So, Ben showed me a movie about how this global warming business is all bunk. As someone who’s been focused on the issue for a good 7 years now, I’ve come across this stuff now and again. Here’s my response to Ben..
Sweet. You found a movie with all the old dudes with funny ears together. It’s nice. So nice. The one thing the movie is right about is that there is not full consensus that human activities are the main cause of global warming. Sounds like a good point, except.. there isn’t full scientific consensus that the earth isn’t flat or that gravity exists either. If you’ve got some time and money, you can always find a scientist to come up with a lot of reasons why something might not be true. The same small number of kooky dudes that you see in the movie have been saying these same things about global warming for over a decade. The difference is that now, finally, they aren’t getting as much airtime in the media as the thousands and thousands of credible scientists who agree that global warming is caused by CO2 and is nasty crisis that we have to solve.
To me, it’s pretty intuitive. This is how I see it. There are a lot of elements to the atmosphere, just like there are to the ocean, including water vapor, oxygen, nitrogen, CO2, and all sorts of other variables. It’s true that CO2 is a small portion of the atmosphere, just like salt is a small part of the ocean. However, it’s also true that CO2 and other greenhouse gases like methane are the parts of the atmosphere with the job of trapping heat. Since the industrial revolution, we’ve raised CO2 levels from about 280 ppm to 370 or so now. They had basically been unchanged for thousands of years. Now they’ve changed, we did it, and the world is getting steamy quick.
Okay, now I’m not stupid enough to think that anyone should listen to me and my basic intuitive understanding of climate science seriously without checking it. However, it does help that it resonates with the opinions of NASA, the National Academy of Science, the NOAA, and the vast majority of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was set up specifically to study this stuff. As for the “conspiracy of global warming”.. that’s silly. The opposite has been true for almost two decades now. A few climate change deniers funded by the fossil fuel industry have gained a big chunk of the media attention and the ear of the most powerful governments in the world including the US Congress since 1988 by calling into doubt what most scientists have agreed is a major problem that has to be addressed now. On the other side have been non-profit environmental organizations, scientists, and anyone who will listen to them. I’ve worked for Greenpeace and several other non-profits. Believe me, nobody’s doing that work for the cash.
Anyway, it’s nice when people question the status quo and think twice about things. Good on ya. Unfortunately, what has now in 2007 become the status quo of scientific opinion, that global warming is a major crisis caused by coal smokestacks and car tailpipes that must be addressed ASAP, is actually right this time. It would be a lot sweeter if we could just keep on trying to dig and build our way out of our problems and trade in this idea of sustainability for a godzilla humvee with a badass sunroof.
If you need some more proof, here’s a good article about that Swindled movie on a blog I like to read sometimes about climate science:
http://www.desmogblog.com/a-global-warming-swindle-play-by-play
