blog action day

Today is "Blog Action Day", and the topic is Climate Change, so my good friend Holly has encouraged me to use this as an excuse to start posting on my blog again.

Most of you reading already know I'm an atmospheric scientist, so this topic is near and dear to my heart.

I spend a lot of time hanging out at blogs of so-called "global warming deniers" or "skeptics" to try to understand where they are coming from. It's never accurate to generalize, so it's wrong to lump everyone that is skeptical of human-caused global warming into one pot. It is legitimate to question. I would, in fact, be concerned if people believed anything without questioning and doing their own thinking. However, some of the arguments out there are simply ludicrous (e.g., CO2 is not a greenhouse gas, or human activity is not increasing CO2 in the atmosphere). In fact, these two things are solidly established. CO2 occurs naturally in our atmosphere and absorbs infrared radiation, re-emitting it in all directions (rather than allow infrared heat to escape directly into space), and this ultimately keeps the surface of our planet at the comfortable temperature it is. The average temperature of the earth would be about 60 degrees Fahrenheit cooler without CO2, water vapor, and the other greenhouse gases. It's also easily and well-established that our burning of fossil fuels has significantly increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We know this from simply looking at the sources and sinks of CO2, including the increase in human sources during the industrial age. We can also can use isotopic analysis to convince us that human activities are responsible for the increase of CO2 from 280 ppm (parts per million) 150 years ago to about 380 ppm (and rising) today. (See, for example, this post from climate scientists at their "Real Climate" website)

Given these two simple facts, the impetus in fact becomes "show me how humans can't be impacting the climate."

Of course it's infinitely more complicated than that. There are climatic feedbacks. We don't fully understand the role of aerosols and clouds. Climate scientists are making much progress at understanding the climate through use of models (only one tool to try to better understand the processes impacted by increased CO2). There is also work afoot to drastically improve the observations that we need to better understand how and why the climate is changing. There are a multitude of signals that we're monitoring to follow the impact of climate change: e.g, surface temperature (from surface stations), near-surface temperature (from satellites), polar ice melt during the spring and summer, glacial melting, average sea level, ocean temperatures, changes in permafrost, migratory behavior of species...

There is overwhelming scientific consensus that human activities are impacting the climate. The areas of active research - the areas where there is not consensus - are focused on the expected magnitude of the changes, and how increased CO2 and the accompanying average warming might impact things like agriculture, species migration, and regional climate.

I thought I'd also point out that the idea of global warming is not as recent as you might think. Here's a brief history of some of the early key players.

John Tyndall was a British physicist, born in 1820, who loved mountaineering. He adored nature, and in particular loved geology.He was fascinated by the idea that geologic evidence showed that northern Europe was once covered with ice. He was amazed and puzzled that the earth's climate could change so significantly. This curiosity led him to examine the ideas put forth about 30 years earlier that some of the gases in the atmosphere might in fact, be capable of absorbing and reemitting heat energy (infrared radiation).

So in 1859, John Tyndall published results from laboratory studies that in fact did show that several gases that were commonly present in the atmosphere were absorbers of heat. (Check out that link - it's a copy of his 1859 paper.) Water vapor and carbon dioxide were two of the most important gases with this property.

Here's his lab set-up. (Much of this information was obtained here). On the far left is a bunsen burner (sitting atop the desk). It is heating a Leslie's cube which is filled with water, and there is a thermometer sticking out of the top to measure the heat of the water. It's hard to make out, but there's another Leslie's cube being heated by a bunsen burner at the far right side of the long horizontal tube. The long tube is filled with the gas of interest. Tyndall ran experiments on several different gases. The funny looking thing with two cones on it (sitting on the desk between the long tube and the first Leslie's cube) is a thermopile. This instrument generates electricity when there is a heat differential – that is, when one side is warmer than the other. It's connected to a galvanometer to measure the electric current that is generated. As the infrared energy from the 2^nd Leslie's cube passes through the gas in the long tube, if the gas is an absorber of the infrared radiation, the temperature at the end of the tube will increase, resulting in a temperature differential that can be measured by the generated electric current. What John Tyndall discovered was that water vapor (aqueous vapour), carbon dioxide (carbonic acid) and ozone were particularly strong absorbers of infrared radiation while being transparent to visible light. Here's some of what he wrote:

"But this aqueous vapour, which exercises such a destructive action on the obscure rays, is comparatively transparent to the rays of light. Hence the differential action, as regards the heat coming from the sun to the earth and that radiated from the earth into space, is vastly augmented by the aqueous vapour of the atmosphere."
"...Now if, as the above experiments indicate, the chief influence be exercised by the aqueous vapour, every variation of this constituent must produce a change of climate. Similar remarks would apply to the carbonic acid diffused through the air, while an almost inappreciable admixture of any of the hydrocarbon vapours would produce great effects on the terrestrial rays and produce corresponding changes of climate."
"...Such changes in face may have produced all the mutations of climate which the researches of geologists reveal."

About 30 years earlier, Joseph Fourier, who was a French mathematician and physicist (and yes, this is the same Fourier of the mathematical Fourier Series), had published work where he noted that the temperature at the surface of the earth was much warmer than you would expect from doing a simple energy balance of the planet.

"The decrease of heat in the higher regions of the air does not cease, and the temperature can be augmented by the interposition of the atmosphere, because heat in the state of light finds less resistance in penetrating the air, then in repassing into the air when converted into non-luminous heat."

His theory was that the atmosphere must allow visible light through easily, but infrared heat energy must be absorbed by the atmosphere. (He also had some idea that the earth received heat from "the universe at large" but that's since been disproven, heh.)

Building on these studies, in 1896 a Swedist chemist names Svante Arrhenius refined the idea of the greenhouse gases. He suggested that halving the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere could decrease the global temperature enough to explain previous ice ages. He also worked with a colleague Arvid Hogbom and showed that the amount of CO2 put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels was roughly equivalent to natural processes. He postulated that given enough years, the amount of CO2 might build up enough to begin to impact the climate. This was in 1896. Arrhenius and Hogbom figured it would take about 3000 years to build up enough CO2 to see an impact on temperature, given the emission rates of 1896. We started burning fossil fuels considerably faster than the rate of 1896. Don't you wonder what these scientists would think of how things have played out today?

a more honorable existence

I suppose I've never written the obligatory post outlining the things that I am thankful for this year, have I? It's really a bit difficult since I've been solidly in a "find the cloud attached to the silver lining" mode for the last month or so.


