Global Warming On Thin Ice?

Scientists, like most people, don't particularly like giving bad news. If a scientist is lucky enough to work in a field like astronomy or quantum mechanics she rarely has to talk about anything that would affect the GDP. She gets to describe super novae happening billions of light years away, and you get to imagine it like a fire cracker in space. So pity the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, because they have much more difficult working conditions.

A must-see debate is happening over at the New York Time's Dot Earth, between an anonymous user with the monicker "Wmar" and Andrew Revkin, the author of the blog. Wmar is a man-made climate change skeptic, and Mr. Revkin is a highly experienced journalist. The debate is especially refreshing because both parties are being so darn polite about it. There are a few snide, completely unhelpful remarks from others, but the main contenders are both sincere. That's important, because when people are being polite it's easier to understand what they're saying, and (especially important) what they mean.

Wmar does not believe that we humans are causing global warming. He does not deny that it is happening, or that there is hard data demonstrating that the globe is warming. As his own evidence he uses links to a website called CO2science.org, which has charts and graphs of its own and the names of scientists from all over the world who are referenced, but never quoted. On the other side is Mr. Revkin and the IPCC. An impasse, huh? It would only seem so.

At this point human caused climate change deniers are banking that if people see scientists in disagreement on the issue they'll take the safe route and wait until greater consensus has been established, or forget the problem altogether. If it were a duel at high noon, and the IPCC had 75 scientific studies, and CO2science.org had 802 scientific studies, we'd be measuring the IPCC for a casket. Fortunately for the IPCC, none of CO2's studies are loaded. CO2 is just a blog using other scientists' data; but it uses the numbers without the researchers' analysis.

At the Times, Mr. Revkin actually brings in prominent scientists who have physically tested ice cores and worked with other scientists, presumably without calling each other frauds all the time, who make it their professional duty to be twice as critical as the community at large could ever be. If there were legitimate, significant differences in findings it would be expressed in calls for further studies and criticism of methodology, not as personal comments vented through e-mail.

The recent mistake found in the second section of the IPCC's report was disturbing specifically because this one paragraph, in one section, lacked thorough scientific corroboration. Don't take my word for it: Scientists are pissed.

Dr. Richard Alley, Mr. Revkin's guest glaciologist, is still really, very confident climate change is being propelled at an unprecedented rate in the icy annals of geothermal history. He sees the causes of previous climate change, which have caused one degree Celsius shift over thousands of years, as negligible in our circumstances. No space dust or cosmic ray or volcanic eruption is causing our current trajectory into unknown climes.

But don't take my word for it. He's the expert.