By Doug L. Hoffman, the Resilient Earth

In an essay adapted from his 2009 AAAS Annual Meeting keynote address, James J. McCarthy has produced a fairly concise statement of the anthropogenic global warming believer’s world view. After a self-serving review of climate science history, McCarthy trots out the usual litany of climate change troubles: increased cyclones, rain and floods, rising sea levels and, of course, those pesky tipping points. The tone of the article is set early on, when research is cited stating that mankind’s impact on Earth is “sufficiently profound to declare that we have transitioned from the Holocene era of Earth history to the Anthropocene.”

McCarthy, professor of Biological Oceanography at Harvard and outgoing president of the AAAS, has done an admirable job in summarizing the main stream, “concensus view” version of climate science. His article, titled “Reflections On: Our Planet and Its Life, Origins, and Futures,” appeared in the December 18, 2009, issue of the AAAS journal Science. He begins with a quick rundown of how the CO2 centric AGW theory developed - a history that could have been cribbed from The Resilient Earth.

With the feelgood preliminaries disposed of, now comes the real meat of the article. What follows is a recitation of the basic beliefs of climate change alarmists. Much like Saint Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, McCarthy’s article is a plea for unity among climate change believers in the face of various issues raised by skeptics. Like that epistle, the tenants of faith are layed out- humans are harming the planet in a myriad of ways, anthropogenic CO2 is primarily to blame, the IPCC models are correct, things are probably worse than they seem, and so on.

Much like St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, McCarthy’s article is in part a defense of climate science’s ministry. In a strange twist on the doctrine of weakness being strength, the faults of the IPCC reports are called out as reasons to believe even more fervently in global warming:

Over the past two decades, many of the future climate projections from the IPCC and other groups have been proven to be conservative. This is in part because an IPCC assessment is by its very nature highly conservative. The content of an IPCC assessment is based on peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals. Thus, the most recent findings, perhaps already widely known among experts, may not be included in an assessment report if the work has not been published. Furthermore, recently published findings that have yet to be corroborated by other investigators may receive less emphasis than well-established work from an earlier period…

Unfortunately, when data confirm that projections for future climate have been overly conservative, this implies more serious negative impacts. Some aspect of the projected rates for greenhouse gas emissions or for the modeled climate response to these emissions has been underestimated.

So, welcome to the Anthropocene era, when humanity confesses to its sins against nature and repents its CO2 emitting ways. As penance the developed nations will lay waste to their industrial economies and the developing world abandon their dreams of a prosperous future. But even after bemoaning the decline in funding for Earth observations in NASA’s budget, the catalog of worsening conditions, and warnings that “there may yet be surprises” McCarthy finds succor in the new leadership of the Obama administration. “Never before have scientists been so influential in their active support of sound government policies, nor as selfless in accepting positions of great responsibility in the governance of our nation.” So here is his earnest plea- keep the faith. And make no mistake, belief in anthropogenic global warming has become a matter of faith not science.

Be safe, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical.

Read this full essay and review here.