Global Warming a Hotly Debated Topic - Essay Example

Global Warming – a hotly debated topic The issue of global warming has been a hotly debated topic for many years. While recent debate has been centered more upon what can be done about the issue, scientists have still not reached a consensus opinion regarding whether it really is happening, or that it is happening as the result of man-made issues rather than simply a naturally occurring process. In his article, “Global Warming: The Bogus Religion of Our Age” (2007), Professor Richard Lindzen argues that the global warming issue has not been sufficiently examined to justify the devastating claims of imminent doom that are being made. His greatest criticism focuses on the Stern report, upon which many other global warming proponents have based their claims. He begins by pointing out Stern’s lack of acknowledgement regarding the various scientific studies that refute that global warming is happening, as a responsible scientific research study should do, and then moves on to attack other aspects of Stern’s scientific method. “He is guilty of misreading the data, of distorting the evidence to suit his political masters’ dogma, of throwing numbers about with reckless abandon, of promoting alarmism in place of rational discussion, and of reinventing climate history.” Refuting Stern’s climatic claims, Lindzen offers verifiable dates regarding scientific inventions that facilitated accurate record keeping, but offers no sources to back up his other statements regarding evidence of a warmer Middle Ages or a colder 17th century, an expanding Greenland or the reasons behind increases in polar bear numbers. In his criticism, he accuses Stern and others of having a hidden agenda, centered on providing more power and money to those in positions of leadership, making the Stern report little more than political rhetoric. Although his stated purpose is to open up the global debate to explore other possible causes of global warming, he offers merely an attack on the Stern report, backed by a hypocritical lack of outside sources or acknowledgement of dissension in the ranks of supporters. The newspaper article was initiated in support of an upcoming network television special in which the Global Warming issue was to be examined in terms of its invalidity or at least lack of full investigation and hard evidence. This is stated explicitly in the opening statements of the article, “Tonight, Channel 4 will broadcast The Great Global Warming Swindle, which suggests that the whole subject has become such a political hot potato that other explanations for climate change are not being properly examined.” However, the article does very little to support the program, focusing instead upon attacking the foundation document of the other side. Among Lindzen’s claims is that the Global Warming proponents have stifled true debate into the possibility of other causes for global climate change, yet this is refuted by Robin McKie (2007), who states, “Listeners to Today and viewers of Newsnight have been hearing Stott and the rest promote their views for years. Indeed, they have dominated and distorted the whole global warming debate.” Unlike Lindzen, McKie supports his statements with references; however the references (Alan Thorpe, head of the Natural Environment Research Council, for example) don’t provide any more objective viewpoints than Lindzen’s unsupported statements. Lindzen’s claims regarding a stifling of the debate is further falsified by Goldacre and Adam (2007) who indicate not only that a scientist featured in the show is considering legal action for being misrepresented, but also that the same producer had made a similar series of shows in 1997 entitled Against Nature, which also attacked many of the global warming claims. Instead of stifling debate, much of the available literature seems to indicate the scientists supporting global warming would welcome a true debate of the issues surrounding global warming. “Were it not for dissent, science, like politics, would have stayed in the dark ages. All the great heroes of the discipline – Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein – took tremendous risks in confronting mainstream opinion” (Monbiot, 2007). This idea is supported by the only scientist in the Channel 4 program who was highlighted by others as being ‘respectable’ in that none of his claims or reports have been proven false through carelessness, deliberate misrepresentation or alarmism. “When a journalist approaches me suggesting a ‘critical approach’ to a technical subject … my inference is that we are to discuss which elements are contentious, why they are contentious, and what the arguments are on all sides. To a scientist, ‘critical’ does not mean a hatchet job – it means a thorough-going examination of the science” (Wunsch, 2007). That this statement comes from one of the scientists featured in the program that Lindzen himself is advocating speaks volumes regarding the falsity of his claim that detractors from the Global Warming theory are being silenced or that a universal consensus among scientists exists. As is revealed in the literature leading up to and following the program, there are a great number of claims being made regarding the issue that are just false, on both sides. On Lindzen’s side, taking the position that any evidence of global warming is the result of natural processes involving the sun, atmospheric particulate matter and clouds, Wunsch (2007) labels the Channel 4 program as “an out-and-out propaganda piece, in which there is not even a gesture toward balance or explanation of why many of the extended inferences drawn in the film are not widely accepted by the scientific community.” Concerned for his personal reputation as a scientist, Wunsch also explains how his own contribution to the program was grossly distorted, using his words to infer something completely different from what he was trying to say, “This use of my remarks, which are literally what I said, comes close to fraud” (Wunsch, 2007). On the pro-Global Warming side, McKie (2007) points out the extremist position that insists “Petrol-guzzling 4x4s must be taxed, foreign holidays discouraged, TVs unplugged and lavatories left unflushed. After decades of waiting, the green movement has found the cause of its dreams: a crisis that gives them carte blanche, they believe, to rule our lives.” Despite the existence of fanaticism on either side, it remains those scientists who claim global warming is occurring as the result of mankind’s actions who seem to provide sound references to actual studies utilizing accurate data as support. Claims such as Lindzen’s, on the other hand, are either not backed at all or are backed by research that has been proven faulty, is based upon old or inaccurate data or misrepresent the data available. Discussing the work of the Channel 4 program’s director, Martin Durkin, Monbiot (2007) says, “Cherry pick your results, choose work which is already discredited, and anything and everything becomes true. … You can find lines of evidence which appear to support all these