost entirely through mother nature, with the “man made� component being 0.001%. He asked: Who would want to eradicate water vapour?

Temperature variances taken since the late 1880s to 2000 in the United States showed that temperatures had increased marginally in cities and urban areas but declined in rural areas and a factor behind the heavily populated areas was the impact of concrete, roads and reflection.

Where does CO2 (carbon dioxide) come from?

Volcanoes (such as Milos, Greece), earthquakes, intrusions of plutonic rocks (such as Kamchatka, Russia), metamorphism (such as the Alps), oceans degassing (evident in the tropics), life-bacteria (humans are riddled with bacteria) and comets.

“The human contribution is miniscule,� Prof Plimer said.

Where does the CO2 go?

Into weathering and sedimentation (silicate + water + CO2 = hydrous silicate and carbonate), plants, polar and deep ocean water, carbonate reefs and bacteria.

Carbon dioxide, he said, is plant food.

A real problem with climate change are volcanoes, particularly in the island arcs, that produce dust, acid and the sulphuric acid that comes with the vapour wipes out plant life and people.

Eruptions that have been weather changing on earth include Krakatoa in 1883, Tampora in 1815 and the mighty bang of Santorini in 1470 BC that destroyed the Minoan culture and, as myths go, sunk the city of Atlantis. Volcanoes are still with us, and Anak Krakatau that emerged off Java from the devastation of Krakatoa, is still growing.

“One super volcano could wipe out a large part of the world and, if placed in the United States, would destroy the world’s greatest economy or, in or off Japan, then the world’s second largest economy would suffer.

The doomsayers looking at polar ice have it all wrong, for the Vostok ice core taken in Antarctica traces 420,000 years of temperatures and CO2 concentrations, and another ice core study over a similar period on Greenland to cover dust, CO2 and temperatures. Both showed huge fluctuations over those periods - influenced by “wobbles� in the earth axis and sun spot activity - and the near present and present are not at any of the peaks over that time.

The pictures of melting ice and ice caps falling into the sea can cover a genesis of at least 600 years, so it is not a sudden happening.

_____________________________________

How about a bumper sticker that reads "Al Gore is a warm monger" ?

[Insidious Rex]

Originally Posted by inked

There is no scientific evidence that carbon dioxide causes global warming.

Wow how can someone still be so mind numbingly ignorant on something for which theres so much evidence? Is this abject hopeless denial or is he just lying through his teeth because hes a mining industry stooge? Of course carbon dioxide can cause global warming. That’s been well known for decades and has been proven out at times in our past and on ACTUAL planets like Venus. And what he says about ice cores is just patently false. How do people get away with that? And the human contribution to CO2 is “miniscule�? Is he unaware of how many vehicles exist on earth and how many tons of carbon dioxide EACH is responsible for emitting? I mean that’s just simple math. How can you deny simple math with a straight face like that? Its not like the earth has always had billions of cars and trucks and busses. And his solution of “the plants will take care of it� fails to take into account the also man made phenomenon of massive deforestation due to clear cutting and other human activities. And he fails to grasp the basic concept that these changes have been occurring MUCH quicker then we have seen at any time in the geological records. EVEN if you look at extinction events involving things like gigantic asteroids or whatever else catastrophe, the geological records shows it often took some time for things to change enough to effect life. The dinosaurs didn’t die out over night despite having to deal with 10 miles of rock falling on their head one day. Yet here we live in a world where people in their 20’s can remember distinctly different weather patterns and snow falls from when they were a child. How does he explain that? Volcanoes? Comets? The Alps??

[faerie_child]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

What solution do you favor?

I think we should all work on lowering CO2 emissions- even if global warming is just a big hoax- we need to cut down on our pollution. It's good for the enviornment and good for human health. Finding a new energy source is also critical. I don't think we're every going to get nature back on perfect balance, but we need to try.

[Earniel]

Mineweb[...] the Association of Mining & Exploration Companies annual convention in Perth,[...]Professor of Mine Geology[...]

Yes, I can see why anyone from this crowd would speak against global warming, their livelyhood is at stake because of it. I know the title professor and university always sounds very impressive, but mine geology just ain't meteology or climatology. That article, that is obviously politics, not science.

