The seldom-seen devastation of climate change

[one...two...tree 2,762]

A NASA climatologist explains why global warming is more than starving polar bears, and skeptics are simplistic.

By Peter Dizikes

slide show

In our visual culture, climate change remains oddly invisible. Few people can glimpse melting glaciers or perceive that seas levels are rising. We may feel hotter, but we cannot see carbon rising through the atmosphere as we drive our cars around. This is one reason for our lethargic response to the problem: out of sight, out of mind.

"Climate Change: Picturing the Science," a new book by Gavin Schmidt and Joshua Wolfe, aims to alter that by providing a rich photographic record of a warming world. Some photos tell a self-evident record of geophysical change, like a shot of Lake Powell, on the Arizona-Utah border, where warming-induced drought has produced a dramatically lowered water line -- a yellow "bathtub ring" of once-submerged rock.

In other cases, knowing a little about our climate can affect the way we interpret these photos -- lending a more menacing air to seemingly benign images. An aerial shot of a massive Dutch sea barrier, with the city of Rotterdam lying just beyond, looks like an ode to Sisyphean futility. A gorgeous photo of sunlight striking a glacier in Peru's Quelccaya ice cap symbolically sums up a larger question: How long will such formations resist the effects of the sun?

To provide some of that knowledge, Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, wrote a few accompanying essays and solicited several others from colleagues. The book emphasizes the complexity of the climate change problem, noting the wide range of greenhouse gases that engender warming (not just carbon dioxide but also methane, aerosols and more), the many ways we release them, and the varied regional effects they produce. Climate change is not a one-dimensional problem with a simple solution, so we need to grasp the totality of the global climate system.

Salon spoke to Schmidt about our inability to grasp global warming, the nature of climate science, and our prospects for a cooler future.

Why is it important to depict climate change visually?

The imagery associated with climate change often veers toward the overly dramatic. That isn't to say climate change is not dramatic. But people get the idea that climate change is all about polar bears and hurricanes. What we tried to do was to find images that showed the relationship between climate change and people and that brought out some of the long-term nature of changes and its complexity. Small things that happen because of climate change end up having big effects.

What's a small change in nature that leads to a larger problem?

Pine-bark beetles. They are a pest for lodge-pole pine trees in Colorado up through British Columbia to Alaska. They are very sensitive to cold. If it doesn't fall below minus 20 Celsius [minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit] for a week or two during the winter, they reproduce rapidly. As the winters have gotten warmer, the range of the beetles has expanded enormously, much faster than their predators. If you visit Colorado, behind the Front Range, you'll see whole hillsides devastated by these pine-bark beetles. In British Columbia and Alaska, it's huge thousand-mile tracts of forest. These changes have been leading to forest fires, because now you've got more fuel, which increases carbon emissions.

Beyond fixating on polar bears, what else are we missing about climate change?

There's still a lot of confusion about the role of humans. If you look at opinion polls, people are much less aware of our role in pushing climate change forward than the scientific community or even policymakers. And we're trying to make clear it's a multifaceted problem. It's not just carbon dioxide but methane emissions, black carbon and aerosols. It's not just you driving your SUV that's causing it.

People also see the conclusions of science, but they don't see the process of science. When somebody tells them what scientists say, there's a knee-jerk reaction: "Who the hell are scientists to be telling us these things?" So we try very hard to give a sense of how scientists really go about their detective work. How do you piece together a hugely complex situation like the earth's climate?

I think a big problem is that we often view science as a source of fixed facts. For a lot of us, high school biology just involved memorizing the parts of a cell. Whereas climate science is more about analyzing cause and effect in a complex system, adding information in, understanding results we measure as probabilities.

This is reinforced all the time in popular culture. And the way we teach science is that Newton said "X" and it's correct, so learn this formula. This promotes the idea that science knows all the answers. Whereas when you look at any actual working scientist, whether it's in climate change or medicine or building a nuclear power plant, the stock in trade of science is uncertainty; it's not certainty.

Niels Bohr said, "Prediction is difficult, particularly when it's about the future." People demand certainty from scientists they would never demand from any other field of life. In economic policy, with the stimulus package, are we saying, "This will fix everything"? No, there are all these variables like consumer confidence, and people understand it's a complex problem. Yet when it comes to something slightly more scientific, you often hear that unless the science is 100 percent certain, it's not worth listening to.