It's a dreary day outside...

Here goes.

I am thankful to those who refuse to remain silent in the face of racism, homophobia, religious discrimination and sexism. It is easy (and cowardly) to remain in the safety of our homes and invisibility cloaks and privately condemn these actions. It is more difficult and much more honorable to respond publicly, whether it's participating in public protests against California Proposition 8, or refusing to let your friend stereotype a religion or race.

I am thankful to the climate scientists who have put themselves on the front lines of what remains of the climate change "debate" (realclimate.com, etc). The few remaining dissenters are quite uninformed and are wrong on all of the arguments I've seen out there, but they are also quite vocal, nasty, and persuasive/persistent, so to ignore them remains a mistake. It takes someone with an extraordinary amount of patience and an extraordinarily thick skin to respond to them. It is difficult for scientists who put in 60-80 hour work-weeks, and who have families and outside lives, to find the extra time and patience to power through the education of the public. It is much easier to bury your head in the comfort of your own research and assume that with time, the tide of public opinion will become powerful enough to ensure response. I am thankful for those who chose the more difficult path and continue to respond to ridiculosities with rational, science-based arguments.

I am thankful to those who volunteer hours and hours of their time every week to help make our public schools successful. It is easy to complain about the PTA or about school policies in the comfort of our homes while downing a few cold ones with friends. It is much more difficult to give up precious extra hours in order to plan fundraisers, print and distribute newsletters, and attend meetings.

I am thankful to everyone who has chosen the difficult path of action over the easier path of apathy and acceptance. For everyone who has acted rather than simply talked, I believe you have chosen the more honorable existence. So thank you.

my comments on being pro-science

edit: I came in this morning with the intent of taking this post off since it's so awfully fluffy, but Mare had already commented on it so I'm leaving it. Take this as it is - written after a few glasses of wine and after seeing a lovely rainbow.

In hindsight, I suppose it is really no surprise that I ended up as a scientist.

There is one incident from second grade that I clearly remember, and it was certainly suggestive of the fact that I'd end up where I am now. We were learning multiplication and our teacher, Mrs. England, was using flash cards to drill the class. She was sitting in front of the class on her wooden stool and was rapidly flipping through the fact cards, her thin lips pressed into the persistent grimace that was her teacher face. I was not a happy girl. You see, Mrs. England never explained the concept of multiplication to us. We had been asked to simply memorize the facts and the class was collectively reciting them back to her. I felt like a fish out of water. While the rest of the class was dutifully, if more than an little monotonously chanting multiplication facts in unison, I was determined to figure out HOW this new math was working. Unfortunately she and the rest of the class were zipping through the rote memorization too quickly for me to work it out. I was so frustrated that I started to cry. When Mrs. England asked me what was wrong, I told her I was sick, so I was sent down to the nurse's office. I can acutely remember the combined medicinal and musty smell of that primary school's nurse's room as I lay there on the little white cot waiting for my mom to come pick me up. The sick feeling in my stomach was a combination of frustration at not being able to figure out why multiplication worked like it did, and the abject worry about what my mom would say to me when she realized I was faking it. In fact, my mom did immediately know that I wasn't sick. Her response was to give me a big hug and take me home.

At that point in my life, I was only just beginning to realize that beneath every action, there lay a series of logical steps. Cracking the code of logic beneath something magical like why the stars twinkled or why the sunsets are so beautiful only heightens the sense of awe for me. It is what makes me gaze at a rainbow (I saw a 4/5 full one tonight!) and is what makes me hold my breath in reverence at the simple movement of the wind.
I am not an excellent scientist. I'm merely an adequate one, but I do know enough to understand that explanations - logical explanations - exist if you know where to look for them.

I also understand that there is an amazing and wonderful variety of kinds of people in this world. There are many who are not as fascinated by science and logical explanations as I am. Many are quite willing to accept life as it is without feeling the need to search for the "why." And that's fine - that's great. No problem. Variety is the spice of life and all that.

However, I do add the caution that the fact that one does not feel the need to search out and understand the science behind our world does not eliminate the fact that it is there. With a little time and experience, most children figure out that even if they close their eyes, others can still see them. You see, science is not a religion. It is not close to anything remotely resembling a religion. It is not even mysterious. Science is the result of the collective knowledge that is the result of thousands of years of billions of thinking humans. It didn't come about by accident.

There are a couple of things that I've read about Sarah Palin's take on science that are, ehm, confusing.

1) She believes that both evolution and creationism should be taught in the classroom.
One of these is backed by the previously described years of collective knowledge and supported by factual scientific evidence and theory. The other is written in the Bible. One should be presented in the academic environment from which it was born . The other should be presented in the religious environment from which it was born. I do not understand the confusion here. If you do not believe that scientific fact is compelling enough, why on earth would you insist that your religious beliefs be presented as, um... scientific fact? Pick one or the other, and keep it in its respective home. Or, like most of the country, allow for the fact that both can co-exist, but keep each in its respective home (Personally, I do not subscribe to this latter suggestion but realize that the majority of people do.)

2) Governor Palin also seems confused on the issue of climate change.
From the Associated Press:

She has told the Internet news site Newsmax, "A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location.... I'm not one, though, who would attribute it to being man-made."

In an interview with a Fairbanks newspaper within the last year, Palin said: "I'm not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity."

But in a recent interview with Charles Gibson, she said:

Show me where I have ever said that there's absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any effect or no effect on climate change. I have not said that," said Palin to Gibson.

and

I believe that man's activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming, climate change.

While vague, and only slightly less worrisome from the persepective of a scientist, these last statements seem awfully out of line with her earlier stance. Politics, anyone?

In case you are wondering, I did finally figure out that multiplication was only a fancy way of doing addition. I honestly don't remember if Mrs. England taught me this (doubtful) or if my parents did, or if I just figured it out on my own at last. In any case, I'm glad I did, because I use it an awful lot these days.

From Alberta to Virginia

I'm home from Alberta. It was an interesting trip - I'm glad I went.

On the work side of things: it was successful. The goal was to sample boreal fire plumes and we got them. (Holy moly! There are a lot of stories about this mission out there on the internet! I knew Jim and Daniel seemed to be called away for a lot of interviews, but jeez. Funny side-story on that note. Daniel is a Hvd professor and he had a couple of his grad students there. One of them came into work all freaked out one day because her radio alarm went off right during the middle of an interview with Daniel, her advisor. Can you imagine being woken from sleep with the voice of your advisor? She thought she was in the middle of a nightmare. Daniel had a good laugh out of it.)
There were some frantic days out there - some low-on-fuel-driven last-minute flight planning sessions, extra (unplanned) days in Thule, Greenland for the instrument guys, a broken DC-8 windshield, and some close calls weather-wise. But overall, we got what we needed to.