[faerie_child]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Wow how can someone still be so mind numbingly ignorant on something for which theres so much evidence? Is this abject hopeless denial or is he just lying through his teeth because hes a mining industry stooge? Of course carbon dioxide can cause global warming. That’s been well known for decades and has been proven out at times in our past and on ACTUAL planets like Venus. And what he says about ice cores is just patently false. How do people get away with that? And the human contribution to CO2 is “miniscule�? Is he unaware of how many vehicles exist on earth and how many tons of carbon dioxide EACH is responsible for emitting? I mean that’s just simple math. How can you deny simple math with a straight face like that? Its not like the earth has always had billions of cars and trucks and busses. And his solution of “the plants will take care of it� fails to take into account the also man made phenomenon of massive deforestation due to clear cutting and other human activities. And he fails to grasp the basic concept that these changes have been occurring MUCH quicker then we have seen at any time in the geological records. EVEN if you look at extinction events involving things like gigantic asteroids or whatever else catastrophe, the geological records shows it often took some time for things to change enough to effect life. The dinosaurs didn’t die out over night despite having to deal with 10 miles of rock falling on their head one day. Yet here we live in a world where people in their 20’s can remember distinctly different weather patterns and snow falls from when they were a child. How does he explain that? Volcanoes? Comets? The Alps??

My sentiments exactly. Well put. This guy obviously hasn't been looking at the numbers. Look at todays stats vs. what was going on thousands of years ago, and DUH!
The human race has been introducing new technologies and of course all that stuff we're polluting is going to effect the enviornment!
I guess idiots like this may finally get it once the polar ice caps are gone and manhattan is underwater.

[inked]

Hey, IR, I see your critical reading skills haven't improved since we last engaged them!

Al Gore Is a Greenhouse Gasbag
Penn professor Bob Giegengack has a few quibbles with the former VP on this whole global warming thing
By John Marchese


LUKEWARM: Says Gieg of Gore, "What he's doing is no less than the scare tactics used by people like Karl Rove." / Photo by Chris CrismanIt's the last day of November, which means winter begins in three weeks. Yet the temperature on the Penn campus is nearing 70 degrees, and it's muggy. Walking to the offices of the Department of Earth and Environmental Science from a remote parking lot makes me sweaty. Global Warming.

Driving here this morning, I heard a report on WHYY from National Public Radio that the International Ski Federation was canceling races because there's no snow in the Alps. Got to be Global Warming!

Yesterday, down the road in Washington, where the temperature was 16 degrees above normal, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case in which 13 state governments are suing the Environmental Protection Agency to force the government to begin controlling carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the decades-old Clean Air Act. If that doesn't happen, the states claim, the rising sea levels caused by greenhouse gases will rob them of coastline. GLOBAL WARMING!!

And this is just one ordinary day in the new normal. Even if daily weather has nothing to do with global warming, and even if the scientific debate about it is not quite done, its cultural moment has certainly begun. Insurance companies have stopped writing policies for coastline residents. A government report out of England warns that global warming may be so economically deleterious that it will make the upheaval of the Great Depression and World War II seem benign.

Michael Crichton has already dramatized the issue in a best-selling novel. Leonardo DiCaprio is working on a documentary on the subject. A recent Time magazine cover featured a polar bear in danger of drowning and the warning: "Be Worried. Be Very Worried."

I've come to Penn to see the skeptic.

In Room 100 of the classic Christopher Wren-inspired Towne Building, Robert Giegengack seems much less than worried. The 67-year-old professor is preparing to give one of the semester's final lectures to his 150-student class in environmental analysis, a popular science elective among Penn's arts and sciences undergrads.

For decades, Giegengack was content to be a relatively obscure geologist who taught more than he published. Recently, though, he's stepped into the swirling tempest surrounding global warming, in part because he says it's not even one of the top 10 environmental problems we face. To make that point, he occasionally joins in a panel discussion, or gives a quote to a science writer. He's thinking about writing something for one of the smarty-pants magazines. "I've always been interested in this question," he says, "but when I first started working, no one cared — you couldn't get an article published if you wanted to." Now, though, "The public appetite for all this crap seems to be insatiable."

