This winter, I spent some time in Death Valley photographing the incredible rainy season. Overlapping this time, I received an email from a family friend who is known for sending out those infactual and hysterical emails we all loathe.

As is often the style of these emails, this latest one veils its hidden political statement as a friendly email about a deserving person. The email begins, "There recently  was a death of a 98 year-old lady named Irena...She was caught, and the  Nazi's broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely. Irena kept a  record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them  in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war,  she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it and  reunited the family. Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got  placed into foster family homes or  adopted. Last year Irena  was up for the Nobel Peace Prize ... She was not  selected. Al Gore won, for  a slide show on Global Warming."

I couldn't resist, so I emailed our family friend back, including her entire cc list, which included executives at large Midwestern companies.

The email exchanges that resulted from this are collected in the posts below. There is a lot of text to follow, so, to lighten it up, I included some images of arid places that have also been damaged by poor environmental stewardship.

Robin,

I agree with the parts of this email that memorialize Sendler and that lament holocaust denialism, whose modern equivalent we see today in the intelligent design movement, in Iran and Turkey and in other political anti-science movements. But just a thought. The Noble Prizes were never meant to award the most deserving. Our President lamented this fact when he used his Noble award speech to clarify the importance of our strategic need for force. The Noble Prize is to be awarded to the man or woman who "...shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." link

Certainly, there is no doubt that Irena Sendler is deserving of much praise: link

But certainly there is no controversy about Al Gore's importance in popularizing climate science around the world, and that in this modern world of ours, where environmental casualties are measured in gigadeaths, and where changes to our climate will have compounding effects on our economy, environment and health unlike nothing we have ever seen before, that the choice of Al Gore for the Noble Prize was very much in tune with the mission statement of the prize.

Erik

Sorry Erik.. Must disagree on several points.  1) By the definition you used Al Gore hardly qualifies. And 2) Al Gore is symbolic of all that is wrong with the climate change fear mongering based on over blown science, if we can call it that, and political posturing.   The changes in the climate of our earth happen with or without us, and swings in the climate have been quite dramatic in recorded history (see Little Ice Age) and yet we survive.  Environmental disasters occur all the time, in geologic time they happen very frequently; they will happen long after our eventual extinction (please spare me the climate connection there.. more likely an asteroid).    Addressing the issues that result from any climate change requires social policy changes on development (like the worlds tendency to build in flood prone areas), engineering (where do we best spend our efforts), infrastructure and creating better cooperation on reaching places in need during an emergency among many others.    Remember scientists love research and funding is needed to do so… get more money, the more the public focuses on your pet issue.  How do you get the public to pay attention – create fear.. note that Mr. Gore has been rattling his environmental saber for years to little effect until he pinged on the mother lode of fear.. climate, resulting in a mother lode of research).    A great non climate example (used to provide a neutral example for the 80% of are now mad at me)  is the complete lack of fact portrayed by the presentation of Dinosaurs on TV shows, that are supposedly science based (Discovery channel for example).  As a paleontologist I can tell you 50% of what is shown is complete fiction, and 30% is conjecture… but it looks cool and it keeps interest high- that gets people into museums and that gets money flowing so scientists, funded by say the Chicago Field Museum can fund trips to Africa to find more dinosaurs (great research and prior to the Jurassic Park was a near dead field).   Many Paleontologists I know lament the show boating and lack of science presented, but acknowledge it helps them get the funds they need, so they keep their mouths shut.

So I suggest we spend more time on problem solving and less on fear mongering… and btw our President did absolutely nothing to deserve a Nobel Prize and I think showed a lack of character by accepting it.   Hard to justify he met the criteria below given he has not even been in office enough to affect change and just continued a war that in my opinion is a quagmire that even the likes of Alexander could not overcome.

Bob

Bob, thanks for your thoughtful response.  You mentioned that you are a paleontologist.  I love paleontology and also its relationship to climate science.  Where can I learn about your work?  Using the Discovery Channel as an example of overblown science is a very poor example.  Popular science television shows use the given knowledge of the time and popularize it.  There is nothing wrong with that.  Most recently, some of our dinosaurs are shown with feathers.  Adults understand there is no way these are accurate representations.  Three cheers to the Discovery Channel for making these subjects interesting for a diverse audience. As paleontology has made mindblowing new revelations about the physical structure of dinosaurs, those Discovery Channel models change along with it.  That there are no longer brontosaurus burgers is hardly an example of science being overblown for grant dollars. 

1.       You said, " By the definition you used Al Gore hardly qualifies."  This would only be true were climate change not a global threat to mankind, a modern equivalent of peace and stability, represented by modern warfare in Noble's time.

