Easterbrook Switches Sides On Global Warming

Gregg Easterbrook, writing in the NY Times:

[H]as anything happened in recent years that should cause a reasonable person to switch sides in the global-warming debate?

Yes: the science has changed from ambiguous to near-unanimous. As an environmental commentator, I have a long record of opposing alarmism. But based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert.

Interesting, but...

In the intellectual trench warfare of the global warming debate, the question of whether there has been a man-made influence on the climate is only the first step.  A reasonable next question is, are any proposed policies actually cost-effective, and do they represent a "solution"?  Easterbrook concludes with this:

President Bush was right to withdraw the United States from the cumbersome Kyoto greenhouse treaty, which even most signatories are ignoring. But Mr. Bush should speak to history by proposing a binding greenhouse-credit trading system within the United States. Waiting for science no longer justifies delay, as results are now in.

Bjorn Lomborg, the Skeptical Environmentalist, tackled this cost-benefit question; I had a brief discussion in this old post.

Comments

[cathyf]

the science has changed from ambiguous to near-unanimous.

*snort* The only group who is "near-unanimous" are the journalists who have never taken a science class at higher than jr-high level anywhere in their communications major careers.

cathy :-)

[JohnH]

This reminds me of callers to talk radio who say, "I'm a life-long Republican, but I think Bush is disgusting and we should never have gone into Iraq."

What does Gregg Easterbrook know about AGW, i.e. man-made global warming, as opposed to simply global warming? The "proof" of human influence on temp has been debunked. Bad statistics and a small group of Bristlecone and Foxtail Pines in the Western U.S. constitute the "proof." It's bad enough to make the textbooks as an example of spurious correlation.

So what has Easterbrook got? The Time Magazine piece? Al Gore?

[Seixon]

It's my personal impression that the science on AGW is under attack as never before currently. Many scientists have done studies concerning how much the Sun has played a role in the warming of the Earth the past few decades and that is something that only started recently, a few years ago.

What Easterbrook meant to say is that the AGW fanboys have been screaming louder than ever in recent times, which is what has buckled him into submitting to their desires. Time magazine and Al Gore as evidence.

I can't wait to debunk Gore's movie. The trailer has a bunch of bunk in it. If the trailer is representative of the movie, Gore's movie could eclipse Fahrenheit 9/11 for the award of most misleading film since Stalinist and Nazi propaganda. OK, maybe that was exaggerating a bit. Or was it?

[clarice]

Hey, wait a minute..consider that Gore (like Plame) has exactly the sort of science background for the task. IIRC Morannis(sp?) WaPo reviewed Gore's high school and college records and beyond a few basic classes in science at St Alban's his pot smoking, class skipping career there listed some gut science course..the equivalent of "big thoughts on science". LOL

[Fresh Air]

Well, you got part of the decision tree. There's more to it, however.

1. Is global warming definitely occuring?

2. If it is, is that necessarily a bad thing?

3. If the planet is getting warmer, is it due to something for which man is responsible?

4. If man is responsible, is it something that can be sucessfully ameliorated?

5. Can comprehensive ameliorative steps be taken that reduce global warming significantly?

6. Are such steps cost-effective?

7. Can these steps be agreed to by ALL the world's (polluting) nations and shared equitably?

I submit the answer to every single one of these questions is "NO!"

Greg Easterbrook, I'm sorry to say, is not a linear thinker. He is a lefty and lefties simply cannot think clearly. Q.E.D. They jump from a specious assumption to a dubious inference and finish with an absurd recommendation that makes them feel all ooey-gooey-good-for-the-earth inside.

I recommend "deep thinkers" like Easterbrook pick up trash on the side of the highway instead. It will accomplish the same thing at much lower cost. It will also possibly be beneficial, depending upon how much gasoline he uses up to get to the highway, of course.

[Seixon]

There's a lefty here in Norway who is all over this global warming stuff. In an interview, he admitted that he had always hated math, couldn't understand it. This guys is trying to tell me about science? Yeah. Pull my other leg.