People clearly recognize the limits of scientific knowledge in medicine. One reason we use a medical analogy in the book -- symptoms, diagnosis, cures -- was to tap into this. We have symptoms, the doctor prods and pokes and says, "Let's have a follow-up test," and then comes back with, "Well, maybe you need to cut down on your cholesterol. Maybe you can take this drug. It might have side effects." People don't expect a doctor to predict exactly the day that they're going to die, or even exactly what they have. Doctors have an enormous body of knowledge that allows them to treat people with beneficial effects, but there's no guarantee. People understand that.

more...

http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2009/06/0...im=/env/feature

[AnaAndDaniel 0]

I tell ya, the Republicans need to grow some 'nads.

Mad as hell I tell ya.

Daniel

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

[GaryC 7]

I still haven't seen anyone show me one shread of proof that the changes happening are caused by man. Sure the climate is changing. It does it on a constant basis. It did it before man was around and it will continue to do it long after we are gone. The arrogance of the lefties to think we can change the climate is beyond me.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I still haven't seen anyone show me one shread of proof that the changes happening are caused by man. Sure the climate is changing. It does it on a constant basis. It did it before man was around and it will continue to do it long after we are gone. The arrogance of the lefties to think we can change the climate is beyond me.

Gary, do you believe that it is only left-leaning climate scientists who think that the rapid climate change is caused by man-made emissions?

[GaryC 7]

I still haven't seen anyone show me one shread of proof that the changes happening are caused by man. Sure the climate is changing. It does it on a constant basis. It did it before man was around and it will continue to do it long after we are gone. The arrogance of the lefties to think we can change the climate is beyond me.

Gary, do you believe that it is only left-leaning climate scientists who think that the rapid climate change is caused by man-made emissions?

I believe that all you want to do is ask stupid questions when your cornered.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I still haven't seen anyone show me one shread of proof that the changes happening are caused by man. Sure the climate is changing. It does it on a constant basis. It did it before man was around and it will continue to do it long after we are gone. The arrogance of the lefties to think we can change the climate is beyond me.

Gary, do you believe that it is only left-leaning climate scientists who think that the rapid climate change is caused by man-made emissions?

I believe that all you want to do is ask stupid questions when your cornered.

It's a fair question to ask since you implied above that the theory is of political nature, rather than scientific. For you to believe that, you would then have to believe that consensus on climate change among climate scientists is because they all share the same political viewpoint.

[GaryC 7]

I still haven't seen anyone show me one shread of proof that the changes happening are caused by man. Sure the climate is changing. It does it on a constant basis. It did it before man was around and it will continue to do it long after we are gone. The arrogance of the lefties to think we can change the climate is beyond me.

Gary, do you believe that it is only left-leaning climate scientists who think that the rapid climate change is caused by man-made emissions?

I believe that all you want to do is ask stupid questions when your cornered.

It's a fair question to ask since you implied above that the theory is of political nature, rather than scientific. For you to believe that, you would then have to believe that consensus on climate change among climate scientists is because they all share the same political viewpoint.

That is just it, there is no consensus. There is a group that believes in man made climate change but there is no consensus. The politics comes in on who gets the air time and who gets marginalized. The consensus is political and it is from the left. Science has nothing to do with it.

[Peikko 1,575]

I think the more important question is not whether science can empirically prove that man is causing climate change but rather pose the question, what are the current observable changes going to mean to the human (and importantly the ecosystem that is our environment including animals/insects/plants) populations. If the observable changes appear to result in a less habitable, less usable environment, can humans influence the ecosystem to create a more positive, more sustainable environment?

There are things we know we can do, including maintaining forestation. We KNOW that reducing the rain forests is having an adverse impact and yet the destruction, man made construction continues. What does that tell us about what humans want to achieve?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I still haven't seen anyone show me one shread of proof that the changes happening are caused by man. Sure the climate is changing. It does it on a constant basis. It did it before man was around and it will continue to do it long after we are gone. The arrogance of the lefties to think we can change the climate is beyond me.

Gary, do you believe that it is only left-leaning climate scientists who think that the rapid climate change is caused by man-made emissions?

I believe that all you want to do is ask stupid questions when your cornered.

It's a fair question to ask since you implied above that the theory is of political nature, rather than scientific. For you to believe that, you would then have to believe that consensus on climate change among climate scientists is because they all share the same political viewpoint.

That is just it, there is no consensus. There is a group that believes in man made climate change but there is no consensus. The politics comes in on who gets the air time and who gets marginalized. The consensus is political and it is from the left. Science has nothing to do with it.