2.       You said that climate change science is, "fear mongering based on over blown science."  This is a political statement, not a scientific one.  The basic theory of global warming is a solid theory supported by the national academies of all industrialized countries.  Scientific theories are not the same kind of thing as, "I have a theory that Britney Spears is a lesbian!"  A scientific theory is a very powerful thing.  AGW is a theory held up by many interlinking hypotheses from dozens of disciplines of science.  It is a theory, but that makes it the closest thing to a fact.  There is no debate over the basics of climate science within the climate community as a whole.  It is a consensus.  A consensus, by the way, is the collective judgment of a group of qualified scientists – while it does not mean universal agreement, it is, in the case of AGW, a powerful deterrent to your political statement that climate science is "fear mongering."  Science is not fear mongering, and Al Gore is not a scientist, but a political advocate who often overhypes.  Regardless, there is little controversy over the good he has done for popularizing the science.  Maybe he is a bit like the Discovery Channel!

3. You said, " The changes in the climate of our earth happen with or without us."  This is true, especially in the long run.  And yet, we are concerned with the short-term impact of anthropomorphic global warming, which would have drastic consequences for humanity in a time span that is meaningful to us.

4.You made several points about Gore creating fear mongering.  I have not seen this. Present to me evidence that the modern political advocacy for climate change science is fear mongering.  

5.  You mentioned the Little Ice Age.  The Little Ice Age was not an ice age, but a period of regional cooling.  These natural factors will continue to affect the world.  In the time period that is meaningful to us, we can assume or pray these effects will be inconsequential.  But we also know that the effects of anthropomorphic global warming will be consequential and that is why our focus is on these human-caused effects on our atmosphere.

It is fine to have a skeptical view on climate science, as I do.  But remember that when you make a political statement about science that differs with a very strong theory, you have a high burden of proof to overcome.  And it is incumbent upon you to do so with a sense of humility.  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  The claims in your email are extraordinary ones.  There is a lot of misinformation out there in the world about climate science, but not within the scientific community.  We live in a country where about 45% of us believe that Jesus lived along your dinosaurs.  They were not born believing those things - there are powerful elements of antiscience and pseudoscience in our country.  The same ones as Jesus and dinosaurs are fueling our anti-AGW debate.  Presented point-by-point, in a structured way, I would be happy to disprove any of these points for you.  Feel free to bring any of those issues to me and I will explain them to you.

Your truly,

Erik

Bob –
I understand that your paleontology work is not related to climate change, but I would still be curious to learn more about what you are involved in.  I disagree with you that we can never agree on the basics.  That's the purpose of discussion after all.  The views I presented in my prior emails are more or less in line with statements made by any of the modern biographers of science – Sagan, Gould, EO Wilson and so forth.  And so, I am not confident in my own statements due to ego or presumptions of inventiveness, but rather in their safety.

Just to get started.  You mentioned that the climate modeling is not very complex.  This is not true.  The climate models are some of the most complex models in the history of science.  What is interesting, and likely the basis of your comment, however, is that as these models get more and more complex with time, the results of the impact of ghg on the climate are the same as they were when these models were quite simple.  Here is a Wikipedia link on the subject.   

Here is the things about scientists.  They are fallible.  They fart, they poop, they make bad jokes.  But while scientists are themselves fallible, the scientific method is the best tool we have in the world for explaining and answering the domain of science.  Throughout your email, you refer to scientists being 'radical' or part of a 'cartel.'  All of this can be dismissed easily, especially by the fact that science tends to work in spite of the personalities of scientists.  I do see that these sorts of claims tend to be created by climate skeptic communities, intelligent design communities, and so forth.  That does not mean there are not scientists who do bad things, and that does not mean that there are not biases and ploys for funding.  In my many discussions with intelligent design proponents, I see scientists attacked for all sorts of reasons.  That is not a scientific argument.  You may be interested in this topic on antiscience.    

You mentioned that theories have been disproven in the past.  This is true.  A theory can be disproven, and often is.  That is part of what makes the scientific method so strong.  There is never a pure fact, only the best explanation at the time.  With that in mind, modern theories like the theory of AGW tend to be very 'bombproof.'  Does that mean that the theory of AGW is a fact?  No.  It's just unlikely that this theory will be disproven.  This theory wasn't made up last night over a bottle of whiskey.  It can be explained in several different ways by different branches of science.  Even if the modeling would fail, the theory wouldn't.   Rather, the science will evolve and the explanation will become more precise.   

