February 6, 2007
Global Warming: So What Else Is New?
by Patrick J. Michaels
Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a slim summary last Friday trimming down thousands of pages of its massive overall Fourth Scientific Assessment on global warming, which will be released in May.
Hopefully the "Summary for Policymakers" will be an accurate distillation. Hundreds of scientists have been involved in the review process, and it's safe to say that means hundreds of bored scientists, because
there's very little in it that's scientifically new. For example, it will report with increasing certitude that humans are responsible for most of the surface warming that began in the mid-1970s. That's been pretty obvious for years.
Graphs in Friday's summary will show that
the rate of global warming has been remarkably constant -- about 0.18°C per decade -- since 1975. So, any news report that
"UN panel says the planet is warming at an increasing rate" (and there will be many) will be dead wrong.
For over a century, it has been known that increasing the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide will eventually lead to a warming of surface temperatures, concentrated more in winter than summer, and more in mid and high-latitudes over land. That's exactly what's been observed for years, as is a global cooling of the stratosphere, another prediction of greenhouse theory.
More interesting, and, again, less newsy, is that
the communal behavior of the dozens of computer models for future climate also predicts a constant (rather than an increasing) rate of warming.
That means that unless the collective conclusions of all of the models is wrong, we can confidently estimate a warming of about 1.8°C from 2000 to 2100. That's very near the low end of the range of projections released on Friday. The fact that the most logical distillation of observed and predicted warming yields such a modest heating should be reassuring, rather than alarming.
The new estimate for maximum rise in sea level, assuming a middle-of-the-road estimate for carbon dioxide changes, is going to be lower than in previous IPCC reports. The last figure I saw was around 17 inches by 2100,
down 40% from their previously estimated maximum.
A small but very vocal band of extremists have been hawking a doomsday scenario, in which Greenland suddenly melts, raising sea levels 12 feet or more by 2100. While this forecast enjoys no real support in the traditionally-refereed scientific literature, it is repeated everywhere, and its supporters are already claiming that the IPCC -- the self-proclaimed "consensus of scientists" -- is now wrong because it has toned down its projections of doom and gloom.
But the integrated warming of southern Greenland (the region that sheds ice) was much greater for several decades in the early and mid-20th century than in the last decade. In fact, with the exception of one year (2003),
Greenland's recent temperatures aren't particularly unusual, nor is its rate of ice loss.
As measured recently by satellite, and published in Science magazine, Greenland is losing .0004% of its ice per year, or 0.4% per century. All modern computer models require nearly 1000 years of carbon concentrations three times what they are today to melt the majority of Greenland's ice.
Does anyone seriously believe we will be a fossil-fuel powered society in, say, the year 2500?
In summary, what's not new in today's IPCC report -- that humans are warming the planet -- will be treated as big news, while what is new -- that sea levels are not likely to rise as much as previously predicted --
will be ignored, at least by everyone except the extremist fringe.
This article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle
on February 2nd, 2007.
How to Label Cato
Today, those who subscribe to the principles of the American Revolution--individual liberty, limited government, the free market, and the rule of law--call themselves by a variety of terms, including conservative, libertarian, classical liberal, and liberal. We see problems with all of those terms. "Conservative" smacks of an unwillingness to change, of a desire to preserve the status quo. Only in America do people seem to refer to free-market capitalism--the most progressive, dynamic, and ever-changing system the world has ever known--as conservative. Additionally, many contemporary American conservatives favor state intervention in some areas, most notably in trade and into our private lives.
"Classical liberal" is a bit closer to the mark, but the word "classical" connotes a backward-looking philosophy.
Finally, "liberal" may well be the perfect word in most of the world--the liberals in societies from China to Iran to South Africa to Argentina are supporters of human rights and free markets--but its meaning has clearly been corrupted by contemporary American liberals.
The Jeffersonian philosophy that animates Cato's work has increasingly come to be called "libertarianism" or "market liberalism." It combines an appreciation for entrepreneurship, the market process, and lower taxes with strict respect for civil liberties and skepticism about the benefits of both the welfare state and foreign military adventurism.
The market-liberal vision brings the wisdom of the American Founders to bear on the problems of today. As did the Founders, it looks to the future with optimism and excitement, eager to discover what great things women and men will do in the coming century. Market liberals appreciate the complexity of a great society, they recognize that socialism and government planning are just too clumsy for the modern world. It is--or used to be--the conventional wisdom that a more complex society needs more government, but the truth is just the opposite. The simpler the society, the less damage government planning does. Planning is cumbersome in an agricultural society, costly in an industrial economy, and impossible in the information age. Today collectivism and planning are outmoded and backward, a drag on social progress.
Market liberals have a cosmopolitan, inclusive vision for society. We reject the bashing of gays, Japan, rich people, and immigrants that contemporary liberals and conservatives seem to think addresses society's problems. We applaud the liberation of blacks and women from the statist restrictions that for so long kept them out of the economic mainstream. Our greatest challenge today is to extend the promise of political freedom and economic opportunity to those who are still denied it, in our own country and around the world.