[Forbes]

Gregg Easterbook?

Isn't he the guy that dismissed from an ESPN on-line column gig, a couple years ago?

Maybe he should opine on Barry Bonds and steroids. Oh, never mind. Probably not qualified on the science.

Someone should inform Easterbrook that science is not discovered, nor commanded, by authority or consensus, but by the repetition of disproving the null hypothesis.

[Forbes]

Sorry. I just checked. Easterbrook is now at Brookings--no wonder he switched sides.

[clarice]

In the tank for a lefty think tank? How rare.LOL

[Gabriel Chapman]

When the Global Warming crowd can explain the Ice Age and what brought us into and out of it, I'll start to buy into their "science" on man made Global Warming.

One need only go back 25 years to read stories in all the same media outlets about the "comming Ice Age" and massive starvation and overpopulation to get a handle on media based "science".

[ordi]

Seixon,

Didn't you really mean? Pull my finger.

LOL

[Gabriel Chapman]

P.S.

Junk Science has a nice primer on "greenhouse gasses", perhaps Easterbrook should read it, though I fear the science involved may be over his head.

[TP]

I would be happy of one of these geniuses could tell me the optimal temperature of the planet with the current population. Perhaps they could also explain the effect that seismic activity (particularly on the ocean floors) has on the temperature of the planet.

[Byron]

I have been skeptical of global warming claims for a number of reasons. The idea of a scientific consensus seems to me premature for such a complex and multidisciplinary subject, there is the strong sense of an attempt to enforce an orthodoxy (eg, Lomborg's treatment by Scientific American), there is too much TV time and grant money in the mix, and there are too many ancillary ideological agendas hitching a ride. In short, all the signs of bandwagon, log rolling, and suspect motives. It looked to me like something with the potential to be a major scientific embarrassment.

But I spent some time looking through the 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis," which was available online in draft form for comments until May 10. It is an impressive summary of the issues and evidence, and it shows every sign of being fair, objective, and very carefully done. The Report is very specific about which patterns of findings seem robust, and what key uncertainties remain. There are many uncertainties, but the direction of the accumulating evidence seems pretty clear.

Anyone who thinks this is all an easily-debunked product of some small group of zealots should spend some time looking at this report. (I don't know when the final version will be published, but a search of "IPCC" should find an answer.) Chapter 1, "Historical Overview of Climate Change Science," is extremely good, and the "Technical Summary" is readable for anyone with a minimal science background.

I have to say that it looks to me that the position Easterbrook takes is defensible on best available evidence. But, like Easterbrook, I don't think it at all follows that the global warming hysterics are right. I think what follows is that Lomborg has been right all along: There is global warming, and some of it is the result of human activity. The questions worth arguing about concern the costs and benefits of various courses of action, including doing nothing at all. For example, what would measures that cut economic growth mean for the world's poor and their chances to become non-poor? It's possible that the best approach in the long run might be to maximize rates of economic growth in those countries, even though that would mean more pollution in the short run. History demonstrates beyond any question that as populations become more affluent they become increasingly concerned about environmental quality.

The danger is that the anti-capitalist agenda of some who have latched onto the global warming issue will, by default, be allowed to determine the parameters of the debate, and their ideological commitments to determine in advance what acceptable policy proposals must look like. The last thing we need is more monstrosities like Kyoto.

[Bob]

This article by RICHARD LINDZEN says it all!

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220

I also remember hearing an expert say that if they used the same mathematical models that are being used to predict GW, and reversed them, the temperatures from a hundred years ago would show tremendous inaccuracies.

I say the sky is not falling, and I'm sticking with it until I see some good science.

[Barney Frank]

When an argument is sound there are no calls for 'consensus', because there is no need.

When an argument is weak and driven by agendas an enforced consensus is always sought.

As the actual hard science makes the more outlandish claims of the global warming alarmists appear more ingenuous they call ever louder for consensus.

And just when people like Easterbrook start jumping on the bandwagon is precisely when its headed over a cliff. Think Nasdaq, March 2000.

