Drought, global warming, and politicized science
By Timothy Allinson, P.E.,
Murray Co., Long Beach, Calif.
The other day I was asked to give a presentation to the Student Chapter of ASME at one of our local Universities. The Chapter President wanted his members to learn more about plumbing engineering and “whatever else I wanted to talk about.” I decided that coupling water conservation with plumbing engineering would be a good general topic, timely and appropriate since our collegiate youth is so environmentally aware and concerned — or so I thought. It turns out these students were surprisingly uninformed about LEED, green buildings, sustainability, and the like, so there was a lot to talk about.
It’s good to see water and plumbing and their importance getting more and more attention these days. While I am not a fan of the bandwagon business of the environmental movement, water scarcity is one facet of it that cannot be ignored, especially in my home state of California. That’s why I am pleased when I see a major statement about the importance of water made public — specifically the 48-page white paper published in the November Building Design + Construction entitled “Green Buildings + Water Performance.” If you haven’t seen it, you should dig up that issue.
Getting back to the presentation, in researching the subject of water conservation I stumbled across a report by the NRDC (National Resources Defense Council) from July of 2007 titled, “In Hot Water — Water Management Strategies to Weather the Effects of Global Warming.” The report had a forward by Patricia Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. I found the similarity of her family name with that of Hollis Mulwray’s from the movie Chinatown a little unnerving, but I digress.
As I read Ms. Mulroy’s forward I immediately started to become skeptical of the science behind the report. She wrote, “It is clear that global warming is occurring, particularly in the West. In general, temperatures are increasing… Natural recharge to ground water basins could decrease.” I found all three of these sentences a bit humorous. If global warming is clearly occurring, how could it be particular to the West? The statement is contradictory in nature. She clarifies by stating that in general, temperatures are increasing. I’m glad she cleared that up. Lastly, she quantifies everything with the summary statement that natural recharge of ground water could decrease. The more I research the subject, the more I learn that these non-specific conclusions are endemic of the whole global warming issue.
Anyway, I didn’t spend much time reading this report as it had more to do with utility water management strategies than the subject of drought and global warming. Clearly it is good to have a drought disaster strategy, but I was more interested in finding a proven correlation between drought and global warming.
In further research I found a project report prepared by Hydrology Futures — a “Climate Change Study on the Los Angeles Aqueduct System” — the project team being led by Tetra Tech, Inc. Sadly, this project is incomplete and will not be finished until 2011. The document I found was just a summary project description. But within the report it posed some interesting questions, without drawing conclusions, about the potential effects of reduced snowmelt and earlier seasonal runoff created by climate change (the new catch phrase for global warming). What the report said without drawing conclusions as of yet, was that since the reservoir of snow pack could shrink, there looms a necessity to invest in water storage infrastructure. That made sense to me — less water stored as snow means more water must be stored as water.
In thinking about it from another perspective, global warming (particularly in the West) seems to have the potential to increase the water supply. One of the reasons Southern California is a desert is because the Pacific is a cold body of water. If its temperature were to increase, the evaporation rate would increase and we would get more rain — like Florida, with her warm Atlantic and Gulf waters. Does that make sense? It does to me.
Before I continue, let me clarify one thing. I am not of a “trash the environment” mentality. I think we should do everything in our power to be as environmentally responsible as possible — to conserve water, energy, and to reduce emissions and dependence on foreign oil. However, I am of the opinion that those who think they have everything figured out about our planet are fooling themselves, and many of them are deceiving others. The global warming greenhouse gas theory has become like the bible to many and “thou shalt not question it!” I prefer to be as proactive on these issues as possible but to also maintain an open mind.
Researching further, I stumbled across an Internet video which is a far-right antithesis of the greenhouse gas theory called, “The Global Warming Swindle” (in short, Swindle). I encourage you to watch this at www.garagetv.be, but keep in mind it is a controversial piece. Many claim that comments are taken out of context and that it was fueled (forgive the pun) indirectly by the oil industry. However, it makes some powerful and interesting statements worth viewing.
