Pro: Climate change is real; there is no debate
By Walter C. Oechel

Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 12:01 a.m.

The message from five decades of scientific research, the public-at-large and even most politicians is clear: Climate change is real and we must act now. Our future health, economic well-being and national security are at risk if we don’t.

“But what about the debate?” There really isn’t one. The following are facts:

• Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that acts to warm the planet.

• Carbon dioxide is being emitted from fossil fuels by human activity.

• The amount of carbon dioxide emitted from fossil fuel use is increasing.

• The climate is getting warmer, more unstable, and the climate extremes are greater.

• This can only be adequately explained by including human carbon dioxide emissions.

More than 90 percent of the U.S. and international scientific communities agree that while there has always been climate variation, the recent historic warming is due to human activities, particularly from fossil fuel overuse.

I have been working in the area of global warming, climate change and the impacts of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide for more than three decades. The critical scientific issues were quite well understood 30 years ago but public dissemination of relevant information and appropriate new policy have been thwarted by media laziness, the loss of the Fairness Doctrine in broadcasting and a disinformation campaign funded in part by elements of the fossil fuel industry.

As a false debate raged, we lost valuable time that could have been used to develop technologies and approaches to lower carbon dioxide emissions and increase energy efficiency. Instead, the United States has increased its reliance on foreign-supplied fossil fuel. As we now move slowly toward energy efficiency, we are behind the curve in comparison to other countries but still have the potential to become a leader in renewable technologies. We need to act quickly and effectively to help slow the effects of climate change, gain market-share in renewables, reduce foreign debt and reduce our reliance on insecure foreign fossil fuel markets.

A rarely discussed factor affecting our global health and climate stability is population growth. The world population is increasing by more than a billion people every 15 years, and on average each person is emitting more carbon dioxide. Between 1990 and 2007, as obfuscation and debate regarding climate continued, world population increased by 9.8 percent and per-person carbon dioxide emissions increased by 25 percent. These two factors resulted in an increase of total fossil fuel emissions by 38 percent.

Americans have often faced challenges that have brought about innovation and success. The opportunity to create a long-term and forward-thinking economy based on green technologies is within our reach and includes solar homes and electric cars using renewable energy. We should work with other nations in promoting education and health, which will help slow population growth. With the data collected by scientists, the tools developed by a growing green energy sector and the workforce trained in math, science and engineering to implement these new technologies, we have an opportunity to boost our national and global economy and mitigate the effects of climate change. We have no other choice but to work together globally to avert long-term global climate disaster.

Oechel is professor of biology and director of the Global Change Research Group at San Diego State University.

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Con: Denialists say it’s all about the water vapor
By Jack Henderson

Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 12:01 a.m.

First, to set the record straight, examination of ice core samples from the arctic shows that cyclical global warming and cooling has been going on for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. It is the sun’s emissions that provide the heat, and greenhouse gasses trap that heat, warming the Earth. As the sun goes through cycles of more or less emission, the Earth goes through cycles of warming and cooling.

Water vapor is Earth’s most significant greenhouse gas. About 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is from naturally occurring water vapor, and about 5 percent of it from other gasses. Of the other gasses, carbon dioxide is about 3 percent. Of that portion, about half is man-made.

Former Vice President Al Gore touched off the man-made global warming hysteria. His error-filled movie persuaded many that people are responsible for global warming. The subsequent award of the Nobel Prize led to many scientists and nonscientists becoming disciples of the prophet Gore.

In order to get funding and notoriety, these acolytes deliberately excluded water vapor as a greenhouse gas in their analyses. And, in fact, leaked e-mails show that there was collusion by climate scientists to skew scientific information in favor of man-made global warming.

In a December letter to The San Diego Union-Tribune, two distinguished scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography wrote “the denialists are never held to the same standards but are allowed to present their charges as if they carried the same weight as published research.”

To the contrary, a multitude of publications from prestigious institutions, and dating from the 1950s to current time, present data including water vapor. One notable quote is from S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia: “I can only see one element of the climate system capable of generating these fast, global changes, that is, changes in the tropical atmosphere leading to changes in the inventory of the earth’s most powerful greenhouse gas - water vapor.”

And from Wallace Broecker, a leading world authority on climate at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University: “The ability of humans to influence greenhouse water vapor is negligible. As such, individuals and groups whose agenda it is to require that human beings are the cause of global warming must discount or ignore the effects of water vapor to preserve their arguments.”

The question for the Scripps professors and the Gore disciples is simply, how do you account for water vapor?

Carbon dioxide is relegated further down on the list by recent reports that tell of the presence of previously unknown sources of methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas some 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat. It is bubbling up from the Arctic Ocean floor. Over the past couple of decades, researchers have documented about 90 oceanic locations of methane hydrate, estimated to contain as much as 63,000 gigatons or more of carbon. As the ocean warms, more and more methane will be released from the ocean floor and eclipse the effects of carbon dioxide.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are pledging to provide billions of dollars for other countries to cut down their carbon emissions. Wouldn’t it be better to spend those billions by helping those put in need because of global warming? Icecap Note: or because of misguided government policies.

See the debate story here.

CO2 has been a boon to vegetation and enabled us to feed many millions more people

or seen in experiments here.

Greenhouses know this and actually many pump 3 times the ambient air CO2 into the greenhouses to produce a more vigorous plant growth, CO2 reaches levels up to 5 or 10 times higher in crowded auditoriums and malls, 30 times higher in submarines with no ill effect. CO2 is not a pollutant but an essential plant fertilizer. It has little or no effect on global temperatures. As both Singer and Broeker say, its all about water vapor and satellites and balloons say it is not increasing. The governments and environmentalists don’t talk about water vapor because there is no way to make money off of it. They can’t tax the hydrological cycle or prevent you or the soil and oceans from evaporating water vapor or trees transpiring it. They can and have tweaked their climate models to show water vapor increasing as CO2 increases, but as noted that is not the case. This is why their climate models despite their best efforts to manipulate temperatures to appear otherwise are failing miserably.