Are you a “Warmist”?

So, gentle reader, how do you know if you’re a “warmist”?

According to Rush Limbaugh’s comments on his radio show today, you’re a “warmist” if you believe that man-made global warming is real. It doesn’t matter if global warming IS real, if global warming really IS man-made at least in part, if you’re a scientifically skeptical sort who thinks that the weight of the evidence IS in favor of the man-made global-warming hypothesis. No matter what your convictions on the issue, or how soberly you arrived at your considered opinion, you’d better start calling yourself a “warmist” so that TRUE conservatives can identify you, rip on you, deride you and ridicule your position on this issue.

Now, let me say that I’m not a supporter of the Al Gore school of global
climate change. The Al Gore school of thought seems to believe that the globe is warming at a rate of (up to) one degree per decade, and that the whole human race will be facing calamitous changes in all of our lives because we’ve unknowingly fallen into the “sin” of failing to accuse Big Oil of conspiring to poison our environment with their carbon-emitting products.  This school seems also to accommodate the radical view ascribed to Ted Turner recently, that within a short time the whole world will turn to cannibalism, because of the catastrophic effects of climate change on the availability of water, farm-able land and human tempers. This school also seems to accept such far-out ideas as each and every American farmer paying $150 per year (or more) for each head of “methane emitting” cattle in the US, a proposal floated by the Bush administration’s EPA a few years back, and then (mercifully) put back on the shelf. I’m not a supporter of the Al Gore school of thought because, after all, how the heck does accusing Big Oil and paying “cow-fart” taxes to the feds actually improve the climate?

On the other hand when I look at the evidence, it’s pretty clear that the globe IS warming. Whether this warming is man-made or not is an open question (but more about that in a minute). And no, I’m NOT using data from the (“discredited”) University of East Anglia to support my view.

Last month, I found a graph of global temperature at the NOAA website, showing just how much our globe has warmed in the past 100-plus years.

This really neat graph shows average annual temperatures from weather stations around the world since 1880, carefully vetted by the premier weather-and-climate agency in the world, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  NOAA is an agency of the US government that provides independent weather and climate data to individuals, business and governments around the world. The National Weather Service is a part of NOAA.

Average, worldwide, annual temperature is colored blue in the graph if it’s below the long-term average temperature, and it’s colored red if it’s above the average. I think this shows pretty clearly that our globe is warming. Curiously, land is warming faster than the ocean. The land-and-ocean together seem to have warmed by about 1.5 °F over the past 100 years. The average temperature bounces around a lot from year to year, but there’s a pretty clear long-term trend.

Yet a graph like this gives NO indication about what is causing the warming. We could be at the high-point of a 200-year cycle (it kind of looks like it, to my eye), so temperatures could be headed downward over the next 100 years. We could be experiencing climate change due to our sun’s sunspot activity. The warming trend COULD be man-made; it MIGHT be a long-term warming trend that’s going to continue for over 1000 years or more. But we just don’t know at this point.

I’ve been saying for over a year now (down at the barber shop, mostly) that there are three important questions that I want to see answered about Global Warming before we commit to a policy direction:

1. Is it happening?
2. Does it matter?
3. Is there anything we can do about it?

Obviously, if you answer “No” to question one, you don’t need to ask questions two and three. But I believe that the answer to question number one is a clear YES, it IS happening! So I go on to question number two: Does it matter? And the scientific answer to this is “We just don’t know”. IF the warming is a continuous upward trend rather than a cycle, and IF it’s mostly caused by carbon dioxide emissions from carbon fuels that we’re pulling out of the ground, and it’s NOT due mostly to sunspots or some other natural phenomena, and IF there are no natural processes that limit the increase, then it MAY matter. Right?

And if it does matter, then we’ll need to ask question number three. But right now, we just don’t know the answer to question two. And I have to wonder if it’s responsible to forge ahead on actual policies before we’ve answered all three questions. Sure, lets debate the issues with civility, but how can we know what’s good policy before we’ve asked the right questions?

And we aren’t going to have the answer to question two for quite some time, maybe 10 or 20 years. Yes, the global temperature may increase by one or two tenths of a degree in that time. But that’s a pretty small increase given the daily swings in temperature (around 20 °F) and seasonal temperature swings of well over 100 °F in some parts of our country. So we need to press the climate scientist to keep their noses to the grindstone, keep up the scientific debate, and keep on challenging each old and new hypothesis that comes along. And, while we’re at it, I believe we should all keep our heads bowed in prayer, thanking God for the amazing world he gave us, and commit ourselves to continued good stewardship of this world of ours as we learn more fully what’s going on.

In the mean time, I want to encourage my friends on the left to recognize that I’m with them when it comes to acknowledging the reality of world-wide climate-warming. However, on matters of public policy, skipping questions two and three makes no sense to me. Jumping from “It’s happening” to “Let’s trust the federal government to intervene in our lives, raise our taxes, take our cars away, and tell China and India to keep pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere even though we know that’s bad” just seems like lunacy to me. Let’s be sober about the issues.

On the other hand, I want to encourage my friends on the right to
accept the scientific data, consider the possibility that the situation could be very serious for future generations, and press forward on answering questions two and three. If conservatives continue to fight the data, they seriously risk becoming irrelevant in the debates ahead; they seriously risk a total collapse of credibility on the issues. And if conservatives lose their credibility, the folks proposing loony solutions might be the only credible policymaking force left standing a generation from now. Which would be a serious problem for all of us, in my estimation.

So why do I think Rush’s comments deserve a 5-shovel award? Because it seems to me that Rush is continuing a recent trend among conservative talk-show hosts of digging himself into a hole he can’t easily get out of for years to come. Rush may have a perspective worthy of debate when he says that the policies of the current administration make little scientific sense. But he’s got to back up his position with scientific facts if he’s going to have any credibility in this. Currently, I see him largely dissing the science, oversimplifying the complexity of the issues, and ignoring the risks to our children (and their children’s children) brought about by complacently doing nothing for generations to come.

So, now that you know what a “warmist” is, are YOU a “warmist”?

Just ask’n.