Global Warming Science: A Thumbnail History
75On August 14, 2010, retired astronaut Walter Cunningham wrote:
About 20 years ago, a small group of scientists became concerned that temperatures around the Earth were unreasonably high and a threat to humanity. In their infinite wisdom, they decided:
1) that CO2 (carbon dioxide) levels were abnormally high,
2) that higher levels of CO2 were bad for humanity,
3) that warmer temperatures would be worse for the world, and
4) that we are capable of overriding natural forces to control the Earth’s temperature.
With all due respect to a living American hero, it’s a strange vision when you think about it.
After all, it asks us to believe that “a small group of scientists” could, starting from nothing sometime around 1990, influence most of the national governments of the world to call an expensive conference in order to create the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (May 9, 1992) in order to solve a problem that--supposedly--none of them had ever heard about before.
If true, this vision would surely mark an all-time highwater mark in the political clout of the international science community! Of course, Colonel Cunningham does allow the scientists 'infinite wisdom' to help them in accomplishing this feat of persuasion.
In reality, one can begin the story in Napoleonic France. In 1801 mathematician Joseph Fourier, newly appointed Prefect of Isère, relocated to Grenoble, the “capital of the French Alps.” He became interested in climate, and by 1824 had constructed the first terrestrial “heat budget.” It showed that the atmosphere must act to raise the temperature of the Earth.
Fourier compared this still-mysterious effect to a scientific instrument—one similar to a miniature greenhouse.
Awareness of the Ice Ages was dawning in Fourier’s time, and by 1859, Anglo-Irish physicist John Tyndall had become interested. He began to study how various atmospheric gases transmit heat, and to his surprise found that some, though transparent to visible light, partially blocked radiated heat. Most notable among these were water vapor and carbon dioxide.
This, then, was the mechanism of Fourier’s “greenhouse effect!”
But causes of the Ice Ages remained controversial, and in 1896 future Nobel prize winner Svante Arrhenius investigated. Using Samuel Langley’s atmospheric infrared radiation measurements, Arrhenius hand-calculated the effect of carbon dioxide on temperature, finding that a drop in concentrations could indeed cause an Ice Age. Unfortunately his insight, mired in technical controversy, soon languished.
In 1938 British steam technologist Guy Callendar brought carbon dioxide theory back into focus. Using newer, better measurements, he demonstrated anew the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect. He showed that the planet actually was warming, and suggested that fossil fuel consumption was responsible.
During the 1950s several scientists took up Callendar’s results. Charles Keeling began accurately measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide—a program still continuing. Physicist Gilbert Plass, applying a computer to the latest heat radiation data, first calculated a complete description of the radiative process between ground and space. Swedish scientists Bolin and Erikson showed that the oceans couldn’t absorb carbon dioxide fast enough to compensate for human emissions.
Slowly, awareness of global warming’s potential “dark side” arose. Arrhenius and Callendar had welcomed the prospect of warming. But the International Geophysical Year (1957-58) underlined the linkage of all Earth’s systems, and widened scientific perspectives—the warming so attractive to the Swedish Arrhenius seemed quite a bit less so to Indian or African scientists.
The first alarms were sounded in the US. Congress had heard in 1957 that warming could bring an ice-free Arctic and create “real deserts” in America. But during the 70s concern deepened; a 1970 MIT study warned of “widespread droughts” and “changes of the ocean level,” a 1974 CIA report foresaw the world’s food supply at risk, and in 1977 the National Academy of Sciences envisioned a whole suite of consequences as “adverse, perhaps even catastrophic.” Concern spread globally, and international conferences assessed human health impacts (1979) and called on all governments to develop climate change policies (1985).
It is this long story of science and growing awareness, sketched so very briefly here, that produced the 1992 Framework Convention--not, as Colonel Cunningham thought, “decisions” by a “small group of scientists.” The saga spans two centuries and thousands of researchers--much more than this brief article can more than begin to suggest.
But that saga should be essential common knowledge, as humanity tries to assess the reality of global warming and its probable consequences. It's an urgent task: should the worst case materialize, climate change could pose an existential test of our collective realism, imagination and intelligence--and most crucially of all, our wisdom.
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Thanks for coming by again, "hello!"
