Environment & Energy

Here is a letter I drafted for the PostPartisan column in the Post. I fear that it won't get in the paper, so I decided to try it here, to see if I could stimulate some discussion about what my professional background tells me is a panic response to a very real and complex problem - climate change - the current cold snap in the Eastern U.S. notwithstanding:

"As a climate science user, I have formally contributed to and given professional papers at sessions on radical climate change, specifically the onset of the Younger-Dryas climate reversal. For more than 35 years my primary research interest in archeology has been human adaptation to climate change, particularly adaptation to the end of the Wisconsin glaciation; the Younger-Dryas reversal, and the Holocene onset. Archeological data does help climate scientists date past climate events and even expose the magnitude of those events.
My skepticism about climate statistics and models is fueled, in part, by extensive experience using predictive models and by the politicization of climate science and the latter's impact on good science in general. In that regard, I have some questions and comments about both Darryl Fears' article, ("Three-decade 'megadroughts' forecast for Southwest') and the lead two paragraphs of James Downie's PostPartisan take on the relevance of Gov. Scott Walker's (R-Wis.) views on evolution.
With respect to Fears' article, scientists are fairly certain about the relationship between global warming and greenhouse gasses. We are less certain about the causes of global cooling. Most of the Pleistocene and Holocene climate charts that I have seen show that the onset of warming is usually gradual and cooling precipitous. According to some geologists, the Earth is in the most prolonged warming period in more than 200,000 years. In other words, if we are not in a new geological (warming) period, we are past due for a major glacial advance.
Is it merely a coincidence that the Little Ice Age in the North Atlantic ended with the onset of the industrial revolution in the early 19th century? Similarly, is it possible that anthropogenic warming, if real, has actually prevented the onset of another ice age? Another Little Ice Age, much less another major advance like the last one, would quickly cause untold misery and death due to chaos, cold, and starvation, and surely a quick end civilization as we know it.
An study recently published by a respected climate scientist in the Russian Academy of Sciences claims we are entering a serious cooling period, which will peak around 2050 and will be comparable to the Little Ice Age. He bases the hypothesis on a long term study of solar activity cycles. With the current climatic stabilization and possibly cooling in the North Atlantic, he may be onto something.
That being a basis for skeptically evaluating Fear's article, I am also concerned that both climate and weather have momentum and lag times. For example, with weather, our warmest months are not June and July, when the sun is at its highest, but July and August, when average temperatures should be falling - that is if the sun were the only factor influencing our weather, which we know is not the case.
Since long term climate history shows warming is generally gradual and cooling precipitous, and having long lasting effects, maybe the proponents of climate engineering should take a step back. Whatever they do they better be able to anticipate precipitous global cooling and turn off or reverse what they start, if that would be possible (e.g. the Jurassic Park effect). Better yet maybe they should be more humble and "not mess with Mother Nature," who has a habit of producing mass, climate change induced extinctions.
With respect to Downie's article, he states that "Eighty-seven percent of scientists believe humans are driving risky (climate) change." Like, when is good science a democracy? As a climate science user, I question the credentials of these scientists. First, Downie does not tell us if they are climate scientists or climate science readers/users, like archeologists and nuclear engineers. Second, he does not tell us what percent of the 87% of them tend to vote democrat or republican, which in this age of politicized climate science might be relevant.
Politicized climate science clearly plays a role in why the issue, climate change, rates so low in voter concern. Democrats support the dominant view and Republicans support the minority view. I can't think of a scientific issue that is more politicized.
Former Vice President, Al Gore's movie, "an Inconvenient Truth," which showed only one side of the issue, is a case in point, Nobel Peace Prize or not. The problems with "climategate" and the sequestering of the data behind the "hockey stick graph," politically motivated or not, are reasons for skepticism about both the scientists and the science.
That is a good thing, especially when the results of such un-scientific acts might impact public policy toward supporting drastic measures, such as attempts to artificially induce global cooling."

I am interested in your take on the apparent climate engineering danger and the politicizing (both ways) of climate science and its adverse impact on both science and how science is perceived by the public.

Sincerely,

Mike J. Ph.D.