12-12-07: New Study Questions Human Role in Global Warming

I found an article on a new study performed concerning global warming. But, instead of the same ol' story, it says we probably aren't as involved in the change as we think.

There’s a lot of confusion out there regarding global warming. It’s becoming more of a personal choice than anything, not unlike religion. But what is it that people are choosing to believe in? Ah, that’s part of the confusion.

The common misconception is that a lot of people seem to assume that global warming has to be caused by humans, and that if you don’t believe that humans are the main cause, you don’t think the planet is getting warmer. That’s just ridiculous. There are plenty of climatologists out there who believe the planet is getting warmer, but are skeptical about mankind’s role in it. People like Al Gore have done a fantastic job at scaring the shit out of people with clever line graphs and presentations. A lot is inferred, and emotions are heavily involved (“You wouldn’t want to drown a polar bear with your bear hands, would you? Well, that’s what you’re pretty much doing when you turn your car on.” [Exaggeration, of course]).

Then you have the people who go on and try to give the “unbiased” approach, like a guy did in a video I saw a few months ago. What he did was he made a grid with four scenarios: 1) It is our fault and we do something, 2) It is our fault and we do nothing, 3) It isn’t our fault and we do something, and 4) It isn’t our fault and we do nothing. Ideally, it would be great if it weren’t our fault and we did nothing but cope with it, but this guy had “unbeatable logic” on his side. He simply assumed (the first mistake) that all the money we’d spend on cutting down CO2 emissions would be less than the net cost of doing nothing. No data to back that up. Just his logic. He claimed no one had come up with an argument to beat that, though a few of the comments are pretty well stated. I bet the guy wins a Nobel Peace Prize for his brilliant display of flawed Game Theory.

Anyway, the basic truth is that there’s a ton of money going towards research of mankind’s role in global warming, and it seems like the news outlets are biased. I don’t hear too much about this sort of thing in the news (skepticism, that is). I don’t think it’s necessarily a deliberate bias, but more of a simple overload of information. There’s so much new stuff out there saying we are responsible that it simply outweighs the alternative. Plus, the news does like scaring people, but saying “We can’t do anything about it,” would just be too much. After all, if there are possible ways to fix it, that would fit in quite nicely into a new segment on the 10:00 News in Spartanburg…

This reminds me of a discussion in a course I took in my last term in college. It was a business class, which consisted of mostly senior engineering students. A guy with years of industry experience came in to talk to us one day about pretty much anything we wanted to know regarding the workplace environment. It was great, and the guy was very engaging. We just sat in a circle and talked. One of the topics the guy brought up was global warming (just out of curiosity on his part), and what we thought about it. You’d be surprised what senior engineering students said.

The biggest surprise was how little personal research had been done by some of the students who had already formed opinions. The few of us who had all pretty much said the same thing: there’s evidence to prove that humans aren’t a significant factor. People spoke about how they’re scared that coastal homes will be flooded out. Others said “I haven’t done much research, but it has to be humans if it’s happened so recently.” Mind you, I went to a very good engineering school, and most of these students were quite bright. When I spoke, I mentioned a book I had read, a video I had seen, and other research I had done, and concluded (using references) that changing patterns in solar winds (sun spots) are much more likely to be a cause for warming than human CO2 production (which is also a small contribution compared to natural components like the oceans and volcanoes). The guy leading the discussion also posed the question: “Did you know they used to grow grapes in Greenland?” On a side note, one of the students in the class made a remark one day that our service academies were a drain on our economy. Wow. She also spoke at our graduation… I guess she has to be right, then. Kidding, of course.

Let me just say that I am very happy that the United States did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Even some of those who advocate reduced CO2 emissions admit that the restrictions proposed by the Protocol aren’t nearly enough to do anything significant, especially since China and India are pumping more and more CO2 out each day.

I’m a big fan of alternative fuels, by the way, since it could be cheaper (and just way more neat) if we could rely more on renewable energy. But, that doesn’t mean I support the deliberate reduction of CO2 because of global warming. I just think electric cars are neat. I had one when I was a kid and just loved it.