Climate Change

Not too long ago a facebook friend posted an article about how close the earth is to reaching a tipping point in climate in which we will see major human and ecological disasters. It wasn't just some facebook friend, but someone important to me in life, Sharon B. She is the mom to a close friend growing up, but she was also one of the most important people in my scouting life, school life, and she was also my sunday school and youthgroup leader. She also works for the National Park service and helped me get my first jobs. A lot of who I am is in part due to Sharon. When she posted the article, she had several people attack it right away with their climate change is a hoax thing.

One particular person, someone named Lawrence, came out with all of the standard arguments that climate deniers use and then also had the gall to say that 1/2 of all scientists deny climate change. So I decided to defend Sharon and also spread some knowledge on the subject.

As a person who knows just how true climate change is and more importantly how tragic and widespread the effects of it will be on ecosystems, humans, and the life we know, I wanted to write about it here on my blog. I tend to stay out of most political and touchy, hot topics on social media. But climate change is one exception, b/c the human race's failure to deal with it will have profound negative affects on future generations (and likely our own). In everything else we worry about the future of our children, why not on this??

Below are my arguments I wrote on Sharon's post.

Lawrence, I would love to know where you got the information that 1/2 of scientists disagree with climate change. I'm a scientist that has worked in both the academic and government sector, and to basically everyone I've interacted with, climate change isn't a debate, it's a fact. When scientists present at conferences, they no longer even go through the evidence behind it, they move along with their talk b/c everyone in the audience agrees and understands. In my time I have come across only 2 scientists who are skeptical of anthropogenic climate change. But sorry, that is anecdotal, let's go to research and facts: The latest study on whether there is consensus amongst active scientists points to 97% consensus amongst scientist. (Here is the primary literature behind that: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024/pdf ).

No one debates as to whether the climate is warming. If you don't "believe" in thermometers and their records, then there are many other indicators that the climate is warming: glaciers melting, shorter winters, plants and animals migrating to higher latitudes/ higher altitudes to stay within temperature limits. But this isn't the debate, the debate is to whether it's cyclical or human caused. The evidence indicates that the earth is warming at a scale unseen throughout recent geologic history. Not just a few times more, but orders of magnitude faster. We know this through various standard methods, including, but not limited to looking at the types and concentrations of gasses and isotopes (ex. the different types of oxygen atoms water) in ice cores, sediment analysis from lake and ocean cores, analysis of rock layers, and tree ring analyses. All types of evidence point to an earth rapidly increasing in temperature at a rate orders of magnitude greater than seen before.

So the question is why is it increasing at such a rate. These same ice core analyses show that CO2 has fluctuated with temperature and is now spiking in the same rapid manner as temperature. However, correlation of course does not mean causation. There needs to be a mechanism before we can conclude anything with certainty. Well, we do know from studies in chemistry and physics that certain gases can trap heat (what we now call greenhouse gases), and CO2 happens to be a greenhouse gas. So there we have it. Everyone agrees that the temperature is increasing. You can't argue against the greenhouse gas principle (even those without a science background understand that a cloudy night results in warmer temps than a crystal clear night due to another greenhouse gas: water vapor). So throw in that we know that CO2 is rapidly increasing and mirroring the temperature increase and that we know who creates the excess CO2 and voila! it's pretty clear.

Of course it's great to be skeptical, that's what science is based on after all. The scientific method works by disproving all hypotheses until 1 is left standing. But this skepticism inherit in science should give even more credence to the climate change debate. When was the last time 97% of scientists agreed on something? That's pretty rare. Scientists love to disagree with each other, so this alone says something. Also, scientists often live on disproving ideas and theories. Believe me, you would be super famous, and potentially make quite a bit of money if you could disprove the current accepted model of climate change. This means a whole lot of scientists are trying, but the fact that no scientist has come up with any credible evidence against the current scientifically accepted theory of climate change lends quite a lot of credit to it. Instead, the scientists trying to disprove it are, in the end, just finding more evidence towards the current theory.

In my opinion, much of the voting populace are deriving their opinions from their political parties. To me this is a tragedy. Climate change is not political, it's science. Climate change is as political as how and why antibiotics kill bacteria or as political as how a bird or plane creates lift to fly. Imagine if your political party had a view as to whether DNA carried our hereditary info or not!? Of course politicians from both the left and the right are deriving influence and gain by using climate change to their advantage, but scientific evidence and facts are not political, and politics should NOT be used to determine what is a scientific fact.

Where I believe politics should be involved is to determine what we should do once we know a scientific fact. We know anthropogenic climate change is real. We should be debating what to do now that we are aware of human-caused climate change. We should not be debating whether it's real or not! Scientists can be helpful in this as well. My current field of study is looking to see how the ecology of the planet is and will be different under current climate change so as to better inform decision makers. There are of course numerous ways that climate change will be negative (e.g. increased range of microbial pathogens, droughts, increased fires, less productive oceans, loss of many animal and plant species, coastal cities under water) but there are also some positives (e.g. some animal and plant species will thrive in warmer wetter/drier climates. Growing seasons in higher latitudes will become longer). Politicians should be using the valuable information provided by scientists to make decisions. Politicians should not be trying to determine what is scientific fact or isn't, and they shouldn't be trying to sway people into believing or not believing a scientific theory.

If you don't believe the science behind climate change, then you really shouldn't believe the science behind the airplane your flying on, the medical treatment that's curing you, or the computer that's letting you read this post.