I did see Gore's movie, and to be honest, it bored me, because I had read all the books on climate science before.  To me, An Inconvenient Truth was sort of an unliveley representation of climate change science.  I was expecting cool graphics and computer animated explanations of the science, and all I got was a guy on a stool.  I don't remember pictures of world destruction in the movie, but why wouldn't a documentary about climate change include the elements that are predicted?  Isn't that the point?  The movie that contained pictures of big tsunamis was the Leo DiCaprio movie, and that one failed precisely for that reason.  The lesson?  The public prefers intelligent documentary over rattling doomsday over our heads.      
Link on scientific opinion on climate change

Bob, the term 'extraordinary claims' refers to opinions that are not well represented by evidence and theory in science.  You have suggested various positions in your emails.  For example, you have casted doubt on the theory of AGW, as well as the projected outcomes of climate change.  Science works because of minority opinions.  They are the juice of future paradigm shifts and changing theories.  But they are also extraordinary claims, and extraordinary claims, as I stated before, require extraordinary evidence.  This means that you cannot discuss this subject with me casually, as if the idea that your ideas have an equal standing to the current theory.  You have a high burden of proof to be taken seriously. 

This is why your notion that dissent is being quashed is also not a very good argument.  Science celebrates minority ideas when there is evidence, but throughout the history of science, dissenting opinions get laughed at when they havent passed the muster. 

 This is not implying a cartel, but, the way science works.  No doubt in history, the better theory takes years to get to the surface because scientists fail to see the light...even more frustrating is when better theories are delayed by dumb mistakes, like with our friend the brontosaurus.  Yet, does this imply a real failure in science, or rather the success of scientific conservatism?   

Let's say I see Jim's lost cows in a canyon.  I go to the local newspaper and I say, "I saw Jim's cows in the canyon.  And they've been missing for days."  The paper might decide to report on this and say that Jim's cows have been found.  But let's say I see a UFO.  I take it to the papers and say, "I saw a UFO".  They will laugh at me and tell me to come back when I have some evidence.  Then I come back with a grainy photo.  Again, they laugh at me and kick me out the door.  Then, I come back with a little guy with big eyes and pasty gray skin, and I plop him on the farm editors desk and I say, "I don't think this one is a cow,"…then I've settled it.  I've provided extraordinary evidence for an extraordinary claim.  Your central arguments in this discussion have no backing within science.  In terms of its strength as a theory, it is far stronger than something that can be casually bombarded with one liners.  Therefore, like the man who saw a UFO, you have an extraordinary claim, and you would have quite a terrific job ahead of you to disprove the reigning theory in climate science.   

If you are like so many others, you will replace your lack of a real alternate theory with political garbage – these scientists are part of a cartel, they are radical, they are biased, etc.  That is exactly in line with the methodologies of advocates of all sorts of pseudoscience and political misinformation campaigns.    
You also confuse political advocacy of scientific positions with scientists.  You keep referring to Al Gore as if he were representative of the science.  He is not a scientist, and what he says does not represent the science.  I don't know much about Al Gore or his positions, but when I say that he his style is to overhype, I do not mean that he exaggerates or makes things up, but rather occasionally says the wrong thing, or says it in the wrong way, and it has a sort of Dan Quayle/Joe Biden effect.  I am no expert on Al Gore's accuracy, but I would take a pretty good wager that his accuracy is pretty solid.  The Nobel Prize saw him as the lowest common denominator, and awarded it to him and the IPCC together as a sort of representation of two different sides...   

You said of my statement on the "Little Ice Age" that I am  "way off here my friend.  The Little Ice Age is the term.. I did not coin it (as an aside I took three classes in Glacial-Periglacial Geology so I know what an ice age is)."

You likely took those three classes a while ago.  Things have changed.  The Little Ice Age, you are correct to point out, is the name of the event.  But it was not an actual ice age.  That's just the name we use to describe the cooling of the era. 

You said, " So if we could survive for 500 years of major cooling, during a time of little to no infrastructure or modern agricultural methods, I think we can handle being a tad warmer (btw the glaciers everyone is crying about…And saying we know the effect of “AGW” will be consequential is at best ambiguous."

The IPCC predicts that the world's average surface temperature is "…likely to rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C during the 21st century…"   

The impacts of the Little Ice Age were consequential, even to a less industrialized, lower population level world.  The Little Ice Age, however, was a very modest cooling of part of the world, where surface temperatures were 1 degree cooler than average temperatures of the 20th Century.  Rather than being inconsequential, these changes in climate are devastating.

Your notion that human-caused climate change would be something we could simply survive is stunning in its innocence.  A few things to consider – nobody knows with any certainty what would happen to our economies, our health and our ecosystems in a warming climate, but there is a scale of probable consequences, all of which suggest taking prevantative measures is a good idea. 

One consequence is the massive decrease in Earth's biodiversity.   

