Letter from Leslie Willoughby
Global Warming – September 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
Dear Ed,
It matters because measurable, repeatable experience enables us to act on our motivations most effectively.
I agree that the motivations for acting in our own best long-term interest are many (Why Global Warming Really Doesn’t Matter, p. 51, August 2006). Actions to decrease use of fossil fuels certainly seem more important than whether your motivation is to save money, to save the planet, or to save your soul. At the same time, the most effective actions are based on a foundation of measurable, repeatable experience (science), so getting the science right is fundamentally important.
If money is your motivator, you want to know measures of miles per gallon achieved by different vehicles under different conditions. To become a successful saver, you reevaluate the data to consider every variable — tire pressure, wind speed and how much manure you’re hauling. You consider new variables as they come along, such as hybrid engines and ethanol fuel mixes. You measure variables that change over time (how old is the engine, how old is the driver?) Measurable, repeatable experience enables you to avoid myth and heresy. More information leads to more saving. More science enables us to act more effectively on our motivations.
In order to accumulate the most money, to save the biggest piece of the environment, and to preserve the most peace of mind, it helps to share knowledge and to set priorities. You want to know what helps most. You want to know what hurts most.
Scientists worldwide have been working for decades to accurately describe global climate change. They explore the past and possible future effects that human actions have on climate. Most conclude that the human activities that produce CO2 and other greenhouse gasses are creating climate change that will significantly affect mankind.
THE GOOD NEWS is that “our technical inventiveness and ability to analyze our predicament does give us the chance, during the current century, to prevent the possibility — even the probability — of a man-made climatic catastrophe. We have the technology. The best evidence is that adopting that technology in a sensible manner does not need to be economically ruinous.”
The bad news is, “What is less clear is whether we have the social and political tools to do the job.” (Fred Pearce, 2002, Global Warming A Beginner’s Guide….). This goes to your point, Ed, “I don’t like to waste time thinking about things that I can do nothing about.” One could argue that you, as a gifted communicator, can do much about something. Sure, you may not see the results right in front of your eyes right now, but that never seemed to stop you before from employing your powerful political tools.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the media can always find some scientists who don’t agree. Some of them don’t agree about evolution or even gravity. Doubt is an essential building block to science. Doubt creates new exploration that confirms or rejects previous findings. I credit the Bush administration with so deeply doubting the early findings of climatologists that they returned to broader and deeper investigations that yielded ever more accurate conclusions.
As a result of those investigations, the National Research Council (part of the National Academy of Sciences) found that the one degree average temperature rise “is unprecedented for the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia,” and that “human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.” (Panel Affirms Global Warming, Los Angeles Times, June 23, 2006)
Even California’s Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared, “The debate is over.” (Schwarzeneggar criticizes Bush…, Yahoo! News, August 1, 2006).
ED, YOU RIGHTLY QUESTION the span of reasonably accurate climatic data. Scientists do, too. So they dig deeper than the past 100 or so years of human-kept weather records. They examine tree rings, and air bubbles trapped inside ice cores to better understand the meaning of short-term weather variability in the context of overall climate.
Ancient marine organisms and ocean sediments record historic atmospheric CO2 levels and climate conditions as recent as 80,000 years old, allowing comparison with climate conditions as old as 55 million or more years. (Fossil Fuel Fallout, Los Angeles Times August 3, 2006)
It is, as you say, “hard to tell if something is an actual trend or merely a statistical variation…there are bound to be some century-long sequences of rising temperature.” There you go, thinking like those scientists again. They studied the effects of natural causes of temperature change such as volcanic eruptions, sunspot cycles, and even the wobble of the earth. They concluded, “Natural causes cannot explain the recent temperature surge.” (For details, see Pearce, for an overview of recent conclusions regarding how much CO2 is absorbed by the ocean, see Fossil Fuel Fallout).
Sure, humanity has survived a few ice ages and other forces of nature. We suffer hurricanes and earthquakes and tsunamis because these unfortunate powers are beyond our control. That does not mean, however, that we disregard those we can influence or eradicate, such as smallpox and global climate change.
Your idea that crops will simply be moved northward with the heat disregards the more fixed problem of day length variability up thataway. According to Lester R. Brown, an environmental analyst who spent 10 years as a policy adviser in the Department of Agriculture, “The vast corn belt of the Northern Hemisphere…will become hotter and dryer, and that change can’t be resolved merely by creating new corn belts further north, because the soils further north are not the same at all.” (Global Warming Evidence Mounts, San Francisco Chronicle, December 23, 2002).
“Rising” is not the only sea change we may face. Global climate change could shut down the powerhouse that drives the Gulf Stream. Even more unsettling, at the current rate of CO2 emissions, the acidity of the ocean is expected to change 150% by the end of the century. The last time ocean chemistry underwent such a radical transformation…was when the dinosaurs went extinct.” (Ken Caldiera, Fossil Fuel Fallout)
Given the evidence that the activities of mankind have produced these climate changes and threats since the industrial revolution, essentially within the tribal memory of Colorado’s pioneers, to me it seems more humbling than arrogant “to think we can change something as big and complex as our planet’s climate.” Apparently we have, and we can do better. You may even be old enough to remember when scientists explained the potentially climate-altering effects of ‘nuclear winter’ and how the international community responded to that knowledge.
As you examine solutions, Ed, you bring up nuclear fuel and argue yourself out of the incompatibility of security issues with American ideals of liberty and transparency. It seems natural to solve an energy problem with an alternate energy source. Too seldom, it seems to me, do we look to the source of energy users (parents) to solve the problem. At least in America, so far the greatest producer of CO2, we have at our disposal a vast array of solutions for controlling family size. Why would we choose to produce more poisons (some of which could last until the next ice age) instead of choosing to produce fewer people?
AS YOU SAY, Ed, “Isn’t this something we should be doing anyway on economic and health grounds?” Even as argumentative as my mother said I am, I cannot argue with that one. I must ask, though, are we all doing everything we can? If there were even one more reason to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, one that may capture the attention of even more individuals, governments, and corporations, would we not want to examine it and add it to our compost heap of fertile ideas? And what if that reason indicated which fuels would be less expensive and less damaging?
You claim the more relevant question is “How can we make it easier to save energy and produce less pollution and live better?” Perhaps one answer is “By continually developing our understanding of the power, extent, and potential of mankind’s actions.” Understanding global climate change may not make saving energy any easier, but it could make it more compelling.
Best regards,
Leslie Willoughby
Crowley Lake, Calif.
