A Global Warming Reading List

"What does global warming have to do with triathlon?" you might ask. There are several valid answers I could give to that question, but if you live in the Southwest wheat belt, or the Pacific Southwest, or the Mid-Atlantic, you've all had to ride, swim, or run in the worst drought since 1925, or searing monsoonal heat, or Gulf-fed flooding, respectively.

All of these weather patterns are due to Global Warming. Or are they? This question came up on our other forum, the Lavender Room. (Like the crazy aunt, we don't mention this forum too much, we like keep it in the basement and out of public view.)

The thing about the Lavender Room, it doesn't much matter how high-minded the theme, or well intentioned the query. If it's in any way political (and it usually is) the thread will usually devolve into…

"Is not."
"Is so."
"You suck."
"You blow."

So much for triathlon's admirable demographic.

I thought I'd try an experiment, which seems perfectly rational to all of us when we consider the themes that matter to us in the most imminent and personal ways. What we do, when something really matters, is follow the science, wherever it leads. Should you be so unlucky as to contract a life threatening disease, who checks out their political blogs when choosing a well-qualified doctor? When he prescribes medicine, do you first check to see what the CATO Institute, or MoveOn.org, thinks about it?

So I said to those in the Lavender Room, "Let's put our political views aside." This is certainly a job for scientists alone. Public policy, yes, that's when we grant politicians a seat at the table. But you don't have a right to your own facts, as Churchill said. As to the existence, the causes, and the effects of the Global Warming; as to the degree of certainty and the margin for error; this must be under the purview of mainstream, peer reviewed, science.

But how was I going to prove to my Lavender Room colleagues that I was not only willing to let the science take me where it would, and that my selection of scientists was unbiased and wise?

I decided I'd try to find five scientists who were among the eminent climatologists in this field. I'd write them and ask them to navigate us through the science. I found these five, emailed them, and they all emailed back. Below I'll tell you how I chose them, who they are, what it is I asked them, how they answered, what the reading indicated, how the Lavender Room responded, and what I personally learned.

HOW TO FIND MY FIVE SCIENTISTS?

I decided to start by identifying mainstream institutions that would be well-respected by all, and whose top scientists must be unimpeachable. I assumed that there must be a climatology analog to our other national defense labs, such the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or those labs at Livermore and Los Alamos. I ventured forward on the premise that the leading scientists at those labs would be a good source for reading material that represented a consensus view of the science, if such existed.

THE LABS

I started with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This is not a lab per se, but is worth noting. It's a scientific agency of the United States Department of Commerce focused on the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere. NOAA warns of dangerous weather, charts seas and skies, guides the use and protection of ocean and coastal resources, and conducts research to improve understanding and stewardship of the environment. I knew of NOAA because its personnel helped me on an article I wrote four years ago on Chilean Seabass.

From here, I discovered the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL). This lab is located at Princeton University's Forestal Campus, and is a laboratory connected with NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR). It is engaged in comprehensive long lead-time research fundamental to NOAA's mission, the goal of which is to expand the scientific understanding of the physical processes that govern the behavior of the atmosphere and the oceans as complex fluid systems.

From here the trail led me to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). I found a press release on the GFDL's website announcing that its longtime director had left to take a position heading NCAR. It seemed to me any current or former GFDL director must be a scientist of note. NCAR is a non-governmental U.S.-based institute dedicated to understanding the atmosphere and the interconnected processes that make up the Earth system, "from the ocean floor to the Sun's core." NCAR, like the GFDL, has several of the world's fastest modern supercomputers for modeling complex weather systems and the effects of global warming.

While navigating from site to site I came upon the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Located at Columbia University in New York City, GISS is a component laboratory of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Earth-Sun Exploration Division and a unit of The Earth Institute. A key objective of GISS research is prediction of atmospheric and climate changes in the 21st century. It seemed to me that NASA's lab investigating global warming would certainly be run by a capable, mainstream scientist, and might also serve to give me a view diverging from NOAA's scientists, if a second robust theory existed.

Finally, I ran across the The Cooperative Institute for Climate Science (CICS). It's been around three years, and has a goal of fostering research collaborations between Princeton University and the GFDL.

It seemed to me a good idea to include a lab that had something to do with academia, and so I chose CICS. In retrospect, I should've found a program not on the Princeton campus, because GFDL is already headquartered at Princeton. In fact, one of the scientists chosen answered back and spoke directly to this question. "Your sample opens you up for accusations of conflict of interest," said one of my five, "in spite of the obvious independence of thinking that is a hallmark of these five 'candidates.'"

That notwithstanding, the paragraphs above describe my thinking as to where to cull my five scientists, and below I'll list who I chose to write.

THE FIVE SCIENTISTS I CONTACTED

Dr. Jerry D. Mahlman heads NCAR. He is the former head of GFDL. He is one of two scientists I chose whom any and all sides would have to acknowledge as among the world's respected authorities on global warming. He is the one who wrote to me that my choice of scientists would be open to scrutiny.

