Heresy  

Global Warming, Global Stifling

by Gary Jason

The planet has a problem caused by too much hot air.

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The debate about global warming has reached a crescendo, and has acquired a deeply unsettling tone. We are witnessing a veritable rush to judgment — a rush that has now been accelerated by a United Nations report that accepts and supports the global warming theory. If there was ever a time for skepticism, it is now. The time has come for people who have reasonable doubts to speak up and offer the reasons for their doubts.

In this article I will try to clarify what parts of global warming science give cause for doubt. I will also state the features of the global warming debate that are troublesome to me — and should be troublesome to you.

I'll start by making some distinctions. The first distinction is between the narrow theory of anthropic global warming (hereafter, the "Narrow Theory") and the grand metanarrative of global warming (hereafter, the "Grand Theory").

The Narrow Theory lies exclusively in the domain of climate science, and holds simply that:

1. The earth's climate is warming significantly.
2. This warming is exacerbated by the generation of CO₂ and other anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
3. This warming threatens to induce widescale ecological changes.

The Grand Theory — as presented on television and in several recent movies — is vastly more than a theory of climate science. It is a multiple-domain metanarrative or integrated worldview, including both moral assumptions and policy prescriptions. In essence, it posits twelve theses:

1. The world is warming dramatically.
2. This warming is unlike any other warming or cooling in the history of the planet.
3. The warming is caused primarily by humans' burning of fossil fuels.
4. If we keep burning fossil fuels at the present rate, warming will accelerate and increase without end.
5. The result of warming will be a huge increase in the number of ecological and meteorological disasters, which will be of biblical proportions.
6. These disasters will not be counterbalanced by any favorable effects of warming.
7. Both warming and disaster will occur with such rapidity that mankind will be unable to adjust.
8. The process can be reversed or controlled by drastically curtailing the use of fossil fuels.
9. The only way to do this is by drastically curtailing the use of fossil fuels.
10. The best plan is to slash the use of fossil fuels in the United States and other countries of the developed world, while leaving the less-developed world (including Brazil, China, and India) alone.
11. Use of fossil fuel can best be curtailed by the exploitation of wind and solar power, and by massive "conservation."
12. Whatever this will cost, directly and indirectly (and estimates range from trillions of dollars to nothing at all), will be less that the costs of the damage wrought by continued warming.

This Grand Theory is a wide ranging worldview, of which the Narrow Theory is but a minor part. It includes theses that are well beyond the domain of climate science, including theses derived, at least ostensibly, from history, geology, economics, agricultural science, power-plant engineering, and geopolitics, then given a moral cast, i.e., imbued with moral judgments.

For example, Theses 6, 10, 11, and 12 are all either completely or in great part economic claims, having little if anything to do with climate science. To cite a specific example, Thesis 10 is a claim that can only be proven by looking at detailed, empirically based projections of emissions figures from industries in developed countries compared to those in the third world, and factoring in projections of efficiency and productivity. Another example: Thesis 11 is a sweeping claim about the economics of power generation, and can only be proven by looking at the economics of all known methods of generating power, including every feasible alteration in those technologies.

Most of the theses in the Grand Theory are packed with morally charged concepts. If an epidemiologist says, "The chance of bird flu becoming epidemic is growing significantly," she is making a narrowly scientific statement. If she says, "Bird flu is about to explode catastrophically! We have to stop it now!", she is going beyond science to make a moral and a policy judgment. That isn't a problem if the economics and morality are obvious — if, say, the cost of inoculation is trivial compared to the costs associated with a disease that has a mortality rate of nearly 50%. But when the economics is complex (with costs and benefits hard to measure, the range of options large, and the chances and scale of an anticipated event hard to estimate), or when the moral case is unclear (say, when the moral values being balanced are incommensurable with one another), such value-laden language is dangerous.

Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, an eminent specialist who is favorable to the Narrow Theory, made this point well in a recent interview with the BBC. He said, "Why is it not just campaigners, but politicians and scientists, too, who are openly confusing the language of fear, terror, and disaster with the careful hedging which surrounds science's predictions? . . . To state that climate change will be 'catastrophic' hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science."

