Warm and cool


Martin told me a story yesterday, of him and a friend trudging through the snow, discussing climate change. His friend can't abide those people who are mocking global warming, even as we are living through one of the coldest winters in decades. Those deniers had only his scorn and contempt. Looking around he pointed and said, this is only the weather.

I, on the other hand, have been searching for a word, a non-pejorative form of alarmist. There doesn't appear to be one in English. I thought I might find something that honours the Paul Reveres among us. Instead it appears we have only wolf criers or Cassandras.

I've changed my mind about global warming several times in the last twenty years, and I will admit that the weather has been an influence, as have the many books, articles and reports I've read on the subject. During the heat wave of 1998 I was a true believer. A while ago I said I was taking the middle path, of Roger Pielke's non-skeptical heretics. In the last few months I've found myself favouring the skeptics again. Besides the hours I've spent shoveling the walk you can blame Anthony at Watts Up With That? for turning me around. His blog was just voted best in the U.S. in the science category.

I suppose you could say I've become a luke-warmer. Man-made global warming has happened, with carbon dioxide emissions playing a role. But I think the effect has been modest and benign, and may continue to be so. I'm more worried that we might be entering into a prolonged cold period. I don't believe climate science is advanced enough to confidently predict which way the change will go.

In any case I agree that we shouldn't wait for the science to be settled before trying to escape from our reliance on fossil fuels. Sooner or later we are going to run out of oil, and at the moment the only feasible replacements are nuclear reactors or coal. Wind or solar can help, but only at the margins. They are too capricious. Regardless of whether the future is hot or cold, we've got to make some changes.

One of the skeptics that I find worth reading is Lawrence Solomon. His essays in the National Post form the basis of his book, The Deniers. Last year he wrote a column about how an editor on Wikipedia, William Connolley, had portrayed scientist and climate skeptic Fred Singer as a believer in Martians. I went through the long list of edit changes to Singer's biography on the wiki log, and yes it did seem that Connolley was being mischievous at times. That particular edit war, it seems, continues to this day.

It is true that back in 1960 Singer said, if observational records were correct, he had to agree with a Russian astronomer that the Martian moon Phobos was hollow, and thus artificial. But he also said that was a big if. And the records in question were eventually found to be in error.

Along the way I also found that Connolley was a knowledgeable and often patient editor and that he used to write for the blog RealClimate, which I follow. In fact back in 2004 I had made a note about Connolley's definition of the consensus around global warming, which comes close to including the luke warmers' perspective.

Connolley has his own blog, Stoat, Taking science by the throat... and I enjoy reading him as much as I do Solomon. Connelley is willing to take on the the more exuberant proponents of the consensus view, which makes his defence of the position all the more effective. He's the kind of guy who can change my mind.

A little less contempt and scorn please, on all sides.

Posted: Mon - January 19, 2009 at 04:25 PM          

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