To a good friend,

I enjoyed your comments on the Journal Nature article.  I also found the article to be exceptional.  My views are somewhat different than your views on global warming, or, at the very minimum, climate change.

Forty years ago while finishing up college at Ft. Lewis College my major professor in the field of anthropology was a Harvard Ph.D. by the name of Dr. John Ives.  He had impressive credentials and all of the students enjoyed his classes, although many were intimidated by his outspoken demeanor.  The four to six week (can’t remember exactly) archaeological dig in the four corners region was a hoot.  By that time I had become a serious student and paid attention to what he had to say.  His seriousness was offset by good camaraderie in the evenings when the students would all forgo the trip to the local bar which was more than a few miles away by dirt and gravel roads.  On nights we stayed in camp he would allow us to take pot shots at soda cans out back of the mess shack with his 44 magnum revolver, or entertain us with something equaling enthralling.   I was more impressed with his ability to supply the expensive ammunition than his ability as a marksman.   I think he especially enjoyed the company of some of the Viet Nam era veterans including a pal and fellow student by the Jon Bellar, and yours truly.

On several occasions Dr. Ives attacked several of the budding environmentalists for their “Berkeley” views which were nascent then, but quite prevalent today.  He would inform us in no uncertain terms that every organism on the planet has an effect on every other organism and simultaneously on the environment.  He may have been an early proponent of the Gaia hypothesis without his or anyone else’s knowledge.  His major point was always anthropological as one might expect.  He asked more than once, “why should it really matter if we destroy the environment?  What difference does it really make?”  

This was always followed with the statement that he saw evidence for our wanton destruction everywhere.  Our evolution (he was not fundamentalist) is tied intrinsically to the earths in every possible respect.  We evolved here and we will end here unless space travel across immense distances becomes possible for a handful of our species.  “If we should happen to destroy the earth with billions and billions of people and take all of its resources, THAT IS OK.  We have every right to take everything because we are part of the earth’s history and the earth produced us to consume everything in our paths.  When we are all gone there will be other species to take our place.”  The earth and its environment allowed us to evolve and therefore we have no duty to anything or anyone because we have evolved to do exactly what we were doing at that very moment.  In the case of our little archaeological summer dig, we were digging up graves, making love with whoever would have us and shooting the big revolver at beer cans.   He sometimes went on to point out that as a species our “collective intelligence” was an oxymoron.  Our actions around the camp that summer seemed to bear this out. 

Then he would bring up obvious points for the 1960s and 1970s. He talked of the Chaco Canyon Culture in Northern New Mexico.  He would point out that they denuded the forests for hundreds of square miles around to build their villages, maintain warmth in the winter, manufacture their pottery and cook their meals. This caused flash floods and ruined their irrigation canals, etc., etc. Finally, they picked up and went elsewhere.  The exodus, most likely to the south, wasn’t without tribe to tribe carnage.  As we continued our exploration of the Native American prehistory the signs of violence started to emerge everywhere.  I for one found a human mandible with an arrow head deeply embedded dead center.  I can’t imagine the pain that individual suffered. 

“But Dr. Ives,” asked one of the co-eds, “what happens when there are so many people that there is no longer a place to move.” 

He would answer with something like, “well Judith, you can figure that one out for yourself.”

At that point his argument would not expand much because the expansion points of a warming atmosphere, rising atmospheric moisture, heat waves, drought and extreme rainfall had not progressed beyond 1970. Dr. Ives solution was to simply use up everything and let the species go the way of the Doo-Doo bird…  or maybe that wasn’t his solution.  Maybe the good Dr. was simply trying to get us to think for ourselves. 

I don’t think I have to paint a picture of what is likely to happen beyond a larger group than the Ancestral Puebloans.  When the population has stripped all of the resources, dirtied the atmosphere and pissed off all the neighbors, you can’t simply pick up and move south like the Indians did. 

We have all heard of scientists who would go to any lengths to get more money for the research projects they are working on, or new projects they would like to work on.   I am sure this must happen now and then.  Greed and treachery are part of the human condition.  However, there are so many scientists who claim that we are in trouble that I don’t think they can be ignored.  Last count for the professional scientific believers that we have drastically impacted our environment in the last several hundred years since the industrial revolution’s roots in Great Brittan is running at 97%.  That is right.  An overwhelming number of scientists are convinced by data that we have a problem. 

I imagine that there are also just as many people on the other end of the spectrum who would deny global warming for personal gain.  Personal gain for some people is a powerful motivator regardless of any ethical considerations.  The talking heads, the pundits without hearts and souls, the extreme narcissists are not equipped to interpret any of this scientific data.  They are rebel rousers and their only cause is to line their own pockets with cash.  Can you imagine Rush Limbaugh’s physician saying, “here are the results of your colonoscopy Rush, take a look at them and get back to me and tell me what you think.  You are so full of shit that we couldn’t get a very good view of your colon in some areas.   We have decided to leave the interpretation up to you.”

“But Dr,” (no pun intended) I don’t have the credentials to interpret scientific data, especially when it comes to my own health.”

