My world was flipped upside down last week.
Maybe you, like me, were shocked upon reading about the leak of a large number of private documents and e-mails from within the climate change scientific community last week by way of a hack of the database at University of East Anglia in England. Reporting has highlighted excerpts from the more than 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 documents released that would indicate that the case for anthropogenic (man-made) global warming has been purposefully overstated by the scientific community.
At first, I was appalled and confused. All these questions about the legitimacy of the global warming movement being thrown about like rice at a wedding were too much for me to handle; I wanted to crawl into a hole and mourn the loss of all that was good and reasonable and uncorrupted. But life goes on, and so does the conversation.
I found myself having to overcome my initial emotionally-charged reaction against anyone who would deny that global warming is occurring and is our own fault in favor of a state of neutral questioning. Thinking critically is, after all, what my expensive liberal arts college education has been attempting to train me to do, isn’t it? Upon doing just that, I found that I’m not the only one, and in fact skepticism is surging within the masses.
A survey done by the Pew Research Center last month showed that Americans who believe there is solid evidence that the world has been warming over the last few decades has fallen from 71 percent to 57 percent in the last 18 months. In addition, a Rasmussen Reports telephone survey reported Nov. 13 that almost half of voters blame global warming on planetary trends, while just 37 percent of voters blame human activity. In March, Gallup reported that a record-high 41 percent now say that the seriousness of global warming is “exaggerated.” With such varied opinion about an issue that is scientific, might we be better off questioning the quality of information we’re receiving upon which we base these beliefs, rather than just the beliefs themselves?
Where are we (the media included) getting our information about global warming? The most-oft cited are: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, James Hansen of NASA and Al Gore, which have all been steadily suggesting their certainty that global warming is man-made for many years now. For times’ sake, we’ll just look at Gore.
From what I’ve found out, let’s just say I’m less that enchanted with Gore than I’ve been in past years. What certainly doesn’t help his case for man-made global warming is that he has his hands deep in the new energy market cookie jar. See John Broder’s Nov. 2 New York Times article, “Gore’s Dual Role: Advocate and Investor,” which cites specific examples of Gore directly benefiting from federal grants for energy efficiency through his own private investments, raising the possibility that he is essentially profiteering from his environmental advocacy (some say alarmism) on the issue of global warming.
Gore’s reply to questions of his integrity by one Congressperson recently? “Do you think there is something wrong with being active in business in this country? I’m proud of it. I am proud of it.” OK, Mr. Gore, be proud of it. But just know that it weakens the legitimacy of the movement for which you’ve made yourself a figurehead.
Local biogas expert and now global warming skeptic Warren Weisman says that Gore’s “dual role” was his first indication to look and see if everything we were being told by the media maybe didn’t add up. For him, a long-time environmentalist and activist, “it took a real effort to go to the other side and look at another point of view,” but that after doing a lot of research, his findings suggest there isn’t as much scientific “consensus” as Gore and the media would have us believe.
All this talk of skepticism really had me confused. Who to believe? Who to trust? But then it dawned on me. It doesn’t matter if you believe global warming is happening, or even if it is our fault or not; the fact of the matter is that we are still using finite resources that will continue to become more scarce as we keep burning them up. The time will come when they run out. Period. Plus, there’s no denying that our oceans and forests are in really bad condition. TIME magazine ran a story this weekend about how “the oceans’ ability to absorb man-made carbon may be dwindling — and that has worrying ramifications for future climate change.”
So the conclusion I’ve reached from last week’s venture into skepticism is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be an argument against acting; it’s really an argument against alarmism and hasty decision- and policy- making. (How many environmentalists do you know that really like the idea of a carbon cap-and-trade market, anyway?) The efforts of those working on environmental restoration and conservation shouldn’t be affected by whether global warming is occurring or not; they’re dealing with real problems that need real solutions.
Whether you’re a skeptic or a diehard, maybe we can all take comfort in what I found to be a very apropos statement by Mr. Weisman: “A movement based on fear is a bad approach. Humans are brave, that’s what got us where we are. We still need to act; we just don’t need to panic.”
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Skeptic or diehard, don’t panic, act
Daily Emerald
November 22, 2009
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