Published: May 08, 2008 11:38 am         

Want more evidence? Here it is

I congratulate Mr. Humbertson for his skepticism ("Global Temp has gone down," April 25 Times-News). Skepticism is healthy in these days when anything honest coming out of D.C. or the mouths of politicians or the mainstream media is the exception rather than the rule. Let me compare Mr. Humbertson's evidence against global climate change to the evidence offered by mainstream scientists.

First, Mr. Humbertson noted various events this past year - China's severe winter, etc. -a s evidence that the world is cooling. But a bedrock principal of global warming science is never taking one season or one year as long-term evidence of particular change. Anomalies are a given.

Mr. Humbertson cites the Hoover Institution's inability to see a relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. The Hoover Institution is a right-wing think tank, not a scientific organization. And we know what right-wingers have done to science during the Bush administration - hiding facts, threatening scientists, and having political hacks with no scientific background rewrite scientific reports. Seems they adhere to a precept of one of their idols, Ronald Reagan, who said, "Facts are stupid things."

The journal Science looked at all peer-reviewed scientific studies that mentioned global climate change between 1993 and 2003. Peer-review is crucial to legitimizing the methodology and handling of scientific data. They found over 900 such studies, and every study found evidence of global warming.

Scientists have looked at the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and how it correlates to temperature, going back over 650,000 years. Anyone can easily see the correlation by looking at the graphs. The current steep rise in CO2 begins in 1750 at the beginning of the industrial revolution. CO2 levels now stand above 380 ppm, over 100 points higher than any time in the last 650,000 years, and they continue to rise at about 3 percent per year.

Two thousand scientists from 100 countries making up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change point out that five of the six warmest years in recorded history have occurred this century. The IPCC states that we face a major environmental catastrophe that will lead to many human deaths, mass migrations, and huge die-offs of plants and animals, something already underway.

Mr. Humbertson makes light of the 1 degree rise in temperature, yet in geologic time, this is large. Equally important, much of the rise is at both poles, where temperatures have risen 3 to 7 degree just in the past few decades. So much ice melted this past summer that a ship could have sailed from Norway to the North Pole.

More evidence? In one week last August, an area of Arctic sea ice twice the size of Britain melted in one week. Glaciers around the world are melting at unprecedented rates. Normal glacier flow is 80 to 100 meters a year, yet one Greenland glacier that is three miles wide and one mile deep is flowing at two meters per hour. At current rate of melting, the glacier that feeds the Ganges River could be gone by 2050. Western China, Southeast Asia, and India face extreme water shortages if the Tibetan Plateau glaciers disappear, which they are rapidly doing.

More evidence? Corals, the nurseries of the ocean, are dying world wide, and a big part of the reason is rising sea temperatures. Over 20 percent of the world's corals are dead. Another 50 percent are under duress. CO2 is also turning the oceans acidic. Tiny shelled creatures at the base of the food chain soon won't be able to make their shells in the acidic water.

More evidence? Pine bark beetles have moved up the Pacific coast into the Canadian Boreal forest because of warming, leaving untold devastation in their wake.

Diseases once confined to warmer climes are marching north. West Nile Virus is killing people in Canada. Malaria is expanding into mountain regions that have warmed. Cholera in warming seas has swept into Peru and across Mexico, killing 10,000 people.

I could go on, but space doesn't permit. So do we believe a right-wing think tank or respected scientists and thinkers like Lester Brown, James Hansen, and over 900 scientific studies?

Do we believe a single Canadian scientist mentioned by Mr. Humbertson or the 2000 scientists of the IPCC who describe global warming as "unequivocal," and having "abrupt and irreversible" effects on climate. Logic, and self-preservation, would suggest the answer, even for someone of a skeptical nature.

Craig Etchison
Fort Ashby, W.Va.