Well, there certainly has been an organized effort to create similar impressions. See, for example:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Climate-Cover-Up-A-Review
But let's address the specifics.
1) There's no "UN dept for Globalwarming." You're likely thinking of the IPCC--the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their website is here:
As you can see, they are not actually part of the UN, though there are connections to the UN.
2) The Director of the IPCC--and BTW, this is a volunteer part-time job; the IPCC only has about 10 paid support staff--is Rajendra Pachauri. He began his career as a a mechanical engineer for the Indian railway, later studying economics, and has taught in universities in both the US and India. You can get the details here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajendra_K._Pachauri
3) Allegations of conflict of interest were made against Dr. Pachauri in a story, published in January of this year in the UK paper the Daily Telegraph, by climate 'skeptics' Christopher Booker and Richard North.
4) An investigation by the accounting firm KPMG found no evidence of wrongdoing or irregularities, and found that Dr. Pachauri's earnings amounted less than 50,00 pounds. The paper apologized on August 21, and is rumored to have paid considerable legal costs.
More details are here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbio
The Telegraph's apology is here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/7957631/Dr-Pachaur
5) I'm not sure exactly what the "fiddle the statistics" bit refers to. I've read some suggestions that Dr. Pachauri "might have," "could have," or even "must have" spun numbers--perhaps the erroneous "Glaciergate" Himalayan glacier melt date, which Dr. Pachauri did initially defend--but nothing concrete or specific. Or your concern could relate to some of the allegations made around the "Climategate" stolen emails--most of which were pretty insubstantial, either erroneous, misunderstood or exagerrated. If you have something solid, though, I'd be glad to look into it.
6) There is no evidence that the current warming is largely natural, and a great deal of evidence that humans are contributing to it. There's a good discussion here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent
A lot of climate change 'skeptics' don't accept Wikipedia as a reliable source, citing its open editorial policy. But it's often a very convenient place to start, as it gives you many good sources to explore.
This has been a long answer to a short question, I know, but I hope it helps!
I am not sure which side of the fence I sit on - it takes some 4.5 million years for our sun to make one circle around the milky way.... if the moon can have the effect it does - it stands to reason that other planets also have an effect. Yes I believe the planet is warming - Yes I believe man influences that change but NO I do not hold us alone as the creators of the problem.
Do you have a hub with "only" your views? -- if you do I missed it.
Neil, I'm going to make a short answer now, and a longer one later.
Short answer:
Yes, climate changes without man. However, current climate change can confidently be attributed to human CO2 emissions, based upon several lines of evidence. And it is highly problematic, largely because the rate of change is so high--though it doesn't seem so to us; .7 C over several decades is pretty slow in human terms. But such a warming occurring naturally would likely take centuries or millenia, not decades.
That matters because quick changes are much more stressful for living creatures--including those important to human nutrition!--than slow ones. (I like to illustrate the rate of change issue this way: consider, first, descending to the ground floor by climbing down the stairs. Now imagine the same descent via leaping out an upstairs window!)
Moreover, in many cases habitat is already degraded and fragmented due to human land use changes--a big barrier to climate adaptation, because it makes migrations difficult or impossible. Put those factors together and you have the basis for the projection that possible warmings could take upwards of 30% *of all species* into extinction.
We don't "control" climate--but we do, demonstrably, have enough influence to mess with it fairly seriously. The planet will survive, and so will life--but it's a good deal harder to be sure that our civilization will, too. That's why I'm passionate about the need to address this issue: I want my kids to have a good life, and I want my culture to endure for a while longer.
Hmm, this is no longer such a short answer. But I'll still come back with a bit more later.
Time for the "longer answer." I hope it doesn't turn out all that much longer, though!
First, your comment that you "do not hold us alone as the creators of the problem [of global warming.]" This area of study is referred to as "attribution," and it's a big field. It's also the area where climate modeling is most important--we don't need models to observe the warming; thermometers, satellites and proxy measurements do that just fine. But how can you study what *would* have happened had we not dumped hundreds of billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere?
Well, you can build mathematical models which simulate the physical processes, initialize them with the relevant climate conditions and inputs, and see what happens. There's been a lot of denialist energy expended on attacking climate modeling because there's not much alternative to modeling in really doing attributional studies, and without attributional studies it can always be argued that "it's not us."
