The Climate of Man

New research published this week in the journal Science indicates that glaciers in Antarctica are on a steady retreat. We'll talk about the new work, and about how much of that retreat can be attributed to changes in the climate. We'll also talk with Michael Mann, a climate scientist responsible for a climate model that some call the 'hockey stick.' The model has been the target of criticism by some who don't believe that manmade climate change is occurring. We'll also speak with a journalist who has traveled around the world investigating climate change effects.

Just read the third in of three articles in the New Yorker by Elizabeth Kolbert. They've hit me pretty hard. Does anyone have any rational, scientifically-based rebuttal?

I'd certainly like it if the portrait she paints is inaccurate or alarmist, but right now it seems pretty watertight.

In legitimate scientific circles, it is virtually impossible to find evidence of disagreement over the fundamentals of glabal warming. This fact was neatly demonstrated last year by Naomi Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at the University of California at San Diego. Oreskes conducted a study of the more than nine hundred articles on climate change published in refereed journals between 1993 and 2003 and subsequently made available on a leading research database. Of these, she found that seventy-five percent endorsed the view that anthropogenic emissions were responsible for at least some of the observed warming of the past fifty years. The remaining twenty-five percent, which dealt with questions of methodology or climate history, took no position on current conditions. Not a single article disputed the premise that global warming is under way."

Stabilizing C02 emissions, Socolow realized, would be a monumental undertaking, so he decided to break the problem down nto more manageable blocks, which he called "stabilization wedges." For simplicity's sake, he defined a stabilization wedge as a step that would be sufficient to prevent a billion metric tons of carbon per year from being emitted by 2054... he eventually came up with fifteen different wedges -- theoretically, at least eight more than would be necessary to stabilize emissions.

If 630 refereed articles said that a volcano looming over my house was about to erupt, and none disputed it, I'd get myself out of there. Since what we're talking about is the whole world, that's not an option.

If all you are saying is, "Sure, global warming is happening, but hey it might not be so bad," how 'bout if you read parts 2 and 3 and we'll go from there.

David Rind is a climate scientist who has worked at GISS since 1978. Rind acts as a trouble-shooter for the institute's model, scanning reams of numbers known as diagnostics, trying to catch problems, and he also works with giss's Climate Impacts Group. (His office, like Hansen's, is filled with dusty piles of computer printouts.) Although higher temperatures are the most obvious and predictable result of increased CO2,

To alter the economics against carbon requires government intervention. Countries could set a strict limit on CO2, and then let emitters buy and sell carbon "credits." (In the United States, this same basic strategy has been used successfully with sulfur dioxide in order to curb acid rain.) Another alternative is to levy a tax on carbon. Both of these options have been extensively studied by economists; using their work, Socolow estimates that the cost of emitting carbon would have to rise to around a hundred dollars a ton to provide a sufficient incentive to adopt many of the options he has proposed. Assuming that the cost were passed on to consumers, a hundred dollars a ton would raise the price of a kilowatt-hour of coal-generated electricity by about two cents, which would add roughly fifteen dollars a month to the average American family's electricity bill. (In the U.S., more than fifty per cent of electricity is generated by coal.)