Cooling the warming hysteria... Media hype proclaiming that the sky was falling did not properly portray the consensus of the scientific community.
For the first half of 1992, America was inundated by the media with dire predictions of global warming catastrophes, all of which seemed to be aimed at heating up the rhetoric from the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro last June.
Unfortunately, the media hype proclaiming that the sky was falling did not properly portray the consensus of the scientific community. After the Earth Summit, there was a noticeable lack of evidence of the sky actually falling and subsequent colder than normal temperatures across the country cooled the warming hysteria as well. Everybody, of course, remembers the Earth Summit and the tons of paper used up in reporting on it - paper now buried in landfills around the world. But few people ever heard of a major document issued at the same time and called the "Heidelberg Appeal." The reason? It just didn't make news. Perhaps that is because the Appeal urged Summit attendees to avoid making important environmental decisions based on "pseudo-scientific arguments or false and non-relevant data." The Heidelberg Appeal was issued initially by some 264 scientists from around the world, including 52 Nobel Prize winners. Today, the Appeal carries the signatures of more than 2,300 scientists - 65 of them Nobel Prize winners - from 79 countries. If nothing else, its message is illustrative of what's wrong with so much of the global warming rhetoric. The lack of solid scientific data. Scientists can agree on certain facts pertaining to global warming. First, the greenhouse effect is a natural phenomenon; it accounts for the moderate temperature that makes our planet habitable. Second, the concentration of greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide) has increased and there has been a slight increase in global temperatures over the past century. Finally, if present trends continue, carbon dioxide levels will double over the next 50 to 100 years. Controversy arises when trying to link past changes in temperatures to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases. And it arises again when climate prediction models are used to conclude Earth's temperature will climb drastically in the next century and-based on such models-to propose policy decisions that could drastically affect the economy.
According to Arizona State University climatologist Dr. Robert C. Balling in his book, The Heated Debate (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1992), until knowledge of the interplay between oceans and the atmosphere improves, "model predictions must be treated with considerable caution." Moreover, models don't simulate the complexity of clouds, nor do they deal adequately with sea ice, snow or changes in intensity of the sun's energy. And they don't stand up to reality testing. Comparing actual temperatures over the last 100 years against model calculations, the models predicted temperature increases higher than those that actually occurred. Moreover, most of the earth's temperature increase over the last century occurred before 1940. Yet, the real build-up in man-made CO, didn't occur until after 1940. Temperatures actually fell between 1940 and 1970.
Sifting through such data, Dr. Balling has concluded, "there is al large amount of empirical evidence suggesting that the apocalyptic vision is in error and that the highly touted greenhouse
disaster is most improbable." Other scientists have an even more interesting viewpoint. Notes atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer, president of the Washington, D.C. - based Science & Environmental Policy Project, "the net impact [of a modest warming] may well be beneficial." All of which would seem to suggest that the jury's still out on whether drastic steps to curb CO, emissions are needed. It would seem that the phenomenon - and its impact on the economy - are important enough to warrant considerably more research before proposing actions we may later regret. Perhaps the sky isn't falling, after all.
Who: Mobil
Advert: New York Times, 1993
Methane: 1736.53 ppb
Source: Geoffrey Supran & Naomi Oreskes