Oregon’s climatologist denies global warming

Oregon is in a drought. That’s undeniable. The U.S. Drought Monitor says so. Global warming caused by manmade greenhouse gases is for real. That’s also undeniable according to the results of a recent study of ocean temperatures.

As I wrote in an earlier post, "Global warming: the big truth," Oceanographers analyzed more than seven million recordings of ocean temperatures from around the world. They compared the rise in temperatures at different depths to predictions made by two computer simulations of global warming.

Bingo. Right on. No doubt about it. Man-made greenhouse gases are the cause of observed changes in ocean temperatures. One of the researchers, a marine physicist, said: "We've got a serious problem. The debate is no longer: 'Is there a global warming signal?' The debate now is: 'What are we going to do about it?'

Yet Oregon’s climatologist, George Taylor, denies that global warming is occurring. In September 2004 Taylor was part of a group that sent a letter to Sen. John McCain, who was chairing a Commerce Committee hearing examining recent scientific research concerning climate change impacts. The group was quoted as saying that “there is little supporting meteorological evidence” for global warming.

That's ridiculous. Take a look at the New Scientist "Special Report on Climate Change" and the first thing you'll read is, "Climate change is with us. A decade ago, it was conjecture. Now the future is unfolding before our eyes." Scientists at the University of Washington have studied changes in northwest snowpacks and concluded that global warming could shrink already diminished snowpack water content by over 50% in coming decades.

Meanwhile, George Taylor gives speeches where he says that global warming actually isn't an imminent threat.

I hope Taylor will change his mind. Oregon can’t afford to have a state climatologist who doesn’t understand that global warming almost certainly is a major influence on our state’s climate. Its worrisome when the climatologist for a coastal state doesn’t believe that oceans are warming because of greenhouse gases. By contrast, the climatologist for Washington state says that global warming is no myth and the repercussions could be severe in the Pacific Northwest.

They already are. Close to home here in Salem, Detroit Lake, along with other reservoirs, probably won’t fill up with enough water for boating this year, just as in 2001—another drought year. This will hammer the Detroit economy. A recent Salem Statesman-Journal article lists other impending drought problems: “shortages of irrigation water for farms, tight municipal water supplies, inadequate river flows to nurture salmon and other wildlife and extreme wildfire danger.”

Right after this list of impending catastrophes, the article says, “State climatologist George Taylor, calling himself an eternal optimist, said he thinks a wet spring is possible.” Well, we'll see. Longer term, Taylor believes that Oregon will be cooler and wetter than normal for the next 15 years. That's hard to imagine given the trends of the past few years.

During most of the past winter the jet stream took storms to the south, into California and away from Oregon. To my understanding, this is a typical El Nino pattern. In his paper, “Impacts of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation on the Pacific Northwest,” Taylor writes that the warmer ocean temperatures associated with an El Nino results in lower than normal precipitation for the Northwest.

Which is just what is happening. And it has been happening for years. A 1998 NOAA (National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration) report said that global warming might be exacerbating El Nino’s effects on the weather. After this report was issued Al Gore urged Congress to act to reduce greenhouse gases. His advice was ignored. People are more likely to believe in the reality of El Nino than in the reality of global warming. Politically, says this analysis, the two have been disconnected.

Yet almost certainly they are connected. It isn’t difficult to make a persuasive argument that Oregon is going to suffer through a drought because manmade global warming has raised ocean temperatures, which has created El Nino conditions, which divert Pacific storms away from the Northwest.

Oregon’s policy-makers shouldn’t be focused only on dealing with the effects of global warming, as the group Taylor is associated with has argued. This group advised that emergency preparedness should be the focus of efforts to mitigate the effects of Florida hurricanes. Since Taylor doesn’t accept the reality of global warming, I expect that he isn't supportive of the West Coast Governors' Global Warming Initiative that Oregon is a part of.

Doesn't it seem strange that Oregon's climatologist is at odds with not only most of the world (which has adopted the Kyoto Treaty) but also the official policy of our state? The above-linked Oregon Department of Energy page says that "on September 22, 2003, Governors Kulongoski, Davis and Locke announced that they have concluded that Oregon, California and Washington must act individually and regionally to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because global warming will have serious adverse consequences on the economy, health and environment of the west coast states. (Governor Schwarzenegger has continued California's participation.)"

It isn’t too far off the mark to say that a meteorologist who doesn’t believe that global warming is occurring is akin to a zoologist who doesn’t believe in the theory of evolution, or a cosmologist who doesn’t believe in the big bang. Taylor’s writings (such as this, and this) point toward a conclusion that he is out-of-touch with the broader scientific community.