Other side of things: I learned that nice things happen when instrumentalists and theoreticians are essentially held prisoner together at an isolated military base in the middle of nowhere. They begin to talk. And play pool. And snooker. And shuffleboard. And foozball and crud and darts. (and drink- errr- network, too).

Here's a photo of our loverly pool hall, which closed at 8 pm UNLESS there were 10 people there, in which case she kept it open until around midnight. The bartender hated us. She obviously did not like her job and was anxious to leave. We had several tight moments of pulling unsuspecting scientists who were simply strolling along the sidewalk into the pool hall at 7:59 in order to meet the quorum. Invariably, we'd have huge numbers of folks there at 9:30 or 10. 8:00 was just slightly too early to get the 10 quota. We gave her big tips, but she was still grumpy. Oh well.


I like this photo mainly because you can't see any faces so I don't have to worry about folks getting mad at me for putting them on the internet. We really had a nice time hanging out. More than one scientist commented to me that it was like being back in grad school, but better (no one ever articulated why, but I'm thinking that we're just all older and that's why it's better). I had some nice bike rides down to Cold Lake, through fragrant clover and prairiedog towns. Don't romanticize it, though. It really isn't very pretty out there - though the lake was nice.



Here I am playing shuffleboard. Who knew I'd actually be pretty OK at it? And at darts, too? I guess I shouldn't have given up on "sports" when I realized I sucked at softball and basketball.












Here's a rainbow I saw on the bus ride back to Edmonton yesterday. Texas family/friends - see what I mean? It's Texas up there!!!!
(Actually, I had a Canadian friend tell me that that part of Alberta is called "Texas north" so I wasn't making it up. They even have oil wells out there.


Anyway - all done. I'm back home with my hubby and kids (heart, heart, heart). We went and picked blueberries today, grilled chicken and eggplant and onions for dinner, and are watching the Red Sox play tonight. Life is good. Abundance.

esoteric

Well now. This is something I actually know something about.

If you're not so inclined, that link leads to a post on RealClimate.org which comments on a recent scientific paper in the journal Nature that looks at boundary layer ozone loss due to halogens and how chemistry-transport models could be overpredicting ozone (a greenhouse gas) in these sorts of regions if they don't include these reactions in their simulations. This sort of issue is something that we looked extensively at during our recent foray into the Arctic. Satellite measurements have suggested that in the Arctic, regions impacted by halogen-driven ozone loss could be significant. It wasn't quite so clear based on the in-situ data, but whatever, we'll see. If you're really interested in this sort of subject, keep an eye on papers from ARCTAS. I tend to think that in the Arctic, this is a localized (regional) phenomenon. This current paper is looking at different regions of the globe - and it's interesting that they find an impact there. In any case - the point here is that this is an interesting subject for me in my daily research but I never would have guessed that it would have made "news." It is ultimately of unknown/insignificant consequence speaking in the broad climatological, increasing temperature context, I suspect. Yet, if you click on the link and read, you'll see what the media is reporting and the spin being put on so-called "deficiencies" of climate models as a result of this, which is most certainly not what the authors intended to be pulled from their paper, I suspect.
Eh.

Atmospheric and Climate scientists are ill-prepared for the magnifying-glass nit-picking of our normal day-to-day business that global warming has thrust upon us.

et tu brute?

I've long been angry at the way that the media, the conservative pundits, and the global warming deniers have slandered Al Gore. I suppose it's the en vogue thing to do - to sit around and talk about what a hypocrite he is. But for my friends to join the chorus? Well that's just freakin' depressing because it shows the power of populist media. I suppose it'd be easier for me to laugh it off and agree with the crowd, but there's this damned thing in me that insists I stay true. I cannot tell a lie. I think Al Gore ROCKS.

Good.Lord.

OK - the whole Gore "carbon footprint" thing? Besides being wrong and besides being so "last year", it's obvious that this was an orchestrated attack. It's no coincidence that the Tennessee Center for Policy Research put out a press release the day that Gore's documentary won an Oscar. (By the way, this Tennessee Center for Policy Research? Who are they? Their website's links include the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Heartland Institute...do I really need to say more?). But anyway, that's enlightening but not relevant. They didn't lie, exactly....however...

However. Their "analysis" consisted purely of sloppily checking out his electric bill. They didn't bother to include in their press release that the Gores were in the process of trying to install solar panels (check out these links, please) and geothermal heating and cooling among other energy-saving technology. Didn't bother to mention that the Gores work from their home, meaning heating/cooling and lights are on all day, didn't bother to mention that they don't commute to and from work each day. Didn't bother to mention that he buys carbon offsets each month (not that I think that's a good solution ultimately, but he does, and he's doing it). Selective reporting.

Here's a response, probably somewhat biased toward Gore but I feel a little balance is required here. The fact is that the "common knowledge" Average Joe cites that Gore's home is an energy guzzler is flat out wrong. It's so hard to argue against a soundbite. It's hard to interject reason against knee jerk reactions. I hardly even try any more. He's been slandered, in my opinion.

Besides, all this ridiculousness is irrelevant.

Gristmill had a post last year when this came out that summarizes my feelings on this well. His point is basically something that I have long held true.

Almost by definition, very few people are going to attempt that kind of lifestyle. Does that make all greens who fall short of that mark hypocrites?

Of course not. The primary message of the green movement is not that everyone should become monks. The primary message is that we need to change the system -- the laws and physical infrastructure that underpin our collective life. We need a new industrial revolution that makes eco-friendly living the default choice, the one that requires little thought, much less heroics.

We're not going to solve global warming one household at a time. Perhaps I'm overly pessimistic, but what we do as individuals is not ever going to come close to solving the problem. This is a government and international issue. Individual carbon footprints are meaningless when the lifestyle of our society is so intricately tied into carbon use. Those who call Al Gore a hypocrite? Give me a break. Better go check your own glass walls before casting stones. How many of us could stand up to the relentless scrutiny and life under a magnifying glass that this family has had to endure? These people could make Mother Teresa come off as a hypocrite.