[ghostcat]

If we totally eliminated all greenhouse gasses... a silly notion, actually ... the underlying global climatic cycle would continue.

[Seixon]

Those who need to keep talking about "consensus" seem to be defensive about their position, as if they don't even think it stands on its own.

Well, obviously it doesn't, as there are many scientists still who do not think that humans are having any real effect on the temperature.

One other thing is that this issue is very complex, the atmosphere, and how it interacts with the rest of the Earth, is very complex. Yet you have different scientists in each field acting as if their research in their field exists in a vacuum. Just imagine the astronomers and such who study the Sun and its effects on the Earth. We didn't even start hearing from those guys until recently, and more and more studies are coming out showing that the Sun definitely has had something to do with the warming of late.

Ask Dr. Gray, he hasn't once been asked to contribute to the UN's IPCC even though he is one of the most respected and renowned scientists in the field. Why? Well, because he doesn't believe all the hype and thinks humans have had little or no effect on the climate.

[Pisistratus]

The scientific consensus point is really irrelevant.

Probably 99% of working scientists accept that evolution of species has occurred in the earth's history, but people blithely dismiss that as just a "theory" too.

So even if 99% of scientist say humans are causing global warming, it will remain simply politics.

Put out the coal fire in Centralia Pennsylvania burning since 1962 as a first step in any event.

[clarice]

http://www.anklebitingpundits.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3619

[kim]

Climateaudit.org
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[bud]

One more point:
Think about the size of *any* countermeasure that would affect the climate of the entire earth, and then think of The Law of Unintended Consequences.

email is human readble - aloud

[willem]

Catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is far from enjoying a broad scientific consensus. There are profound flaws in the popularized cartoon that brought us Kyoto. Last I knew, over 16,000 practicing scientists had signed a petition against it and the anthropogenic causality theory of global warming. Unfortuately, most Journalists became such to escape the very academic rigor they are now shamefully attempting to monetize in the name of news.

What we have here is Goebbels Warming.

Oil For Food wasn't enough. It's the Carbon Tax, stupid. Fine young princes like Algore need a job, one way of the other.

Ask them. They were born to rule. Should we let them?

[willem]

Heh.

Make that: *fine young cannibals*

[willem]

This just up..

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=052406F

[kim]

I can't believe Gore still believes in Mann's hockey stick. He is a demagogue, and the 'sky is falling' hysterics about the anthropogenic component of 'global warming' are his acolytes. From time immemorial, man has blamed human misbehaviour for the wrath of the gods manifested as unpredictable and often devastating weather. Don't sacrifice my virgins for your superstitions.
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[kim]

David Attenborough of the BBC has recently claimed to have moved from skepticism to faith that the anthropogenic component of 'global warning' is dangerous, and should be attenuated. Unfortunately, he uses the devastation of New Orleans, and Mann's phony hockey stick and the bogus average surface temperature readings to explain his conversion. Another below sea level Katrina victim.
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[Karl]

"Considering the multiple times Gore has given his greenhouse slide show (he says "thousands"), it's jarring that the movie was not scrubbed for factual precision. For instance, this 2005 joint statement by the science academies of the Western nations, including the National Academy of Sciences, warns of sea-level rise of four to 35 inches in the 21st century; this amount of possible sea-level rise is current consensus science.

"Yet An Inconvenient Truth asserts that a sea-level rise of 20 feet is a realistic short-term prospect. Gore says the entire Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could melt rapidly; the film then jumps to animation of Manhattan flooded. Well, all that ice might melt really fast, and a UFO might land in London, too..."

-- Gregg Easterbrook, May 24, 2006.

So even the new convert to AGW knows Gore is misleading people, likely on purpose. But I guess that's not fit to print in The New York Times.

