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From: Jeanette Schmitthausler < [email protected]> Date: October 24, 2017 at 1:01:55 AM EDT To: [email protected] Subject: Fwd: Climate change controversies

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Climate change controversies

Environmental Encyclopedia, 2011 Updated: June 14, 2017 From Opposing Viewpoints in Context

According to the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a report compiled by 259 leading scientists and released in parts from September 2013 to November 2014, "Human activities have have contributed to increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, rising sea level, higher ocean and atmospheric temperatures and reductions in ice and snow." Accordingly, "it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century."

The IPCC was formed in 1988 as a joint effort of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to study and report on potential global climate change. The IPCC working group does not conduct original research and does not gather the data that form the basis of its reports. Instead, the group studies scientific data published in peer reviewed scientific journals (publications that allow leading scientists in various areas of science to scrutinize the work of their colleagues) and other technical sources in order to attempt to formulate an objective consensus on the science related to climate change and the impact of human activity on climate change. The IPCC reports describe progress in understanding both the natural and human impacts on climate change, including data related to observed climate change, the methods involved in the scientific study of climate processes, and estimates of projected future climate change.

IPCC reports fueled debate, mainly centered in the United States, on how to respond to the report's ominous predictions regarding climate change. Older IPCC reports stated that satellite measurements of global warming did not agree with surface measurements. The 2007 report, however, asserted that this discrepancy has been reconciled and that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal."

The 2013 IPCC report provides evidence that each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth's surface than any preceding decade since 1850. The report concludes that "global surface temperatures are more likely than not to exceed 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) compared to pre-industrial levels by 2100," and "most aspects of climate change will persist for many centuries even if emissions of carbon dioxide CO2 are stopped."

Sea ice and glaciers

In 2007 the IPCC reported that losses from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica have "very likely contributed to sea level rise." The 2013 IPCC report concludes that "oceans will continue to warm, and Arctic sea ice cover and northern hemisphere spring snow cover are very likely to continue to shrink during the 21st century. Ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica have been losing mass, Arctic sea ice and northern hemisphere spring snow cover have been shrinking, and glaciers have been retreating almost worldwide over the last twenty years."

According to multiple studies by NASA an other agenices, Antarctica's Larsen B ice shelf is melting faster than previously measured. Scientists expect the entire disintegration of the Larsen B ice shelf to occur around 2020. Just as melting ice cubes in a glass actually lower water levels (the air-filled and lattice-locked ice displaces more volume than liquid water), ice shelf melting does not contribute directly to sea level rise. However, breakup of floating ice shelves can accelerate onshore glacial feeder flows and increase ice-sheet melting that does contribute to sea-level rise.

Sea level rise

With regard to sea level rise, the AR5 asserts that between 1901 and 2010 (the last year for which there is coordinated global data), "global mean sea level rose by between 6.7 and 8.3 inches (0.17 and 0.21 meters)." Based on current prediction models, "for the rest of the century, sea level rise is very likely to exceed that observed between 1971 and 2010."

Scientific and political controversy

Despite the high scientific confidence in the conclusions drawn in IPCC reports, errors in data and methodology were ultimately discovered, further fueling scientific and political controversy regarding global warming and climate change. Scientific controversy exists because Earth's climate system is complex, which leads to uncertainties about how it has behaved in the distant past, how it works today, and how it will respond in the future. Public controversy and political partisanism often thrives on the existence of scientific uncertainty. Also, even persons or nations who accept the scientific consensus and data showing that climate change is at least partially the result of human activity (anthropogenic climate change) can, and do, disagree about who should make what changes in order to minimize climate change':s future impact. There are also sharp debates about who should pay for needed changes and remediation of damage.

There are, then, three basic kinds of climate-change controversy: (1) scientific disagreement over the details of climate changes past, present, and future; (2) denial of the existence or human origin of present-day climate change; and (3) disagreement over what actions to take against climate change, when to take them, how much they will cost, and how to pay for them.

Background

Many assertions about climate change do not correspond to the best and most complete scientific studies. A number of these arguments are stated below, each with one of the brief counter-arguments normally offered in reply by climate experts.

(1) The world isn't getting warmer at all. Millions of direct temperature measurements and satellite observations agree that the world is indeed warming.