Giegengack is a slim man of medium height, with a prominent nose and a very high forehead. "I traded my hair for eyeglasses," he's been known to say. In this weird late-fall weather, he's dressed as if he might run off for a round of golf or a sail — khaki pants, striped dress shirt (short-sleeved) and boat shoes. His name is pronounced "GEEG-in-gack," and over the nearly four decades he has taught at Penn, students have developed the habit of simply calling him "Gieg."

Gieg is situated at a lectern in the pit of an amphitheater classroom. As the seats fill, he fiddles with his Mac laptop, where he has stored a PowerPoint presentation that covers today's lecture. Before that, though, he runs a short clip from a Simpsons episode in which Bart and Lisa argue over whether water drains in different directions in the Southern and Northern hemispheres. Though Gieg has long been known as an entertaining lecturer, he's not The Simpsons. The students laugh out loud at the clip, as does their professor. When the lights come back on, the professor assures them: "Bart will probably not be on the final."

The class is a typical-seeming group, heavy on girls, some of whom wear ripped jeans and do-rags, others of whom are carefully made up and snappily dressed, pulling their notebooks from designer bags. Midway through the class, Gieg says, "Now it's time for us to talk about the number one political/environmental issue of our time." He reads a snippet from a New York Times editorial about the Supreme Court global-warming case.

"What I'm going to try to do the rest of today and also probably on Tuesday is bring you up to date on this. I'll try to avoid editorializing or politicking. I'll just tell you some stuff. Give you information. There's lot's of stuff, and it's very complicated."

Gieg gazes upward toward his young charges. "Every single one of you knows more about this than Al Gore," he tells the undergrads. "And vastly more than anyone in this present administration."



YOU REMEMBER AL GORE. Congressman, then senator from a political dynasty in Tennessee. Vice president for the eight years of the Clinton administration. President-elect of the United States for about 10 minutes, before being waylaid by the dangling chad. Since his bitter, disputed loss to George W. Bush, Gore has gone through some changes. He tried sporting a beard, reinvented himself as a media entrepreneur, hosted Saturday Night Live, gained a lot of weight. Then, last May, he burst back into the public eye as the star of a surprisingly successful documentary on global warming called An Inconvenient Truth. In a way that sometimes happens in America, Al Gore has come to personify an issue that until recently, most of us didn't know we needed to know or care about. Oprah calls him "our Noah." But if she's going to get all ancient on us, Cassandra might be the better comparison.

Gore's film has become the third highest grossing documentary ever, way behind Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 but closing in on number two, the equally surprising March of the Penguins. An Inconvenient Truth is basically the video of a PowerPoint presentation that Gore had been giving for years, jazzed up with animation and film clips, but weighted by some treacly autobiographical segments that seem to have been left over from an Al Gore for President campaign film.

The new Al Gore, visibly more relaxed and likable than during his last campaign, basically says this:

Our world is habitable because some of the heat from the sun is held here by gases in the atmosphere that are descriptively labeled "greenhouse gases." Carbon dioxide is one of the main components. Unfortunately, measurements over the past 30 years show a steep climb in carbon dioxide concentrations and happen to track closely a concurrent rise in the average temperature of the Earth. All that extra carbon dioxide, a.k.a. CO2, isn't produced "naturally"; it's mostly a result of mankind burning fossil fuels.

If the profligate use of fossil fuels continues and the carbon dioxide levels keep rising, the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans will rise to calamitous heights, melting glaciers, disturbing water systems, and causing droughts, crop failures, and much stronger hurricanes and cyclones. Gore forecasts the worst-case scenario as "a nature walk through the Book of Revelation."

But the real worst case that the once (and future?) politician presents is the breakup and melting of the two massive ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica, an event that would raise global sea levels so much that many coastal areas would be under water. Using an animated seeping blue stain that's reminiscent of how filmmakers once illustrated the progress of the Nazi regime, Gore shows large parts of San Francisco, Beijing, Shanghai and New York becoming submerged. The result, he says, will be tens of millions of "climate refugees." It will make the upheaval caused by the flooding of New Orleans and its displaced persons seem like a walk in the park.

There's no way to watch An Inconvenient Truth without getting worried — at least a little worried.

