Tag: Dickinson

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The Discovery of the Truth: Revised and Expanded Edition

The Discovery of the Truth: Revised and Expanded Edition

by Elizabeth Plascencia

Courtesy of Balog: Columbia Glacier, Alaska from 2006 to 2012
Courtesy of Balog: Columbia Glacier, Alaska from 2006 to 2012

To divulge the whole story of global warming – what a task. Where to even begin? How would we explain the state of our existence on planet Earth to a foreigner? Human activities in the Anthropocene? The Industrial Revolution? Population growth? Fossil Fuels? I am unsure of the beginning and I sure don’t want to know the ending.

Weart carefully tells the story of global warming through meticulously weaving in and out of science and history in The Discovery of Global Warming: Revised and Expanded Edition. Additionally, to my surprise, Weart actually stated a handful of aggressive verbs, which is often unlikely for climate change activists who try to “speak the party talk”. I was pleasantly surprised. Often climate change speakers are lost in their sea of words when attempting to maintain their position in the middle and not appear too radical. In order to achieve some sort of movement I really respected when Weart presents to model ourselves differently in the name of change. Real change. Not just something that we talk about and agree on at a conference.

Discovering the truth about our state of being is so much more than just the idea. It is taking action and creating momentum in order to catapult change.

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ON CLEARANCE (90% off): Doubt

ON CLEARANCE (90% off): Doubt

by Elizabeth Plascencia

Cigarette on the beach

What does it mean to doubt? Is it the dictionary definition of “a feeling of uncertainty or lack of conviction” or rather this mindset that has been spoon-fed to us about climate change? How does one so easily doubt the change that is evident right before our very eyes? Easy. It has to do with something in your pocket or on your desk right now – your wallet.

Our wallets expand and contract every so often, rarely, or never. Unfortunately, it is now evident that human beings are fragile enough to be swayed by meaningless dollars signs and devour the doubt in exchange for the green. The climate change skeptics who claim that the science behind the matter is “unsettled” or “to be determined” are particularly of this nature.

I found the book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway of special interest due to the language of presentation. Not only did the authors blatantly spell out the truth but did so in a way that brutally clarified the raw material at the core of this so-called “dispute” over climate change.  I soon realized that the raw material was in essence composed of industry and power through the familiar green noted above. Basically, this book enraged me and I had to put it down twice.

It is sickening to me, 19-year old me, to be aware of these outstanding faults in our society and feel slightly powerless. Because what I observe around me is not the tobacco industry crashing but rather the latter – I return home every summer to the strewn cigarette butts that ornament my hometown beach in Santa Monica, California.

 

Congruently, the quote that stood out most to me was the following:

“How could the industry possibly defend itself when the vast majority of independent experts agreed that tobacco was harmful, and their own documents showed that they knew this? The answer was to continue to market doubt, and to do so by recruiting ever more prominent scientists to help” (p.24)

 

As symbolic as the cigarette butts are to the tobacco consumer, we must stop the market for doubt right in its tracks. No sale today. No sale tomorrow. The market for doubt has crashed.

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Who wants to believe that Lord Voldemort has returned?

voldy returns

• Cigarette smoke causes lung cancer.
• Massive sulfur emissions, primarily released from power plants, are causing acid rain.
• The CFCs we put in aerosol cans, air-conditioners, and refrigerators are depleting the ozone layer.
• Humans are causing global warming.
• Voldemort is back.

What do the phrases have in common? No one wants to hear them. No one wants to hear that their activities are harming themselves or the planet. No one wants to hear that the dark lord of the wizarding world is coming to create a pure blood society.

If you believe these facts (save Voldemort’s return), then you feel guilty until you change what you are doing. If you hear even one little whisper that the fact might not really be a fact at all, then you can cling to that whisper and carry on with your life, guilt-free and change-free.

The Freds (Fred Singer and Fred Seitz) knew about this flaw humans have. Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway tracked their careers and they’ve been working in the industry of doubt for a while. They started when smoking cigarettes was still advertised as “healthy” and tried their best to keep it that way. The truth eventually won out, but the Freds did slow down the progress.

Undeterred that their previous claims on cigarettes had been proven false, they worked their way through the years to cast doubt on disarmament, acid rain, the ozone hole, secondhand smoke, and then global warming. As long as some scientist could deny that these harms were occurring, politicians and mass media could still claim “debate.”

So why did these two physicists make these claims on issues that were outside of their expertise again and again even after they were proven wrong each time? “Our product/ byproduct harms people” is not a great slogan. This means decrease in revenue and increased government restrictions; this change means money. A lot more money than it takes to fund the Freds and their friends to take your side.