I worked for a year at Princeton's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab. I remember one lunch a bunch of us had where the director (Jerry Mahlman at the time) was there. He had recently returned from a trip to DC where he met with Senator Gore (still pre-VP Gore) to discuss climate change science with him. He was blown away by how intelligent Mr. Gore was, and repeated to us several times how much he understood about climate research. He was obviously so impressed by him that our conversation made a lasting impact on me and I still remember it clearly.

As climate science has matured and we know something about the future potential impacts of carbon usage, it has become clear that this is no longer a scientific debate but a populist one, and scientists are horrible at public outreach. We desperately needed someone who could communicate the science to the public in an understandable way, who could communicate the urgency of the issue. We needed someone with a high profile.

I believe Al Gore knew full well that by taking on this task, he would be walking right into the line of fire. He knew full well that he and his family would undergo attacks and slander by various interest groups and would be portrayed in the media as an opportunist, as a power-hungry elitist, as a whole slew of negative stereotypes. And he was willing. The Nobel Peace Prize committee recognized this, as well. I hold Al Gore in the highest esteem, and am grateful to him for putting himself out there. There are very few people who are both capable and committed enough to have done the same.

persistence

'Kay.

I saw this comic on one of my favorite science blogs, and it's originally from here. This is one of my favorite comics EVER. My DH laughed too, though I imagine our laughter comes from different perspectives. But still.


This is so perfectly my life for the last few weeks and so perfectly why I've been preoccupied and weird that I could melt. This is me, down to the earnest look of desperation on that sweet blank face.

Stupid, I know. Tell me.

I cannot convert the entire community of global warming deniers in one fell swoop. Or even 1% or them of .01% of them. But I persist in thinking I must try.

I am not going to save the world. Yet I think I must try.

I am barely able to make dinner for my kids and keep them from throwing mud on the neighbor children (OK, I am NOT able to keep them from throwing mud on the neighbors. Fodder for another post one day. I simply thank the universe that my neighbor likes my kids.) What in the hell makes me think I can impact the world in even the smallest way?

I cannot.

But I try. And that's enough for now.

impacts of climate change in the Arctic

If you want to check up on how the ARCTAS campaign is going (Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites), hop on over to the Discovery Channel website to find out... See if you can pick me out!!!!! (That's a joke, BTW. I'm the female.)

blogging from the Arctic

...the subarctic, really.

For the next few weeks, while I am here in Fairbanks, Alaska for a scientific field study to look at the impact of climate change on the Arctic atmosphere, I will be blogging for the Discovery Channel Earth Live webpage. The producer has told me it will go live on Monday, April 7.

The link to the general page is here.

You click on the "From the Field" button to the left of the globe, and then click on one of the pink pins that appears on the globe. (Mine, of course, will be in Fairbanks). I probably won't keep up with this blog much in the meantime. Stop on by and see how things are going up here from time to time! My days so far have been limited to sitting hunched over my computer in a meeting room. Some of those on the aiplanes have gotten to see polar bears trotting across the Arctic Canadian Islands, walruses diving off of the ice and caribou running below during some of their boundary layer (near surface) legs. On Wednesday they'll be flying just by the north pole, and those of you who laughed about us blundering into Russian air space, I'll have you know that Russia has claimed the north pole, so we have to be very careful about where we fly. (Besides, my co-worker filed that particular flight plan instead of me so I can't be blamed).

I'll update when I get the exact link for my part of the Discovery Channel blog...

In the meantime, here's a photo of the DC8. You can see all the inlets for the instruments making the measurements poking out every which way.

uncle

Disclaimer:
Any scientist who reads this post will likely roll his/her eyes at the naivity and shallowness and the gross "duh" factor. Forgive me. My middle name is Pollianna. Whatever. Plus, this blog is my personal journal as a way to stay in touch with my family and friends, rather than a science-based blog, as many of yours are. You and your blogs are needed and I thank you. I'm just an everyday kid working as a scientist but mostly working on being human and blogging about the journey, so I'm coming at it more as an individual and less from the science perspective. Not that interesting for you, but hopefully OK for my 1-8 readers. Any non-scientist will wonder what I'm going on and on about. Any global warming denialist will simply not believe me (as is the norm). Bear with me. I just need to get this out, and then I'm done with this.

I've not written many recent posts about global warming. This is because it exhausts me . I have still felt compelled to discuss the (ridiculously recycled) issues that continue to appear and reappear amongst the ardent crowd of folks who do not believe that global warming or climate change is occurring (I give myself permission to grossly generalize this group of people here for the sake of brevity. What shall I call them? "Deniers?"). Ultimately, what a waste of energy. This is a very small (albeit very vocal) minority on the global scale, and the per capita energy expenditure required to communicate with them tops out because I have found that they are persistently unwilling to engage in any kind of civil discussion...And that is what I have been unwilling to admit until now, and why I am so exhausted by this subject. Oh naivety. I had this ridiculous optimism that given enough perseverance and decency, civil discussion would ensue and understanding would blossom throughout the world. Silly, silly me. So much for us all holding hands and singing Kum-by-yah (my second reference to that song in just a few weeks...I have no idea why).

I would be more than happy to listen to ideas and concerns and partake in a civil discussion, and in fact view that as part of my job. I'm willing to do my part. In fact, I've spent a lot of time reading through the litany of "issues" with the research that are repeated around the blogosphere amongst this crowd and spending time finding reasoned responses to the more credible sounding arguments. (I can take a guess as how many of the "Deniers" have spent a comparable amount of time reading up on the published and peer-reviewed research that supports human-caused climate change. The number is tiny.) You give me any denialist "news item" or any "new finding" (ha), and I dare say I will be able to give you a reasoned, credible argument based in scientific study to show the flaws in such finding, or show you the blatant misrepresentation of data to come up with the findings. It's REALLY not hard. It is, however, time-consuming because I try to come at it with a clean slate and open mind, but that is ultimately ridiculous because no one is going to listen to me.

Here's the real problem. These folks aren't total idiots. They are, however, unwilling to open up and listen, and this is ultimately because they view climate science as having a political agenda. I can partially understand their point, though they are completely wrong. Yes, a large portion of PhDs and research folks are of the liberal persuasion on the political scale, and a large portion of the deniers are very, very right-wing conservative. I can understand the skepticism.