Not Bob Giegengack. He has described Al Gore's documentary as "a political statement timed to present him as a presidential candidate in 2008." And he added, "The glossy production is replete with inaccuracies and misrepresentations, and appeals to public fear as shamelessly as any other political statement that hopes to unite the public behind a particular ideology." This from a guy who voted for Gore in 2000 and says he'd probably vote for him again.

Geologists by nature and training take a long-term view. The professor clicks a slide onto the classroom screen. It reads: "In 1958, Robert Giegengack first heard about Global Warming!"

There are a few chuckles in the classroom. Giegengack waits a beat for comic effect. "I said, 'Big deal,'" he tells the class. "I lived in New England."

He'd been born in Brooklyn, but spent much of his life in New Haven. After a false start studying civil engineering at Yale, Giegengack discovered geology and got hooked. He got a master's degree in Colorado, then returned to Yale for a doctorate and focused his research on rocks and climate change. He arrived as a young assistant professor at Penn just about the time the first Earth Day in 1970 was reflecting — and driving — an interest in the environment. Giegengack got the assignment to set up the university's environmental studies program, which he would run for more than three decades.

A few years ago, Giegengack told the Pennsylvania Gazette, the school's alumni magazine, that the environmental analysis course he's teaching today often attracts students who want to be environmental activists and carry picket signs outside the offices of the bad guys in the military-industrial complex. "But I want them to understand that these questions are enormously complex," he went on.

Yes, they are. I ask Gieg for a private tutorial based on the lectures he gives his students to make them consider the scientific complications of climate change. We sit one afternoon at a conference table near his office, his laptop open and the PowerPoint ready to go. Charts appear, one after another.

Giegengack may have a personal 50-year perspective on global warming, but the time range he prefers to consult is more on the geologists' scale. The Earth has been warming, he says, for about 20,000 years. We've only been collecting data on that trend for about 200 years. "For most of Earth history," he says, "the globe has been warmer than it has been for the last 200 years. It has only rarely been cooler." Those cooler periods have meant things like two miles of ice piled over much of what is now North America. Nothing to be nostalgic for.

The professor hits a button on his computer, and the really long-term view appears — the past 650,000 years. In that time, the Earth's temperature has gone through regular cycles of rise and fall. The best explanation of those cycles was conceived by a Serbian amateur scientist named Milutin Milankovi´c. Very basically, Milankovi´c said this: The Earth's orbit around the sun is more or less circular, but when other planets align in certain ways and their gravitational forces tug at the Earth, the orbit stretches into a more elliptical shape. Combined with the tilt of the Earth on its axis as it spins, that greater or lesser distance from the sun, plus the consequent difference in solar radiation that reaches our planet, is responsible for long-term climate change.



NOW TO THE CRUX OF THE Al Gore argument — the idea that rising carbon dioxide levels are causing an increase in temperature.

To determine temperatures and carbon dioxide levels in the distant past, scientists rely on what they call the "proxy record." There weren't thermometers. So researchers drill deep down into the Antarctic ice sheet and the ocean floor and pull up core samples, whose varying chemical elements let them gauge both the CO2 levels and the temperatures of the distant past.

Gieg clicks a button, and three charts come together. The peaks and valleys of the Milankovi´c cycles for planetary temperature align well with the ocean-floor estimates, and those match closely the records of carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature indications from ice cores. So, the professor maintains, these core samples from the polar ice and ocean floor help show that the Earth's temperature and the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been in lockstep for tens of thousands of years.

Of course, that was long before anybody was burning fossil fuels. So Giegengack tells his students they might want to consider that "natural" climatic temperature cycles control carbon dioxide levels, not the other way around. That's the crux of his argument with Gore's view of global warming — he says carbon dioxide doesn't control global temperature, and certainly not in a direct, linear way.

Gieg has lots more slides to show. He points out that within his lifetime, there was a three-decade period of unusually low temperatures that culminated in the popular consciousness with the awful winter of 1976-77. Back then, scientists started sounding the alarm about a new ice age.