The second distinction I want to make is between general agreement, at least among the scientists in a given field, and a complete convergence of opinion. When the majority of scientists agree that a theory in their domain is true, there is general agreement. But general agreement means that a significant minority of scientists still dissents. When a theory has survived repeated tests (i.e., has predicted with great accuracy phenomena that are then confirmed empirically) and has been tremendously fruitful in guiding research, then virtually all scientists active in its domain agree, and there is complete convergence. Ask physicists whether quantum theory is true, and 99.99% will say it is. You would see the same virtual unanimity if you asked biologists whether all life on this planet evolved from one original form.

There is general agreement about the Narrow Theory — though there are varying degrees of this agreement, depending on the particular thesis being considered. The summary of the UN study just released (the Fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or "IPCC") reports that its panel is over 90% certain that the "observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is . . . due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations." This means that a significant minority of the rele-vant scientists continues to doubt part or all of the Narrow Theory — perhaps a larger minority than is apparent, since the summary is often more "confident" than the actual study, and even more since the report's contributors were selected by politicians whose desire for scientific objectivity may not have been paramount. And although the highest percentage agrees that temperatures have risen (Thesis 1), there are prominent dissenters. Atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer questions Thesis 1. So do eminent climatologist Timothy Ball, and Neil Frank, former director of the National Hurricane Center. Climatologist William Gray of Colorado State University actually predicts global cooling — which, remember, was the dominant climatological prediction of the 1970s.

Fewer scientists agree that the rise was caused by human activity (Thesis 2), or that the potential ecological damage will include such threats as increased storm activity (often cited by supporters of Thesis 3). Much of the disagreement about Thesis 2 surrounds the question of whether the global warming posited by Thesis 1 is primarily or only partially caused by human fossil-fuel use. After all, methane is a greenhouse gas, and is emitted by cattle in large quantities, so it is caused by man, but not by the burning of fossil fuel. Then again, volcanoes and other natural processes create copious amounts of CO₂.

Some scientists, such as Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, believe that the rise is caused by a rise in solar radiation, a cyclical pattern that they see going far back in geologic history. This explanation has the advantage of providing a reason for periods of global warming (and cooling) before human existence. Other climatologists point out that the geological record shows that some past rises in CO₂ were preceded by temperature rises, and thus could not have been causes of those temperature increases. There must have been a different cause (such as increased solar radiation). Another recent theory is that temperature fluctuations may be caused by increased cloud formation resulting from increased cosmic radiation. And prominent Narrow Theory critic Richard Lindzen (a meteorologist at MIT) disputes whether rising temperatures will increase storm activity.

I am not a climate scientist. I do not know if complete convergence among climate scientists will ever occur, or if it does, whether it will be convergence on all three theses, or fewer. But I don't have to be a climate scientist to see that there is at present nothing approaching complete convergence on the Narrow Theory.

Turn to the Grand Theory, and things get very curious. While there seems to be a preponderance (though nowhere near a complete convergence) of opinion on the Narrow Theory, there isn't even anything approaching a consensus on the Grand Theory. For instance, an NREP (National Registry of Environmental Professionals) survey of licensed environmental specialists shows that only 66% consider the rate of global warming a serious problem facing the planet (with roughly the same percentage believing that the U.S. should do more to address the issue), and that only 39% consider regulation of carbon emissions as the most important tool in addressing global warming.

Nevertheless, it appears that many climatologists give evidence for the Narrow Theory — usually by showing that the carbon dioxide building up in the atmosphere has a human stamp — but then essentially assume that all the other theses of the Grand Theory follow automatically.

This doesn't surprise me, because, again, most of the other theses of the Grand Theory are economic or even moral, hence not in the climatologists' domain of expertise. Such things frequently happen with multi-domain metanarratives. Because the experts in one field (say, atmospheric physics) don't know much about another field (say, agricultural economics), they can't agree or disagree with the experts in that field in any meaningful way. This is why these metanarratives are more often put forward by advocacy groups than by groups of scientists reasoning as scientists.

