Balancing Frogs: Climate Change

Here's a good reason why I need to increase my scientific literacy - it's so that I can think intelligently about different points of view about science. About issues that go beyond "I disagree with flat-earthers" or "Creationists fail to convince me."

Almost a year ago I read a Washington Post article on scientist James Lovelock's dire warnings about the future of climate change.

"Our global furnace is out of control. By 2020, 2025, you will be able to sail a sailboat to the North Pole. The Amazon will become a desert, and the forests of Siberia will burn and release more methane and plagues will return."

Scary stuff. As I wrote back on my old blog,

Even though this guy's worst-case-scenario predictions may not actually come to pass, I still want to say something. For lots of people it's cool to try to persuade people that global warming / climate change is nothing to worry about. I mean, it's cool to show you're not taken in by something by this, or it's cool to stick it to Al Gore, or what have you.

Is it just me, or is this the kind of thing where maybe it's better for the human race to play it safe for a while, and kinda assume the worst-case-scenarios might come to pass, even if they don't? I know that the human race is made up of 6 billion people who are all pursuing their own selfish aims, and it's really hard to take the moral high ground against people in poor countries who are burning rainforest so they can grow food to feed their kids.

But for rich, comfortable, well-fed people in the First World who tell everybody through their newspaper columns or radio shows or books not to listen to environmental activists, and global warming is nothing to worry about... does it ever occur to them that their grandchildren living in a parched, water-poor world might come across old tattered copies of their public pronouncements and think, "Gee, THANKS!"

Even if the Earth is in much better shape than the doomsayers claim, and global warming is not serious enough for us to worry about - even then, it still seems to me like global warming naysayers are basically advocating gambling with our descendant's quality of life for our current comfort. Apparently frugality and planning for hard times are virtues in our everyday lives, but not on a global scale.

Of course, I totally lack the scientific knowledge to evaluate whether Lovelock's dire predictions are reasonable or not. Recently Freeman Dyson, who like Lovelock was born more than 80 years ago, and like Lovelock is less senile than I am at 27, wrote a couple of "heretical views about science and society."

My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

Freeman Dyson is most definitely not the type of person I complained about back in September who is "advocating gambling with our descendant's quality of life for our current comfort". He's not disputing global warming alarmism because of some self-serving reason or because it fits nicely into his political orientation. He's disputing global warming alarmism because he understands the science involved and honestly believes the alarmism to be unwarranted. I have no problem with that.

Shortly afterwards, scientist Alun Anderson wrote his rebuttal to Dyson, The Changing Arctic.

I'm up in Greenland along with the celebrated photo-essayist John McConnico, who took picture above, because I am reporting on the future of the Arctic. And it's not that I just want to lament the end of the polar bear, though hard times for the bear and other creatures that rely on sea ice are looking more than likely.

I think there is a lot more to it than that. This is one of the regions of the world that will change first and fastest as a result of climate change. There will be losers but there may be winners too (on this I would agree with a heresy of Dyson). And there will be wrenching change, startling technological developments and political strife. It will be a microcosm of what will happen elsewhere.

And I wish I understood the processes and principles involved well enough to judge for myself which predictions were closer to the mark. Because with my current ignorance of Earth sciences and meteorology, right now I'm reduced to just choosing which scientist to believe on faith.