(2) The world did get warmer in the 1990s, but since 1998 temperatures have leveled off or it has been getting cooler. Global warming must by its nature have random ups and downs. The year 1998 was actually an aberration, much hotter than those years just before or after it. According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), since 1998 the world has experienced multiple new record highs, including 2014 and again in 2015 and 2016. Although it is almost certain that global surface temperatures will continue to climb in the near future, future spikes and dips in the temperature record are inevitable.

In June, 2015, a study by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), published in the journal Science, showed that any perceived leveling off or pause in global warming between 1998 and 2014 was a statistical illusion driven by faulty data.

In addition to 1998 being an abnormally hot year--thus measurements relative to it might seem to indicate a leveling off or hiatus in global warming--natural variations in an upward trend line of temperatures, and arguments that the apparent slowdown was perhaps due to temporary heat transfer to drive observed deep ocean warming; the IPCC itself noted that data seemed to show that the "rate of warming over the past 15 years [from 1998 to 2012], which begins with a strong El Niño, is smaller than the rate calculated since 1951." The apparent pause was seized upon by critics of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming as empirical proof that IPCC and other prediction models were wrong or prone to cause unnecessary concern.

During the apparent pause in warming, temperatures remained high. New records in annual global average temperatures were set on multiple occasions, culminating with 2014 setting a new high record for average global temperatures. The NOAA study, along with refined data analysis, indicates the apparent pause was due to data biases in ocean and land temperature data and that corrected and updated global surface temperature data from NOAA's NCEI do not support the hypothesis of a global warming hiatus since 1998. Refinements on how ocean temperatures are measured, especially differences in data gathered by ships and automated buoy systems, proved decisive. The NOAA study concluded that the trend over the period 1950 to 1999, 0.204°F per decade (0.113°C per decade), was statistically indistinguishable from observed warming, 0.209°F per decade (0.116°C per decade), between 2000 to 2014.

NOAA scientists say that lack of historical data from the Artic and Antarctic regions contribute to what they argue is an under-representation of the true extent of global warming and that without suppressive influences of deep ocean warming and cloud cover due to volcanic eruptions, that temperatures might have soared to still higher levels than those observed since 1998. Moreover, data shows that 2015 ranked as the hottest in 140 years, just edging out 1998, 2005, 2010, and 2014 which with regard to statistical error were essentially tied as the hottest years on in modern record-keeping history.

(3) Climate change is natural. Natural climate change does occur, but evidence from many sources shows that humans have almost certainly caused the global warming that has been observed in recent years. Ice core data is an important part of assessing whether current greenhouse gas levels are truly exceptional or if they are simply at a high part of a natural cycle. According to the 2013 IPCC report, "the atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have all increased since 1750 due to human activity. In 2011 the concentrations of these greenhouse gases exceeded the pre-industrial levels by about 40 percent, 150 percent, and 20 percent, respectively. Concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide now substantially exceed the highest concentrations recorded in ice cores during the past 800,000 years. The mean rates of increase in atmospheric concentrations over the past century are, with very high confidence, unprecedented in the last 22,000 years."

(4) The Sun, cosmic rays, or both are causing global warming, not human activities. Scientists have carefully examined the possibility that greater energy output from the Sun, or reduced cloud cover on Earth caused by a decrease in cosmic rays from deep space, may have been responsible for recent warming. However, both these effects are much too weak to account for the warming that has occurred. Only mathematical models that take human activities into account have been able to explain the warming that has already been measured. Human beings are changing the global climate.

(5) Computer models are unreliable--garbage in, garbage out. Plus, they don't even take water vapor and or other variables into account. The mathematical models used to simulate past and future climate change are based on scientific laws and constantly tested and improved by physical measurement. While individual studies and models may have flaws, it is not credible to maintain that all studies are flawed and/or that they fail to take into account water vapor and other variables. Many models exist that take such variables into account and the vast majority of models created by many independent groups of scientists agree that global warming will continue.

(6) Climate change isn't anything to worry about anyway. Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will make plants grow faster, soaking up carbon dioxide and keeping warming from getting out of hand. Scientists from multiple disciplines conclude that for many species only a limited rise in carbon dioxide levels will produce greater growth and that increases beyond predicted levels will result in less growth and overall species loss.

