CLIMATEGATE – The Big Chill for Global Warming? The recent batch of hacked e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England present a real “head-scratcher” for the average person who is trying to decide whether to take global warming seriously. I have not reviewed all of this material; however, I did take a quick look at a random handful of these e-mails

It’s hard to find anything sinister in what I saw. There was a lot of talk about local university politics, along with assumptions and methods to be used in various models, discussions about computer simulations, the scheduling of meetings, attending conferences, submitting articles for publication, and whether a fellow professor agrees or disagrees with someone’s latest paper. It’s a lot of bureaucracy, ego, gossip and worrying about money, brewed together with on-going concern about scientific data, assumptions and reasoning. About what you’d expect from a research university.

However, some people have gone thru the whole collection (about 1,050 e-mails!), and have found various comments and observations indicating extreme defensiveness regarding those who deny or minimize the significance of anthropogenic global warming. This defensiveness allegedly reaches the point of tampering with input data and preventing legitimate scientific work by “deniers” from being published or presented at conferences. As such, conservative writers recently posted a slew of articles on a wide variety of sites arguing the shakiness of global warming science and making large-scale government responses (e.g. carbon cap-and-trade systems) seem unnecessary and even foolish.

In response, the defenders of the global warming hypothesis, along with those who support an activist response, have put out a corpus of writing which in effect says “so what?” They point out that a large majority of the scientific community has endorsed the anthropogenic global warming theory. They point out that a wide variety of governmental scientific commissions and science academies have issued statements accepting the reality of global warming and the dangers of its unchecked progression, while no such commission has expressed doubt.

They also point out that there is a lot of big-business money trying to fight the tide, money from power companies, coal mining companies, etc. who stand to lose a lot of wealth if governments make a serious effort to control carbon emissions. This money goes into the pockets of lobbyists, video makers and scientists who still have doubts about global warming and the processes behind it. Such money allegedly gives “the dark side” an unfair advantage against the voices of truth. Thus, the defenders of truth, such as the East Anglia scientists and professors, have to be defensive and even a bit aggressive about their work, about making their voices heard.

I myself am more confused now about global warming. I’ve read a fair amount about it over the past 5 years, and most of the articles I’ve come across (as well as shows viewed on PBS or heard on NPR) have been quite unanimous about the realities and dangers of human-caused global warming. I’m reasonably educated but not a climate scientist, so I couldn’t make any detailed judgments about what I was reading. However, it generally seemed well-reasoned. I was as fully convinced as Al Gore is.

Lately though, partly as a result of these e-mails, it’s been easier to find other views regarding global warming in the media, especially on some of the more reputable web-sites. And to be honest, a lot of the doubting arguments seem just as well reasoned as the supporters’. Thus, at the moment, I’m a bit perplexed. The global warming proponents still have a lot of strength; perhaps their biggest strength is in numbers. Global warming does seem well accepted by a majority of reputable scientists. However, this was also once the case for phlogiston, the concept of fire as a liquid or gaseous substance back in the 17th century; and the good old 3-circle atom, which was scientifically de-bunked by the quantum physicists of the early 20th Century, but was still seen in textbooks into the 1950s. Things do change sometimes in science (which is part of the beauty of it).

There is no doubt that global carbon levels have risen tremendously over the past two centuries, and that average global temperatures have concurrently risen. However, there is that matter of average world temperatures roughly leveling off over the past 10 years while CO2 levels continued to rise; but that could yet just be a random quirk that will reverse itself. Time will tell. A lot of ice has been melting over the past 50 years, especially up in the Arctic. However, the Antarctica is strange; it seems to be warming around the edges, especially its Peninsula, but the bulk of it has gotten colder since 1984.

One of the biggest threats from global warming is the rising of the oceans from the melting of overland ice (Arctic ice is mostly in water already, so it doesn’t matter so much if it melts; I was never a big polar bear fan anyway), given that a whole lot of humans live on very-low elevation real estate near the sea. However, if the Antarctic dynamics were to continue, then more and not less ice would pile up on it, and would keep the oceans from rising very much. (However, another study indicates that even interior Antarctica is now starting to get warmer. But then again, another recent study says that Antarctic ice has been growing, not shrinking)

I recently viewed and studied a Teaching Company video course entitled “Understanding Complexity”, which is all about the scientific study of the dynamics behind complex systems. The earth and its weather certainly qualify as a highly complex system. What I took away from the course is that over the past 20 years, scientists rightly decided that they needed to study the patterns in how complicated things interact, and that they have gathered some amazing facts and theories during that time. However, during this time their appreciation has grown as to how much they don’t know about complex system dynamics. I.e., ‘the more you know, the less you know’.

To be honest, I think that makes for a good summary of where we are right now regarding global warming. The recent Climategate revelations did NOT prove global warming to be a farce. But then again, even when scientists who specialize in a field as complex as climatology seem to be largely in accord about something, they still might well be wrong. Human beings do have egos, and climatologists might well be a bit more impressed with all that they DO know about our atmosphere than with what they DON’T. Complexity study is still a young field, and may not have had time to fully permeate the culture of many established fields, including climatology.

As physicist Freeman Dyson says about global warming models,

The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world . . .

Right now, I
’m not ruling global warning out, given the potentially disastrous consequences. But then again, taking measures to stop it are also going to be painful and have long-term repercussions. I myself hate the idea of studying something to death, but for the time being, I think that we need perhaps another five to ten years of research to be sure about the global warming thing. During this time, our scientists and the scientific infrastructure needs to be FULLY OPEN TO ALL VOICES. We can’t tolerate attitudes such as those in the East Anglia e-mails.

BUT at the same time, we should also be doing a lot of research and development on WHAT TO DO IF IT IS TRUE. If, by 2018, there is a rich understanding of the system dynamics that enfold themselves within the macro and micro-studies regarding global temperature trends and regulation, and these “dynamic studies” prove that global warming is a clear and present danger, then we can “hit the ground running” with carbon emission reduction techniques along with geo-engineering schemes. That’s where our governments should be putting our tax monies right now, IMHO.

(And even if global warming does turn out to be not quite as bad as we thought it would be, the world would still receive a bonus from all the science and technology developed during this “get ready for it” phase. Similar to the boost that the US economy received from the space program in the 1960s).