So these Freds, they worked on writing their own reports, slandering other scientists, and talking to politicians. Most recently, they worked to keep the “climate change debate” alive and well. F. Seitz is now dead but F. Singer still writes the occasional opinion piece dismissing global warming. Their business has become something much larger; people in power now realize just how valuable doubt is in slowing, even halting, a response to climate change. More than 97% of scientists believe that humans have caused climate change and our earth is warming. Yet, in 2010, WorldPublicOpinion.org surveyed Americans of voting age and found that almost half (45%) of them think most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring.

Corporations are using media outlets to trick us into believing that climate change is something that the scientific community is unsure about. They present the facts like there are two equal sides, when there aren’t. Presenting two opinions makes sense when debating politics, but it doesn’t transfer well to science. In the scientific world, uncertainty about an issue requires more research, not a debate.

John Oliver has a better way of representing this debate in the media; have a televised debate with 3 climate change skeptics and 97 climate scientists who say humans are the cause of climate change.
[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuGCJJUGsg”]

So what I’m proposing is change in how the media feeds us, and how we swallow their message. We need to demand the unpleasant truth. It’s not fun. We don’t want to cut emissions and spend money and pass new regulations. We don’t want to acknowledge that Voldemort is back because it’s so much nicer to pretend he isn’t.

But no matter how much we pretend, the climate has changed and it’s getting worse. We put too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Now we have to collectively toughen up and deal with climate change head on.

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Take the longest road, get lost, and talk to the locals before arriving at Machu Picchu

Take the longest road, get lost, and talk to the locals before arriving at Machu Picchu

by Elizabeth Plascencia

Machu Picchu (Photo Cred: Martin Lang)

It’s actually crazy to me how much technology knows the individual. As swiftly as my fingers tap along the brightly lit keyboard in front of me, Google already recognizes the “Mach…” and automatically fills in the rest – Machu Picchu. Sure – this once mysteriously epic, wild adventure of a lost city right off the Inca Trail is now practically a household name.

As I was saying, technology knows. It listened to me and remembered when just shy of seven months ago I searched Machu Picchu. My initial interest in the ruins began early on as an amateur geologist interested in the towering Andes. This initial spark was of course dimmed by reality and a lack of funds in the bank. My second wave of interest ignited once more when news of the Global Climate Change Mosaic caught my attention on campus. Surely enough this could not be true. Could it?

Fast forward to present day as I sit here at my dorm desk reflecting on the projection of this semester. Fall 2014 of my junior year at Dickinson College could not be more jam packed with adventures, loads of reading, hard work, and ultimately gratitude. I am honored to be a part of a team that will dive deep into the pressing topic of global climate change.

Mark Adams’ richly descriptive recollection of his Peruvian adventures in Turn Right at Machu Picchu truly was a highlight read for me this summer. Adams presents an organic unfolding of what may have been the greatest adventure of his life; and for that, I thank him. Thank you, Mr. Mark Adams – wherever you may be. I thank him for reminding me to be mindful and thoughtful. One should not just desire to visit said place, rather there be an educational curiosity, cultural tie, pure thrill. Something. I am done with this generation that post “selfies” in front of grandiose UNESCO World Heritage Sites. I challenge anyone planning a trip to this sacred landscape to do their reading, watch a fair share of documentaries, perhaps even read this book, or run by this list written by Mark Adams himself.

 

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Climate Change and Rhetoric

element rh small

The power of words is indescribable. They are: how we communicate with each other, how we express our feelings and how we share our thoughts.  How these words are used is up to the beholder, for words can completely alter how one perceives a topic.  A topic that demonstrates the effect of the right words by the right people is climate change.

In Merchants of Doubt, authors, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, convey the events that lead to the cloud of uncertainty surrounding global warming.   Surprisingly, it all started with three well-respected physicists who were able to orchestrate doubt through the media and politics.  Their approach was described as the “Tobacco Strategy”, which was utilizing the “lack of certainty” to it’s advantage to avoid the truth. For example, tobacco companies were able to argue that tobacco was not proven to be detrimental to one’s health because data was “uncertain”.   The three scientists applied the power of the word, “uncertainty”, to acid rain, the ozone hole and the cause of climate change.

However, only three scientists would not be able to spread the whole anti-climate change movement, so they hired scientists to add credibility and started the George Marshall Institute.  The right words were now coming from the right people, which is when rhetoric is most successful. If a civil war solider, not Abraham Lincoln, gave the Gettysburg Address it would not have even close to the same effect. In addition to the credible sources, they were able to use the media to their advantage and spread their ideas. Below is a talk by a scientist from the George Marshall Institute that exhibits climate change rhetoric.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5wqAaLf4Rk

After reading this book, it is slightly terrifying to think about the power of words and it’s effect on our ideas unconsciously.  It makes me wonder how the media’s crafty words have infiltrated my thoughts, ideas and actions.  Hopefully, after reading this book I can be more aware of my thought process.