(7) Climate predictions must be less reliable than often errant weather prediction. Weather and climate are different, differing in both duration and extent. Weather is the hour-to-hour, day-to-day behavior of the atmosphere in a given place; climate is weather averaged over years. Long-term, average weather is more predictable than hourly or daily weather. For example, it is safe to predict in January that average temperatures will be warmer in July (in the Northern Hemisphere), even though the weather on any single day in July cannot be predicted. Climate, like the seasons, can be predicted much more confidently than the weather.

In addition to the scientific arguments, the sources of climate controversy are complex, and there are economic costs to both combating climate change that must be weighed against economic losses caused by climate change.

Climategate

In November 2009, selected excerpts of private emails, data, and computer programs belonging to climate scientists working at the University of East Anglia's (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU), located in Norwich, England, were published online. The CRU is regarded as one of the world's most influential climate science research institutions. The material, made available by hackers, sparked a controversy widely dubbed "Climategate."

In a frenzy of online activity prior to the December 2009 global climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, critics of global warming science published excerpts of the CRU material that they claimed supported their assertions that climate scientists manipulated or deleted data in order to support evidence of global warming. The assertions made it into media reports, at times drawing more media attention than the efforts in Copenhagen to reach a new international treaty intended to limit greenhouse gas emissions and thereby mitigate the most dire predictions regarding climate change.

While many openly disavowed some of the views and harsh language contained in some CRU emails (some of which was aimed at climate change skeptics) the vast majority of climate scientists and international agencies stood by the work of the CRU and its major conclusions of climate science as expressed by the IPCC reports, that "warming of global climate is now unequivocal, that is, essentially certain" and that the warming is most likely driven by human (anthropogenic) activity since the industrial revolution. CRU scientists strongly asserted that the allegations against them were false and that CRU data and conclusions had been subject to expert review for decades. CRU defenders argued that while minor errors might be found to exist, such errors are a normal part of the self-correcting scientific method and did not impact the conclusions drawn from CRU data and work, especially work used to prepare IPCC reports.

In response to complaints and concerns surrounding transparency and failure to release data, CRU scientists pointed out that about 95 percent of the raw station data used by CRU is also accessible via other sources.

While expressing varying degrees of dissatisfaction with the content of some of the CRU emails and calling for stricter oversight of climate research, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, the IPCC, and all major national academies and institutes of science continue to endorse the conclusions of the data and the work produced at CRU.

A March 2010 report by the British House of Commons Science and Technology Committee expressed concern about the CRU scientist conduct but confidence in their conclusions. The committee specifically expressed confidence that words and phrases seized upon by critics in the hacked emails, such as "trick" or "hiding the decline," were "colloquial terms used in private e-mails and the balance of evidence is that they were not part of a systematic attempt to mislead." No data was hidden and the words "trick" and the phrase "hide the decline" merely related to attempts (including attempts by other scientists) to construct graphs and other statistical illustrations that would represent the most reliable data. The report further asserted that the word trick was "richly misinterpreted and quoted out of context." The Committee went on to support the conclusion that there was an attempt by climate scientists to subvert the scientific peer review process.

Later in 2010, a review group consisting of members of the academies of science from the United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and nearly 100 other countries ultimately concluded that the IPPC reports were sound and that the fundamental conclusions drawn from undisputed evidence concerning climate change were not altered by the minor errors in IPCC reports. However, to avoid future errors, the group advised that the IPCC should make predictions only when it has the highest levels of confidence in evidence and should avoid direct climate policy advocacy.

In 2010, Richard A. Muller (1944-), a professor of physics at the University of California-Berkeley, founded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study to analyze climate data in an open and transparent manner. Climate change skeptics had often cited Muller's work, particularly his criticism of the hockey stick graph. The hockey stick graph shows a sharp spike in global temperatures in the twentieth century that correlates to increased carbon dioxide emissions. In 2012, Muller published an opinion-editorial column in the New York Times titled "The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic." In the article, Muller states that his work analyzing climate data at Berkeley Earth led to the conclusion that humans contribute significantly to climate change.

Public impact

Efforts to confuse the public about climate controversies have been partly successful, especially in the United States. In February 2008, the outgoing chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, John Holdren, told an interviewer for the Guardian, a British newspaper, that "deniers of the reality of the climate change problem have been more effective in the United States than they have been in Europe...Climate change deniers...have received attention in this country out of all proportion to their numbers, their qualifications, or the quality of their arguments. And it has slowed down the whole discussion in the United States."

