By DUANE SCHRAG
Salina Journal
Admit it, you're not a scientist.
So what you know about global warming came from someone else (please don't say you made up your mind because you remember there being more snow when you were a kid, or, worse yet, because we had a really big ice storm this year).
And because the science behind the theories of climate change is so complex -- calculating the re-entry trajectory of an orbiting satellite is, by comparison, trivial -- the question for most people turns on which expert they believe.
The believers
Climate Change Believers -- those who accept the theory that human actions are significantly accelerating global warming, and if unchecked likely will have severe consequences -- are backed by some of the most prestigious scientific organizations in the world.
When Rod Bremby, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, explained to a Salina audience last month why he believes two new coal-fired power plants should not be built in Holcomb, he named a handful of those groups who warn that trends in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel must be reversed: the Geological Society of America, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Physics, the American Meteorological Society.
"These are the top scientists in the nation," he said.
The doubters
But many Climate Change Doubters insist there is real consensus among scientists on this question. Rep. Deena Horst, R-Salina, said during a legislative forum last month that she thinks the experts are evenly divided.
Indeed, the Doubters have stressed the complexity and uncertainty. And they are certainly buoyed by the Global Warming Petition Project, which claims it has "obtained the support and signatures of more than 19,000 American scientists for a petition opposed -- entirely on scientific grounds published in peer reviewed journals -- to the hypothesis of 'human-caused global warming.' "
So who are these scientists?
The list, which is posted on the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine's Web site (www.oism.org), can be downloaded by state. The Salina Journal downloaded the Kansas section -- 156 names -- and tried to find out what they did and, if possible, interview them.
About two-thirds of the names came up in Internet searches. They represented a variety of professions -- geologists, agronomists, oil exploration and processing, physicians, even meteorologists.
Virtually none appeared to be active in research with climate change implications.
The only one who did appear said he never signed the petition.
"I don't know how they got my name," said Bala Subramaniam, director of the Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis at Kansas University.
"The research I am working on is to prevent carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere."
Subramaniam said he contacted the petition project administrator.
"I got a quick response that they would remove my name," he said.
It's awfully vain of us
Most of the people contacted for the story acknowledged signing the petition.
"I don't know if there's any reason to debate whether the climate is getting warmer or not," said Jon Callen, president of Edmiston Oil Co., Wichita. Callen said he has an engineering degree from the University of Kansas, and a geology degree from Kansas State University.
"I think it's awfully vain of us to believe that we can control the climate of the Earth," he said. But he acknowledged that he really hasn't studied the science behind the climate change debate.
"I haven't made myself a full student of all the science," he said. "Essentially what I know is what I read in the newspaper."
Ernest Angino has been a student of the subject. Angino, retired geology professor, has studied the polar ice and has published work on arctic temperatures. He subscribes to the view that what we're seeing is a natural, 1,500-year climate cycle.
"If you think of a 1,500-year cycle -- 600 AD when it got warm the first time, add 1,500 and voila, if you do fifth-grade math, here you are in the 21st century and it's warming," Angino said. "This (human-caused global warming) is going to turn out to be one of the major scientific hoaxes ... It's politicians taking this thing and running with it."
Thornton Anderson, a retired geologist from Wichita who worked all his adult life in the petroleum business, dismissed the Believers also.
"There are relatively few geologists that believe in global warming," he said. "It's not anywhere near the serious problem they are talking about."
Confusion about data
That's not the position of the Geological Society of America. The group adopted a position paper in October 2006 saying interpretations of the geological record show that changes in the atmospheric composition, "especially with respect to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, is unprecedented in Earth's recent history."
Several people who signed the petition said they reject the popular climate change theory, because they believe the conclusions are driven by data collected in the past century, and that when the geological record is examined current temperatures and carbon dioxide levels are nothing unusual.
"They're only looking at data from the last 50 to 100 years," said Heidi Petermann, Overland Park, who has a degree in meteorology and was a meteorological technician with the National Weather Service in Michigan.