However, if you read my Hub on Arrhenius--linked below--you know that climate modeling goes back more than a hundred years. And the use of computers for this purpose goes back nearly five decades. So this endeavor is not--as detractors like to paint it--some new, untried technology that may or may not have any validity; it's a long-established, sophisticated methodology, which, though not perfect, is able to supply reliable insights into how climate works.
And what does model-based attribution say? Well, in essence, the only way in which models can reproduce the climatic history we have observed is by including BOTH natural and human forcings--and if human forcings had not occurred, the climate would probably have been *cooling* slightly. So yes, the best scientific assessment we have is that we are "likely"--if I recall correctly, "likely" in this context means better than 90% probability--to be "the creators of the problem," as we are in fact overpowering a natural slight cooling.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/a
Secondly, I appreciated your question about "my views" because it made me think. I've spent a lot of time and energy looking at the evidence and assessing it as best as I (a scholar by training, but not a scientist) can. I have considerable confidence in the scientific process because I've known scientists all my life and I have a good sense of how they think and work, and because the constant advancement of technology over my lifetime provides a strong practical demonstration of the ability of scientific research to uncover new truths--ones with practical consequences.
So I base "my views" on the science--which made me wonder, when you asked, just to what extent they are "mine." Yes, I hold them--but I didn't originate them.
I also wondered about the word "views." When I first read your post, I inadvertently substituted the word "belief" for "view"--and that troubled me, because "belief" has, after all, a religious connotation, one that includes by implication the idea of uncertainty and doubt. (Cf. St. Paul's phrase "I see now as through a glass darkly.")
"View" is more neutral, but still includes the idea of subjectivity. Of course, subjectivity is an unavoidable part of the human condition. But while "we're all entitled to our own opinion," it's been argued that "we're not entitled to our own facts." (An oft-violated proscription in highly-polarized debates, including the climate debate.)
So in arriving at "my views," I've used my personal experience that scientists are largely honest, hard-working, clever folk--also independent and often contentious ones!-- who belong to a sub-culture that (over time) does a very good job of sorting the true from the false--to inform a set of facts that I haven't "pre-selected" but have examined pretty closely.
Do I have a Hub about them? Not a comprehensive one. However, you might be interested in this relatively personal Hub reflecting on the 2010 sea ice melt:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Through-A-Glass-Darkly-Equ
I wrote in after this one, so it wasn't included in the links below--and the title perhaps wouldn't have tipped you off. But I'll add it now.
Thanks again for a great comment. I hope my Hub and responses have been helpful in informing "your views" on this very important topic!
i am very glad to see an individual on hubpages that is as dedicated to this subject as you are. Personally i am not as learned on the subject as you are. However i phrased my thought processes in the manner.
if the world assumes the Global Climate Change is indeed fact and proceeds from that point what is the outcome?
I see an auto-industry not controlled by global oil corporations. every country with its own independent renewable energy supply.
New fields of research and a new sector in which to expand job growth.
In my entire examination of the possible repercussions i could see no negative side effects for the individuals that comprise most of this country.
On the flip side of that postulate however we continue to live under the assumption that global warming is false and it is. we gain nothing, we lose new technology amongst other things.
the third side of the coin is what troubles me the most. if we assume that it is false, and it then turns out to be true. then we see the destruction over the next 50 years or so of every major coastal city in the world...not a happy prospect.
so my conclusion is thus, operate as if it were fact and we lose nothing.
the short version "hope for the best prepare for the worst"
i apologize for my improper usage of capitalization, and/or punctuation as it is 0100 and i am quite tired
demosthenes, your capitalization may be nonstandard, but your thought process seems to be pretty darn clear, if you ask me.
Those opposed to action to mitigate carbon emissions (that's the jargon) often give as the reason for their opposition a fear of economic catastrophe, massive job loss and severe impoverishment.
I'm not aware of any economic study that supports this outcome as being a real hazard--and economists as a group are not particularly inclined to be climate "alarmists." Estimates of the costs of mitigation typically run around a few percent of GDP--1-5%, if my memory on this can be trusted.
On the other hand, we're already seeing costs of inaction:
--increased incidence of wildfires around the world. This summer saw the Russians severely hit; in 2007 it was the Greeks. Most of the change is less-visible, occurring as an increase in fires that, though serious, are not so spectacular as to garner world-wide media coverage. But there are at least 4 different studies formally attributing an increase in wildfire to AGW; both the US and Canada are included in this effect.