It is easy to see why certain advocacy groups oppose the Grand Theory. Most obviously, opposition is clearly in the self-interest of the fossil fuel industries. But who pushes the theory?

Five kinds of people reflexively support it:

The first, and some of the most exuberant, are people with a religious faith that dovetails with the Theory. I have in mind the pagan, neo-Romantic Greens who worship Mother Earth, and believe that She is being ravished by Corrupt Mankind. These folks have been around since at least Rousseau. They are especially common among baby boomers, many of whom were hippies before being compelled by economic reality to acquire a job, and are still in touch with their tree-hugging inner selves. The idea of sinful industrial man being punished for the offense of developing the planet for such filthy purposes as survival excites these folks more than all the Viagra in Vegas. Their political force is a phalanx of well-funded environmental organizations: Greenpeace, the National Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, etc.

The second sort of people who reflexively support the Grand Theory are the open anticapitalists (socialists, Marxists, anarchists, and assorted other aging revolutionaries manqués, pining for the Great Communist Heaven that has heretofore eluded them). They hate capitalism generally, but American industry in particular. American prosperity sticks in their craw. It shows what free enterprise can do. These people love the Kyoto Accord precisely because it proposes to channel industry into China and Brazil, while throwing massive numbers of Americans out of work. If implemented, it would allow them to exclaim, "Can't you see, worker? Can't you see how the evil multinational corporations deliberately send your jobs abroad?" And, as believers in equalizing world incomes, they would have the pleasure of equalizing America downward.

The third group advocating the Grand Theory consists of global redistributionist, Wilsonian liberals and one-world bureaucrats. These people also want to end global income inequality, even if ending it comes at the price of ending global prosperity. It galls them to see America so rich and third-world countries so poor, although they are congenitally unable to see that the blame lies with the bad governments that have afflicted the third world. To admit that would be to "blame the victim."

The fourth group enamored of the Grand Theory is that of the modern statist liberals. Modern liberals love the extensive control of the economy that taxation and regulation bring them. The pork that statist liberals derive from the Grand Theory is not trivial. The yearly spending on "alternative energy" alone is $14 billion, and statist politicians get to hand it out. More, vastly more, can be expected from fuller applications of the Theory.

The fifth group of reflexive advocates is, of course, the individuals and corporations who stand to gain financially from extensive regulation of the energy industries. Groups 4 and 5 often work together. For example, prominent advocates of the "cap and trade" proposal (a proposal to set emission targets, and allow those companies who beat the targets to sell their "savings credits" to companies which fail to meet their targets) are the large brokerage firms Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, who are happy to testify in favor of the Grand Theory in hearings run by Democratic power players such as Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer. Probably the main player here is USCAP — the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which includes energy companies, brokerage firms, and manu-facturers, as well as some big environmentalist organizations (Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense, and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change). All this is classic rent-seeking.

Add to group five the usual gathering of weasels, to wit, parasitic trial lawyers who will rip off uncountable billions by suing productive enterprises because of CO₂ emissions. Naturally, California has jumped into the lead here. State Attorney General Jerry Brown (yes, Governor Moonbeam, redivivus) is aggressively pursuing a federal lawsuit directed at the major auto makers, seeking billions of dollars in compensation because cars allegedly constitute a "nuisance" by contributing to global warming. You might well ask why Moonbeam didn't start by suing the utilities firms (which, after all, use fossil fuels to run their power plants). But no: California suffered power shortages a few years back, and the voters tossed out a recently reelected governor because they held him to blame. The attorney general knows this. Also, he has a long-standing hatred of private cars; during his own eight years as governor, he notoriously refused to build any freeways. State by state, industry by industry, such junk lawsuits will proliferate.

Need I demonstrate that the groups I've mentioned are incredibly influential in American society? The influence of all the alternative thinktanks and independent scholars is laughably weak in comparison. Nevertheless, these five groups have shown few scruples about attempting to stifle independent criticism of the Grand Theory — an activity that inspires little confidence in rational arguments for the Theory itself.

