The Distortions in Global Warming - Essay Example

The Distortions in Global Warming Former US Vice President Al Gore has raised worldwide awareness on global warming with the 2006 release of his award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. The picture being painted now is grim, the most dire of which is the extinction of the human race if, allegedly, no action is taken now. That is why it has become politically-correct to join the world chorus about the issue to the point that even fair-minded people refuse to listen to arguments against the permeating global warming perspective. According to Robert Ehrlich (2003), “given the large rise in federal funding for the subject of climate change (a thousandfold in the last 15 years), and the biases of many climate scientists, dissenting views… tend to be suppressed.” (144) While the global warming concern is legitimate, there is still the lingering issue on whether the way it is being pandered today is anchored on factual, solid and sincere foundations. This paper will examine the points being raised by skeptics on the global warming issue as presented to us by the Gore-led advocates. Critique The main rationale behind most experts critical stance on how global warming is perceived today comes from the uncertainty of the scientific data that presumptuously warn of a looming environmental catastrophe brought about by the incidence global warming. Indeed, the body of literature, studies and research that we have now are largely predictions and, in the cases where they are not, are actually products of faulty research and imprecise weather simulation. According to Spencer Weart (2003), there are scientists who claim that there had been no real global warming trend at all, that the statistics of record-breaking heat since 1970s were illusory. (p. 165) For instance, according to him, expert groups somehow failed to properly account for the well-known effects of urbanization in the temperature fluctuation when they compiled weather statistics. Furthermore, Weart argued that leading climate modelers, those who simulate the earth’s climate and atmosphere, have admitted that there were discrepancies on the tools and methods used and, hence, the results of their procedure. For example, “their models typically had a strong sensitivity to greenhouse gases, predicting roughly 3 degrees Celsius of global warming for a doubling of CO2… For the known increase of greenhouse gases over the twentieth century, the models calculated a one-degree rise, but the temperature actually recorded had risen half a degree. Another galling problem was that different models gave different predictions for just how global warming would affect a given locality.” (p. 165) Patrick Michaels (2005) also documented some faux pass committed by the global warming alarmists and I quote: The historic behavior of the North Polar icecap was improperly characterized by scientists whose statements were carried with little question by newspaper as august as the New York Times. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change dramatically overstated the amount of ice that has been lost from polar seas. The same Times left an impression that arctic climate is changing at a rate 10 times faster than it actually is… No one ever bothered to check to see whether that was what happened (it didn’t) during the last century, when the temperature changed that much. (p. 5) It is easy to sympathize with the skeptics as we often hear seemingly silly but threatening pronouncements about impending environmental calamities without any empirical evidence. Jellyfish are disappearing, as result of global warming; penguins are moving north as results of global warming – these are unfair and even preposterous claims given the fact that no scientific relationships were established between these occurrences. In addition, in areas were ice are reportedly receding, the temperature were found to have actually dropped. We also have the case of the island of Tuvalu, which is predicted to be swallowed by the sea sometime in the near future so evacuation plans to New Zealand were reportedly in the process. If anyone among the alarmists cared to check, even the UN’s probable estimates of sea-level rise, combining Cabanes’s results and observed changes in greenhouse gases, suggests that Tuvaluans won’t see any sea levels back up to where they were in 1950 until sometime around 2050! (Michaels, 205) Conclusion Global warming is an exaggerated issue. It is predictably blown out of proportion by the political and professional climate in which it evolved. As previously mentioned, elsewhere in this paper, the prevention of the warming of the earth’s atmosphere is a valid issue. But the propensity of the global warming hype makes a fool out of people and becomes an open entry for political, economic and even media exploitation. The validity of the cause does not license anybody to peddle half-truths and a litany of questionable science, overstated science, poorly reported science, and unwarranted statements by scientists themselves. At the end of the day, one should remember that global warming or its overstated existence competes with potentially more important concerns for federal outlay such as cancer research or nanotechnology. It jeopardizes federal welfare funding in the backdrop of the horde of politicians and policy makers who wants to have a hand on the issue because of its popularity. In the global stage, the concerted efforts in reducing greenhouse emissions both in developed and developing countries alike - which have been consistently called for as the “correct” action to do – will come at highly differentiated costs across world nations and social groups within them. (Dunlap, p. 24) There are those who can cope but what will happen to those who cannot – those citizens of the Third World who represent three-quarters of the world’s population and rely on industrialization to get out of poverty with the strings of social maladies it entails? What the environmentalists and international groups wanted was to sacrifice the future of these people just so the uncertain scientific threat of global warming – a knowledge claim - could be addressed. A sober plea was made Patrick Michaels who stated that, “Global warming is real, and human beings have something to do with it. We don’t have everything to do with it; but we can’t stop it, and we couldn’t even slow it down enough to measures our efforts if we tried.” (p. 9) What this paper seek to underscore is that there should be fair and level discourse and debate on the matter so that policies and decisions made are helpful on the issue and do not compromise other pressing global concerns. Indeed, it is acknowledged even by the skeptics themselves that humans have something to do with the incidence of global warming. But efforts at creating solutions to this problem or in addressing the issue are muddled by the sensationalism, which, whether deliberate or not, fuels people’s agitation and hinders fair judgment on the matter. Bibliography Dunlap, Riley. Sociological Theory and the Environment. Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. Ehrlich, Robert. Eight Preposterous Propositions. Princeton University Press, 2003. Michael, Patrick. Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists. Cato Institute, 2005. Weart, Spencer. The Discovery of Global Warming. Harvard University Press, 2003. Read More