Plant Biodiversity and Climate Change
Extinction Risk from Climate Change

Climate change denialists often jump from science to political solutions as if the two arethe same.  I have not advocated any particular solution in my emails to you, and in fact, and it is disingenuous of you to assume that I, or anybody else could answer those questions

You said, "If the United States and Europe could achieve the cuts in GHG you desire next year what would the resultant climate change be in 100 years?"

And then,

"What is the First Order drastic consequence of the latter that could not be addressed by engineering, policy and other human led solutions?"

We will need to prevent climate change, and we will need to combat the consequences of climate change.  Combating anthropomorphic climate change means any host of solutions.  That discussion – of policy, technology and the future, is a fun one, and it is the discussion we _should_ be having.  I'd wager that keeping the boreal forests, the Amazon and the oceans healthy would be one major component of any climate change policy.  Another would be to wean the world away oil and encourage fuel efficiency.    

"What is the primary benefit in achieving your goals?"

I am not sure I have stated any goals, have I?   

"What is the cost per person to achieve your goals versus the cost to not?"

Not sure which goals you are referring to.  

"Oh.. one other.. if climate change is occurring universally around the globe due to industrialization of the west and we agree that climate changes on the earth whether we are here or not, how does one tell the difference, given the lack of consistent, reliable measuring devices in the past, and the short duration of impact; how does one remove the effect of vulcanization on the data? Have fun." 

Bob, you have made a number of mistakes in this jumbled sentence.  Vulcanization is the process of turning rubber material into something harder.  I think you are referring to the effects of climate change events triggered by volcanoes.  I am not a scientist, and I won't pretend to be one, so let me offer you this link:    

Link on Volcanoes and Climate Change

You suggested that you and I might agree that "if climate change is occurring universally around the globe due to industrialization of the west"

No, I don't agree with this statement.  The inputs of climate change come from different parts of the world – both from industrialization and poverty, east and west, capitalism and communism.   

In your emails, you have referenced future solutions to global warming as something that can be handled by construction and engineering.  This would be laughable if you genuinely believed that.  The Earth's biosphere is too complex for man to manage as if it were a factory.  The costs of fuel efficiency and conservation and so forth are a fraction of what you propose – which is to let the Earth warm, face a world with decreased biodiversity, rising sea levels, desertification and so forth.  The world responds well to natural climate change, Bill, because natural climate change generally takes its time, and the biosphere, and diversity, can manage to adapt.  But this climate change is a shock to the system that would look more like the catastrophic climate events of the past.    

Let's wrap up for now with the Discovery Channel.  Science should never be the domain of some secretive clergy.  It should be accessible to everyone in some way or another.  This is the way the founding fathers, disciples of the enlightenment age, imagined our country. 

 So, when a space book colors a planet red, instead of orange, and the Scientific American paints a picture of a robot fish with some artist's fancy, and the Discovery Channel creates models of dinosaurs with brown skin and no feathers, this is not dishonest.  But the point is – this example has no relevance to the climate debate, where, when science advocates and journalists slip up (as Tim Flannery did in his excellenet, "The Weather Makers") on a tiny detail here and there, they get eaten alive.    

I believe that all our environmental problems as a whole are very severe, but that the solutions do not necessarily require massive investments or changes to our economies.  They require acceptance of the issue and appropriate policy.  EO Wilson once explained that the one time cost of protecting our most critical habitat around the world would be something along the lines of 20 billion. 

 That is an extraordinarily tiny cost for one of our most critical issues. The cost of delaying climate change action to a point of moving cities out of rising waters, etc would be enormous. It would require huge global federal programs.  Massive socialism. 

 I'm a free marketeer, a believer in science and its closely related cousin, Democracy, and I reject your high cost, high risk, high death solution of delaying action.  

Erik

Bob,

Thank you again for engaging me in this discussion, and sorry for the long lag time in my response.  I have been busy, and away.  Most notably, I have been enjoying the strange weather in Death Valley.  El Nino has brought amazing amounts of rain to the California desert in this, what is to be projected the warmest year in recorded history.

This discussion is about whether a politician like Al Gore, who advocates the science of climate change, is worthy of a noble peace prize.  Since the Noble Peace Prize has been awarded in the past to people who engage the world on diverse life-saving ‘peace’ topics, such as environment, health, food and medicine, the hinging argument of this discussion is the validity of the theory of AGW. 