Of course, it's long been thought that the world would end either in fire or in ice. These days, the scientists are shouting fire. And in all his years around environmental issues, Giegengack has never heard so much shouting. "I don't think we're going to have a rational discussion of this question in the present environment," he says. "The scientists are mad because they think nobody in Washington is listening to them. So it's all either apocalyptic disaster or conflict of interest. If you suggest that we're not going to hell in a handbasket because the rate of global warming is low compared to so many other environmental issues that we're enduring, then you're accused of being in the employ of the oil companies and you're labeled a Republican."

Giegengack says things started to get this way around 1988. There was a horrifically hot summer season that year, and drought led to seemingly apocalyptic fires in Yellowstone National Park. Something in those fires was galvanizing. Al Gore, who made his first run for president in 1988, published his first environmental jeremiad, Earth in the Balance, a few years later. Around the same time, the newly formed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was making noise, and governments met first in Rio de Janeiro and then in Japan to forge agreements on "targets" for carbon emission cutbacks. The resulting Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by most of the countries on Earth — none of which are doing very well at actually meeting the target cutbacks — but very notably not by the United States.



"WOW," SAYS GIEG AS Al Gore struts onto the stage of The Oprah Winfrey Show. "He looks like he's had Botox or something."

It's afternoon in America, and Oprah is offering her millions of viewers a class with Dr. Gore that the producers are calling Global Warming 101. I've asked Gieg to watch it with me.

The show turns out to be pretty much a synopsis of An Inconvenient Truth, with Gore clicking through his hyper-produced PowerPoint program and Oprah exclaiming "Wow! Wow!" with dramatic concern. To dramatize the melting of the floating ice cap at the North Pole, Gore has inserted an animated clip of a polar bear swimming desperately to a tiny ice floe that isn't strong enough to hold him. Global warming is drowning helpless bears. Oprah thinks it's the coolest and saddest thing in Gore's whole movie. Gieg starts shouting:

"We don't know that. We don't know that! We don't know that polar bears haven't drowned in every interglacial period. Nobody was watching them back then."

It's got to be a frustrating experience, seeing a topic you've spent some 50 years studying turned into an Oprah episode. "I like her," Gieg says. "She'd beat Al Gore if she ran for president."

Then Gore clicks again to dramatic footage of a collapsing polar ice shelf. "That's irresponsible," Gieg says. "What he's doing is no less than the scare tactics used by people like Karl Rove."

Oprah says she had no idea all these terrible things were happening until she interviewed the noted authority Leonardo DiCaprio. Gore is now into his segment on the melting of glaciers and the possibility of catastrophe if Greenland goes, or parts of Antarctica. The deadly blue water seeping over the world's great lowland cities comes onto the screen.

"Sea level is rising," Giegengack agrees, switching off the sound. But, he explains, it's been rising ever since warming set in 18,000 years ago. The rate of rise has been pretty slow — only about 400 feet so far. And recently — meaning in the thousands of years — the rate has slowed even more. The Earth's global ocean level is only going up 1.8 millimeters per year. That's less than the thickness of one nickel. For the catastrophe of flooded cities and millions of refugees that Gore envisions, sea levels would have to rise about 20 feet.

"At the present rate of sea-level rise," Gieg says, "it's going to take 3,500 years to get up there. So if for some reason this warming process that melts ice is cutting loose and accelerating, sea level doesn't know it. And sea level, we think, is the best indicator of global warming."

By now, Al Gore is taking Oprah on an anti-global-warming shopping trip, buying compact fluorescent light bulbs and programmable thermostats.

We should all buy those things, the professor says, but he's had just about enough of Dr. Gore. "See," Gieg says, "the thing he doesn't mention is that there are 2.4 billion people in India and China who have launched a campaign that will increase their energy consumption by a factor of 10. No matter what we do. If we somehow cut our CO2 emissions in half, you wouldn't be able to measure the difference because of the role played by India and China.

"It's over. If CO2 is the problem, we've already lost."

When Gieg gets to this point in his argument, as he often does when talking about global warming, he gets a little frustrated. "I always get sidetracked because, first of all, the science isn't good. Second, there are all these other interpretations for what we see. Third, it doesn't make any difference, and fourth, it's distracting us from environmental problems that really matter." Among those, Gieg says, are the millions of people a year who die from smoking and two million people a year who die because they don't have access to clean water.

Bob Giegengack likes to point out that there was a time when people like him were called natural philosophers, and he wouldn't mind a return to the days when scientists spent more time asking questions and less time testifying before committees.