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When Objective Journalism Breaks Down

Two of the most important features of a liberalized nation are the right to free speech and freedom of the press. Freedom of speech gives all citizens of a nation the right to voice an opinion or idea using their body or property. Freedom of the press allows the freedom of communication and expression of ideas through various media without state intervention. These two rights enable people to obtain information from a diversity of sources, make decisions, and communicate those decisions to the government, which in turn contributes to progress within a nation and in the world at large.

These two rights are probably the two cornerstones of a liberal society, but nonetheless, these freedoms can still be abused. Take the cases discussed in Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway’s book Merchants of Doubt for example, about a loose-knit group of scientists and scientific advisors who worked to mislead the public on various issues, such as the effects of tobacco smoke on the lungs, the effects of CFCs and the effect humans and technology have on global warming.

This group of scientists worked with large industries to oppose new research that damaged the public perception of said industries. Journalists, in their constant drive for true objectivity, portrayed both sides as being two equal, legitimate arguments. This is seemingly what the idea of free press is about; an argument is formed around an issue, and the media gives equal and neutral coverage to both sides. But the problem with this was that the scientists on the side of large industries were not doing science, but instead merely drawing attention to various uncertainties in the true research on the other side. The two arguments were not equal; while one side was doing truthful, legitimate and objective research, the other was merely finding uncertainties in this science and drawing attention to them, hence creating doubt in the public.

This brings to light an interesting question: Where do we draw the line between objective research and disinformation?

In the age of the Internet, anyone with access to a computer has a way to disseminate his or her opinion to the public. In a sense, this is a big step forward for the freedom of speech, because the discussion of local, national and international issues is opened to more people, ensuring that no one is censored. But on the other hand, this means that the opinions expressed might hold no truth, as is the case with the group of scientists discussed in Merchants of Doubt.

There are a lot of ideas out there that one might not necessarily agree with, but this does not mean they are disinformation. They still deserve to be covered with the same journalistic integrity as the ideas that one does agree with, but the line between objectively researched information and disinformation seems to be very thin. Where do we draw the line between the two without censoring any arguments? How should a journalist decide what to and what not to cover? To be honest, I have no solution to these questions. It seems to me that both journalists and consumers of journalism need to take a better look at the credibility of the information that they are reading. I predict, as widespread Internet use continues to grow, this is a problem that will more and more become an important political issue.

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The Impact of Human’s Hamartia on Climate Change: Procrastination at it’s Finest

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In a discussion about climate change with my father, I mentioned the dire circumstance of Earth’s future and the necessity for change on a global scale. He smiled at me and said with a shrug “Heather, they were saying that stuff when I was at school. And look, nothing happened, we are still fine and we will continue to be fine”.  I hate to admit it, but my father is a climate-change-denier.

Denial is a trait that we all share and exhibit to varying degrees, which can ultimately lead to procrastination.  When a hard-to-grasp or difficult situation arises, it’s easy to ignore the major issue and focus on the smaller ones.  In regard’s to climate change, human’s hamartia (fatal flaw) is denying that climate change is an issue, leading to the worldwide procrastination of changing our high-energy consuming lifestyles.  Fencer R. Weart discusses this dilemma through the historical analysis of scientist’s climate change discoveries in his book “The Discovery of Global Warming”.

Surprisingly enough, as far back at 1896, scientists already understood that global warming was occurring and human activities were responsible for contributing to atmosphere’s imbalance. Meaning that the academic world has been aware of climate change for 118 years and there has only been an increase in fossil fuel emissions.  It seems that as a race we are in severe denial about what is going on with our planet and the implications we are causing for ourselves for two major reasons. One reason is that climate change is a long-term issue that so far has not required immediate attention.  At least in American society, it seems that people would rather concentrate on the internal issues, such as gun laws and health care. These issues are important, but are more short term rather than long term.  Even though, the effects of global warming have not drastically affected our daily lives, there will be consequence for future generations around the world due to longevity of the feedback cycle.

The other reason is due to the orchestration of science is based on theory and uncertainties. People value certainty for when something is unsure it allows for people to believe there is another possible outcome or that action is not required because it COULD not happen.  For example, if the weather report predicts 100% chance of rain, then one will most likely wear a rain jacket; but if the report predicts for 50% chance of rain, one will most likely ignore the report. A problem that requires immediate attention will often receive action because it’s easier to act upon something that is more concrete. Throughout human history, the uncertainties have affected the credibility of climate change.  Even though, that’s how science works, people were able to foster in the unknown and say that even the professionals don’t know what is occurring.

