It’s a misinformation battle of literally epic proportions, that is still somehow currently raging on the internet and even in mainstream media. The “debate” over whether global warming is anthropogenic (man made), simply part of a natural planetary cycle, or if the idea that the planet is actually warming at all, is still a hotly contested topic and unfortunately the scientific reality is not currently winning.

According to a Rasmussen survey taken last month, only 34% or one in three Americans believe that global warming is caused by human activity. The rest either think that there is no global warming or that it is simply a naturally occurring long-term trend in the planets history. After weeks of trying to sift through the mass of contradicting and conflicting articles that are being quoted and misquoted on the internet (often in what are considered “legitimate” or mainstream news sources), eventually I just stopped, as I had learned enough about the origins of where the conflicting opinions were coming from. Many of these conflicting articles seemed to cite reputable sources and often make seemingly plausible claims, enough so that I certainly paused more than once to question my own set of beliefs and understanding about the topic. However, by the time I was finished conducting the necessary research, it turned out that there was really no debate at all. The issue is settled and has been for some time. The answer is simple. Rising co2 levels in the atmosphere are conclusively the result of human’s burning of fossil fuels, and outcome from this is that we are headed down a path that will lead to a drastic alteration of the planets climate.

The main purpose of this post will be to discuss the basics of global warming, broken up into 3 main sections;

1) How long the scientific community has known about it’s anthropogenic origin
2) Why there is still the idea in the American public that the issue is not settled 3) Why this issue should even matter to you (if it isn’t already obvious)




The Prequel;
The Science Behind the Debate

As I mentioned earlier, only 1/3 of Americans believe that humans have caused the current warming trend that the planet is experiencing. The reasons behind the global warming “debate”, and why the often used phrases of the “science is not all in” or that “there is not a scientific consensus” exist in the public discourse about the topic, is the starting point for this discussion, and to get there, it is important to understand how we have come to our current position today.

To begin, I will try as briefly as possible, to highlight the history of the scientific inquiry into global warming, and the surprising facts about how long not only the scientific community has known about the problem, but our government as well.

The science behind the effect of global warming begins in the early 1900s with the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius, a chemist who was the first person to predict that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other combustion processes would cause global warming. His estimate in 1908 that the doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere would cause the temperature to rise between 3.5-4.5 degrees C, is practically dead on with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (known as the IPCC) (which will be explained later) prediction in 2007, of a 2-4 degree rise in temperature by the doubling of CO2.

In 1938 Guy Callendar published the first paper studying the actual effects of increased CO2 on temperatures, using world wide data sets to already show the impact of increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

In 1957 oceanographers Revelle and Suess studying the increased CO2 levels, determined that the increase would not be absorbed by the oceans. It was in this paper that Revelle famously wrote, “"Human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future."

In a 1965 report from the US Dept. of Environmental Quality, Revelle first warned then President Lyndon Johnson of the potential of global climate change its potential impacts.

In 1979, JASON, an independent group of elite scientists was requested by the U.S. Government to prepare a report predicting the output of greenhouse gases and their effects on world temperatures. They predicted a doubling of the CO2 levels in the atmosphere by 2035, with a temperature increase of 2-3 degrees C, which is in line with current projections (which will be discussed later). Additionally, that same year in what is known as the Charney report, issued by the National Academy of Sciences (which is comprised of 2,100 of the scientists in the U.S. with 200 Nobel Prize Winners), JASON's results were confirmed, and both reports expressed concern about rising sea levels, and the effects of this temperature change on the world's crop producing capacity. So in 1979 there already was a consensus!

Then in 1988, Congress finally got in on the act as three separate bills were introduced under the name of a National Energy Policy Act set out to try and establish a framework for attempting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by our country. Scientific evidence was presented, expert testimony was brought in, but there was no movement on any of the bills, and although one version was re-introduced the next year, nothing was passed.

Also in 1988 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), two organizations of the United Nations and tasked to evaluate the risk of climate change caused by human activity. This panel has issued seperate reports in 1990, 1995, 2001, and most recently in 2007.

The 1995 report was the first to suggest that "the balance of the evidence" supported global warming was caused by human influence on global climate.

The 2001 report was worded even more strongly, stating that "most of the warming associated with the past 50 years is directly attributable to human activity".

Lastly, the 2007 report concluded that warming of the climate system is "unequivocal", and that "anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized, although the likely amount of temperature and sea level rise varies greatly depending on the fossil intensity of human activity during the next century. Additionally stating that"the probability that this is caused by natural climatic processes alone is less than 5 percent."

Basically, the science of global warming has been “settled” for what one could argue has been 100 years now, with our own government being aware of the problem for 40 years after a direct report to the president. Which leads to the next big question. Why? Why hasn’t this issue been in the public consciousness for decades, and why haven’t we been working to re-arrange our economy and energy sector to meet these challenges for years?? Basically it boils down to two issues. Avoidance and intentional misinformation.