I am not sure how to respond to much of your email; I was hoping for more content.  But this type of exchange can be informative as well.  You again begin with the argument that you and I simply can’t see eye to eye on this issue, and then you back your reasoning up with a string of infactual claims about me.  Because this issue is a scientific one, the opposite should be true: we have the tools at our disposal to come to the truth.  Bob, you and I live in a time when media and news have become absurdly partisan and driven by ideologies, and so, in this atmosphere, it is easy for us to fall into this style – where our own filter of media determines our own personal truth.  But that is not how science works, and it is not a game we need to play here.  There is no "you and I can never agree on anything!" There is only logic and evidence and the gentle volleying of ideas until we reach common agreements, we give a little and we exult in the beauty of discussion, American style.

You said that I have avoided a question and attacked the credibility of the person who asks the question.  I am not aware of having avoided any questions, nor of attacking your credibility.  If anything, I am attempting to keep this discussion focused.  In Appendix A, I have taken your last email and put it into 31 bullet points.  Those bullet points are in essence a series of broad, unsupported statements with little relevance to this discussion.  I encourage our readers to read  those points again.  Were I to answer each question, we would surely lose track of the main discussion.  If there is anything you feel I should answer more clearly, please reiterate.

Your three emails have offered me enough nuggets of information to be able to pinpoint the basis for several of your political opinions.  One paragraph in particular leaps out at me as an example of something I think we need to focus on.

You said:

"The environmental crusaders all jumped on the “Silent Spring” band wagon, banning DDT when there was no credible evidence DDT was a bad actor.  The result was a very large increase in deaths from malaria, as the cheapest means for the third world to deal with mosquitoes was removed… by poor science and fear mongering.     I am a scientist who works with scientists, did research with them and reads a ton of material, from extra-dimensional theories at Harvard, to books by former colleagues on dinosaurs in Mongolia, not to mention those on hazardous waste.   I do not a priori trust any scientist and rarely anything reported in the paper.. neither do many of my colleagues."

This paragraph contains several factual errors, and I think it reiterates the failures of logic in our main discussion.  These are not errors of opinion, but, rather, opinions that came  from somewhere very specific and are discredited.   Where these opinions came from _is_ important to our discussion.  Your comments about DDT exist in a vacuum of a very specific component of the American political scene.  I have to assume you came up with these discredited comments from one of Ann Coulter's books.  Ann Coulter, mind you, argues that CFC's cause global warming and that evolution is a liberal plot.  If it wasn't Ann Coulter, it was her source material.  This is not coincidence.  The political garbage associated with DDT has a source.

Your suggestion that American environmentalists are responsible for more deaths than Hitler is absurd, despicable and patently false.  But it is not that you came up with this line of thinking on your own.  This is a popular myth that, like so much of the subject matter of Robynn's emails, floats around in a cesspool of misinformation that substantiates itself by broadly avoiding interaction with the well-trodden paths of scientific fact.

Despite Coulter and others insistence, Rachel Carson, in her book 'Silent Spring', did not call for a ban on DDT, and it is believed that the worldwide bans on DDT for agriculture uses actually increases its effectiveness against malaria. 

Carson was arguing preventative environmentalism, with DDT as her example.  She was arguing that, here in the United States, we do not know the cumulative effects of such far-reaching use of DDT.  History proved her right: DDT was incredibly dangerous both to humanity and the environment, the consequences far outweighing the benefits.  But Carson was not talking about malaria, and in Silent Spring, she even suggested that DDT might be an effective bomb against malaria.  Carson, who died in the 1960's, is a strange choice for a movement to use as its Demon.  Carson is well respected around the world, and she comes from a time before modern environmentalism even existed.

So much of modern ecological history in the United States is tied to DDT.  I am very familiar with the effects of DDT.  Not from television and the internet, but from direct experience.  I gave up television at age 20, and I have learned about environmental science from my preference for books and science literature.  I find the internet to be a democratizing force of information, and if, as consumers of information in the marketplace of ideas, we know how to distinguish from political misinformation and bad politics, it is a powerful tool in sorting the truth.  I would hardly think the articles in scientificamerican.com and the accessibility of peer-reviewed white papers are that evil "internet" to which you refer.

Regardless, African countries continue to use DDT as a last line of defense against malaria, and, despite your suggestion, DDT was not banned globally due to American environmentalists and certainly not by Rachel Carson's book.  Rather, very strong evidence correctly encouraged the countries of the world to discontinue its use as a fertilizer.  DDT goes quickly into the food chain, and its results are catastrophic.  In the United States, we saw the rapid decline of several species.  Particularly birds, although birds in the United States are so well studied, what other cumulative effects would such a potent drug have on our environment, and what effects would it have on our world economies in the future?  The brown pelican is one of North America's symbols, as is the bald eagle, and both were brought to the brink of extinction due to DDT.   

These are top-level animals, and we are learning that they have more of an impact on ecosystems than we ever imagined.  I haven’t followed this topic as well as I should have, but David Quammen addressed it very well in the past.