--increases in pest invasions. The current leading example is the pine bark beetle epidemic currently affecting most of the Northwestern US, as well as the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. Total costs aren't readily available, but are known to be greater than 2 billion dollars--probably much, much greater. The ultimate costs are unknowable at this point; there are worries that the pest could move into the wider circumpolar Boreal forest, which would dramatically boost costs, obviously.
--Drought has been increasing for the last two decades, as shown by the review study, Dai, 2010. While droughts have always occurred (and some of the prehistoric "mega-droughts" experienced in western North America dwarf anything seen lately), climate modeling shows that drought induced by AGW will cause serious challenges for human agriculture and food security. Current droughts have had extremely high economic costs--see the impact of this year's weather on the Russian wheat crop, or the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Sahel (western Chad has 1.6 million people at risk, and has experienced livestock mortality rates of about 31%.) Now, you can't say that there wouldn't have been problems without AGW--for instance, Chad had terrible drought problems back in 1984, when warming was much less. But such events let us see what sort of future we are crafting for ourselves.
The other side of the coin, as you point out, is that there is considerable potential benefit by embracing change. One of the fascinating cases in this regard is China. Five years ago, all we knew about China and energy was that they were adding coal-fired power plants at a truly alarming rate, and they were finishing up this huge (and controversial) Three Gorges hydropower project.
Now, they are the leading exporter of wind turbines in the world. They are deploying wind and solar power at startling rates--albeit in conjunction with lots of new coal capacity, too. They've signalled a new involvement in the COP process to find a successor to the expiring Kyoto treaty--though it remains to be seen if there will be any material consequence to this involvement.
In short, they have visibly embraced technological change in the energy economy, and are already profiting. It certainly supports your take on the upside possibilities.
well i can see that transferring to alt. energy would hurt Exxon Mobil's profit margin. but we will always need oil based products, so maybe instead of posting a quarterly profit of a few billion dollars they only post a few 100 million and their CEO doesn't get a bonus. i'm strictly middle class i could care less
i thank you for supporting my "take"
De nada, demosthenes--just calling it like I saw it.
Thanks for coming by once again!
"Using Samuel Langley’s atmospheric infrared radiation measurements,"
Actually as I remember, measurements of IR radiation coming from the Moon (through the atmosphere, at different elevation angles and times of the year)
Martin, your memory is exactly right. I just didn't want to go quite into that level of detail in this particular Hub, and so left it a bit vague. But that is just what he did--and I gather it was just as finicky to do as it sounds.
Related links
- The Discovery of Global Warming - A History
Physicist Spencer Weart tells the history of research on climate change from the 19th century to the present, in a set of hyperlinked essays. The best single resource, bar none, to understanding the history of the science of global warming. - Climate Wars: A Review
The worst consequences of global warming may not be the most obvious. A historian and journalist takes a look. "Gwynne Dyer was not like other war correspondents, back in the day: with other reporters, if there was shooting in the provinces..." - Global Warming Science And The Dawn Of Flight
The "life, work and times" of Svante Arrhenius, who in 1896 hand-calculated the first mathematical model of CO2-induced global warming. "In the middle years of the 1890s, the world was trembling on the brink of breakthroughs and breakdowns..." - Global Warming Science In The Age Of Queen Victoria
The "life, work and times" of John Tyndall, who first identified CO2 and water vapor as primary greenhouse gases. "Perhaps its the dramatic weather changes, or perhaps it is mere coincidence, but mountains recur in the scientists' lives. . ." - The Science Of Global Warming In The Age Of Napoleon
The "life, work and times of Joseph Fourier, who first deduced the existence of the greenhouse effect. "If we think of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, many things might come to mind: "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity"..." - Through A Glass Darkly: Equinox Reflections, 2010
A more personal take on climate change--and what it's like to watch it happen. "Its just past the fall equinox, that day when the year turns from light to dark, summer to winter. Days have been growing shorter since the summer solstice..."
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Hello, hello, 20 months ago
I thought it has been established that the chief of the UN dept for Globalwarming had fiddle the statics to gain millions of dollars and rising of temperature at the moment is part of a natural cycle.