But here's the rub. Science itself is not political. (duh) It's really not. Despite political leanings, despite economic status or gender or race, the scientists I know (and I know a lot of them) are totally focused on finding out how things work. We are trained to look for flaws in any argument. When I have a paper to review, I try to find the chinks in the armor. I feel successful if I do find one. I won an award for a paper where I corrected some flawed arguments that had been published earlier. Science is absolutely relentless - to portray scientists as blindly following a political agenda and participating in any kind of conspiracy is so absurd that I have no words. I have never known a more diversified, more argumentative, or more open-minded crowd than scientists. To characterize scientists as collectively bowing to any overarching agenda, much less a vast conspiracy, or to politicize science completely misrepresents its entire definition.

In addition, I have to say that I work at a research institution where there are probably more researchers on the politically conservative side than not (it's not typical). Yet not a single one of them doubts climate change. This is because when you strip the issue of political colors and are willing to really study the science involved, it is overwhelming. Science is not a matter of interpretation. It is what it is.

But the deniers have decided to believe otherwise, and no amount of energy that I can expend is going to convince them that this is not the case. That totally sucks, and I have decided that it is not worth my time or energy to continue in this. There are some great scientists out there who are good at this (some of which are in my blogroll). But I'm don't have the energy.

It's so much more useful to spend my energy discussing and debating responses to the changing climate, or discussing aspects of the economic impacts of various courses of action and find ways to mitigate adverse impacts (no, I am not ignorant of the possible economic shockwaves that could resonate across the globe if we act drastically and without thinking). I'd prefer a vigorous debate over new energy sources. I'd mostly prefer to discuss aspects of my own research (understanding fast photochemistry in today's atmosphere based on regional observations from aircraft campaigns), but the number of people who would find THAT compelling are - uh - somewhat limited.

I guess I'm crying uncle. I thought there was a place to meet where open dialogue could occur with these folks. I was wrong. Maybe the right answer is to admit to myself there will always be a contingent that will persist in believing that science is really only a political tool, and move on. There will always be that component that will persist in convincing themselves that the world is being duped by a vast conspiracy, and that they are ultimately the only ones with enough fortitude and intelligence to know otherwise. How ironic that those who claim that they are the special few who are smarter than and are above the general "hoodwinked gullible" public are really only those who are the most closed-minded, the most misled, and the most deluded.

OK, I don't feel so bad anymore...

I've had this conversation with several people, including my email list of moms and several friends. I have always been pessimistic that the emphasis on individual action as a "help" to global warming was in error. Seems like Al Gore agrees with me. :-)

We can do our little parts.

But the real difference comes when governments of people take collective action. Yes.

(I'm feeling justified for my perceived negative comments of the past)


-------------------------------------------------
We must abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer.
They can and do help.
But they will not take us far enough without collective action.

- Al Gore, Nobel Lecture
-------------------------------------------------

home again home again jiggity jig

Hello!!!! I'm in the process of rejoining normal life, post-meeting.

First, the AGU (American Geophysical Union) meeting in San Francisco was OK this year. It was much too huge, which is my complaint year after year, but that's OK. There's something kind of comforting for me to be around 15,000 people just as geeky (or more so) than I am. We were all over SF this week. Made me happy. It's funny how comfortable I feel around science-types. I say "funny" because there really are several distinct science-types of people from students to academics to civil servants to managers (I feel a blog entry coming on this one day) but I can meld with most of them. Scientists are an interesting, unique breed. Overall, they're mostly innocent and quite trustworthy. Seriously. I'm trying to find the right unifying description. Passionate? That may be it. And it's not just for science. These folks are highly passionate about whatever it is that trips their trigger. Science. Politics. Hiking. Rock climbing. Music. Wine. Theater. Literature. Star Trek. Whatever it is, there is loads passion there...which is probably the key to why they have subjected their careers to the difficulties inherent in scientific research. You've GOT to be passionate about it to survive this business.

There's a general observation I'd like to make about climate change after being at the conference. There really isn't any discussion left on a scientific level about whether climate change is occurring or whether humans are the cause (that's pretty much an enormous DUH.). Those questions aren't even on the radar anymore in the scientific world for the reason that...um...We've done that one. Scientifically, it's answered. Science has moved beyond that into "what will the future look like" and "What can we do to alleviate the major problems?" sort of level. (This is a link to the Real Climate discussion of the meeting, Check out all 7 "dispatches" from AGU for a summary of some of the climate change sessions about things like geoengineering consequences and Tipping Points. PS - I didn't get to go to these sorts of sessions because I was too busy. More about that later.)

There remains some level of disconnect with the general public - the key question is what that level is and what amount of attention and worry I (we) should expend on it. Is this a very vocal, very small minority that can be safely ignored (i.e., science can move on to addressing the relevant questions and attempt to make progress?) Or is does the vocal minority have journalists and the media by the ear enough that we as scientists need to still be concerned with the level-zero issues (i.e., convincing the public that there is not a global warming conspiracy.) Is that even an issue for scientists? What level of social responsibility do scientists really have? Once the science has been investigated, does it really become the responsibility of scientists to address the politically-driven debate of today's world? Scientists aren't socially equipped to do this. But besides the obvious question of "who else?" I feel like it's our moral obligation. I just don't know the appropriate approach.

It's hard for me to definitively comment on where the public perception is in relation to the scientific one. The scientific position (on the level-zero climate change issue) is quite clear and easy to gauge, but the general public's position is very difficult for me to understand. I'm on the internet a lot which is heavily biased to extremists, so I read a lot of the vocal "deniers" arguments (which can SO totally and easily be debunked point by point - so tiresome ... check here if you don't believe it. BIG yawn.) Despite that, the fact is that there seems to be a not-insignificant number of normal folks who still think there are valid questions about whether humans are causing climate change. Am I wrong? Is my perception skewed because of where I live and from spending a lot of time on the internet?
I've had a few intelligent people articulate very wrong perceptions about climate change to me recently, and *that* scares me more than the extremists. (e.g., no it's NOT arrogant of us to think that humans could change the climate. It has nothing to do with arrogance and everything to do with understanding the facts behind what factors have contributed to the climate over the last century. And no, this current change is NOT driven by natural causes - we have , in fact, investigated all this and found those contributions to be well below what the observed temperature changes have been)

It's always strange and hard for me to move between this uncertainty in "normal life" and my scientific life, where everyone is so solidly and scientifically on the same page. Damned politics. Or whatever it is that has made "people" distrust science suddenly.