[Bill]

"Yet An Inconvenient Truth asserts that a sea-level rise of 20 feet is a realistic short-term prospect. Gore says the entire Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could melt rapidly; the film then jumps to animation of Manhattan flooded." - Easterbrook

If the Greenland and other island arctic ice sheets were to melt the sea level would rise about 17 to 20 feet. On the other hand melting the Antarctic ice sheet would raise the sea level about 170 feet.

By short term Gore seems to mean a geological short term of a few hundred to a few thousand years.

[R C Dean]

the question of whether there has been a man-made influence on the climate is only the first step

And one that has still not been answered. People are citing the recent NOAA report as if it settled the question of causality when it said the data had recently been reconciled and were consistent with anthropogenic global warming.

All that means is that, for the first time, all the data sets show a warming trend, and we cannot rule out AGW.

There is still no demonstration of causation, nothing that indicates why this global warming trend, unlike all the previous such trends in the history of the planet, is caused by human activity.

[ajacksonian]

And one of my very first posts was to look at global temperature and carbon dioxide levels.

Analysis time: 4 Billion Years.

Current global temps: Far lower than average.

Causation: Break up of super continents and faster continental drift.

Analysis for the last 65 Million Years is frequent global cooling periods with ice sheets extending from both poles.

Even the alarmist extrapolationists cannot overcome this.

Link between carbon dioxide and global temperatures? Only at the extreme low end of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere do we see global cooling. We are currently in one of those. Once a certain threshold is reached the globe tends to shift back to much higher temperatures and moderate climate globally, although this is usually linked with supercontinent formations and much slower crustal movement.

Mankind's impact on this? Heh.

The alarmists must also explain why Mars is warming also and ensure that they have taken all solar activitly into account while doing so. Perhaps Sol is just putting out a slight smidgen more energy on a fluctuating cycle. No one can say for sure.

To try and identify *one* thing as critical on a multicausational study in which multiple elements are critical and to assume that some things in the short term that have appeared static are indeed static, while they are long term variable is ridiculous.

The scientific evidence of the last 100-200 years does not show anything out of the ordinary for this planet. The data may not be looked at sensibly in the short run, post-glacial, highly fluctuating temperature regions and then attribute warming just to mankind. The reason we got out of the last glacial period is due to GLOBAL WARMING and that was 12,000 years ago. We are *still* climbing out of that ice-age minimum and have been for 12,000 years and will continue to do so, with any luck, for many, many more.

This is known as a normal cyclic period between glaciations. Anyone pointing to today's evidence must clearly and reasonably explain each and every previous glacial warming period over the last 65 Million Years and explain, clearly and definitively, how this one is so much different.

And back it up with clear evidence that clearly and difinitively demonstrates that the minor changes that mankind has put upon this planet are doing something out of the ordinary.

Because, to-date, no one in any field of astronomy, geology, climatology, or statistics has done this. Evidence is being presented in a short-term timeframe and is taken wholly and fully out of context with the larger body of evidence that currently exists for the globe and to the very beginnings of sediment deposition 4.3 Billion Years Ago. There is a huge, huge mural stretching down many blocks of fencing, and someone is taking a postage stamp size piece at one end and claiming they have it all.

Show me the *real* evidence, in context.

This last 200 years stuff is a single, nice data point. And that is *all* of it, except that our lives our short and we think it is *everything*.

I will go back to worrying about Yellowstone and hoping we can get that sensor net up very quickly and enough computers and 3D modeling power to find out what is going on there. It was not pretty the last time it went. And it is coming due for another caldera event. The lakes have shifted since the 1920's and that indicates something moving deep down. Old faithful has changed its pattern due to many minor earthquakes over the last two decades.

Global warming? So what.

Yellowstone? Maybe not today, tomorrow or 60,000 years. But things are shifting and it is not nice when it goes.

Can we get off this planet now? It is not friendly to life.

[Karl]

Bill wrote:

"If the Greenland and other island arctic ice sheets were to melt the sea level would rise about 17 to 20 feet. On the other hand melting the Antarctic ice sheet would raise the sea level about 170 feet.

By short term Gore seems to mean a geological short term of a few hundred to a few thousand years."

