By Ralph Schwartz
I’ve been branded a liberal before, and an elephant-hugging conservative. I’m OK with that. If you’re far enough on one side of the spectrum, just about everyone will look like they’re on the other side.
There’s an issue I have drawn a conclusion about. It’s not a political issue, it’s a scientific one — but somehow it has gotten stuck in the political arena, and a lot of meaningful carbon-controlling legislation in this country has suffered as a result.
Global warming is real, and it’s being caused in large part by humans burning fossil fuels. The No. 1 source of human-caused atmospheric carbon dioxide in our state is transportation.
The equations are hard, but the scientific concepts are straightforward. Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation (heat) emitted from the earth and re-emits it back down to the earth. That’s what makes it a “greenhouse gas.” The more carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere, the greater the greenhouse effect.
Increasing CO(2) in the atmosphere is easily measured. So are the increasing temperatures globally. There is at least one unfortunate local consequence of global warming — the ocean is absorbing some of the excess carbon dioxide, increasing the water’s acidity and threatening survivability of shellfish (and the attendant industry).
It’s 2013, and people won Nobel Peace Prizes years ago for their work on the science of global warming. Year after year, we continue to have “one of the hottest years on record.” Scientists say old projections of temperature increases are being exceeded.
In this “atmosphere” of scientific understanding, Western Washington University climate contrarian Don Easterbrook will take up the time of the Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee on Tuesday, March 26, to counter Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee’s climate change bill (SB 5802).
Easterbrook, professor emeritus of geology at Western, is welcomed by the committee’s chairman, Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale.
Here’s Ericksen’s statement on Easterbrook, released today:
“As chairman of the Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee, my goal from day one of this session has been to operate in an open, transparent manner and allow multiple views to come forward. Earlier in the session, the governor gave his side of the issue and now we’ll hear from an expert with a different viewpoint.”
I find it interesting the primary sponsor of the bill to be challenged is also on the above-mentioned Senate committee — Kevin Ranker, D-Orcas Island. He’s very active in combating global warming.
Sen. Ranker is probably in committee as I type this, and I expect to hear his thoughts on Easterbrook’s appearance later today. If I get them, I’ll add them here.
A reporter willing to take a stand… NICE!
The WWU Geology Department has two position statements that are a result of Dr. Easterbrook’s media science.
Human-induced climate change
Decades of scientific research have shown that climate can change from both natural and anthropogenic causes. The Geology Faculty at WWU concur with rigorous, peer-reviewed assessments by the National Academies of Science (2005), the National Research Council (2006), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) that global climate has warmed significantly and that human activities (mainly greenhouse-gas emissions) account for most of the warming since the middle 1900s. If current trends continue, the projected increase in global temperature by the end of the twenty-first century will result in large impacts on humans and other species. Addressing the challenges posed by climate change will require a combination of adaptation to the changes that are likely to occur and global reductions of carbon dioxide emissions from anthropogenic sources.
Related positions: Geological Society of America, American Geophysical Union, National Association of Geoscience Teachers
Peer Review
The Geology Faculty at WWU believes that all science must be subjected to rigorous peer review and publication before it becomes worthy of serious discussion. We do not support publication of non-peer-reviewed scientific results in the general media. A brief guide to peer review is available at Sense About Science.
I was in Olympia watching when Gov. Inslee testified. Even though I have not been a supporter of Gov. Inslee, I found him to be remarkably well informed on climate SCIENCE. It is his passion. He reads at least one scientific article a day on the subject and has recommended a sound bill examining best practices employed by other governments–state, provincial and national–in addressing climate change and clean energy.
I was mortified when Doug Ericksen asked Inslee whether he had read Don Esterbrook’s work and suggested he do so.
Dan McShane is being overly polite in merely reporting the WWU Geology Department statements.
The sad truth is that Esterbrook is no expert. He is a bad joke in the scientific community, popularizing himself in anti-science conservative circles by spouting off in areas in which he and they lack expertise. He is an embarassment to the University
Doug has children, so I can understand his desire to want to believe that the climate crisis is a hoax. Nobody wants to think of their children burning in 50 years. But, as sure as the Earth is over 6000 years old, that will be all of our progeny’s fate if we don’t mobilize quickly on a massive scale to address our suicidal course.
do not discount senility
Leaving aside the many, let’s just say significant, problems with Dr. Easterbrook’s work- Bob Burr above summed that up very nicely- let’s instead focus on Senator Ericksen. Why, given the importance of this issue for our state, and our county- would he insist on proposing that a long-retired local, with a fairly spotty record of publication during his career, be invited to give expert testimony to the state? There are any number of folks who are experts and whose science is current and up to date. Ericksen is playing a foolish political game, and I think also is being played the fool.