But that won't happen soon. Now that Democrats run Congress again, they're likely to ramp up the hearings to chide the Republicans for what they see as nearly a decade of stonewalling and misinformation on global warming. After all, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment, Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, ignited a wildfire in the groves of environmentalism when he called the idea of catastrophic global warming a "hoax."

Movie stars will continue to move in on the action. And look for Al Gore to keep rolling along as the Energizer Bunny of global warming, beating his drum incessantly, powered by a carbon-neutral battery.

In the long view, a geologist like Giegengack can take some comfort in, well, the long view. "There's all this stuff about saving the planet," he says. "The Earth is fine. The Earth was fine before we got here, and it'll be fine long after we're gone."

That will probably be on the final.

John Marchese is a contributing writer. His book The Violin Maker: Finding a Centuries-Old Tradition in a Brooklyn Workshop will be published in the spring.

Comments on this story? Please send them to us.
Originally published in Philadelphia magazine, February 2007

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by faerie_child

I think we should all work on lowering CO2 emissions- even if global warming is just a big hoax- we need to cut down on our pollution. It's good for the enviornment and good for human health. Finding a new energy source is also critical. I don't think we're every going to get nature back on perfect balance, but we need to try.

Thanks for telling me what your view on this is . I was curious. I do disagree, though, and will take a little time to argue it.

According to the source I quoted earlier:

Originally Posted by planetark.com

"Scientists who support Kyoto have estimated that emissions cuts equivalent to 30 Kyotos will be needed," said Myron Ebell, director of global warming at the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, which supports "free enterprise and limited government."

He said costs would rise with each new target since companies make the cheapest cuts first. "I can't imagine that any informed person could claim that the total costs will be anything less than astronomical."

30 Kyotos, I think you'll have to admit, is pretty overwhelming. Also, we don't sustain the Global Warming by our emissions. After the "point of no return," it becomes self-sustaining according to these sources:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0916-09.htm

http://www.global-warming.net/pointofnoreturn.htm

And we're already either across that point of no return or only a few years away from it. We'd have to essentially refocus our entire economy to stop the world crossing that point of no return.

So I don't think that lowering emissions would in any way stop or slow Global Warming. Because there is not enough time to change our economy to prevent Global Warming from reaching the point at which it is self-sustaining.

All that said, I do agree with you anyway, though, that we need to cut emissions. I don't believe that that will have the slightest effect on Global Warming, but I do believe that, like you say, it will help the environment and human health. Also, the available fuel in the Earth is just running out anyway. It has been estimated that it will have all dried up in about 30 years. I don't know that it'll be that soon, myself, but it is going to all have been used up sometime soon and probably within our lifetimes. So we need a new fuel source simply because soon all the currently used fuel will be gone. And also the Middle East is so unstable right now that it's really not safe to depend so much on their oil, as most Western nations do.

Even though the US doesn't get all that much of its oil from the Middle East (from what I've heard), most other nations do, and if they lose their oil supplies, then, because there is a global economy, our oil prices will skyrocket too.

So all in all, I agree that we need to cut emissions, only for different reasons.

[OldHippie]

Personnally, I see a cyclical trend going on here. Lake levels rise and fall and temperatures do the same. How did the last ice age dissapear?? Appears the Earth had to warm up a bit I'd say. Mankind in his infinite wisdom and crying wolf seems to be taking data from a couple hundred years and extrapolating it into a "Were all damned" syndrome.

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by OldHippie

Personnally, I see a cyclical trend going on here. Lake levels rise and fall and temperatures do the same. How did the last ice age dissapear?? Appears the Earth had to warm up a bit I'd say. Mankind in his infinite wisdom and crying wolf seems to be taking data from a couple hundred years and extrapolating it into a "Were all damned" syndrome.

Yes, climate naturally oscillates through a combination of various cycles interacting with discrete events- mountain building, volcanic eruptions, opening and closing of sea channels- but the point of global warming is that human beings are altering the nature of events.

Even if there is some natural warming going on, to ignore human-induced changes is like saying there's no need to take your foot off the accelerator when you're screaming down towards Dead Man's Curve, because, hey, the car's rolling downhill anyway.