More Heat Than Light in Climate Change Denial

Well, the climate change skeptics have recently been smugly relishing what they deem to be vindication.

I actually have something in common with these folks: I too would like it to not be true that our activities are having an impact on climate. But there’s a world of difference between wishing ever so hard for a pony and actually having something to feed carrots to at your birthday party.

The recent uproar hinges on the contention that the warmest year on record was about 10 years ago, as if to suggest that warming has stopped entirely.

Any expectation that global temperature changes taking place will display a neat, tidy, consistent year-after-year incremental change reveals astonishingly poor comprehension of how intractably complex global climate is. The data are noisy, filled with short-term ups and downs, and they will continue to do precisely that. To hold up the most recent decade of data from a 4 billion year old planet as proof of anything (other than technical illiteracy) is a fool’s errand.

But more significantly, and as this terrific RealClimate article points out, the temperature data set at the root of the current brouhaha—the one purportedly indicating no increase in temperature over the past 10 or 11 years—has one doozy of a flaw. It fails to take into account the temperature changes at the poles, which have witnessed the globe’s greatest rates of temperature increase. Oops.

It’s a critical oversight. In fact, the last couple years have seen several reports highlighting rates of change, particularly of ice coverage at the poles, which exceed bad-to-worst case predictions. This is no minor matter: with decreased ice coverage comes a decreased capacity to reflect incoming solar energy. With more dark area exposed—open water and land alike—more heat is retained, making it available to melt more ice. It’s a clear-cut and potentially nasty feedback loop.

As it turns out, the magical, silver bullet decade-long data set, when corrected for the glaring oversight, reveals a short term temperature increase trend that fits snugly with the long-term upward trends that rational minds have been warning us to pay heed.

I get it: there are scientists who aren’t on board with human induced climate change. That’s fine, but does nothing to change the overwhelming consensus remaining at a level of strength that is almost unheard of in other complex technical matters.

Science is less about firm proclamations regarding what absolutely is, and far more about refining question after question that help sharpen our sense of what might be.

Particularly with something so mind-bogglingly complex and critically important as our planet’s climate, the expectation that 100 percent surety be in place before changing course (because, well, 95 percent just isn’t good enough) isn’t simply laughably unrealistic. It’s totally derelict.

If some people feel compelled to stop chewing a particular gum until that holdout fifth dentist changes his mind, that’s fine. But otherwise, consider finding another planet to play chicken with.

Image courtesy of Antarktika via Wikimedia Commons