Nobody in their right mind would blame the limiting of DDT use on the untold deaths caused by malaria.  With all the venom this injects on the human female reproductive system, and its potential for catastrophic long term effects on the environment, the statement is insane.

If you made your statement about DDT singularly, it would be no big deal to me.  People get confused by extremist misinformation all the time.  But, you also see environmentalism as  a cartel, you dispute the overwhelming evidence for global warming, and its projected effects.  To point this out to you is not to make what you correctly call out as a bad argument – an ad hominem attack – but it is an important piece of information.  You are coming to the science lab and telling us that everything is upside down from is well established.  That tends to be a discrediting factor.  One of your most consistent arguments is that you claim to be a scientist and that your colleagues all agree with you.  Fine, I have no reason to dispute you, but this does not make a very good argument, unless I have access to their resumes, viewpoints, published papers and so forth.

Your picture of American environmentalism is also, I believe, infactual.  American environmentalists have been profoundly successful.  So successful, that we see their historical figures, Rachel Carson, John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, as American heroes, often cited alongside Jefferson and Franklin.  They have sparked the entire world to protect wildernesses.  And our endangered species act is now a model around the world for protecting species and habitats.  Environmentalism, American style, is popular, successful, and now a part of the world psyche and the world economy.  The early predictions from mainstream environmentalists about pollution, overharvesting, habitat loss, invasive species, and unsustainable development, have been vindicated by science and experience and time.  Surely there are bad predictions in environmental science, surely there are components of environmentalism, like the animal rights movement, which are absurd, and surely there are policy positions, like nuclear, which lose their steam as priorities change.  But overwhelmingly, your position on American environmentalism is not credible. 

Let me address your specific questions:

You said, “We are in an interglacial period.  I expect us to be warmer than glacial periods. “

And so does everybody else.  But interglacial periods are measured in thousands of years.  When we passed into the current Holocene interglacial period, that was the defining moment of humanity.  The most important event of the species.  The defining moment of humanity was an event of the Earth warming about 5 degrees Celsius.  Now, we are looking at the Earth’s surface temperatures having risen by 1 degree in century, and which is projected to increase a further 1 to 6 degrees.  See the difference and the significance?

You said, " We have been warmer and colder in the past and will be that again long after we are extinct.  Animals go extinct, they evolve.. it happens."

While this is true, it is also true that under normal circumstances, it takes any one individual species about a million years to go extinct.  This, the beginning of the sixth extinction, the Holocene extinction, is an age where a large percentage of the world's species are threatened with extinction due to human activities.  The slow process of evolution does not apply here, and nobody credibly doubts that.

You said, " The current debate has more to do with politics and economic warfare than it does science. The science is very complicated and poorly understood by 90% of the population screaming about it.  If economics were not an issue, India, China etc. would sign right up."

This is an unfocused statement.

You said, " Anthropomorphic influences  are minor compared to the natural change that is occurring."

Over the long run, this may be true.  But for the purposes of our discussion, regarding current anthropomorphic global warming, considering the evidence, this is an extreme statement, and you would need evidence to back it up before anyone should take it seriously.

You said, "We need to integrate environmental policy, social policy and engineering to address issues that occur with climate change.   If we zero all of the wests emissions tomorrow, it does not significantly change our climate future.   It is also practical.. why rebuild New Orleans so it will be destroyed again in a decade.  Why allow more building on the Florida coast?"

That's a can of worms!  I agree with facets of this statement, but I think the point is that the questions of future policy do not fit well into a discussion about current reliability of a scientific theory.  I’d love to have all our issues resolved, and then have a beer with you about this much more exciting topic.

You said, "Need to view all of the money spent for this issue in terms of what you are ultimately trying to do.. save human lives? Save every species on the planet? All of the above?.. versus cost benefit.   Could the dollars spent be better served addressing poverty in the third world today?"   

This is a no-brainer.  Poverty in the third-world cannot be solved by throwing money at it, and I think that the beginnings of the answers to the relationship between saving human lives and savings species are already well addressed within the environmental community.  Nobody in the mainstream environmental community is trying to 'save every species on the planet.'  The environmental movement is both conservative and realistic, and views this question in a much more complex way than you presented here.  Rather, species represent habitat, and habitat represents the health of our economies and the quality of the lives of our descendents, and, in the present bottleneck, we seek to limit the rate of extinction, save the most critical habitats with the richest biodiversity, and focus on the areas where the habitats are most crucial to the future of the planet.  Preventative environmentalism reigns here.  There are clear answers.  Typically, an environmentalist might say – lets save 90% of the world's species from this bottleneck and, in the long run, commit half the world's terrestrial ecosystems to permanent protection.