First, Swindle points out that CO2 is a very small percentage of the gases in our atmosphere at just 0.038% (380 parts per million), and changes are measured in single parts per million. CO2 also represents a small percentage of the greenhouse gases, the largest being water vapor, which makes up about 95% of the greenhouse gases. While the video claims that this points to CO2’s lack of significance as a greenhouse gas, critics claim that in terms of contribution to the greenhouse effect, its relative scarcity is still highly significant – somewhere between 9 and 26% of the greenhouse effect – but I have not seen the substantiation of this claim.
Second, the video charges that global temperatures have been higher in the past, so warming trends today are part of a natural cycle. It presents a graph that indicates a global high temperature in about 1100 AD — the Medieval Warm Era — that was higher than “today.” However, counter augments to the claim point out that the graph falls short of “today” and actually stops somewhere in the late 1980s, thus ignoring the IPCC (the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and their commonly accepted depiction of the last 20 years of the most dramatic warming trend, frequently referred to as the “hockey stick” on their temperature graph.
Third, Swindle claims that increased CO2 levels don’t cause temperature increase; it’s the other way around. The video shows an excerpt from Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” where he displays two graphs, one above the other, showing how Antarctic ice core samples have revealed that CO2 and temperature levels are directly related. Swindle then overlaps the two graphs and claims that the CO2 levels actually trail the temperature levels by 800 years, meaning that an increase in temperature causes increased CO2 due to stimulation of CO2 producing life forms on both land and in the oceans. This is an interesting argument. Critics claim that the information is not as portrayed in the video, and that there have been a few 800-year lags between CO2 and temperature, but that they were unique events occurring only after the ice ages, and not consistently as portrayed. It’s difficult to determine who is correct.
Fourth, Swindle claims that global warming has nothing to do with CO2 — that it is the result of natural solar activity. Our sun is a dynamic star that has sun spots and associated solar flares, each releasing the energy of tens of millions of atomic bombs exploding at the same time. It is this dynamic solar activity that the video claims is the source of naturally occurring global temperature fluctuations. This could be true, but critics argue that the graph showing the correlation of solar activity is not well founded and that it ignores the last 30 years — the period during which the recording of solar activity has been most accurate, and the period during which the supposed correlation falls apart. Again, while I have read the counter argument, I have not seen the supporting data.
Fifth, the video argues that climate models do not accurately reflect the observed data. I have read this before, in Michael Crichton’s, “State of Fear” — not a great book, but it has a strong argument for de-politicizing scientific research in the author’s notes at the end. Swindle critics argue that the models do reflect the data, but of course when the model makers are also the data developers, the two could easily be manipulated to prove or disprove virtually anything.
Ultimately, Swindle attributes the creation of all of the global warming hype on Margaret Thatcher and her desire to free England from striking coal miners and dependence on the Middle East. This, so claimed, is when the subject of global warming became political. To quote Professor Philip Stott of the University of London, “Inevitably, the moment politicians put their weight behind something and attach their name to it in some way, of course money will flow.” And it is that money and money from many governments which has continued to fuel the greenhouse gas theory of global warming.
Since seeing this video there were a series of more than one thousand emails hacked from the Climate Research Unit in England and publicly released — recently referred to as Climategate. You probably heard about this. These emails revealed damaging statements made by global warming experts that imply collusion on the part of the researchers. In one, written by the center’s director Phil Jones, he refers to using a “trick” to “hide the decline” in global temperatures. While Jones admits that the email was his, he denies manipulating data and says that the word “trick” was meant colloquially, that the email was taken out of context, and that he was not referring to anything untoward. But what else could he possibly say when so publicly exposed? Not to worry though. Al Gore promises us that the content of the emails is not significant. The Associated Press said that the “Science [was] not faked, but not pretty.”