On a totally personal level, this meeting was a lot less fun than previous meetings. I *worked* 99.5% of the time. I was either trying to put together my talk or was recoding our model to constrain HONO for a student I'm helping, or was checking the NO to NO2 photochemical balances compared to measurements in response to "issues" from Harvard, etc. etc. One one hand I felt very useful. On the other, I was tired and ready to collapse.

One night (after my talk), GC and I did take a break and sat up at the lounge at the top of our hotel. I got there early enough to grab a table right by the windows overlooking the Bay Bridge and the SF Bay at sunset. Nice. We bought a $65 bottle of wine and enjoyed the view and talked and talked (about lots o' things). I needed that, and so did he, since he's going through some personal stuff that's very tough.

Oh. My presentation, you ask? There are two distinct components to it. The content was great. I got mobbed afterwards by several researchers who wanted to discuss future work we could do. There was a lot of positive interest. Made me feel great. I've got lots of stuff to think about and work on. The second component: the delivery? I get a solid D- or an F. My voice was shaky (even *I* could tell), and the little red laser pointer I used? It's only lucky that I didn't blind someone with my shaky hand. I sucked. Yes really. I did. Big time sucked. I have a phobia of public speaking. I admit it freely. Everyone in that room knows it now, too.

Don't try to make me feel better. I really did suck. As a scientist, I'm OK, or at least passable. As a public speaker I totally suck. I could HEAR it as it was happening. It's a sad, sad thing, and helpless to stop. It's like I was an observer and I could tell I was crashing but was helpless to stop it. Train wreck.

But it's OK. That's my personal little demon to learn to get along with. Plus, that nice bottle wine and the sunset over the bay helped. All in all, I'm really very glad to be home.

stop chicken little

May I point you to a very nice article on our reaction to global warming?
Check this out.

Nobel Peace Prize

Congratulations to the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) and to Al Gore for winning the 2007 Nobel Peace prize.

Hear that rage? The heads of global warming denialists are exploding all over the world. But don't worry, they'll find their tongues soon enough and will resume their campaign of misinformation. (Actually, they already have. No I'm not giving any links here).

The IPCC and Al Gore are both highly deserving. From the Nobel Prize website:

In addition to humanitarian efforts and peace movements, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded for work in a wide range of fields including advocacy of human rights, mediation of international conflicts, and arms control.

Climate change is the issue that will define our generation. No other conflict or action that we as a species take during our lifetimes is going to have as much ultimate impact on the earth and on the human species as climate change will. Yes, that is simply a prediction (and my prediction at that). But after a few decades of studying and thinking about this issue, I am convinced of this truth. Despite the (99.99% unfounded) claims that the science is uncertain, the real evidence strongly supports that humans have altered the carbon balance of the earth/atmosphere system significantly and as a result have initiated a new era of human-induced climate change, and anyone who actually takes the time to review the science in an unbiased manner will agree, I am positive. Al Gore suspected the importance of this "truth" decades ago and has been a steady and stalwart voice for educating the public on climate change ever since. The US military itself has recognized the ultimate threat of climate change to global security and peace in its report on 'National Security and the threat of Climate Change." The Nobel committee awarded the prize to Gore and the IPCC because it wanted to bring into sharper focus the "increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between state" posed by climate change. Climate change is not simply about the world having warmer temperatures. It is about changes in locales of food production, water availability, and ultimately, in wealth. And this is indeed the stuff of peace and wars. That Al Gore has persevered in getting the message to the public in the face of such vicious backlash from certain sectors is a testament to his dedication to this message.

Recognition of the IPCC is a nod to the dedicated work of thousands of scientists. Here is a description of what the IPCC is and why we should pay attention to its conclusions. (and you know what? Only after I found this description of the IPCC and decided to link to it did I realize that it was written by none other than my thesis advisor when he was working at the Environmental Defense Fund. No wonder I felt so at home reading it.) And here is a good essay on the IPCC award.

In just the last week or so, I've had two people ask me about global warming. Both are people I respect a lot and consider to be highly intelligent and unbiased. But both were under the impression that the message about global warming being caused by humans was overinflated and that the current changes in climate could be explained primarily by natural causes. I hope (I think?) I explained to them how scientists know that is not the case now well enough to them to change their minds. (Look here if you're interested. Really - it's the Skeptical Science link I have under my links list. It's a great resource. I'm very impressed with this guy). I do know that I came away exceedingly depressed because the denialists are doing a bang-up job of spreading enough of the seed of doubt out there for it to take some root. Why are people so willing to dismiss decades of work by scientists as incomplete? Do they really think climate science and scientists are so soft and incompetent as to not have considered natural impacts and other such obvious possibilities? Or is it just that as Al Gore stated - that this truth is inconvenient enough to make us desperate to deny it?

In any case. Apart from my concerns about climate and the future, this prize went to a organization and to an individual who are stellar examples to us all. Thank you, Nobel Committee.

thanks mom!

My mom just pointed me to a website for recycling household compact fluorescent bulbs. I almost hyperventilated at the first few prices I saw ($100.00 or more) but wait! Have no fear! For ordinary compact fluorescent bulbs that we use at home, you can dispose of 12 bulbs for about $15.00, just over $1.00 per bulb. That's actually do-able. You buy a "kit" which includes packaging and all postage. When you receive it, you fill the box with used bulbs (I'm figuring that's going to take a LONG time), and ship it off to be recycled when it's full.

Here's the website.

I just ordered mine.

My mom is such a treehugger. I'd post a picture of her hugging a tree in Idaho, but I'm not sure she'd want me to. :-)

when the lights go out

Search out any list of "ways to help the environment" and I guarantee you'll find the admonition to replace your incandescent bulbs with fluorescent ones. They use something like a quarter of the electricity and as a bonus, last much longer than traditional bulbs, saving you some $$ on top of feeling good about being "green."
What's not to love?

We started that process a while ago. Long enough, actually, to have some of our fluorescent bulbs go out. And now all the helpful voices have become very quiet, and I am getting very little help in finding the right way to dispose of these things. Fluorescent bulbs contain a small amount of mercury - not enough that I'm worried about my home, but enough that if we all tossed used bulbs out with the garbage and let them break and release mercury into dumps, we'd end up contaminating our water supplies first and then watch as the mercury made its way on up the food chain. Not ideal.

So after quite a bit of googling I'm positive only that "recycle" is the proper method of disposal. The problem is that not many sites go into more detail than that.