You cannot justify "spending money" on third-world poverty today as a justification for not correcting problems that will excacerbate third-world and first-world poverty in the future.  The solution to third-world poverty does not involve throwing money, but rather the advancement of democratic institutions, infrastructure, sustainability and so-forth.  The solutions to anthropomorphic climate change are linked to our myriad other issues. 

Science makes mistakes, and theories are sometimes discredited.  But overall, the case for the accuracy of science, and the scientific method, is very strong.  On a whole, it has a very high reliability for predictive power, better than any of its substitutions.  I strongly urge you to reverse your position and allow your skepticism to be restrained by the powerful interlinking hypotheses that have built up a strong, nearly impenetrable theory.  I also urge you to reverse your position on Al Gore’s work on global warming.  Like me, you may disagree with his politics and his personality.  But surely you can admire the work he has done on this quintessential human issue.

Erik

APPENDIX A

1.       you again are so blinded by your own set of beliefs that you miss the point of what I was saying. 

2.       unlike the environmental advocacy groups I have to contend with regularly, who bear a striking resemblance to the global warming cartel, I actually clean up the mess and restore it to beneficial reuse as opposed to wringing my hands about it.  But I digress.

3.       I think we will never agree on this issue

4.       mainly because you rely too much on what you see on TV and internet.  T

5.       The key to understanding an issue, and developing  your own set of beliefs is to read, in detail as many sides of a debate as you can. 

6.       In addition, you seem to like to refer  to me as naive, which I am not.  

7.       I find it interesting that after all of your discussion you still did not answer the questions that I asked of you. 

8.       Your response is a classic case of avoiding the question by attacking the credibility of the person who asks it.   One I find to be consistent with the current global warming cartel. 

9.       I used that term btw because of the alignment of media journalists (who are ever hood winked by science because they often lack background in the topic and like the hype—see cold fusion)

10.    politicians (who will use whatever they can to get a vote or make their core happy)

11.   celebrities (who, frankly are the worse)

12.   … and scientists who make pronouncements ahead of analysis of data (the scientific method you are so fond of citing is not followed when scientists spout unchecked data as fact—which the cartel does often..a problem as well with our health profession- caffeine bad, no good, no bad, maybe Ok) and shout down anyone who disagrees.

13.   I will one final time just state my overall climate change opinion and since no matter what I say, you will send me a link to a web site or just assume I am an idiot, working off of old data.  

14.    I would venture I have read more books, and journal articles and logged more time watching debates on global warming than most Americans; both sides.

15.   We have tough choices to make..

16.   the easiest one to focus on, hence the one politicians talk about is to talk about treaties to cap emissions to some level sometime in the future. 

17.   It lets them say they are addressing the issue, while actually doing nothing. 

18.   If you want to know the simple choice in any debate, watch how politicians in all countries address them… “Drug Tsars”. “Climate Tsars”, policy papers …..  So there you have it.   

19.   To me this is a political debate fueled by fear and lack of knowledge, deferring to the wise sages of science.. the same that gave us nuclear  problems

20.   determined women were inferior to men intellectually, and so on, only to be reversed years, sometimes decades or more later.  

21.   The process worked, but at any given moment, bad decisions were made based on deferring to the sages.  

22.   The environmental crusaders all jumped on the “Silent Spring” band wagon, banning DDT when there was no credible evidence DDT was a bad actor. 

23.   The result was a very large increase in deaths from malaria, as the cheapest means for the third world to deal with mosquitoes was removed… by poor science and fear mongering.     

24.   I am a scientist who works with scientists, did research with them and reads a ton of material, from extra-dimensional theories at Harvard, to books by former colleagues on dinosaurs in Mongolia, not to mention those on hazardous waste.  

25.   I do not a priori trust any scientist and rarely anything reported in the paper.. neither do many of my colleagues.

26.   We are in an interglacial period.  I expect us to be warmer than glacial periods. 

27.   We have been warmer and colder in the past and will be that again long after we are extinct.  Animals go extinct, they evolve.. it happens.

28.   The current debate has more to do with politics and economic warfare than it does science. The science is very complicated and poorly understood by 90% of the population screaming about it.  If economics were not an issue, India, China etc. would sign right up.

29.   Anthropomorphic influences  are minor compared to the natural change that is occurring.

30.   We need to integrate environmental policy, social policy and engineering to address issues that occur with climate change.   If we zero all of the wests emissions tomorrow, it does not significantly change our climate future.   It is also practical.. why rebuild New Orleans so it will be destroyed again in a decade.  Why allow more building on the Florida coast?