My own doubts about global warming are yet to be stifled. Concerning the Narrow Theory, I'm willing to agree with the majority of experts, because I am not an expert — though I still wonder why, if the evidence is so overwhelming, complete convergence has not been achieved. But it is with Theses 4 through 12 of the Grand Theory (which go beyond the Narrow Theory) that I have real concern.

The questions about these theses virtually ask themselves:

Regarding Thesis 4: How do we know that the rising temperature won't cap at (say) five degrees higher than it is today?

Regarding Thesis 5: How do we know that storms and species extinctions will dwarf those that have occurred before? There have always been hurricanes, snowstorms, droughts, and species extinctions. Something like 98% of all species that ever existed became extinct before hominids dragged their sorry asses across the planet.

Regarding Thesis 6: This is hardly self-evident. How do we know that there won't be massive benefits from global warming, such as vast stretches of the planet now too cold to inhabit or cultivate becoming habitable and cultivable? A thousand years ago, during a warming period, the Vikings started farms on Greenland. And it certainly seems that humans have an easier time dealing with warm temperatures than cold. During the Medieval Warming, population grew. When the Warming ended (around 1300), Europe was slammed by crop failures and plagues.

Regarding Thesis 7: How do we know that the prognosticated climatological disaster will be more than we can handle? If, for example, the ocean rises a bit every year for some period, people will have time to relocate — perhaps to areas that were previously uninhabitable because they were too cold or dry. And notice something that is routinely downplayed in the media: the recent IPCC report revised significantly downward the estimated rise in the sea level during this century, from a prior estimate of 36" down to 7"–24." This is a far cry from the 20-foot (240") rise that former Vice President Gore mentions in his Oscar-winning movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." Seven inches would still be inconvenient, if true, but certainly not calamitous.

Regarding Thesis 8: This deserves some rumination. Where have the Grand Theorists shown that the build-up of greenhouse gases is close to irreversible, that we have not already passed the "tipping point?" Gore repeated the claim that we have ten years left to Do Something, but how does anyone know that? Is there any reason ever given to believe that Gore's call to arms is different from any other politician saying, "The situation with X is dire, and you must give me power now in order to save the world as we know it"?

Regarding Thesis 9, which holds that we can save ourselves only by a rapid choking off of fossil fuels: what if we could stop global warming by (as I heard one physicist suggest) spreading a bunch of nanoparticles into the atmosphere to deflect sunlight, or deploying a huge screen in space to block it, or (as I heard a biologist suggest) spreading "fertilizer" in the ocean to increase plankton that would gobble up the CO₂, or just planting a bunch more trees? Then we could burn even more fossil fuel and not worry. Shouldn't all these other would-be remedies be shown not to work before we turn to the one that also might not work but will definitely cause the most economic pain? (Of course, it is just this pain that is so devoutly sought by the neo-Romantics.)

Regarding Thesis 10: This is the Kyoto treaty in a nutshell. Of course, the treaty — which Gore negotiated — was never ratified. In fact, the Senate voted against by a 97 to 0 margin before Clinton dared to send it over, because it would have the obvious consequence of forcing American industry to move its operations to other countries, resulting in a wipe-out of American jobs. The Kyoto nonsense appears especially nonsensical when one remembers that (according to the International Energy Association) about 75% of the projected increase in CO₂ emissions over the next 25 years will come from developing countries, with 40% coming from China alone. The IEA projects that China will overtake the U.S. in greenhouse gas emissions within two years.

Regarding Thesis 11: Readers of this journal already know that I have major problems with this idea (see my Liberty article "Nukes and NIMBY," January 2007). Let's grant for the sake of argument that the other theses of the Grand Theory are true. Still, if we are going to slash the use of fossil fuel, why shouldn't we turn to the only other known practical method of generating power — nuclear energy — instead of turning to costly solar power, inherently limited and ugly wind power, or economically catastrophic conservation? Just start building nukes, as fast as reasonably possible, on military bases if you're worried about security, until (like the French) we generate our electric power mainly in that way. As we bring down the price of electricity, electric cars may even begin to look attractive.

