Part 1
Before delving into this week’s column, a quick reply to Mr. Noonan, the editor of the newspaper, about global warming: I’m not particularly offended that Mr. Noonan quotes that great unmarried marriage counselor, Bjorn Lombord, in his dismissal of global warming’s importance. Lombard, a political scientist, says just the right things to make head-in-the-sand folk feel warm and fuzzy. Meanwhile, I’ll stick with what actual climate scientists have to say.
I can’t let slip by without comment a (relatively) recent editorial from Mr. Noonan, the editor of this newspaper,
that blasted global warming as “junk science.” A few choice quotes:
“By hysterically mixing sober environmental sensitivity with global warming junk science, is it any wonder that only liberals believe Mr. Gore’s global warming gobbledy gook?”
It was a spectacular protest at the King Fahad mosque on Sunday the 10th — spectacularly pointless.
What did the United American Committee (UAC) hope to accomplish? Ostensibly, they wanted the mosque to issue a fatwa against Osama bin Laden, or admit to preaching hate, or confess to harboring terrorists, reform their supposedly extremist ways, or something along those lines. All this, of course, was dressed up in the memory of Sept. 11. But it’s hard to swallow. Five years later, and now they’re protesting at the mosque? Part of their beef was that the mosque harbored two of the hijackers, that the Muslim community supported them, and that an imam at the mosque actively assisted them. The basis for their accusation is the 9/11 Commission Report. But unless they know something law enforcement doesn’t, they’re acting on spotty reasoning. To quote from the report (highlight added for emphasis)
Once upon a time, there was an architecture firm whom I’ll refer to as “X,” who designed a school for the Los Angeles Unified School District. It was a difficult process, as LAUSD staff wasn’t always open to exciting design ideas and to working with “X” to get the best design bang for their somewhat limited number of bucks. But despite the difficulties, and despite LAUSD’s reluctance to pay on time, “X” persevered and delivered a final set of drawings “which was stolen by LAUSD and their pet architect.” By stolen, I mean that they removed “X’s” stamp, the professional seal that asserts ownership and establishes responsibility (read: liability) for the drawings. Instead, LAUSD placed “Y’s” stamp on it. Naturally, “X” was not amused and did what had to be done: dragged LAUSD and its very well paid herd of lawyers to court.
Armchair warmongers, just as safe in their seats as I am in mine, are fond of rhetorically forcing people into line. There’s us. There’s them. That’s it. Anybody who doesn’t take sides (i.e. their side), or asks for more than a rah-rah by way justifying violence, is made an honorary enemy. Questioning authority and popular opinion is discouraged. Mourning the loss of life — all life — is apparently outrageous, too.
Characteristic of that rhetoric is a lack of substance, because substance tends to raise more questions than it answers. This explains why Ari Noonan, in his response two days ago steadfastly refuses to discuss why it’s okay for civilians to die when Israel acts but not when its enemies act. He prefers diversions involving the strange mix of politics and Hollywood.
[Editor’s Note: In Part 1 (“Global Warming Gorilla: 900 Pounds and Growing,” July 14), Frederik Sisa wondered why it has been so difficult to convince global warming skeptics of the facts. He explored the nature of specific criticisms.]
[Part 2]
Less fanciful than Michael Crichton, but no less beloved, is climate skeptics’ hero Bjorn Lomborg whose book The Skeptical Environmentalist asserts that not only is global warming not really occurring at worrying scales, but “that the global environment has actually improved.” (http://www.lomborg.com/books.html.) He goes on to suggest that these are phantom problems for a self-inflating environmental movement.
But here’s the thing. He is praised by non-scientific publications such as The Economist, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Daily Telegraph. However, he has been severely criticized by the scientific community, who have not ignored him or refused to debate him. Scientific journals such as Scientific American and Nature, as well as science organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists — to name a few — have thoroughly discussed the flaws in his book. (http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/ucs-examines-the-skeptical-environmentalist.html and http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00000B96-9517-1CDA-B4A8809EC588EEDF). Let’s see: scientists disagree with Lomborg, non-scientists agree. What is the public to decide?
This is where we play the credibility game. Lomborg is a political scientist who held an associate professorship of statistics in the department of Statistics at the Danish University of Aarhus. His critics include U.S. National Medal of Science and two-time Pulitzer recipient biologist Dr. E.O. Wilson, multiple award recipient and Honorary Visiting Fellow at Oxford University species extinction expert Dr. Norman Myers, among many, many more. So who has the background to evaluate the science behind global warming? Frankly, it’s not Lomborg. Similarly, it seems that given a choice between politicians and business leaders, and organizations/conferences such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.S. National Research Council, the American Meteorological Society, the Federal Climate Change Science Program commissioned by President Bush, the National Academy of Science (and equivalent academies in countries such as Brazil and China), and the 2003 World Climate Change Conference held in Moscow, I’ll go with the scientists on matters of science. And they’re telling us that we’re causing global warming, it’s a problem, and it’s getting urgent because we’ve been dawdling for a long time.
[Part 1]
If you’ve ever done a beach cleanup with Heal the Bay — or maybe just went for a stroll after a good rain — you undoubtedly noticed all the garbage that accumulates as a result of litter going down the storm drains. You might also remember the sea birds covered in oil as a result of the Exxon Valdez spill. And when you look up at the Los Angeles sky on a hot day, you’ve no doubt seen that big yellow belch of smog hovering ominously above the city.
There’s no doubt that humans have a dangerous impact on the environment. So why is it so difficult for some people to accept that, more than 100 years after the Industrial Revolution, pollutants from cars and power plants are drastically altering global temperatures?
I’m not going to go over the science of global warming. For that, I’ll refer you to Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth. Whatever you may think of Mr. Gore himself, An Inconvenient Truth explains the science clearly, with good humor, and without cheap rhetorical attacks on business or overblown “sky is falling” hysteria. It’s also been vetted for its overall scientific accuracy, with a few minor criticisms, by scientists such as isotope geochemist Dr. Eric Steig at Real Climate, a climate science commentary site run by climate scientists. (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/al-gores-movie/)
Instead, I’d like to consider the nature of criticisms leveled against global warming, which seem to go beyond reasonable skepticism to unreasonable, radical doubt.
Does “God” evoke religious or secular notions? It sounds like a stupid question, but please bear with me. For our purposes, pick one of the following three interpretations:
1) God as a secular notion. Far-fetched, I know, even ludicrous . But there’s a philosophical precedent in the notion of an “uncaused cause.” The reasoning goes, if everything has a cause but you can’t have an infinite series of causes, there must be one cause that started it all. Plato called it a demiurge. Aristotle called it the “Prime Mover.” Everyone else knows it by how St Thomas Aquinas called it: God. Of course, none of these three august philosophers used the uncaused cause strictly as a scientific, impersonal explanation of how the universe came to be. But to define God as an uncaused cause does strip away any spiritual/religious dimension if one is inclined to do so. Or maybe secular just means that “God” is a meaningless word.
2) God as a historical notion. Similar to 1, with the difference that “God” mostly has significance as a historical artifact from the past — like Zeus or Osiris?
3) God as a religious notion. If “uncaused cause” seems too impersonal, and God is more than just a blast from the past, then God as a divine entity, a Creator, a Master Planner, is the other alternative. This is the God of the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, and other theologies; a God that judges, rewards, forgives or damns, redeems, inspires, and so on. In brief, a God that has a hand — and stake — in human existence.