But they're not.
"Specifically," the Geological Society of America position paper continues, "the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the past 650,000 years, and probably higher than at any time in the past 30 million years."
Dave Relihan is a meteorologist at WIBW in Topeka. He said people who see human-influenced climate change aren't following the science.
"They have other reasons for making the claim," Relihan said. "They purportedly base it on science, but when that science is scrutinized, it is discovered it is flawed, manipulated and sometimes made up."
Kent Craghead, a math professor at Dodge City Community College, said only part of the story is being told.
"I think there's a lot of information being reported that is truly one-sided," he said. "There really isn't any proof this is caused by man-made gases."
Yet here is what the American Meteorological Society says in the climate change statement it adopted last year.
Our effect on the climate
"In recent decades, humans have increasingly affected local, regional, and global climate ...
"Strong observational evidence and results from modeling studies indicate that, at least over the last 50 years, human activities are a major contributor to climate change."
And where does the American Meteorological Society see its views relative to those who are warning of the threat posed by climate change?
"This statement is consistent with the vast weight of current scientific understanding as expressed in assessments and reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program."
Mark Larson, the morning meteorologist at KWCH-TV in Wichita, said he is familiar with the Global Warming Petition Project. Indeed, a "Mark Larson" appears in the Kansas list. This one doesn't count himself as a Climate Change Doubter.
"I think we would be totally remiss if we did not take active steps to really reduce our impact on the environment," he said. "To say that humankind has not had some type of impact on the global climate to me is ludicrous ... I was on the mailing list."
Arthur Robinson, a chemist who is president of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, is in charge of the petition. In response to an e-mail query, he said claims of people who say they were wrongly added to the list will be reviewed.
Larson said he fully recognizes that the issue is an emotional one, and because of its tremendous complexity comes with various uncertainties. He points out that some of his peers raise legitimate questions about some of the conclusions that humans are contributing to global warming.
And there's no shortage of instances in which people are wrongly pointing to global warming as the cause of some change, he said.
"But to me, there are other pieces of data that irrefutable," Larson said.
The debate changes
When the climate change alarm bells were first sounded, people who doubted the claim suggested Earth's climate wasn't warming at all. The warming trend is now universally accepted. What's more likely to be debated is the cause and consequence.
"According to what I can tell, it's been way overplayed," said Joe Eagleman, who retired five years ago from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Kansas.
He doesn't see the warming as posing a serious threat.
"I think there is no convincing evidence it would be catastrophic," he said. "Many places in the world would be improved."
Actually, what scientists at the American Geophysical Union see are growing problems.
"In the next 50 years, even the lower limit of impending climate change -- an additional global mean warming of 1 degree centigrade above the last decade -- is far beyond the range of climate variability experienced during the past 1,000 years and poses global problems in planning for and adapting to it."
And if the temperature goes up even more?
"Warming greater than 2 degrees above 19th century levels is projected to be disruptive, reducing global agricultural productivity, causing widespread loss of biodiversity and, if sustained over centuries, melting much of the Greenland ice sheet with ensuing rise in sea level of several meters."
An overplayed card
Some of the Kansans who signed the petition suggested there is too much uncertainty to know whom to believe.
"It becomes an issue of what you believe or what you buy into," Angino said.
The American Meteorological Society, which takes pains to emphasize the uncertainty, says that card is sometimes overplayed.
"Informed policy decisions of government and industry demand unbiased assessments of scientific results by the scientific community," the group says in a position paper adopted in 2003. "The nature of science is such that there is rarely total agreement among scientists. Individual scientific statements and papers -- the validity of some of which has yet to be assessed adequately -- can be exploited in the policy debate and can leave the impression that the scientific community is sharply divided on issues where there is, in reality, a strong scientific consensus."
n Reporter Duane Schrag can be reached at 822-1422 or by e-mail at dschrag@salina.com.
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