contention, and, in most cases, professors who will speak up in their favour. But this does not mean that any of them are correct. You can sustain a belief in these propositions only by ignoring the overwhelming body of contradictory data.” Delivered through the Daily Mail, a general news publication, the Lindzen article was obviously intended for a general audience with an interest in the Science and Technology pages but without a great deal of time for reflection and analysis. It is meant to break down any initial opposition to the television program while instilling doubt in those viewers not completely convinced of the severity of the issue by calling into question the claims of the scientists who feel global warming does exist and is a consequence of man’s actions. Through the rather limited space of the medium, the article commits the same sort of errors it accuses the Stern report of making by totally ignoring any other scientific reports that support the claims made in the Stern report and by doing little to back up its own statements. Far from being the cool, rational voice of reasonable debate it professes to be, the article employs an antagonistic tone that reduces its validity even further. With relatively poor news value thanks to its lack of expert references, other than the fact that it is written by a professor from MIT in a field that would have some bearing upon the issue, its antagonistic tone and several claims that, upon further examination, prove to be either false or grossly exaggerated, the obvious purpose of the article emerges as merely a piece of propaganda in the same nature as what the Stern report itself is accused of. Like the issue of whether the global warming debate was open to dissenting viewpoints, there are many points illustrated in the Lindzen article that are not supported by the literature available. One such point focuses on the question of whether or not global warming could be caused by the sun’s natural processes. “There are any number of other possibilities and the programme tonight examines the possibility that the sun’s radiation is primarily responsible for climate change. Indeed, the climate can fluctuate without any external cause at all” (Lindzen, 2007). Noticeably, Lindzen does not include any external sources to back up this statement, nor does he give any acknowledgement that the Global Warming supporters have looked into this issue. According to Monbiot (2007), this idea has been examined thoroughly, first coming to light in 1991 when Dr. Eigil Friis-Christensen reported that temperature variations on Earth seemed to coincide with the length of sunspot cycles. Not only citing where the idea originated, Monbiot also examines where the theory was proven incorrect. “A paper published in the journal Eos in 2004 reveals that the ‘agreement’ was the result of ‘incorrect handling of the physical data.’ The real data for recent years show the opposite: that the length of the sunspot cycle has declined, while temperatures have risen” (Monbiot, 2007). Monbiot moves on to debunk the next sun theory related to global cloud cover by citing a paper that was published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. Although Friis-Christensen continued to produce reports that related current warming trends directly to sun-related events, each of these reports are discussed by Monbiot, who illustrates how they were proven to be misrepresentations of the available data or otherwise blatantly false. By demonstrating again and again through published reports that the sun theories supported by the television program and the article by Lindzen are false, Monbiot successfully illustrates not that global warming is a man-made issue, but that the sun’s natural processes cannot be the only explanation for global climate changes. Much of Lindzen’s claims are based on claims of climate change specifically, that is, changes in the average daily temperatures of various areas of the world throughout history. According to Lindzen, the Stern report claims accurate climate information spanning back at least 1,000 years. It is likely he is correct in at least some respect as it is unlikely that the Normans, when invading England, had detailed measurements of region-wide temperatures in order to determine possible farming land in 1066 or that the Spanish Armada had accurate satellite images of cloud formations over the channels in 1588. As a professor of meteorology, he is probably also correct in naming the dates in which specific inventions for measuring climactic temperatures were created and put to use. The 50 year time span of what Lindzen considers to be reliable climactic knowledge is, even to a layperson, obviously not enough to base claims of global warming or to refute these claims. However, even a layperson understands that there must be some record of at least general weather conditions as we know an entire navy was wiped out with fierce storms in 1588, that Washington crossed the Delaware in freezing conditions and Ben Franklin’s publication of the Farmer’s Almanac reporting generally expected conditions preceded the development of the weather balloon. The overall results expected of Lindzen’s article seem to be to not only support the television program, but also to raise doubts and concerns regarding the established scientific community’s ability to accurately report the true nature of the issue. Throughout the article, Lindzen suggests that the Stern report is driven by a political agenda seeking to gain more power and money through taxes and regulations while he makes no claims regarding the supporters of those who speak against the global warming issue. According to an article published by Monbiot less than a year before the Lindzen article appeared, “The campaign of dissuasion funded by Exxon and the tobacco company Philip Morris has been devastatingly effective. By insisting that man-made global warming is either a ‘myth’ or not worth tackling, it has given the media and politicians the excuses for inaction they wanted. … These companies have helped to delay attempts to tackle the world’s most important problem by a decade or more” (2006). While the Stern report is obviously attached to the government in that it was government sponsoring the research, it is less obvious who is supporting the Channel 4 programming or the ‘scientific’ support provided by professors such as Lindzen. References Goldacre, Ben & Adam, David. (11 March 2007). “Climate Scientist ‘duped to deny global warming’.” Guardian. Lindzen, Richard. (6 March 2007). “Global Warming: The Bogus Religion of Our Age.” Daily Mail. McKie, Robin. (4 March, 2007). “Why Channel 4 has got it wrong over climate change.” Guardian. Monbiot, George. (26 September 2006). “Pundits who contest climate change should tell us who is paying them.” Guardian. Monbiot, George. (13 March 2007). “Don’t let truth stand in the way of a red-hot debunking of climate change.” Guardian. Wunsch, Carl. (18 March 2007). “The Causes of Climate Change: Open Letter to Channel 4 Head of Production of ‘The Global Warming Swindle’.” Global Research. Read More