I've also heard the argument from people of faith that climate change is probably real, but there is no need to worry about it or change one's life over it b/c God will take care of his people. My argument to this is that the same people using that argument (at least the ones I know) don't use this argument in other areas of their life. If they have a life-threatening medical condition, they go to the doctor to get cured or take the medicine that treats their condition, they don't sit and wait for God to heal them. If they have children who are behavior problems or failing in school, the parents intervene and try various disciplinary actions or programs. If one does not have enough food/money to stay alive, they don't just sit along a peaceful stream and wait for God to give to them, no they go out and find a job, work hard, etc so as to provide for themselves and their family. I believe the same argument should be used with climate change. If God gave us this earth, he certainly didn't give it to people to trash and destroy but to take care of it. And in the same way God would expect one to take care of their body, their family, their home, he would expect them to take care of the Earth. In fact, the origin behind the initial climate deniers, the ones that started the whole climate hoax thing, was all about money. Slowing climate change means that certain people, especially some very wealthy people (I'm looking you oil and car industry people) will see lower profits. They now use all sorts of arguments to try to get people to vote for politicians who call climate change a hoax, but the root is all about the money. This is the antithesis of what God would want, I should think. Let's destroy the earth all in the name of the almighty buck. 

It's really important to look at the motives of those original climate deniers and why they worked so hard to get your average everyday person to also deny climate change. There are some very rich and influential people who are set to risk their giant profits if we fight climate change. But the average person isn't going to see any negative monetary affects in the long run. They'll just end up in a world that is livable and can be livable for a long time. They'll have cleaner air and cleaner water. And even if we did have to give up a bit of money to fight climate change, isn't this better than living in a future with major droughts and flooding causing major starvation throughout the world? Or a world in which diseases are able to run rampant due to longer warm seasons and expanded ranges?

Lawrence responded to my above argument with this:

"Not arguing. When we plug up all the volcanoes, stop Forrest and brush fires, dust storms, etc, witch is impossible to do, we may see a difference. The pollution that we create is a drop in the bucket compared to what mother nature can do, and does every second of every day since the earth formed, and will continue until we no longer exist."

I responded with this:

That's an interesting thought Lawrence and of course something that has been looked into as another potential hypothesis to explain the current climate change. My initial response is that the temperature increase (and dramatic spike) has mirrored, not only the CO2 in the atmosphere, but the CO2 output by humans, and has not paralleled major volcanic eruptions or forest fires. I believe dust storms might actually have a slight cooling result through the albedo effect (but unsure). Also, volcanoes have been active throughout earth's history, yet we haven't seen a constantly warming atmosphere. If volcanoes/fires were to blame for this dramatic temperature spike, then you'd think you'd see similar spikes throughout earth's history, corresponding to even higher levels of volcanism. These were just my hypotheses based on what I know about these fields of science, so I looked up to see what the literature said. 

The scientific literature seems pretty clear that humans contribute substantially more greenhouse gasses per year than natural activities. If you'd like to look at the major findings on the topic, the bottom of this article lists some of the more relevant and recent scientific and peer-reviewed findings on this topic. I note that the article is not peer-reviewed, but that many of the sources it cites are, so I would recommend looking at them:

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits-more-carbon-dioxide-volcanoes-or-human-activities?fbclid=IwAR3JVFYstbO3XadUVZ3HSxN36v6JMrxx6M6fG-hduBeodm3HG58eAZYCGgs

For my own time's sake, instead of summarizing what the scientific knowledge is on this topic, I'm just going to paste in what a science writer from Scientific American wrote after reading those articles: (nice that his term of drop in the bucket matches up to yours! ;)
"This argument that human-caused carbon emissions are merely a drop in the bucket compared to greenhouse gases generated by volcanoes has been making its way around the rumor mill for years. And while it may sound plausible, the science just doesn’t back it up.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the world’s volcanoes, both on land and undersea, generate about 200 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, while our automotive and industrial activities cause some 24 billion tons of CO2 emissions every year worldwide. Despite the arguments to the contrary, the facts speak for themselves: Greenhouse gas emissions from volcanoes comprise less than one percent of those generated by today’s human endeavors.

Another indication that human emissions dwarf those of volcanoes is the fact that atmospheric CO2 levels, as measured by sampling stations around the world set up by the federally funded Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, have gone up consistently year after year regardless of whether or not there have been major volcanic eruptions in specific years. “If it were true that individual volcanic eruptions dominated human emissions and were causing the rise in carbon dioxide concentrations, then these carbon dioxide records would be full of spikes—one for each eruption"

Later in the facebook discussion, Sharon wrote "So if all of you are wrong, Larry, we all lose. If the other side is wrong, we end up with a cleaner earth. I guess I don’t understand the reason for the argument"

To which I added this little paragraph and attached the cartoon that I mention

"one of my favorite cartoons highlighting your point. And as you say, there is great risk to not acting. If we act and it turns out climate change was a hoax, well then we're really not out much, but if we don't act and turns out there is climate change, then we're in major trouble. Climate change is of course happening, but even if you're unsure, the smart money is to act like it is"

Not relevant to the discussion but my own ego ;)  A few of my former teachers chimed in. Teachers are so important in our lives and hearing this from them warmed my heart

Sharon Proud to know you!

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 · Reply · 25w

Lynne  me too! So well said.

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 · Reply · 25w

Angi Thank you !!!!!

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 · Reply · 25w

Jennifer  Omg Travis Guy you are amazing! Lol. Thank you for saying that and putting it all in perspective for some who might not believe! I sure hope they do now!