Why is there a sudden spike in all of the climate conditions I have just mentioned?  Why have these changes been so dramatic in the last 40 years when we have had general warming trends and less dramatic variations over the last ten thousand years?  To be sure, the changes could all be totally natural.  They could be caused by anything from the sun to volcanism and heretofore undreamed of phenomena. 

However, everyone should stop to consider the trillions of pounds of carbon that have been released to the atmosphere over the last several hundred years since the beginning of the industrial revolution.  Coal, oil and gas have been liberated from the ground where these ancient carboniferous forests have been safely sequestered for millions of years.  I have flown over vast open pit mines in Colorado and Wyoming where the extraction fills a thousand coal cars a day from a single mine.  There aren’t just a few mines.  There are dozens of them.  I have walked through abandoned oil fields in east Texas and Wyoming through what seemed like a forest of oil and gas dereks. 

If carbon dioxide was at 315 parts per million on Maun Loa back in 1960 and it is nearly 385 and climbing right now, isn’t that a bit of a red flag.  Not long before that the CO2 was around 250 parts per million.  I have read more than once that an increase in carbon dioxide, as well as methane, is a simple matter of physics.  There is a direct correlation in a test chamber when heat trapping carbon dioxide is increased.  Why wouldn’t the same thing happen to the atmosphere when these gases are added at much the same percentages? 

Take this example.  Say one family lives comfortably on a $100,000.00 per year.  Dad and mom do not overspend.  Everything is fine.  Life is good.  Theoretically they can continue comfortably through life for decades.   Say the guy down the street spends $110,000 per year.  He also takes in $100,000.00 per year.  After ten years he owes someone $100,000.00.  In 30 years he owes someone $300,000 plus interest on his foolishness.  Putting mom to work might cure the problem.  What do you do with the atmosphere?  Who is going to cure the problem?  What does that extra 10%, 5% or even 2% do to the globe after a long period of time?

I could go on.  The fellow, who wrote the Journal Nature article didn’t seem to have an ax to grind.  But he did hit the nail on the head in regard to which peer group a person was likely to side with if his welfare, living and identity was tied up with a certain group.  The problem becomes sociological and anthropological.  If you don’t have a scientific background the whole thing comes down to belief systems and politics.  If you or anyone else has a different view than their personal politics, belief system or peer group, any course of action will eventually be deadlocked. 

Another factor is a lack of science and math in our backgrounds.  Many of our policy makers are lawyers.   How many lawyers have you met who understand anything at all in the way of science?  I often think of lawyers as having pursued “extended education for the ambivalent.”  They got a BA one bright sunny day and then looked around and said, “oh shit, what am I going to do now… guess I’ll go to law school.” 

Science still produces fear and loathing among non-scientist.  Scientists are modern day Galileo’s fencing with the Roman Catholic Church. 

To write off the whole idea of global warming being caused by humans in the last 200 years as simply “bullshit” is failing to give careful consideration to a lot of scientific inquiry.  Serious ideas should not and cannot be dismissed by a statement that is nothing more than thinly disguised partisanship and a sprinkling of bravado.

One of the giant leaps of humankind in the last 50 years has been our ability to carefully measure, record and analyze vast amounts of data.  I am simply asking my friends to take a look at this wonderful new ability to look carefully at our world and see for the first time what is going on with the aid of devices that are far more precise than Galileo’s finest telescope. 

At the very least, everyone in every city on the planet is entitled to air that is clean enough not to make one ill.  The statistics that measure illness’ caused by airborne pollution are paraded past us often enough that no one should balk at the EPAs insistence on scrubbers for coal producing electricity. 

My thoughts on this could go on and on.  If I had a scholarly bent, I would provide footnotes for the few hypotheses I have cited.  I do not have a scholarly nature so I will decline.  However, anyone with any real interest can go straight to the science in reputable journals and read the science for themselves.  Before any one does this they should reacquaint themselves with the guidelines for the scientific method so they understand what is really being said.  I think most of us were exposed to the scientific method around 5^th grade.  A lack of knowledge of the ground rules for interpretation of science is unconscionable in a democracy where everyone is empowered with a vote.

From:P Frank Wolfs, University of Rochester.

 I. The scientific method has four steps

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.

2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.

3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.

4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

If the experiments bear out the hypothesis it may come to be regarded as a theory or law of nature (more on the concepts of hypothesis, model, theory and law below). If the experiments do not bear out the hypothesis, it must be rejected or modified. What is key in the description of the scientific method just given is the predictive power (the ability to get more out of the theory than you put in; see Barrow, 1991) of the hypothesis or theory, as tested by experiment. It is often said in science that theories can never be proved, only disproved. There is always the possibility that a new observation or a new experiment will conflict with a long-standing theory.

What do I really think?  It’s far too early to simply pick a side.  This is not a heads or tails issue.  It’s not a flip of the coin.  Yes I believe in global warming or no, I do not believe in it.  Reacquaint yourself with the premise behind the scientific method and begin looking at the data and what those who have the education to interpret the data have to tell you.