My favorite response to these damaging emails came from Larry O’Hanlon, a columnist for Discovery News titled “Are You a Global Warming Sucker?” In his column, O’Hanlon states that if you think the discovery of these emails is important, “then you are a sucker or perhaps a fool.” But if you think the latest reports on global warming are more important, “then you are an intelligent person.” I was amazed that Discovery News would print a column that was based on nothing but name-calling.
This debate over global warming and its basis will obviously continue for quite some time. The oil industry has a vested interest in pursuing it, and the scientific community has too many jobs and grants at risk not to defend it. The good news about global warming science is that right or wrong, it promotes environmental consciousness and responsibility; however, I’m not sure I want to pay the taxes required for government mandated global warming policies. As Crichton wrote in “State of Fear,” politicized science is pseudoscience. He gives a powerful example with the politicized pseudoscience of eugenics.
Back in the early 20th century there were many scientists, politicians and other noteworthy people who embraced eugenics — a theory of gene-pool crisis — which claimed that the “best” human beings were not breeding as fast as the “inferior” ones. This politicized pseudoscientific theory was eventually taken to its extreme by Adolph Hitler through his Holocaust, so clearly politicized pseudoscience has the potential to cause a great deal of harm when pursued aggressively, blindly and wrongly. In Swindle, this is portrayed as the campaign by environmentalist to stifle the use of coal and oil to produce electricity in underdeveloped nations, lest they increase the world’s carbon footprint. Rural Africa, according to assertions in the video, should produce power only from wind or solar. This is expensive and unreliable, and doesn’t produce enough power to run any sort of industry. To quote Patrick Moore, Co-founder of Greenpeace, “The environmental movement has evolved into the strongest force there is for preventing development in the developing countries.” This, it would seem, is the misuse of politicized science.
During the weeks that this article has been in development the Climate Change talks in Copenhagen have begun and the media attention to global warming skepticism has been on the rise. I think that this skepticism is healthy and warranted. Many claim that the skeptics have the oil industry lining their pockets, and there is some truth to that. But look at it this way. As reported by Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal, last year ExxonMobil donated about $7 million to the public policy institutes that support this skepticism, while it is estimated by HSBC World Bank that $94 billion has been spent globally on what it calls “green stimulus.” So the dollars suggest that an oil industry conspiracy is like accusing the tail of wagging the dog.
So far I haven’t even touched on the proposed environmental solution of Cap & Trade. Here again, it is another good idea but it is riddled with potential problems, and many stand to benefit financially from the process if instituted. If you want to see a good video on the subject, check out storyofcapandtrade.org, but I won’t get into the details here.
As this article goes to press, 968 people were detained in Copenhagen for protesting the Climate Talks — not because they are against them, but because they were stalled by a boycott from participating developing nations. Those same countries want the United States and other rich nations to do more to lower their own carbon footprints and to spend more to finance the developing nations’ efforts. The proposal announced by Obama is that $350 million would be provided by the international partners over a five-year period to help these developing nations, $85 million coming from the United States. Basically, this represents a fund for residential solar panels and appliances in developing nations. Sorry, but if the science is real, I don’t think that effort is going to prevent the Arctic polar cap from melting into the sea in five years, which is what Al Gore has predicted with 75% certainty.
But is the science real? The TimesOnLine published a statement signed by hundreds of scientists from the UK which said “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and that “Most of the increase… is very likely due to… anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” You may disagree, but based on my education, when science is real it is exact, and the words “very likely” have no business in it. The words “very likely” would by nature imply a hypothesis.
So what does all this have to do with plumbing design? Not so much — just provoking thought. As was noted in the “Green Space” editorial of the November Consulting-Specifying Engineer, “Engineers are the bridge between hard science and society. The profession needs to get it right.” I agree whole-heartedly with that statement, and to me it means understanding and critiquing the science that is being spread throughout society in the hope that eventually we get it right.
Timothy Allinson is a senior professional engineer with Murray Co., Mechanical Contractors, in Long Beach, Calif. He is a professional engineer licensed in both mechanical and fire protection engineering in various states, and is a LEED accredited professional.