When an issue is not set in stone and is at a global scale that requires an immense change in lifestyle, it is understandable why dealing with climate change has been pushed to the back- burner for over a hundred years. However, if we continue this extensive error in judgment about global warming, it could lead to our ultimate downfall.

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The IPCC as an Avenue to World Peace

 

For as long as there have been humans, there has been conflict and attempts to remedy it. These attempts have been in the form of treaties, intergovernmental organizations, or merely a compromise between two people. The League of Nations was a notable example of an attempt to remedy global conflict. Formed in the aftermath of World War I to foster international security and sustain peace. It was notable in that it represented a fundamental shift from the diplomatic philosophy of the preceding hundred years: The League lacked an armed force of its own and depended on member countries to enforce its resolutions and provide an army if needed. The League of Nations ultimately failed, but it inspired a myriad of intergovernmental organizations post-World War II, among them the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). All of these organizations were created to in some way forge a more peaceful world.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body under the UN, created in 1988 to assess scientific information relevant to climate change, its impacts, and options for the mitigation of it. The creation of the IPCC was obviously a huge step forward in combating global climate change, as it brought together the ideas of independent scientists in separate fields around the world in an institution devoted to the full-time study of climate change and the addressing of urgent policy questions. But the creation of the IPCC might have been just as important in areas unrelated to climate change.

Stephen R. Weart only mentions it only in a very short, two-paragraph section in his book, The Discovery of Global Warming. But as an international relations major, this short section stood out to me. It discusses the IPCC as being an important player in the promotion of world peace.

One of the problems that international organizations have in creating more peaceful relationships between countries is that all member countries will naturally have conflicting national interests. Just look at the US and Russia—the US has vetoed 14 UN draft resolutions, and Russia has vetoed 11. Realist theory dictates that all states will act in their national interest and increase their power, even at the expense of other countries, because this is the only way for states to ensure their national security in an anarchic system—to become the most powerful state in the system. International institutions were created as a way to mitigate this anarchy, but as long as states remain sovereign the international system remains anarchic.

What makes the issue of global warming different from many other issues that the UN deals with is that the slowing of climate change is mutually beneficial to all countries. While it might not be in all countries; interest to allow Ukraine to join the EU, or to drive Bashar Al-Assad out of power in Syria, it is in all countries interests to mitigate global warming because the effects of a warmer climate on areas such a as a country’s economy, population and on the global food supply will be devastating. Getting countries to work cooperatively on an issue that is mutually beneficial is far easier than getting countries to work together on issues that are more decisive, and countries that cooperate form better relationships and will be less likely to come into conflict with each other. Why are we more scared of North Korea than of the UK, even though the UK has far more nuclear capabilities than North Korea? The UK theoretically should be a bigger threat to us than North Korea, but because we have a good relationship with the UK, we aren’t worried about coming into conflict with it. If these beneficial relationships can be formed between countries through cooperation on an issue that is mutually beneficial, it could be possible to foster more peaceful relationships in the international system. Of course, there are many other problems that must be dealt with before a lasting peace is achieved, but the IPCC could definitely play a major role in creating a lasting peace in the future.

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Infrastructure: The Road to Survival

road

It’s not sexy. It doesn’t work well on a bumper sticker easily. It doesn’t bring in big donations to charities or get people energized. But infrastructure is the key to our future survival and prosperity. A continually changing climate and environment necessitates advancing infrastructure renewal to keep pace. In Bill McKibben’s Eaarth, a new world is described that is radically different than the one we currently enjoy, and one that we may even begin to experience within our lifetimes. The effects of global warming on this new world, Eaarth, will have serious economic repercussions; for example, Hurricane Katrina caused about $108 billion of damage in the United States. The infrastructure that was in place before the storm was severely insufficient to match the storm, even though predictions had been made before the storm hit in 2005 that the infrastructure needed to be beefed up in case of a direct hit by a hurricane. Had the city’s infrastructure been attended to before the storm, the economic and personal costs to the people of New Orleans would have been far less severe.

A well-maintained infrastructure is pivotal to whether or not we can maintain the lifestyles we have grown accustomed to. If any more delay persists, the global economy will be dangerously unprepared for the looming fate that awaits us just over the horizon. Shocks on the scale of Hurricane Katrina are not going away; they’ll be a fact of life, and we need to be proactive with precautionary measures and fundamental changes to our economic and physical landscape in order to weather the impending storm (pun intended).