Unlike Bill, I'm not a mindreader, but I would suggest that Gore is not putting all of this effort into stopping something he thinks is going to happen a few thousand years from now. Certainly, his presentation, which shows the sea level rising in a few seconds, doesn't suggest he's thinking on that long a time horizon. And the ice sheet is growing in Greenland. But other than that, nice try.

[Bill]

Of course, Gore didn't mean 'short term' that way either he doesn't know what he is talking about or he is trying to scare people or both, but I took it that way the first time I read the sentence which didn't make sense.

It is extremely improbable that the Antarctic ice sheet could melt short term.

[steve]

Whether or not the warming is anthropocentric is not policy-relevant, if you're thinking clearly. Suppose the earth is warming up all by itself. The only relevant questions are:

1. Should we try to deliberately control the global thermostat through an international poltical regime?

2. Is the reduction of CO2 emissions the best way to control the thermostat?

I would answer both with a resounding no. Even if we understood causality well enough to exert such control, the political economy is terrible. Husbands and wives can't agree on the thermostat setting in their living room. Nations and regions around the world will never be able to agree on the appropriate setting. Actions taken in one direction will be countered by others trying to thwart them. War is even a possible outcome. So it makes more sense to let the climate go where it will go and work on adaptations and economic growth.

If, nevertheless, we decide to deliberately intervene in climate, it is almost certainly orders of magnitude cheaper to change the earth's albedo than to slash the consumption of fossil fuels. We could put sulfur in jet fuel to stimulate the formaiton of reflective clouds, paint our roads and rooftops white, etc. This would call for some focused research to see what really works.

[Sweetie]

I've read quite a bit of Easterbrook (okay, mostly his Tuesday Morning QB column but other stuff too) and I believe his position on the environment has been: it's unclear if we're creating environmental impacts but we should always endeavor to make as small a 'footprint' on the environment as possible within economic constraints. For this he was definitely on the 'outside' of the scientific community - he wasn't getting Lomborg level hostility but he was widely derided in the scientific community as a 'pop' environmentalist. So his history certainly isn't 'playing ball to get along'. I have little to no scientific skills so I depend on 'pop' environmentalists, like Easterbrook, to sort through the mumbo jumbo (technical term). Long story short - I'm a little more open to the idea of human caused global warming than I was yesterday.

[kim]

Good Lord, Steve, you make sense. I'd disagree that we should do much intervening for climate control. The Law of Unintended Consequences is even more difficult to model than the heat engine that is our earth.
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[kim]

Even if human caused CO2 release were an anthropogenic component of warming, hydrocarbons as a source of energy will rapidly become economically inefficient, in deference to fission, maybe someday fusion, sources. It's a self-limiting problem.

Antarctica is getting colder; it's winter ice extent expanding, and the Greenland Glaciers are thickening. I equate this Attenborough and Easterbrook 'awakening' to the Time Magazine Cover Jinx. They're finally convinced, at the height of the hysteria.

Sell.
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[M. Simon]

Willem,

I invented the phrase Goebbels Warming.

Nice to see it is catching on.

BTW #3 son is studying it in college and asked me how it works. I explained the theory.

He then surpised me by saying that the scientists he had heard about all thought it was bunk.

He waws really interested in solar output , the Little Ice Age, and the Maunder minimum.

[M. Simon]

kim,

It will be a lot sooner than that.

Prices for wind electricity are declining by 1/3 every 5 years or so.

Right now wind costs less than natural gas.

It is also stronger in the winter - just when you would prefer lower electrical gas use.

Plus they dispatch on comparable time frames.

[kim]

Thirty years ago I argued with Ennis D. that if significant amounts of energy are wrought from the wind, then you would inevitably change weather downwind. And who's downwind? A large class.

With any luck, Gaia will allow us to mature to a phase where our energy needs do not demand that we tap into the heat engine that is the earth and the wind, water, and sun can go back to regulating that engine rather than being viciously enslaved to our appetites. That does implie a grid. Gaia's girdle?
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