Our Current State of Affairs;
Avoidance and Misinformation

To address how we are where we are today, that is, living with the majority of the public in the world's highest greenhouse gas emitting nation being completely ignorant of the current precarious state of what we accept as "normal" planetary conditions continuing to exist, it is important to address the why, as the science behind the debate has been available to all parties involved for decades. I believe it to be attributable to two main sources, and will start by addressing the less sinister of the two, avoidance. The main problem with the issue of global warming is that it is an issue that has such immense implications to the way humans are currently work, live and play that simply discussing its realities creates an immediate sense of fear, followed by either suspicion of its truth and then the innate reflexive human reaction, which is denial. There is no easy band-aid solution, and nothing really that one individual can do to change its progress. Human’s simply are not wired to want to comprehend a potential disaster of this sort, and in a country where our generation has grown up mortgaging the future on credit, the idea that things will not continue to consistently get bigger, better, faster and more wonderful for us, is a reality that no one would like to face.

The best example of this psychological phenomena that I can use comes from one of my favorite authors Jared Diamond and has been also used by Charles Munger, the VP of Bershire Hathaway (Warren Buffet's investment company), as a demonstration of the human tendency towards denial.

"Consider a narrow deep river valley below a high dam, such that if the dam burst, the resulting flood of water would drown people for a long distance downstream. When attitude pollsters ask people downstream of the dam how concerned they are about the dam's bursting, it's not surprising that fear of a dam burst is lowest far downstream, and increases among residents increasingly close to the dam.

Surprisingly, though, when one gets within a few miles of the dam, where fear of the dam's breaking is highest, as you then get closer to the dam the concern falls off to zero! That is, the people living immediately under the dam who are certain to be drowned in a dam burst profess unconcern. That is because of psychological denial: the only way of preserving one's sanity while living immediately under the high dam is to deny the finite possibility that it could burst."

The looming specter that the engine that drives our economy (which consists of the unprecedented burning of fossil fuels that took hundreds of millions of years to create through geological pressure in the Earth’s layers) and powers our modern luxuries, is creating a disturbance in the processes of the planet that is potentially so severe as to displace 100’s of millions of people, (according research by the World Bank) by rising sea levels and cause droughts and more severe storms is a thought far worse than the usual realities that an ordinary American faces on a daily basis. Making it is easy to understand why people would prefer not to think about it, or outright deny the strong possibility of this occurring. Obviously many politicians have been aware of this "dam" problem for awhile, and it has either been put off or denied by people with vested financial interests in current use of fossil fuels to generate our energy for simply too long. Which leads to the next section, the misinformation that has saturated the media and its sinister source.

It is said that we are currently living in an information age, as the internet generally and Google specifically, have provided the unbridled access to unprecedented amounts of information on virtually any topic, and all at one's keystroke. However, with this comes a large amount of distorted factual information, masquerading as truth in the form of conspiracy theories, secret plots, and general nonsense that seems to pervade any internet search for any topic where there are strong vested financial interests, or at least where there is a market to exploit peoples less logical tendencies to support their pre-conceived notions of how the world works, such as racial bigotry, fear of big government and secret governmental plots. Feeding the "debate" in this case, is the George C. Marshall Institute, which has previously provided misinformation for the tobacco industry and on the issue of CFC's and ozone depletion, and is referred to by Newsweek as a "central cog in the denial machine". A conservative think tank founded in 1984, it has been extremely successful in its tactic of creating an illusion of "the science not all being in" and that there is still "scientific debate" when there simply is none. Their goal is to simply proffer enough contrarian opinion that the public becomes confused to what the truth is. When this occurs, they have met their goal, which is keeping the industries that fund them (tobacco, coal etc.) in business a little longer, by keeping the public from demanding action from their politicians on the issue. They are successful in doing this by recruiting scientists that previously done reputable work such as Fredrick Seitz, Richard Linzen, Robert Jastrow and William Nierenberg. These decorated scientists were successful in promoting the idea to the various media outlets that the science was not "settled" on the anthropogenic origins of global warming and therefore it was not necessary to change our energy policy, but rather to take a "wait and see approach" until we had more conclusive results. While I am not opposed to contrarian opinion, as a healthy amount of skepticism is necessary to fuel any good debate, and is certainly necessary in a debate where the ultimate solution will be the vast re-arrangement of society, differing opinions should be heard.

However, when the only real scientific "debate" is essentially coming from one source, and that source is funded by the very industries that these opinions succeed in protecting the economic interests of (in this case the fossil fuel industries, our #1 energy source and most polluting), then there is a major problem. Now, I don't want to make it seem like the George C. Marshall Institute is the only place that is pushing the debate, that would over simplify the issue, and it is unrealistic to think that they alone could sway public opinion. Other groups have also been successful in stirring up controversy where there should be none, but none have had the backing of such reputable scientists. Some of these other groups funded by ExxonMobil (the worlds largest oil producer, and therefore the largest vested interest in maintaining the status quo) can be viewed here. I chose to focus on the Marshall group because the fact that they were able to actually grab reputable scientists and have them stir up a debate that had already been settled, makes them the hardest to debunk, and therefore the most effective.