Dr. James E. Hansen is the other. He is director of NASA's GISS lab, and has been for some time. He might be the most well-known climate scientist in America and, possibly, anywhere. This is partly because he's been a vociferous exponent of the dangers of Global Warming since the 1980s. He's frequently attacked in print by those who wished he'd be seen and not heard. He's now a bit of a hot potato, because NASA recently declined to allow him to be the subject of a particular interview. This has caused Sen. Joe Lieberman, among others, to launch a probe into this administration's muzzling of NASA and NOAA scientists. NASA has apologized, in a letter to Lieberman, for its inappropriate denial of this interview, but some element of investigation is going forward anyway.

I did not know any of this when I chose Dr. Hansen as one of my five scientists to whom I'd write. It just seemed to me that the director of GISS would be a good get. Notwithstanding the politics proximate to Hansen's outspoken views, he remains a good get.

Dr. Jorge L. Sarmiento is Director of CICS. He is the former director of another long-running and successful cooperative between Princeton and NOAA. He and Keith Dixon (a research climatologist and product manager at GFDL, and another of my "five") are considered primarily oceanographers, and so provide a slightly different perspective on the subject. Dixon was a contributing author on two chapters of the most recent IPCC report (more on the IPCC report below).

Finally, I chose Thomas Knutson, a research Meteorologist at GFDL. I chose to write him because his name is listed as author/co-author on a bibliography of some 35 articles dealing with Global Warming issues.

WHAT I WROTE THESE SCIENTISTS, AND HOW THEY REPLIED

I asked each of these men for a list of citations our Lavender Room regulars could read that would give us an idea of the state of the science. All five answered.

Two of them list the same source. it's the IPCC report, most recently updated in 2001. Keith Dixon wrote to me, "The IPCC reports are generated every 5 or 6 years, and involve about 1,000 scientists from about 100 nations whose task it is to report on the state of climate change knowledge. The IPCC reports are generally considered the most authoritative definitive summaries on the topic, and are used by policymakers in many nations."

Sarmiento seconded this. "The Bible for scientists is the periodic summary by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

This document is about 800 pages long. It's next due in November of 2007. The 2001 edition is the most recent, and it's still current and relevant. Dixon wrote that, "The 'SPM' (Summary for Policymakers) is a 20-page document summarizes the key points found in the report." I read this, and it's not hard to follow. You'll find the PDF of the SPM downloadable. Go to "Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report: and download the Stand-alone edition, SPM in English (or Chinese, Arabic, or whatever you want).

Dixon also recommended an "online museum" that I read, and it's quite good, though basic. It is "…a web site," Dixon wrote, "associated with the US National Academy of Sciences museum located in Washington, D.C." This is probably the best place to start one's reading for a broad, and simple, overview for those naive to the science and terminology. After having digested this it becomes easier to get through the IPCC's reports, and the other reading listed below.

A somewhat deeper overview on the subject is Mahlman's broad analysis of the subject presented on the GFDL's website. Hansen recommended this.

Also listed by Hansen is a blog by Gavin Schmidt that he considers the best on the internet. It's called Realclimate.org.

Hansen sent along a PDF of an article he just wrote, that was to be published on the New York Review of Books. In the interim the article has been published. This article is not a summary of peer reviewed work, it is rather Hansen's jeremiad aimed at the global warming problem.

Sarmiento included for us a PDF of an article he authored in 2002 explaining what controls the growth of CO2 in the atmosphere, the main cause of global warming.

THE NATURE OF THE CONTROVERSY

What I expected to find was a brou-ha-ha. I thought that Hansen, employed by NASA, would tell me in the nicest terms how those folks at NOAA had it wrong. Or vice versa. What I found is that the scientific fight over global warming turns out to be a gross mismatch. While I don't know the exact proportions, to say that there are one thousand scientists on one side for every one on the other would appear a close approximation.

The side on which "our" five scientists fall says that Global Warming is real, is mostly man-made, is accelerating, and is the cause for climate changes already observable. This consensus also holds that, in the main, Al Gore's current movie, An Inconvenient Truth, has it about right. Associated Press science reporter Seth Borenstein made the front page in newspapers all over the country this week in covering that point in Scientists OK Gore's Movie for Accuracy.

This is not to say that there is not controversy on global warming, and the man-made contribution to it. I thought perhaps I'd missed something important, and there was a vibrant, even-handed debate hidden behind a blind spot eclipsing the true landscape.

So I went back and started reading the articles on the other side. I found that these articles tended, more often than not, to emanate from websites like tcsdaily.org and junkscience.com that appear to me more advocacy-driven than science-driven. The articles were frequently written by a small group of prolific writers. I found quite a bit of intersection between writers like this, and the websites publishing their work, and ExxonMobil, the Exxon Education Foundation, and ultra-right-wing think tanks like The Cato Institute and the George C. Marshall Institute.