Hopefully he is keeping his mind open. I look forward to learning whether recent research has led George Taylor to change his opinion about global warming.

When even evangelical leaders are getting behind the effort to fight global warming, Oregon’s climatologist should become a convert to doing what’s right for our state and the earth. (See post continuation for a New York Times article on this evangelical movement)

“Evangelical Leaders Swing Influence Behind Effort to Combat Global Warming”
By Laurie Goodstein
The New York Times
March 10, 2005

A core group of influential evangelical leaders has put its considerable political power behind a cause that has barely registered on the evangelical agenda, fighting global warming.

These church leaders, scientists, writers and heads of international aid agencies argue that global warming is an urgent threat, a cause of poverty and a Christian issue because the Bible mandates stewardship of God's creation.

The Rev. Rich Cizik, vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals and a significant voice in the debate, said, "I don't think God is going to ask us how he created the earth, but he will ask us what we did with what he created."

The association has scheduled two meetings on Capitol Hill and in the Washington suburbs on Thursday and Friday, where more than 100 leaders will discuss issuing a statement on global warming. The meetings are considered so pivotal that Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, and officials of the Bush administration, who are on opposite sides on how to address global warming, will speak.

People on all sides of the debate say that if evangelical leaders take a stand, they could change the political dynamics on global warming.

The administration has refused to join the international Kyoto treaty and opposes mandatory emission controls.

The issue has failed to gain much traction in the Republican-controlled Congress. An overwhelming majority of evangelicals are Republicans, and about four out of five evangelicals voted for President Bush last year, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group of 51 church denominations, said he had become passionate about global warming because of his experience scuba diving and observing the effects of rising ocean temperatures and pollution on coral reefs.

"The question is, Will evangelicals make a difference, and the answer is, The Senate thinks so," Mr. Haggard said. "We do represent 30 million people, and we can mobilize them if we have to."

In October the association paved the way for broad-based advocacy on the environment when it adopted "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," a platform that included a plank on "creation care" that many evangelical leaders say was unprecedented.

"Because clean air, pure water and adequate resources are crucial to public health and civic order," the statement said, "government has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation."

Nearly 100 evangelical leaders have signed the statement.

But it is far from certain that a more focused statement on climate change would elicit a similar response.

In recent years, however, whenever the association latched onto a new issue, Washington paid attention, on questions like religious persecution, violence in Sudan, AIDS in Africa and sex trafficking of young girls.

Environmentalists said they would welcome the evangelicals as allies.

"They have good friendships in places where the rest of the environmental community doesn't," Larry J. Schweiger, president and chief executive of the National Wildlife Federation, said. "For instance, in legislative districts where there's a very conservative lawmaker who might not be predisposed to pay attention to what environmental groups might say, but may pay attention to what the local faith community is saying."

It is not as if the evangelical and environmental groups are collaborating, because the wedge between them remains deep, Mr. Cizik said. He added that evangelicals had long been uncomfortable with what they perceived to be the environmentalists' support for government regulation, population control and, if they are not entirely secular, new-age approaches to religion.

Over the last three years, evangelical leaders like Mr. Cizik have begun to reconsider their silence on environmental questions. Some evangelicals have spoken out, but not many. Among them is the Rev. Jim Ball of the Evangelical Environmental Network, who in 2002 began a "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign and drove a hybrid vehicle across the country.

Mr. Cizik said that Mr. Ball "dragged" him to a conference on climate change in 2002 in Oxford, England. Among the speakers were evangelical scientists, including Sir John Houghton, a retired Oxford professor of atmospheric physics who was on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a committee that issued international reports.

Sir John said in an interview that he had told the group that science and faith together provided proof that climate change should be a Christian concern.

Mr. Cizik said he had a "conversion" on climate change so profound in Oxford that he likened it to an "altar call," when nonbelievers accept Jesus as their savior. Mr. Cizik recently bought a Toyota Prius, a hybrid vehicle.

Mr. Cizik and Mr. Ball then asked Sir John to speak at a small meeting of evangelical leaders in June in Maryland called by the Evangelical Environmental Network, the National Association of Evangelicals and Christianity Today, the magazine. The leaders read Scripture and said they were moved by three watermen who caught crabs in Chesapeake Bay and said their faith had made them into environmentalists.

Those leaders produced a "covenant" in which 29 committed to "engage the evangelical community" on climate change and to produce a "consensus statement" within a year.

Soon, Christianity Today ran an editorial endorsing a bill sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, along with Mr. Lieberman, that would include binding curbs on heat-trapping gases. Mr. Ball said the strongest moral argument he made to fellow evangelicals was that climate change would have disproportionate effects on the poorest regions in the world. Hurricanes, droughts and floods are widely expected to intensify as a result of climate change.