I did, however, find this very nifty earth 911 site where you use your zip code and the type of item you would like to dispose of to find the nearest options for recycling. It looks like the nearest site for fluorescent bulbs recycling is 57 miles away from me, clear in another state. Dag-NABit Jim-Bob. I'm set for motor oil and computer recycling though, with places showing up as close as 0.0 miles from me.

Seriously, if we're going to encourage conservation, we've really got to do it intelligently. While I've found a very large number of announcements for programs giving away fluorescent bulbs and encouraging their use, I've not seen much movement afoot to take care of their disposal. Seems more than a bit shortsighted to me. We can't just jump on the bandwagon de jour and stop thinking. Life is complicated. Taking care of our planet is complicated. But both are worth the effort.

Edited to note that I was recently pointed to a website for reasonably-priced mail-in recycling for these bulbs.

Newsweek article - a must read

Here's the Newsweek article on the story of the Global Warming Deniers machine and who is funding them (take a wild guess).

Also, please take a look at the Skeptical Science link I added. He's got a nice summary of current arguments used by denialists with very clear responses, based on science, that show the total and complete fallacy of these arguments. It's very scary to me how this "machine" of denial has gained such momentum when scientific fact is so very clear in support of the presence of human-induced global warming. It's admitedly not easy to do your own thinking and research, but the fact that people are happy to jump on board whatever ship seems appealing is frightening to me.

hiatus

Hello all....I am reporting from chilly, thunderstormy Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, here. (This is an explanation for my latest brief period of not updating my blog. E and I are visiting our friends out here in the midwest and are having a great time. Squeaky cheese curds are AWESOME.)

Because I'm the only one up this morning, I've been doing some web surfing and thinking about global warming and found a few interesting reads I thought I'd share with any of you who are interested. The first is a somewhat recent article by Freeman Dyson essentially pooh-poohing the concern about (not the presence of) global warming. He's a well respected physicist so I was interested to read his thoughts. There seems to be a lot of presumption on his part about what he thinks climate scientists are like, and what climate scientists (as opposed to environmentalists and public figures) are saying about global warming (e.g. "hype" in his words), however. His carbon sequestration in soil solution, while interesting, seems fairly flippant and very very difficult, if not impossible to fully pull off. In any case, I enjoyed reading his thoughts. He's not of the knee-jerk naysayers camp so he is somewhat informed on the issues. I also found a response to his article from a climate scientist that I thought was very well-informed. So if you're bored, take a look at those articles for more of the back-and-forth banter in the world of climate science. The moral of the story is that no matter how intelligent someone is or how well-respected, and no matter how thoughtful an article sounds at first read, nothing beats further thinking and, ultimately, self-evaluation of a problem.

newsflash

Woowheee!! Yee-haw! Have you read? It's all over the blogosphere. The right wing blogosphere is just giddy! Words like "Climate Porn" and "debunked" and "drastic changes to the data" and "rotten, filthy, scientists" (I added that last one) are just flying all over the place.
All this because 'bloggers have totally debunked global warming'!!! It's OK! We can go back to our SUVS and air conditioned houses and continue to buy food from the opposite coast without a shred of guilt anymore. Whatever am I going to do with my cloth shopping bags now?

See, some guy found an error in the surface temperature data compiled by NASA GISS (partly overseen by none other than Dr. James Hansen - he's that scientist that caused an uproar when he outed NASA's public affairs office when they tried to keep him from talking about his global warming research, the cad). Worse, when this horrible error was pointed out to the scientists, they not only agreed the data was in error, but they corrected it and republished it on their public archive. Can you imagine? Oops, I meant to say that they "quietly" revised the data under the cover of darkness, those slimy so-and-so's. But boy did they underestimate that extra astute right wing, conspiracy-revealing, "global warming myth" crowd. Such an intelligent bunch!! Nothing gets past *them*.

For your enjoyment, here are a few snippets of soundbites you might find about this "controversy."

"Does [such an] an agenda excuse such excess of professional scientists?"

:...government agency is actually participating in a fraud against the American people by withholding information crucial to a major policy issue now facing the nation."

"I would welcome letters to GISS urging them to fully disclose their source code."

(bleah. There is not much that is more tiresome than digging through someone else's code. Do these people really know what they are asking for?)
Even better - this whole "cover-up" is being blamed on a "Y2K" bug. I was waiting and waiting and waiting for something to finally come of that switchover. It took a while, but voila!

According to the DailyTech blog, the NASA temperature data used to estimate the advance of global warming has been shown to be way off the mark, due to a Y2K bug in the graphing software—and the corrected charts tell a very different story:

The Y2K coding bug twist that appeared somewhere in the growth of this story is hilarious. It has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that the year 2000 was involved in a change in the way of reporting some things. (By the way - in more seriousness, I'm not linking to the original sources of some of these pseudo-quotes because the authors are totally and completely deluded and basically intellectually challenged and misguided and not very scientifically enlightened I'm not about to help them spread their disease of idiocy. If you want to read them, google pulls up plenty of sites.)

Yes. Steve McIntyre found an error when examining trends in temperature data compiled on the GISS website (more on the "error" in a second). He was puzzled by a "jump" in data at several stations at the same year, and wrote an email to GISS scientists working on this, who looked into it, discovered the error, corrected the data, promptly corrected their public archive, and credited McIntyre with a personal email and public acknowledgment. (all this cover-up makes me shudder...ewww). Just look at this cover-up statement put right up on the GISS data site when the error was corrected by these sneaky scientists.

Input data for the analysis, collected by many national meteorological services around the world, is the unadjusted data of the Global Historical Climatology Network (Peterson and Vose, 1997 and 1998) except that the USHCN station records up to 1999 were replaced by a version of USHCN data with further corrections after an adjustment computed by comparing the common 1990-1999 period of the two data sets. (We wish to thank Stephen McIntyre for bringing to our attention that such an adjustment is necessary to prevent creating an artificial jump in year 2000.)

Ya think I'm being a little sarcastic?

Yeah, I'm pissed (again), especially after reading about how we nasty scientists need to be more transparent and publish our code and "scripts." Oh such a secretive bunch we are... other than the scads of publicly available scientific literature that is peer reviewed and published in journals available at many libraries and online, with the universal requirement of "reproducibility" - i.e., every paper I publish is required to contain enough information that the results can be reproduced by other scientists. Maybe these bloggers don't realize that. Or maybe the problem is that a baseline of some intelligence and scientific knowledge is required in order to understand what was done in the analysis. Or that the raw data is available at the GISS website. I could go on, but I digress.