It’s a great idea to combat excessive CO2 release locally,
even statewide,
but really the tipping point has been reached and even the worst science from the dumbest climatologist
might show that,
without a global initiative,
it’s more or less useless to expect change through even a radical departure from fossil fuels.
The smartest people on a sinking ship are just as doomed as the fools
so Ericksen need not worry much how he’s viewed by history or his local constituency.
He’s playing to the business end of the status quo,
always a safe bet for re-election.
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2013/03/climate-tribes.html
“…So what do some “alarmist” folks do? In the hope of getting society to do the right things, they hype current big storms, droughts, and other weather events, claiming that such events are either signs of or “consistent with” human-caused global warming. The media, always hungry for apocalyptic headlines and unwilling to fact check the claims, highlights these scary, but generally unfounded, claims.
Now these unsupported claims (e.g., Hurricane Sandy is a sign of global warming) are fairly easy to disprove and the skeptic sites (e.g., Climate Audit, Watts Up) have a field day tearing them apart. Surely, if the alarmist claims of warming-induced extremes are obviously false, the whole global warming business is unfounded!…”
I will continue to be a ‘global warming’ skeptic until new continental high temperature records begin to be set. According to NOAA as of 2011 the current most recent continental high temperature on record was set on January 5, 1974 in Vanda Station, Antarctica (59 degrees F) That must have been a scorcher. The following are the other current continental temperature records and dates they were set:
North America: July 10, 1913 (death valley CA) 134 degrees F
Asia June 21, 1942 (Tirat Tsvi, Israel) 129 degrees F
Africa – September 13, 1922 (El Azizia, Libya) 123.9 degrees F
Australia – January 2, 1900 (Oodnadatla, South Australia) 123.3 degrees F
Europe – August 4, 1881 (Seville, Spain) 122 degrees F
South America – December 11, 1905 (Rivadavia, Argentina) 120 degrees F
Canada – July 5, 1937 (Midale & Yellow Grass, Saskatchewan) 113 degrees F
Oceania – April 20, 1912 (Tuguegarao, Philippines) 108 degrees F
If global warming is actually happening, why aren’t these records being shattered?
I rest my case.
Hint to Lighter and Hans, if you are focusing on meaningless minutiae then you are not seeing the global picture. Clearly development and industry are polluting and changing the planet and our success of survivability. That may be hysteria to some, but some don’t need to have a picture drawn or a pronouncement from a mythical being to get a clue.
But man can survive a lot and maybe if your benchmark is “as healthy as a coal miner” then your standards will be different and of course not everyone is living like a miner …yet…so why worry, party on dudes and dudettes, gangnam oblivious style.
Temperature is weather not climate
and that’s why climate change is the theme
and not global warming.
Every winter brings out global warming deniers,
how could it not?
“If you think global warming isn’t happening, you’re wrong”
Correct, its been happening for millions of years. If you think global warming is man made, you’re wrong.
Ralph! I KNEW you were a Communist!
I would like to invite Ralph or any other person that believes in global warming to answer these two questions for me. 1. What did man do to cause the glaciers that formed Yosemite to melt? 2. In the 1960s we were told that if we did not clean up the air that we were headed for another ice age. In the 1970s we started cleaning up the air and air polution is not as bad as it was in the 1960s. So, if the air is cleaner why are we having global warming not an ice age? Could the answer be long term history, that the earth has climate cycles? We were taught an ice age killed the dinosours. Did man also cause that?
The simple answer from my third-grade neighbor is that man discovered coal,
then oil and burning these carbon-rich fossil fuels started man towards his detrimental contribution to his environment.
I’m sure man had little to do with forming Yosemite since it predates industry.
Also predictions from the past have no bearing on conditions in the present.
I hope you’ve been enlightened, those were really hard questions!
rubiebegonia – I am sorry but the 3rd grader is wrong. In the 1960s when we were headed to an ice age, the air was so bad in Southern California that we had smog days. These were days that the air was so bad kids were not allowed to go out and play. Since then, smog emmissions on cars had been cleaned up. Scrubbers have been added to generation plants to clean up their emmissions. Some plants have even changed from oil to natural gas to help additionaly clean their emmissions. So, again I ask, if in the 1960s when air was so bad that we were headed to an ice age, why today, when the air is so much better are we now headed into global warming. That to me is a big change in just 50 years.
The LA basin and then all of California took extreme measures to combat smog which is mainly sulfur dioxide and water vapor reacting with sunlight to create a soup of chemical particulates.
I can’t recall anyone predicting that smog would lead us into an Ice Age since it’s a local phenomenon but it did make people sick and it did spur change.
Today there is an entire planet of developing industry and automobile use that makes what Americans do for CO2 control almost pointless and that’s part of the alarm.
If you really think that burning fossil fuels doesn’t add CO2 to the environment in unprecedented ways, I can’t change your mind but thank God I don’t need to.