Evangelical leaders of relief and development organizations had been very receptive, he said.

"Christ said, 'What you do to the least of these you do to me,' " Mr. Ball said. "And so caring for the poor by reducing the threat of global warming is caring for Jesus Christ."

Among those speaking at the two meetings this week are Sir John and Dr. Mack McFarland, environmental manager for DuPont, who is to describe how his company has greatly reduced emissions of heat-trapping gases.

Such an approach appeals to evangelicals, Mr. Haggard said, adding, "We want to be pro-business environmentalists."

Mr. Cizik said he was among many evangelicals who would support some regulation on heat-trapping gases.

"We're not adverse to government-mandated prohibitions on behavioral sin such as abortion," he said. "We try to restrict it. So why, if we're social tinkering to protect the sanctity of human life, ought we not be for a little tinkering to protect the environment?"

Mr. Lieberman added: "Support from the evangelical and broader religious community can really move some people in Congress who feel some sense of moral responsibility but haven't quite settled on an exact policy response yet. This could be pivotal."

Comments

[Steve Bailey]

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/global_warming.html
We may be experiencing 'Global Warming', but the link above provides the more reasonable reasons why. The other day I heard a climatologist say that the computer models that are predicting the coming climate apocalypse use programs that are 'ancient' and do not even factor in cloud cover! They leave that out! Give me a break.

[Dave Burton]

Taylor is right to be concerned about the rush to declare as settled science that which is actually very much in doubt, and he is far from alone in that view.

See, for example:
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

dave at burtonsys dot com but please no spam

[BeeJiggity]

Whether or not Taylor is the actual "State Climatologist" it must be conceded that his expertise is seldom rivaled, and that his dissent destroys the myth of "consensus" among scientists.

[Brian]

Bee, that's a terrific ironic comment. For a moment I almost thought you were serious.

Taylor has a master's degree, not a Ph.D. To my knowledge he's only published a few papers in his entire life.

He's not part of the genuine faculty at OSU. If you talk with real faculty members at his college, as I have, they'll laugh and say "Oh, George."

He's good at collecting weather data. He's terrible at interpreting climate change science.

The IPCC represents the consensus among the world's leading climate scientists. That's a fact. As I just wrote in response to another commenter, a recent issue of New Scientist has an article called "A fake fight."

It's subtitled: "Climate change needs sceptics, but those who peddle bogus controversies to the public are helping no one."

Some of those bogus controversies are what Taylor loves to spout on right wing talk shows. That fluctuations in the output of the sun are responsible for climate change. That variations in CO2 have lagged behind atmospheric temperature changes.

All this stuff has been studied and discounted by real climatologists. It's only the uninformed who are taken in by Taylor and pseudo-scientists like him.

[Steve]

True: global warming is occurring. The earth's average temperature has risen 0.6 degrees Celsius in the past century. The earth's temperature has had a natural variation of approximately +/- 1 degree Celsius over one hundred year periods in the past. The greenhouse effect is real, but its contribution to our current 'global warming' is minimal. Pollution and CO2 are not even the major contributors to the greenhouse effect, it is water vapor. 'Greenhouse' gases have risen 30-40 percent in the past century and their predicted contribution based on an ill-conceived model at Oxford University years ago would have produced a rise of 5-6 degrees Celsius.

The earth is currently in one of its interglacial periods and based on historical data should last another 2,000 to 10,000 years. Some estimates have postulated up to 50,000 years, but this seems a bit extreme. After this, the next 'ice age' will occur.
I don't argue with the fact that pollution, aerosols, propellants, and fossil fuels contribute to the 'greenhouse effect' although not to the degree that water vapor contributes . However, saying that the greenhouse effect is the driving force for global warming is scientifically unfounded and has resulted in public misconception. Association does not imply causality.

[TJ]

I agree with Steve. In addition to the water vapor theory there are a number of others that are plausible such as solar radiation or shifting ocean currents and magnetic fields.

Sure, we should work to clean up the environment and develop environment-friendly technologies, but let's not drastically shut down economies based on a theory which is all the greenhouse effect is.

Consensus among many scientists does not prove they're right. It just proves they agree, and there are plenty of smart folks who don't. It's not "cut and dried". Not by a long shot.

And if they're right we're screwed anyway because they say the wheels have irretrievably been set in motion even if we turned off every car and factory today.

[sam]

there is no such thing as global warming there are just as many scientists who say there is no such thing problem is they get no grant money so IF I got money based on saying global warming is happening I guess i would look for gloabla warming too