The need to turn to nuclear power is becoming clear. In a recent column, economist Robert Samuelson (Orange County Register, Feb. 20, 2007) called for a focus on nuclear power. China is building 40 more nuclear power plants over the next 15 years, and India is likewise dramatically expanding its nuclear power program. Why not the U.S.? As I noted earlier in these pages, moving toward nuclear power will have the added benefit of ending our dependence on unstable and tyrannical states that hate us enormously. We can stop handing the tyrants and religious bigots $800 million a day with which to fund their jihad against us.

The Greens in general, and Gore in particular, will never explore this angle, for obvious reasons. The environmentalists killed nuclear power back in the '70s, and Gore was in on the 1994 termination of the Integral Fast Reactor program, which had developed an ultra-safe reactor that would have virtually eliminated the problem of nuclear waste through skillful reprocessing. The Greens don't want to admit a possibility that is fraught with irony: the possibility that they may be a big part of the very problem that exercises them so fervently.

Finally, regarding Thesis 12: Where is the massive economic literature that proves it? I mean, if global warming were a net economic plus — because, for instance, the amount of land made newly cultivable was more productive than the land lost to flooding — we ought to welcome it, and maybe even hasten it, say, by burning huge piles of coal to create more greenhouse gases.

Come at Thesis 12 again, but talk lives instead of dollars, and it looks even more dubious. Where are the detailed epidemiological studies that show that we will save lives if we shift money away from health care, education, and so on, and put it into reducing the use of fossil fuels? What if dramatically increasing the fuel economy requirements of cars results in everyone driving tiny cars, and we wind up saving 200 lives a year by preventing increased storm activity — at a cost of 2,000 extra auto deaths a year? What if we save 2,000 people a year from dying from greater heat waves, but at a cost of 20,000 lives lost in colder winters?

So much for my own doubts regarding the Grand Theory. I'm concerned about the theory itself, but I'm also alarmed by the way the debate about the theory is proceeding. There are two particularly striking phenomena that trouble me, and I think they are connected.

First, I see an ongoing attempt, by the groups that are predisposed to favor the Grand Theory, to equate it with the Narrow Theory in public discourse. To put this bluntly: they are trying to piggyback the Grand Theory on the Narrow one, despite the fact that the Grand Theory, being grand, requires much more work by economists, agricultural experts, climatologists, historians, geographers, geologists, power-plant engineers, philosophers, and other analysts before its various parts can be deemed reliable. The recent release of the IPCC summary created a chorus of people chanting, "The science is solid!", without (as Lindzen so nicely put it) saying which science. They hoped that the public would buy the Grand Theory without realizing that it goes way beyond anything mentioned in the IPCC report.

More troubling still are the concerted efforts now being made to achieve complete convergence by means of political and economic force and mass-oriented propaganda. I call this "Global Stifling," the oppression of the critics of global warming. A common warning sign of pseudoscience is the use of political or emotional coercion, instead of the force of evidence, to silence opponents of a pet theory.

Consider an example I have briefly discussed before ("Shut up, they reasoned," Reflections, February 2007): certain members of Congress have threatened oil companies who fund researchers skeptical of global warming with reprisal, imagining that they are similar to tobacco companies that dared to deny that cigarettes are addictive. These solons are trying to cow the oil execs into stopping their funding of research that is critical of global-warming theories. The tactic seems to be working; ExxonMobil has thrown in the towel. This threat to research and criticism is outrageous enough on its face, but it's even worse when you think about the whole funding picture. The amount of money that ExxonMobil has given to global-warming critics is a measly $19 million over the past decade. It pales in comparison to the enormous funding that has gone and continues to go to researchers around the world who are investigating global warming (or claim to be investigating it, because scientists often "write grants" in such a way as to hook basically irrelevant work to some popular cause): $80 billion spent by the U.S., EU, and UN. We can be certain that virtually all this money has gone to scholars who favor some version of the orthodox theory of the moment. The money spent on privately funded research on global warming is similarly lopsided: the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a thinktank which has been critical of the Grand Theory, has a minuscule budget of $3.6 million, while the National Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club Foundation have budgets of $57 million and $91 million, respectively.