What I did not find was much in the way of peer reviewed journal articles that tended to refute the consensus view. What I tended to find more often was that the minority view was also a rather vitriolic one, perhaps best illustrated by this mean spirited rebuke of Gore's movie written by Dr. Roy Spencer (a scientist frequently cited and published on tcsdaily.org).

THERE ARE ALWAYS TWO SIDES TO A STORY

One might choose a cynical view that all science, all viewpoints, all the expert opinions, have behind them an agenda, a private purse, a special interest. Is this the lesson to be learned, that we can't really trust either side of a scientific debate; that trust no one is the truest statement that can be made?

To bring this full circle, would I apply this standard to the science with which I intersect most intimately? Were my wife to be diagnosed with cancer, would I not place trust in the scientific consensus? Would I seek out the advice of that one doctor in a thousand holding out against the use of an accepted regimen of chemotherapy, because he's pro- or anti- government interference in business?

If I trust the scientific consensus in cases critical to my immediate needs, is it intellectually honest to pick and choose when science can be trusted?

I note that the U.S. Surgeon General released an assessment this week concluding there are no safe levels of secondhand smoke. I also note that some of the websites and scientists upholding the minority view on global warming also held the view that secondhand smoke is not an environmental health problem. It becomes clearer to me that a blending of science and industrial advocacy dominates one side of these debates.

But this does not stop those who've already made up their minds on global warming to continue to believe as they have. In response to our Lavender Room exercise one of our forum regulars had the courage to write, "I have made up my mind that global warming is bullshit regardless of what data is presented to me."

Alarming to me is that this posture appears to extend to high offices of government. In one case of the U.S. Congress feuding with itself over the role over the roles of science, advocacy and public policy on this issue, the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Joe Barton, last year wrote letters to several scientists implicity threatening their funding. The chairman of the House Committee on Science, Sherwood Boehlert chastised his fellow Republican for his letters to scientists, and wrote, "…its purpose seems to be to intimidate scientists rather than to learn from them."

In response, Boehlert's committee asked the National Academy of Sciences to report on global warming. The National Acadamies' report made news upon its release last week, indicating that the consensus view was correct: The earth was the hottest it's been in 400 years, and perhaps for 2000 years, and this was mostly a man-made phenomenon.

This was certainly a blow to Oklahoma senator Jim Inhofe who declared man-made global warming, during a 2003 floor speech, "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." More recently, Inhofe stated, "simply put simply, man-induced global warming is an article of religious faith."

This might be considered the idiosyncratic view of an odd senator, except that Inhofe chairs the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works. When Borenstein's article hit the front pages this week, Inhofe's office penned a quick, and official, response that is published on his Committee's site. The press release attempts to paint a different picture, and rolls out junkscience.com and Roy Spencer as citable references.

IS THIS A TEACHABLE MOMENT?

As a driver of a large, diesel-powered pick-up, and a 300 horsepower sedan, my carbon footprint is as large as the next guy's. If I have a dog in this fight, it's to maintain my carbon-burning habits and deny that I (and my country) are complicit in the damage or destruction of the environment.

But I'm constrained to consider this a teachable moment. When a small minority of scientists disagrees with a consensus view does this require us to state, "The jury is still out."? AIDS in South Africa raged because that country's president determined to believe the minority scientific view, espoused by undeniably notable professors, that AIDS was caused by the use of recreational drugs and by AZT.

It seems to me to be folly when we choose to ally with science only when it is politically or personally expedient. This has implications in education, medicine, medical research, ethics and, of course, in the public policies surrounding these issues.

This Lavender Room experiment did cause me to wake up to some realities. Chief among them is the knowledge of a robust consensus in the scientific community worldwide as to global warming.

Second, I was surprised to find the transparent associations between libertarian think tanks, certain so-termed scientists, the websites that publish their writings, and Big Oil. While I had innocuously considered certain institutes reliable husbanders of legitimate opinion, it appears that advocacy — often paid for — plays a bigger part in our national debate than I'd previously assumed.

Third, I'm a bit depressed by the degree to which elected officials in high places buy into "advocacy science," and attempt to muzzle the very scientists we depend on for "national advice." At the same time, I'm encouraged by those in government with the courage to stand up to those who'd quiet these scientists.

This has been a big week for global warming in the news, and this has helped me form some opinions on which I can hang my hat. I heard on NPR this week that Wheat Farmers see Weakest Harvest in Decades. "Farmers in parts of Oklahoma have abandoned their wheat fields, reporting the smallest harvest in 50 years," reported NPR. I can't help wondering what that state's wheat farmers think of their elected Senator Inhofe, and whether they agree with his view that global warming is no more than a great hoax.