Bingo. You believe the consensus is a politically motivated conspiracy. Thanks for making that clear.

[GaryC 7]

I still haven't seen anyone show me one shread of proof that the changes happening are caused by man. Sure the climate is changing. It does it on a constant basis. It did it before man was around and it will continue to do it long after we are gone. The arrogance of the lefties to think we can change the climate is beyond me.

Gary, do you believe that it is only left-leaning climate scientists who think that the rapid climate change is caused by man-made emissions?

I believe that all you want to do is ask stupid questions when your cornered.

It's a fair question to ask since you implied above that the theory is of political nature, rather than scientific. For you to believe that, you would then have to believe that consensus on climate change among climate scientists is because they all share the same political viewpoint.

That is just it, there is no consensus. There is a group that believes in man made climate change but there is no consensus. The politics comes in on who gets the air time and who gets marginalized. The consensus is political and it is from the left. Science has nothing to do with it.

Bingo. You believe the consensus is a politically motivated conspiracy. Thanks for making that clear.

Well duh, How long have I been saying that mr obvious?

[scandal 951]

That is just it, there is no consensus. There is a group that believes in man made climate change but there is no consensus. The politics comes in on who gets the air time and who gets marginalized. The consensus is political and it is from the left. Science has nothing to do with it.

The Declaration (below) from Woods Hole Institute signed by 2409 experts in the field dates back to 1997, 12 years ago, when the science was far less well understood. The science - and scientific consensus - since Kyoto have both increased dramatically in the intervening years.

There are no reputable scholars in the field who seriously challenge the notion that human activity is a contributing factor. There is still ongoing debate about the degree of that contribution, and whether it is reverseable and how to reverse it.

http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_publi...rth/climate.htm

Scientists' Statement

Global Climatic Disruption

June 18, 1997

We are scientists who are familiar with the causes and effects of climatic change as summarized recently by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We endorse those reports and observe that the further accumulation of greenhouse gases commits the earth irreversibly to further global climatic change and consequent ecological, economic and social disruption. The risks associated with such changes justify preventive action through reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases. In ratifying the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United States agreed in principle to reduce its emissions. It is time for the United States, as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, to fulfill this commitment and demonstrate leadership in a global effort.

Human-induced global climatic change is under way. The IPCC concluded that global mean surface air temperature has increased by between about 0.5 and 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 100 years and anticipates a further continuing rise of 1.8 to 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit during the next century. Sea-level has risen on average 4-10 inches during the past 100 years and is expected to rise another 6 inches to 3 feet by 2100. Global warming from the increase in heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere causes an amplified hydrological cycle resulting in increased precipitation and flooding in some regions and more severe aridity in other areas. The IPCC concluded that "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." The warming is expected to expand the geographical ranges of malaria and dengue fever and to open large new areas to other human diseases and plant and animal pests. Effects of the disruption of climate are sufficiently complicated that it is appropriate to assume there will be effects not now anticipated.

Our familiarity with the scale, severity, and costs to human welfare of the disruptions that the climatic changes threaten leads us to introduce this note of urgency and to call for early domestic action to reduce U.S. emissions via the most cost-effective means. We encourage other nations to join in similar actions with the purpose of producing a substantial and progressive global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions beginning immediately. We call attention to the fact that there are financial as well as environmental advantages to reducing emissions. More than 2000 economists recently observed that there are many potential policies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions for which total benefits outweigh the total costs.

The Framework Convention on Climate Change, ratified by the United States and more than 165 other nations, calls for stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at levels that will protect human interests and nature. The Parties to the Convention will meet in December, 1997, in Kyoto, Japan to prepare a protocol implementing the convention. We urge that the United States enter that meeting with a clear national plan to limit emissions, and a recommendation as to how the U.S. will assist other nations in significant steps toward achieving the joint purpose of stabilization.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I still haven't seen anyone show me one shread of proof that the changes happening are caused by man. Sure the climate is changing. It does it on a constant basis. It did it before man was around and it will continue to do it long after we are gone. The arrogance of the lefties to think we can change the climate is beyond me.

Gary, do you believe that it is only left-leaning climate scientists who think that the rapid climate change is caused by man-made emissions?

I believe that all you want to do is ask stupid questions when your cornered.

It's a fair question to ask since you implied above that the theory is of political nature, rather than scientific. For you to believe that, you would then have to believe that consensus on climate change among climate scientists is because they all share the same political viewpoint.