Recently, liberal Senators Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein, and John Kerry sent a letter to the conservative American Enterprise Institute venting their anger about the AEI apparently commissioning scientists to research the IPCC report, and mentioning the fact that Exxon (think of that!) has donated money to the AEI in the past. Of course, liberal thinktanks commission research all the time. The senators have no problem with that; their goal is simply to silence all critics of the received view, anointed by modern liberals — by assuming guilt by association.

There are numerous other examples of Global Stifling. The most recent illustration was the demand by Heidi Cullen of the Weather Channel, that arbiter of scientific discourse, that the American Meteorological Society strip scientific certification from any broadcast meteorologist who expresses skepticism about the Grand Theory. Decertification would, of course, destroy the reputation and livelihood of any such person. This is vile stuff. On one of her shows, Cullen featured a global-warming advocate who has called for holding Nuremburg trials for scientists who criticize the theory. Yet when she debated the vastly more accomplished Richard Lindzen on the Larry King Show, she was not, to put it charitably, able to defend her pet theory.

Consider another case of Global Stifling. George Taylor, the state climatologist of Oregon, doesn't believe that human activity is what is causing global warming. Liberal Gov. Ted Kulonoski has responded by trying to strip Taylor of his title, because his statements interfere with the state's goal of reducing greenhouse gases.

Now consider Dr. David Legates, Delaware's state climatologist. He was so brazen as to file a "friend of the court" brief that said, "It is simply impossible to conclude that the net effect of greenhouse gases endangers human health and welfare." Naturally, he has been viciously attacked by environmentalists, one of whom called him "a favorite scientist of the global warming denial machine." That's openmindedness for you.

Dr. Timothy Ball experienced the same targeted attacks when he dissented from orthodoxy. Environmentalists labeled him a tool of the oil companies. Recently, he said, "What I have experienced in my personal life during the last few years makes me understand why most people choose not to speak out: job security and fear of reprisals. Even in [the] university, where free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent."

Then there is Al Gore, truly the pluperfect prig, riding high on Hollywood's admiration for his global-warming documentary. But he won't debate his all-important ideas. He recently chickened out of an interview he had agreed to do with Bjørn Lomborg, maverick Green and author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist," and Flemming Rose, a journalist with Denmark's largest newspaper. (Lomborg, by the way, views the IPCC report as a good thing, but views Gore as a "scaremonger.")

Gore's unwillingness to debate is an impressive contrast to his willingness to propagandize; he prefers to stifle debate, calling skeptics of the Grand Theory "Global Warming Deniers," as if they were akin to Holocaust deniers (a charge recently repeated by liberal columnist Ellen Goodman). This attempt by Gore and other Grand Theory aficionados to make skepticism about global warming the moral equivalent of Holocaust denial is obscene. It trivializes the moral depravity of the Nazi death camps, a depth of evil that the human race should never forget, even though many people try to do precisely that — witness the president of Iran's international conference on the nonexistence of the Holocaust. It requires an almost paranoid cast of mind to believe that those of us who fail to accept the entirety of the Grand Theory can't be motivated by a sincere desire for a better world, but must instead be driven by malevolence of the most vicious sort.

This paranoid suspicion of the motives of all opponents is an essential trait of the Left generally: its moral self-righteousness is so towering that it views anyone harboring opposing views as necessarily malign. And right now various powerful groups who share in that moralistic righteousness are using the Narrow Theory, upon which there is general agreement but nowhere near complete convergence among the relevant scientists, to institutionalize their Grand Theory. They are trying to force convergence by political power and popular propaganda. It is a "rush to judgment" — to use an old leftist phrase — at the point, not of a bayonet, but of a computerized notice: "Dear Professor X: Your grant/tenure has been denied . . . "

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