Articles by Andrew Dessler

AGU releases position statement on climate change

The American Geophysical Union, a scientific organization with over 50,000 members, mostly earth scientists, just released a position statement on climate change.

It is a strong endorsement of the mainstream view of climate science, as articulated by the IPCC reports: the Earth is warming, humans are to blame for most of the recent warming, and future warming may be disastrous.

While this is a strong statement by itself, its true strength comes when you consider that this statement is just one of a spate of similar statements by other expert organizations: the American Meteorological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (PDF), as well as several others. Even the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, while not exactly embracing the connection between carbon dioxide and climate, cannot bring themselves to contradict it.

Then, of course, we have the "Inhofe 400." Whom should we believe? Jim Inhofe or virtually all of the world's experts? That's a tough one ...

Climate skeptics blame the sun for global warming

Global warming skeptics everywhere are jumping on the solar bandwagon: "It's not greenhouse gases, it's the sun! Let's burn some coal to celebrate!"

There are, of course, many, many problems with the solar theory as an explanation for recent warming. To me, the most damning is that the correlation has failed in the last few decades. As highlighted in an interesting news item in this week's Science:

[Courtillot] and his team acknowledge that "anomalous warming" in the past 2 decades apparently cannot be linked to solar or geomagnetic activity, although they decline to ascribe it to greenhouse gases.

On the other hand, the mainstream theory that today's warming is caused by carbon dioxide (along with other anthropogenic effects and known natural variability) provides an explanation not just for the "anomalous warming," but for just about every climate variation over the last 100 million years.

The parallels between accepting obesity and ignoring global warming

I have recently been thinking about the parallels between climate change and the obesity epidemic facing the United States and other industrialized countries. Both are the result of our society's desire to consume, and there are similarities in how we might respond.

There are basically three ways to respond to obesity, and each has an analog for climate change. First, you can try to reduce caloric intake. Bob Park calls this the thermodynamic diet: take in fewer calories than you expend and you'll lose weight. For the climate change problem, the parallel is reducing carbon-dioxide emissions.

The problem with this approach, of course, is that it is hard. No one likes to diet, and many find it impossible to lose and keep off weight this way. Similarly, our society is not going to find it easy to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. That does not mean, of course, that it can't be done, or that we won't be happy with the results. I've never met someone who's lost a lot of weight that isn't ecstatically happy with the results, and I think there are many benefits for our society that come along with reducing CO2 emissions.

Second, you can simply say, "I'm overweight and I'm going to stay overweight. If I have any health problems, I'll let the doctors solve them for me." So if your weight causes hip problems, just have the hip replaced. If your cardiovascular system goes on the fritz, utilize the latest in cardiovascular care to get the problematic arteries unblocked or a pacemaker installed. If the risk of stroke rises, take the appropriate medication to bring the risk down.

A recent news report said that obesity is now a lifestyle choice for Americans. In other words, many overweight people have simply given up trying to lose weight by taking in fewer calories, mainly because they just can't do it. They are now relying on the health care system to deal with the impacts of their obesity:

Today: George Waldenberger

In previous editions of the "Inhofe 400," we found some skeptics who were completely unqualified and others who are qualified but not actually skeptical.

Today's "skeptic" falls into the latter category. He is meteorologist George Waldenberger.

In response to his inclusion on the list, George sent an email to Inhofe's staffers that began:

Marc, Matthew:

Take me off your list of 400 (Prominent) Scientists that dispute Man-Made Global warming claims. I've never made any claims that debunk the "Consensus".

You quoted a newspaper article that's main focus was scoring the accuracy of local weathermen. Hardly Scientific ... yet I'm guessing some of your other sources pale in comparison in terms of credibility.

You also didn't ask for my permission to use these statements. That's not a very respectable way of doing "research".

Wow. He doesn't leave much to the imagination.

A few thoughts.