That is just it, there is no consensus. There is a group that believes in man made climate change but there is no consensus. The politics comes in on who gets the air time and who gets marginalized. The consensus is political and it is from the left. Science has nothing to do with it.

Bingo. You believe the consensus is a politically motivated conspiracy. Thanks for making that clear.

Well duh, How long have I been saying that mr obvious?

Conspiracy theorists are a group all by themselves.

[GaryC 7]

I still haven't seen anyone show me one shread of proof that the changes happening are caused by man. Sure the climate is changing. It does it on a constant basis. It did it before man was around and it will continue to do it long after we are gone. The arrogance of the lefties to think we can change the climate is beyond me.

Gary, do you believe that it is only left-leaning climate scientists who think that the rapid climate change is caused by man-made emissions?

I believe that all you want to do is ask stupid questions when your cornered.

It's a fair question to ask since you implied above that the theory is of political nature, rather than scientific. For you to believe that, you would then have to believe that consensus on climate change among climate scientists is because they all share the same political viewpoint.

That is just it, there is no consensus. There is a group that believes in man made climate change but there is no consensus. The politics comes in on who gets the air time and who gets marginalized. The consensus is political and it is from the left. Science has nothing to do with it.

Bingo. You believe the consensus is a politically motivated conspiracy. Thanks for making that clear.

Well duh, How long have I been saying that mr obvious?

Conspiracy theorists are a group all by themselves.

Like those that think man is causing global warming?

[GaryC 7]

That is just it, there is no consensus. There is a group that believes in man made climate change but there is no consensus. The politics comes in on who gets the air time and who gets marginalized. The consensus is political and it is from the left. Science has nothing to do with it.

The Declaration (below) from Woods Hole Institute signed by 2409 experts in the field dates back to 1997, 12 years ago, when the science was far less well understood. The science - and scientific consensus - since Kyoto have both increased dramatically in the intervening years.

There are no reputable scholars in the field who seriously challenge the notion that human activity is a contributing factor. There is still ongoing debate about the degree of that contribution, and whether it is reverseable and how to reverse it.

http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_publi...rth/climate.htm

Scientists' Statement

Global Climatic Disruption

June 18, 1997

We are scientists who are familiar with the causes and effects of climatic change as summarized recently by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We endorse those reports and observe that the further accumulation of greenhouse gases commits the earth irreversibly to further global climatic change and consequent ecological, economic and social disruption. The risks associated with such changes justify preventive action through reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases. In ratifying the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United States agreed in principle to reduce its emissions. It is time for the United States, as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, to fulfill this commitment and demonstrate leadership in a global effort.

Human-induced global climatic change is under way. The IPCC concluded that global mean surface air temperature has increased by between about 0.5 and 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 100 years and anticipates a further continuing rise of 1.8 to 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit during the next century. Sea-level has risen on average 4-10 inches during the past 100 years and is expected to rise another 6 inches to 3 feet by 2100. Global warming from the increase in heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere causes an amplified hydrological cycle resulting in increased precipitation and flooding in some regions and more severe aridity in other areas. The IPCC concluded that "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." The warming is expected to expand the geographical ranges of malaria and dengue fever and to open large new areas to other human diseases and plant and animal pests. Effects of the disruption of climate are sufficiently complicated that it is appropriate to assume there will be effects not now anticipated.

Our familiarity with the scale, severity, and costs to human welfare of the disruptions that the climatic changes threaten leads us to introduce this note of urgency and to call for early domestic action to reduce U.S. emissions via the most cost-effective means. We encourage other nations to join in similar actions with the purpose of producing a substantial and progressive global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions beginning immediately. We call attention to the fact that there are financial as well as environmental advantages to reducing emissions. More than 2000 economists recently observed that there are many potential policies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions for which total benefits outweigh the total costs.

The Framework Convention on Climate Change, ratified by the United States and more than 165 other nations, calls for stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at levels that will protect human interests and nature. The Parties to the Convention will meet in December, 1997, in Kyoto, Japan to prepare a protocol implementing the convention. We urge that the United States enter that meeting with a clear national plan to limit emissions, and a recommendation as to how the U.S. will assist other nations in significant steps toward achieving the joint purpose of stabilization.

I could repost the petition signed by hundreds of scientists again that dispute man made global warming. But it would just be dismissed again. It seems the sheep that think man is making GW doesn't want to have their religion challenged.