We were talking about this tremendous "error" that has drastically changed the data! and completely debunked global warming! and shows how we Gore-loving liberal scientists have been horribly sloppy and depended on junk science to come up with and perpetrated this myth.
You wanna see? Huh? Huh?



I got this plot from the following blog: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/08/12/before-and-after/
The plot shows global average temperature from 1880 to today, red diamonds are the original GISS data and the open diamonds are corrected with this earth-shattering, global warming debunking, incredible "error" discovered by bloggers. Can you see the difference? Me either.
That's because it is insignificant. It's slightly more significant when you look only at the US data (meaning, you can actually kind of make out any difference at all). This link is to Dr. Hansen's email reply to this supposed controversy, and includes plots for temperature trends before and after the "correction" for the globe and for the US. If you take a look at this link, the little bit of green you see at the end of the US plot shows the "difference". And if you look at the large peaks in annual temperatures for 1934 and 1998, those two "jumps" that look identical with no noticeable change in the uncorrected and corrected data? Those are the two points that the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the right wing blogospere are using to shout (loudly) about how this "error" has drastically changed the conclusions on global warming because the 1934 peak is something like .02 degrees higher than 1998 rather than the other way around now. So from this it's absolutely CLEAR that "global warming" was limited to the dust bowl days of the Great Depression and any warming trend is clearly a hoax now, right? Excuse me while I bang my forehead on the desk a few more times.

This is such a stupid, even-less-than-minor thing that in a saner world would be totally unnoticed because it is SO ESOTERIC AND BORING, but in the naive, brainwashed world of the global warming naysayers, it has been twisted into a completely false, completely misleading pile of propaganda crap that in no way resembles reality.

Good. Lord.

Someone please reassure me that the collective wisdom and intelligence of this country is higher than this. I feel a little dirty after I read the arguments on these blogs. Makes my head hurt to think of the twisted logic that is attempting to pass for reason. Maybe I should stop visiting them, but quite honestly, I really do like to try to keep an open mind and think about arguments that I've not heard before to discover if there is truth in them that I've overlooked. Call ME naive, but I figure I don't know something well until I've looked at it from all sides and from all directions. Somewhere, I have the (perhaps deluded) hope that there are intelligent arguments against global warming. Because in reality, I would really love for that to be true. (and if I published something reasonable to that effect, I would be a superstar). But so far, I've not come across anything that passes muster.

What really upsets me is that I know at least a modicum of these bloggers really are smart. So the fact that they buy into these arguments and perpetrate them means they are either lazy (too lazy to do their research), naive (don't think they need to do research in the first place), or brainwashed (propagandaists). I'm more than happy to listen to dissenting views. That's my job and I do enjoy it. But let's limit it to intelligent arguments, shall we? These ridiculous ones are tiresome.

For an intelligent and reasoned look at this issue by people that know this kind of science, check out what the Real Climate guys say.

more on the scientific process

I'm continuing in the same vein of thought as my last post, but I'll try to be a little less obscure about my point.

Science can be maddening. Thomas Kuhn describes the evolution of science as long periods of "normal science" punctuated by major paradigm shifts (earth goes from flat to round, sun orbits the earth to planets orbit the sun, Newton's laws of motion to Einstein's theory of relativity). I see the normal periods as also sprinkled with countless little shifts in thinking but with orders of magnitude of less immediate significance.

Each little bump results in the worker bee scientists scuttling and scurrying around behind it to see how well it holds up. Only with time and intense scrutiny do the majority of scientists begin to congregate behind the bump, elevating it to a slightly larger bump. And so on. I tried to make the plot trend upwards to show increased understanding even between paradigm shifts, because that's how I think it works.

Myself, I find the entire evolution of the gain of scientific understanding fascinating. Everything is empirically driven (observation) and any theory we come up with must describe those observations. (Which, in atmospheric sciences, can seem frustratingly contradictory at times.) However, the public really doesn't care much about the evolution of these shifts in thinking. What is important to them is how the current "state" of science impacts their lives. (Are pesticides harmful to humans? Should we use asbestos? What do you do to stop infections?) Normally, science only makes it into the process of general public knowledge, and sometimes into policy-making once it has withstood a significant amount of testing.

Then along comes global warming, hand in hand with the age of the internet. This mix of direct impact on the environment (and lives) of the human population, political and economic implications, and the ability to communicate every wrinkle, every possible theory to massive numbers of the population is new. Because now, much of what makes it into the press for public consumption are these tiny little wiggles that have not been subjected to the rigorous testing. With the internet, anyone is able to cherry-pick the scientific studies and find the ones that support their pre-selected point of view to be offered up as "scientific evidence"... which results in a mess of convoluted contradictions, rendering the public frustrated and completely skeptical of science.

I want to state here that I am absolutely 100% behind the public questioning the science behind global warming. They SHOULD do that. (Just as they should question the decisions our government, our president, makes about foreign policy, etc. but that's another day...). I teach my kids that daily - to question what they hear. To ask themselves if it makes sense. What annoys the #@$@ out of me is folks who walk into the global warming debate and arm themselves with obscure and untested theories (those cherry-picked wiggles) to "prove" that global warming is a hoax. That is no longer questioning, but is manipulation.

We don't know what is going to happen with the climate tomorrow or in the next hundred years. We are working with the empirical evidence that we have and those theories which have undergone and withstood rigorous testing, and have come up with a consensus of what we (scientists) currently believe will happen to our climate (the IPCC reports are the best source for what this consensus currently is). Again, these reports cannot offer absolute proof. They never will. But there is an enormous amount of confidence by most scientists in that report. It's not a guess. It is full of rigorously tested theories, including mountains of empirical evidence. While it is interesting and fun to talk about the evolution of scientific thinking and how theories constantly change, it is important not to forget that science works. We have antibiotics. We have learned the importance of clean water. We have traveled to the moon. We have identified the ozone hole and CFCs as the likely culprits, have passed laws to restrict emissions of CFCs, and the most recent empirical evidence is that the hole is gradually "repairing."

There is some level of uncertainty in science, but we must remember to keep any uncertainty in perspective. We must weigh the repercussions of action versus inaction. We must never stop questioning, but must also not tolerate manipulation of science. (We must, we must, we must).
There are frighteningly important decisions out there that we have the responsibility of making. What we need is solid, thoughtful leadership that is immune to the influence of any company, any groups with special interests. We need to calm the hysteria and bickering and find solutions.