Additionally, I must also mention not only is there illogical dissent in the face of the overwhelming facts coming from independent groups, but unfortunately from our own Congress as well. Members of Congress, rather than debating the science of the issue at this point are now resorting to tactics such as quoting the Bible in order to debate the issue, despite the reality that today even the most ardent Christian (outside of the Evangelicals) would not consider the Bible a science book. In one recent example, John Shimkus, an Illinois republican in this video opens the Energy and Environment Subcommittee meeting just last month, by stating that the Bible is the word of God, perfect and infallible, and that God will not destroy the earth by a flood. He then follows this up by commenting on the amount of carbon in the atmosphere in the "time of the dinosaurs" stating that there were more flora and fauna in this period, and that perhaps the earth is carbon starved. Well, he is a) contradicting himself inherently as the Bible if interpreted as perfect and infallible, implicitly states that the Earth was created 6000 years ago and b) I would hope he would be more concerned about humans being able to live on the planet than "flora and fauna".

I also want to make clear that I am not suggesting that these people are all simply "bought out" by special interest groups. No doubt many of them honestly believe that laissez-faire capitalism will take care of the problem, that regulation of industry will not solve the issue, that the market will dictate what the people want and that the market will provide all of the necessary answers. I simply happen to disagree. To begin with, free market capitalism only exists in theory, not in practice, as there has been regulation of markets since the industrial revolution. The other inherent problem is that the market does not factor in the "externalities" or long term economic costs that burning fossil fuel causes. But that is a whole separate topic, for another day and would require its own series of posts to discuss fully.

In summary, thanks to the efforts of the Marshall Institute, Congressmen like Shimkus (who received the largest share of his 2007 campaign contributions from oil & gas and electric utility companies) and many others, we stand where we are today, a nation of confused, over informed, yet misinformed citizens, who are either frozen in fear, ignorance or denial, as the world gets hotter, new coal plants are proposed and funded, and the question now, is why should YOU care?





Why This Issue Should Matter to You


Well, if you made it this far in reading the blog, congrats, this post turned out much longer than I originally intended, so pat yourself on the back. Hopefully you have learned something or cleared up some of the questions in your own mind about the issue. So the question is why should you care? And the answer is simple. Economics. Do you value your current luxuries, your current lifestyle or your current job? If you do, then this issue should be of utmost importance to you because it will adversely impact all of those. I am sure that the current economic downturn has hurt most of our incomes or savings in one form or another, but this economic struggle could be a blip on the radar compared to what the future could hold for us if we continue along our current greenhouse gas emitting path. Although there can be no accurate prediction of exactly what will be the magnitude of the economic impact of displacing over 100 million people around the world as rising sea levels would make many coastal areas uninhabitable, one can be sure that the effects would not be positive. While undoubtedly some areas will be allowed to simply sink into the ocean, others such as Manhattan (pictured above) are simply too valuable to our current economy to let this happen. Which would mean potentially wasting billions of dollars in an effort to come up with some sort of levee system to keep back the rising waters. The most adversely affected areas will be those in countries without the capital to protect their lands from rising sea level, while others such as our own will be extremely financially burdened by trying to fight a losing battle against nature that we altered by our own hand. Additionally, it is also theorized that tropical storms similar to Katrina would become more common, as well as harsher droughts in certain areas, all with the effect of disrupting our food production and ultimately our economic system. But the reality is no one knows for sure exactly what will happen, other than our lives will be affected and altered by this change in climate, and no one is suggesting that it is "good" for the way humans are currently organized. This is why it should matter, and this is why you should continue to educate and inform yourself about these issues.

Current and future energy policy will determine the way society will proceed during our lifetime, and although cheap abundant energy was a luxury that was taken for granted thus far, it will take a major re-investment in alternative energies to continue this trend into the future. To avoid the societal collapse that has occurred throughout history to many a great civilization when their natural resources were depleted, we must be proactive in coming up with solutions before the true costs of shortages and human induced climate change take effect. There is no longer new lands for us to explore and pillage, the world has been conquered, and now it is time for us to figure out how to manage and use the resources we have left while transitioning to all renewable energy sources.

In the Next Post...

Now that hopefully the question of how we got here has been settled for you, in the next post I will discuss what "here" is, in terms of our energy consumption, what is being done in various fields to promote alternative energy, and evaluate current proposals to determine if they will be effective in slowing the effects of global warming. So stay tuned...

editors note: a big debt is owed to University of California history professor Naomi Oreskes, who's excellent video provided much of the historical information for this post. Additionally if you have any questions regarding the factual items in this post, or suggestions on how to tighten the argument or other things to consider, please do not hesitate to email me at keorourke80@gmail.com, thanks.