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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Climate-change alarmism runs into a reality check The new century has cooled the case for climate alarmism. Global warming has stalled — not accelerated as expected. Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere have increased, but temperatures have been flat for the last eight years and have slightly fallen since 1998's El Nino-driven temperature spike. If the cool-off continues until 2015, as could be the case according to a study published in Nature magazine, we will have had a see-saw of global warming (1900-45), global cooling (1945-75), global warming (1975-98), and flatness (1998-2015). Where does all of this leave us coming out of the Little Ice Age that ended in the mid-18th century — and after a century of greenhouse gas buildup in the atmosphere? Today's temperature is about 1 degree Fahrenheit warmer, and in a naturally warmer climate cycle. Compare this to Al Gore's scary talk about an 11-degree man-made temperature rise this century under business as usual. One decade does not end the debate. But it is yet another data point against treating carbon dioxide as a pollutant and stringently regulating today's consumer-chosen energy economy. And it explains the desperation of those who accuse critics of climate catastrophism as being "deniers" (as in Holocaust deniers) and "flat earthers." Of course the climate is changing — always has and always will — and there may very well be a distinct human influence on climate. Carbon dioxide is a warming agent, as are the other greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere from human activities. But the good news is that so far the observed climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases is much less than what some climate models predict. And the news gets better. A moderately warmer and wetter world, natural or man-made, coupled with the carbon dioxide fertilization effect on plants and agriculture, has distinct benefits, not just costs. As a climate specialist at the U.S. Department of Interior has calculated, a 600-fold increase in carbon dioxide emissions in the last two centuries has accompanied an eight-fold increase in population, a 75-fold rise in manufacturing and a 60-fold increase in global economic output. This is why climate economists are much more optimistic than many climate scientists about the future of climate and the economy. The recent temperature reversal comes on top of falsified climate mini-scares. One headline-grabber was that ocean circulation patterns disrupted by global warming would freeze over North America and Western Europe. "False alarm," Science magazine would later declare to little fanfare. Hurricane Katrina was featured in Al Gore's book and movie, An Inconvenient Truth, as if man, not nature, were to blame. But subsequent research has painted a very mixed picture about hurricanes in a warmer world. Most research predicts fewer tropical storms will develop, and changed wind patterns might cancel out the effect of warmer waters on hurricane strength. There is more agreement that extra-tropical storms are lessened from warming because of a diminished temperature gradient between the poles. These offsetting factors and positive effects of man's influence on global climate should not be surprising; it is environmental religion to believe that nature is optimal and that human influence on climate can only be bad. Gore's scenario about a 20-foot sea-level rise in man's future has also not sat well with science. The modest sea-level rise of recent decades — continuing a trend of the past centuries for reasons that are not well understood — is expected to continue. While Greenland is losing ice, Antarctica is gaining ice. Melting Arctic sea ice, meanwhile, does not affect sea level — nor does the growth of sea ice in the southern ocean — for the same reason that melting ice cubes do not cause a drink to spill. The sea-level debate concerns inches, not feet, for future decades and even centuries. The retreating climate scare has direct policy implications for the new Congress and the Obama administration. The federal deficit should not be swelled by quixotic "green jobs" — public-works programs justified as a "climate policy." Wind and solar power are the least efficient energies and translate into more cost and less reliability for energy users. Rationing carbon dioxide via a cap-and-trade program is all pain and no gain. And blocking increased access to public lands for oil and gas drilling as a climate policy throws away an economic stimulus that would actually raise revenue for the U.S. Treasury and would help consumers worldwide. The 20-year climate alarm has run into a much needed reality check. Real problems must be addressed instead of speculative ones. One hopes that President-elect Obama is not a puppet on the alarmists' string, for economic recovery requires free-market energy, not inferior politically chosen energy.
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