China, followed by the United States, are the two largest greenhouse-gas emitters.

The Paris Climate Agreement, negotiated to limit carbon emissions to levels that would limit or prevent the most catastrophic perils predicted by climate change data and models, entered into force in November 2016. All countries except Syria and Nicaragua, signed the agreement. Then U.S. President Barack Obama (1961-) said that the goal of the Paris conference was "an enduring framework for human progress, not a stopgap solution." Critics had demanded more urgent action because many greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, continue to warm the atmosphere for centuries after they are released into the atmosphere. Prior to the conference, President Obama used his executive powers to enact the nation's first climate change policy in the form of strict new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations designed to reduce greenhouse gas pollution from U.S. coal-fueled power plants.

The Paris Climate Agreement, negotiated to limit carbon emissions to levels that would limit or prevent the most catastrophic perils predicted by climate change data and models, entered into force in November 2016. All countries except Syria and Nicaragua, signed the agreement.

U.S. President Donald Trump (1946-) announced the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement on 2 June 2017, saying the accord disadvantaged U.S. businesses and workers. Trump did not rule out rejoining the Agreement after formulating a more favorable position for the U.S., but France, Italy, and the UK quickly responded that the Paris Agreement was not negotiable. China, India, and the European Union renewed their commitment to the Agreement, and several U.S. states pledged to generate legislation with greenhouse-gas emissions targets in line with the Paris accord. There was widespread and strong international condemnation of President Trump's decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate agreement from leaders of other countries, scientists, and major business leaders.

A Reuters poll conducted shortly after the announced withdrawal showed that 68 percent of Americans wanted the United States to lead the world in fighting climate change, half of participants thought participation in the Paris Agreement was necessary to achieve this, but only four percent identified the issue as more important than the U.S. economy or security.

• Climate Change Controversies

Further Readings

Resources

Books

• Archer, David, and Stefan Rahmstorf. The Climate Crisis: An Introductory Guide to Climate Change. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
• Bloom, Arnold J. Global Climate Change: Convergence of Disciplines. Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer Associates, 2010.
• Brown, Marilyn A., and Benjamin K. Sovacool. Climate Change and Global Energy Security: Technology and Policy Options. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2011.
• Bryner, Gary C., and Robert J. Duffy. Integrating Climate, Energy, and Air Pollution Policies. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2012.
• Clark, Woodrow W. The Next Economics Global Cases in Energy, Environment, and Climate Change. New York, NY: Springer, 2013.
• Bulkeley, Harriet, and Peter Newell. Governing Climate Change. London and New York: Routledge, 2010.
• DiMento, Joseph F., and Pamela Doughman. Climate Change: What It Means for Us, Our Children, and Our Grandchildren. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2014.
• Guzman, Andrew T. Overheated: The Human Cost of Climate Change. 2013.
• Shrader-Frechette, K. S. What Will Work Fighting Climate Change with Renewable Energy, Not Nuclear Power. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
• Pew Center on Global Climate Change, and Pew Center on the States. Climate Change 101: Adaptation. Arlington, VA: Pew Center on Global Climate Change, 2008.
• World Health Organization, and World Meteorological Organization. Atlas of Health and Climate. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, 2012.

Web Sites

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "Climate and Health." https://www.cdc.gov/climateandhealth/ (accessed June 3, 2017).
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). http://www.ipcc.ch (accessed June 2, 2017).
• National Geographic Society. "Causes of Global Warming." http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-causes.html (accessed June 3, 2017).
• National Geographic Society. "Effects of Global Warming." http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-effects.html (accessed June 3, 2017).
• National Geographic Society. "Map: Global Warming Effects." http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-impacts-interactive.html (accessed June 3, 2017).
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "NOAA: Climate Education Resources." http://www.noaa.gov/resource-collections/climate-education-resources (accessed June 3, 2017).

Full Text: COPYRIGHT Gale, Cengage Learning.

Source Citation

"Climate change controversies." Environmental Encyclopedia, edited by Deirdre S. Blanchfield, Gale, 2011. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CV2644151550/OVIC?u=lincclin_ecc&xid=f94f8f9d. Accessed 3 Oct. 2017. Gale Document Number: GALE|CV2644151550 -- Jeanette Schmitthausler