However, McKibben is not suggesting just throwing money randomly on infrastructure renewal projects; he implores a smarter, long-term planning perspective that takes into consideration the changes that will happen not only in the next decade or two, but over the next century. Rising sea levels will submerge coastal roads and bridges around the world; rather than repairing those that most likely will be inaccessible in a few years, it’s more effective to repair infrastructure that is out of the danger zone and that will be available for use further into the future. If we’re smart about what and how we overhaul our infrastructure systems, we’ll be far better prepared to withstand what lies ahead.

McKibben said “we’ve got to harden our communities so they can withstand the couple of degrees of global warming that are now inescapable.” Investment in infrastructure is not only to ensure our long-term prosperity, although it is that; it is also to guarantee and protect our ability to adapt and function in the ever-changing world and to survive. Everything is at stake, and it won’t be easy to defend it. But, when you weigh the options, the course of action is clear.

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The Progression and Importance of GCMs

Science is always evolving. Climate science experienced great leaps forward during the 20th century, largely due to computers and the work of many leading researchers. Before 1896 no one had proposed a theory describing a cooling or warming of the earth, thus with his 1896 publication, Svante Arrhenius was the first to propose the theory of global warming. He found nothing to explain the forcings of the glacial epochs, there was no current understood mechanism that would explain these climatic transitions, but he knew they existed and that something was causing them. However, this landmark publication set the scene for a 20th century full of progress in understanding how the global climate fluctuates and changes.

In the 1930s, the Serbian Milutin Milankovic published about climate forcings due to changes in the earth’s relationship to the sun describing changes in the earth’s axis and elliptic orbit every twenty one thousand, forty one thousand and one hundred thousand years. Milankovic’s work provided the mechanism that Arrhenius had described to force the climate into and out of ice ages (eccentricity being the main driver over the past one million years). Milankovic was able to build on the work of James Croll and use glacial varves present in sediment deposits to correlate celestial events in relation to the earth. Milankovic’s work was crucial in advancing knowledge about paleo climates and thus allowed researchers to dive deeper into the past.

Edward Lorenz looked at much finer scale events in comparison with Milankovitch. In 1965 Lorenz used his computer model to show that small changes in one of his 28 variables in the fourth decimal place (and smaller) could have implications for future weather in as little as days, meaning that small changes in climate models have large implications. These models attempt to reconstruct nature using a computer as a predictive tool, but his observation was important nonetheless. This not only showed the importance (and need for further investigation) of computer models, but also provided a hypothesis as to how the climate could react given small (and seemingly insignificant) human inputs.

Any discussion on climate computer models is not complete without James Hansen. During his time with GISS, Hansen became the most famous climate scientists of the 20th century. Hansen and his team were able to maintain one of the leading models of the earth’s climate systems. Among other accomplishments, Hansen was able to correctly model how the earth’s atmosphere would react in the face of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption. Hansen predicted that the earth’s climate would take several years to eliminate the cooling aerosols pumped into the atmosphere by the volcano. In his 1996 publication he confirmed that his predicts had indeed come to fruition, that the earth’s global average temperature did not return to pre-Pinatubo eruptions until 1995.

Weart describes all of this and more in his book “The Discovery of Global Warming”. Over the progression of the timeline above (the Weart’s book) we moved from a vague understanding of global warming with Arrhenius to the complex computer models that have helped to produce our current understanding of future warming trends. Over time, we found smaller scale changes because better techniques and equipment were developed to measure small changes in climate, such as volcanic activity, ENSO events, and other oscillations. These methods have allowed scientists to more precisely determine climate forcings (such as a medium-sized volcanic eruption) instead of speaking in broad terms about large-scale orbital forcings.

Weart seemed to focus a great deal of his book around the importance and history of GCMs (both general circulation models and global climate models). This originally surprised me, but I came to realize the true importance of these models and how effective they can be in helping to predict the future. Current climate science relies on these models to help us understand how the world will be impacted by anthropogenic emissions decades into the future. These models are especially important as we begin to plan on climate adaptations in helping governments and the global community predict where climate change is going to impact the greatest number of people.

 

Some sources and further reading:

Arrhenius, Svante. “XXXI. On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground.” The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science 41.251 (1896): 237-276.

Hansen, J., et al. “Global surface air temperature in 1995: Return to pre‐Pinatubo level.” Geophysical Research Letters 23.13 (1996): 1665-1668.

Hansen, James, et al. “Potential climate impact of Mount Pinatubo eruption.”Geophysical Research Letters 19.2 (1992): 215-218.

Lorenz, Edward N. “A study of the predictability of a 28‐variable atmospheric model.” Tellus 17.3 (1965): 321-333.