Global warming doubters cling to wishful thinking - Arizona Daily Star

2012-08-22T00:00:00Z Global warming doubters cling to wishful thinking Arizona Daily Star

The following appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Friday:

It's official: July was the hottest month in the continental U.S. since the government began keeping those records in 1895.

For years, scientists have warned that climate change is happening. They reached that conclusion not because of a hot summer like this one, but from decades of data that show slowly rising temperatures.

In 2010, the National Academy of Sciences unequivocally warned: "A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems."

Americans have heard similar alarms before, and no doubt many have become adept at tuning them out, which is why we'd like to draw attention to physicist Richard Muller, a prominent climate-change skeptic who has changed his mind. Here's what Muller wrote in a July 28 New York Times op-ed:

"Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that in my mind threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause."

One reason Muller's conversion is drawing attention: His Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project was heavily funded by the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, which has a history of supporting groups that deny climate change.

Muller's latest scientific paper will be pawed and poked by climate scientists - skeptics and believers alike. We'll see how well it holds up.

One thing we can predict with certainty: Muller will not convince all climate doubters. But complete agreement usually isn't necessary or achievable in science. Heck, there are still physicists who don't think Einstein got it right.

Climate is complex and doesn't yield easily to computer models and scientific calculations. Scientists won't ever be able to predict with 100 percent certainty how bad warming will get and when.

And let's acknowledge this isn't just about data. Somewhere along the way, what started out as a scientific debate turned into a political, even ideological, spat. Highhanded advocates for slashing our use of fossil fuels backed extreme restrictions that would damage the world's developed economies - America's included. Skeptics pushed back, as aggravated by the righteousness of the climate-change Cassandras as by their doubts about the underlying - and incomplete - science.

That split persists. Partisans on both sides of the climate-change debate can be obnoxious - so much so that today we have no consensus on what to do next.

But a recent study issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said climate changes fueled by people burning fossil fuels in their cars, homes and businesses made the 2011 heat wave in Texas 20 times more likely to occur compared with conditions in the 1960s.

Climate deniers who pretend that there is no convincing evidence for global warming need a reality check.

Yes, there were some errors in the U.N.'s 2007 report that said the evidence for long-term global warming was "unequivocal." And sure, the scandal known as Climategate didn't help scientists make the argument; that was the furor over purloined emails showing a few top climate scientists in England and the U.S. fuzzing over some contradictory evidence and conspiring to muzzle skeptics and bury research that didn't agree with their own findings.

What to do? Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, recently outlined a smart strategy in The Wall Street Journal:

"Some proposed climate solutions, if not well-designed or thoughtfully implemented, could damage the economy and stifle short-term growth. As much as environmentalists feel a justifiable urgency to solve this problem, we cannot ignore the economic impact of any proposed action, especially on those at the bottom of the pyramid. For any policy to succeed, it must work with the market, not against it. … It is time for conservatives to compete with liberals to devise the best, most cost-effective climate solutions."

One of those solutions: The U.S. is exploiting vast new stores of domestic natural gas. It's cheap, abundant, and it can take the place of dirty-burning coal power plants to help reduce greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

Another: Companies and individuals are heeding the mantra of reduce, reuse, recycle. They are improving energy efficiency in homes, factories and offices with high-efficiency heat pumps, energy-sipping appliances, better insulation and stingier light bulbs.

The doubters will continue to doubt. But their ranks are now diminished by one. We hope more will join Richard Muller. Overwhelming evidence now backs scientists who warn of global warming. The doubters cling to wishful thinking.

Arizona Daily Star