31.   Need to view all of the money spent for this issue in terms of what you are ultimately trying to do.. save human lives? Save every species on the planet? All of the above?.. versus cost benefit.   Could the dollars spent be better served addressing poverty in the third world today?   

As much as enjoy this back and forth I am quite sure we will not see eye to eye on this ever.    You  never do miss an opportunity for climate hyperbole.  I am sure the people of Washington DC are convinced this is going to be the warmest year in recorded history, what with all those temperature gauges removed from cold regions.  Tough to explain that I would say unless someone is interested in biasing data.   But I digress.  Some points which are opinions and clarifications:

1)      Al Gore is a politician with an agenda.   The Nobel Peace Prize has become, sadly a political statement.  So I guess he did fit in after all.

2)      Never read a thing by Ann Coulter.  She is amusing, looks great in heels (saw her for 20 seconds on some news show) but an ideologue… I discount her as much as I discount Al.  Same basic mold, just one left, one right, one more polished, the other a pit bull

3)      It is Ok to disagree.  My wife is liberal democrat who pulls the lever with D on it regularly.  I am an independent who she believes is a right winger.   Can only argue fact when facts are present.   I just question your facts.

4)      Actually my points are trying to get you to see that politics, public policy, science, uneducated public are interwoven and have been for a very long time.   Global warming is just the latest of many.    Politicians are masters at manipulation as are environmental groups.  It sounds like you dislike PETA as much as I, yet they are very good at misinforming a well intentioned public.  Also note how celebrities love them as much as global warming…. Hmmm

5)      Not sure I called anyone Hitler. 

6)      My colleagues do not all agree with me on every issue, in fact we disagree on a whole slate of them.  We do agree that science is very much affected by politics, funding and ego.  If you do not acknowledge that then you are naïve. Read the Mismeasure of Man for a sobering look at the misuse of science, your sacred scientific method and “facts”.  As I alluded to before, I am sure the women on this e-mail would have been really pleased to know science backed they are not as intelligent as you and I based on their gender.  Having worked with Robynn, I suspect she would smack them in the head.  My colleagues, whose names I will not divulge as they get enough e-mail, include many scientists I work with plus people who are curators at the American Museum of Natural History, The Chicago Field Museum, the former Chairmen of the Society of  Economic Paleontology,  the Chief Engineer for NASAs Shuttle Program, and one colleague at my company who has a PhD in Meteorology, specializing in modeling, to mention some.

7)      Rachel Carson and John Muir do not belong on the same stage as Franklin and Jefferson.  Give me a break.  The former were good people, the latter were critical to our founding.   American Environmentalism has led the charge in many areas, particularly clean ups.  The Endangered Species Act is outdated and needs serious over haul.  Btw- an opinion I got not from Ann Coulter, but from my own experience with its absurd conditions (actually getting in the way of cleanups) and the former President of the National Wildlife Foundation Chapter, who spent years in the woods tagging wolves, loves Al Gore,  and received an award from him.  He and I disagree on much, and are good friends.  He also is questioning some aspects of global warming… a very tough place for him since he called me a climate Neanderthal a couple of years ago (in fairness I did accuse him of drinking too much Kool Aid)

8)      Your discussion on the Holocene as a 5 degree seminal event and defining moment for the species is really bizarre.    My point about interglacial periods remains.     I would say the seminal event would be leaving Africa or perhaps Wood Stock- anthropology kind of bores me.

9)      Extinction events are quick.   On the scale we can see geologically, local and minor extinction events are difficult to detect.  To call this the “Holocene Extinction” the sixth extinction due to human activities is interesting.    It is again another issue where policy, politics and culture come into play.   We certainly have impacted species.  Habitat loss, song bird populations devastated by domestic cats, invasive species… and of course there is very credible evidence of extinction of Pleistocene mammals and marsupials in Australia  by early humans.    I guess we can agree that other things other than global warming impact species.    Yet we God forbid we capture and kill feral cats in America of pass a law requiring them to be inside.  My neighbor is big into the ESA, etc, calls herself an environmentalist and opposed development in town due to Habitat loss, yet her five cats leave their carnage outside my bird feeder and houses regularly.  Seems the cats are more important…. My point, as I know you will miss it, is that people love to be environmentalist until it becomes inconvenient ( Al Gore’s personal carbon foot print… sorry.. could not resist) .

I could go on, but to not link global warming issues to public policy is really irresponsible.   The issue is really saving human lives, and if we do not fix public policy and instead spend our money on trying to prove temperature increases and theoretical weather patterns versus things that would actually help people , then this is really tilting at wind mills.      

 I could go into the DDT thing but then again we already disagree on global warming.

Good luck. Bob.