Review: Hot Talk, Cold Science
Global Warming's Unfinished Debate
Hot Talk, Cold Science, A Book Everyone Should Read
S. Fred Singer published the first edition of this book in 1997, the second edition in 1999, and the third in 2021, with David R. Legates and Anthony R Lupo. It offers the lay reader a concise and accessible overview of the history, science, and politics of what has come to be known as climate change. The main text is only 200 pages, so you can read it over a weekend. You can buy the book here, for about $12-22, or look for it at your local library, if one still does that sort of thing..
But why bother? You can open any newspaper and read that anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change is already underway, and perhaps already unstoppable; causing not just increasing global average temperatures, but increases in extreme heat, cold, rain, drought, fires, floods, hurricanes, tornados, and rising sea levels; and leading inexorably to environmental and geopolitical disaster; unless, or perhaps even if, governments around the world take immediate action to eliminate the use of fossil fuels and remake nearly every aspect of society, including abjuring ownership of household pets.
On the other hand, there may still be time for increasing scientific knowledge, technological advancement, and adaptation to enable continued human life on earth. So get the book and read it for yourself. Or if you are one of those kids who prefers to skip the book and read the notes instead, here are ours.
About The Author
S. Fred Singer (1924-2020) received his PhD in physics from the University of Pennsylvania. In the 1950s, he was a pioneer in the development of scientific and weather satellites. He taught at the University of Virginia from 1971 to 1994, and held numerous other academic appointments. Dr. Singer was also active in government, serving as Vice Chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmospheres, chief scientist at the US Department of Transportation, deputy assistant administrator at the US Environmental Protection Agency, and deputy assistant secretary at the US Department of the Interior. He was the author of many books and more than 400 technical articles in scientific, economics, and public policy journals, as well as more than 400 articles in the popular press.
Climate Change Is Not A New Concern
In 1824, the French mathematical physicist Joseph Fourier (better known for the Fourier Transform) showed that certain minor gasses, like CO2, in the atmosphere could absorb infrared radiation from the earth’s surface, interfere with its escape, and thus raise the surface temperature, an effect he compared to a greenhouse. In 1896, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius published the first definitive paper calculating a rise in temperature. In 1938, the British steam engineer G.S. Callendar attempted to revive the greenhouse hypothesis without success. The first precise global measurements of atmospheric CO2 were begun in 1957. But concern about global warming did not gain traction before the 1980s, in part because air temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere had been dropping steadily since about 1940. Temperatures rose abruptly from about 1975-1980, and have since stabilized, according to satellite data, at about the 1980 level. The cause of this sudden temperature shift remains uncertain, but may be due to a change in ocean circulation.
The United Nations Gets Involved
In 1988, two United Nations agencies formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which published its first scientific assessment report (AR1) in 1990. (The movie version of this story is called Attack of the Acronyms.) The latest report, AR6, has been coming out in stages since 2021. At the Earth Summit in 1992, President George H. W. Bush brought the US into a UN treaty called the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). Signatories to the FCCC began meeting in 1995 as a Conference of the Parties (COP-1), and have struggled ever since to develop an enforceable protocol to limit greenhouse gasses, especially CO2. The latest meeting, COP-27, was held in Egypt in 2022, and the most significant was held in Paris in 2015, producing the Paris Agreement.
We’ll Always Have Paris
The Paris Agreement is not a formal treaty, at least in the United States, and each country’s commitments are voluntary. Nevertheless, President Obama promised to reduce US emissions 32 percent by 2030, compared to 2005 levels. China, by contrast, will not even begin to reduce CO2 emissions until 2030, and along with India, has continued rapid expansion of its coal-fired energy production. Obama also pledged billions of dollars of support for the UN Green Climate Fund through which developed countries would pay developing countries to mitigate climate change. Rather than seek congressional approval for limits on CO2 production, Obama attempted to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement via executive orders and regulatory actions, most notably the EPA’s clean power plan, which was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2016. Although President Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2019, President Biden has re-embraced Obama’s commitments to it, making climate change the number one priority throughout the federal government.
Politics Misapprehended As Science
The periodic assessment reports produced by the IPCC are widely seen as representing the definitive scientific consensus on climate change. Indeed hundreds of scientists spend thousands of hours in the working groups that begin the process of producing these reports. However, politicians set the IPCC’s agenda and control the selection of scientists who are allowed to participate. And governmental authorities and environmental activists edit the reports and re-write the all-important Summaries for Policymakers, that the vast majority of policymakers and opinion leaders rely upon. Thus, starting with AR2 thirty years ago, the reports’ conclusions began to misinterpret the underlying science concerning climate change. See, for example:
Thank Goodness For The Greenhouse Effect
Greenhouse warming, produced mainly by water vapor and CO2 in the atmosphere, has been around for 4.5 billion years. And thank goodness for that. Without this effect, the surface temperature would be about minus 18 degrees Celsius, versus the actual average now of plus 15 degrees Celsius. Looking back, for example at sea surface temperatures determined from sea sediment studies in the North Atlantic, or temperature studies using Greenland ice cores, one observes both rapid variations and temperatures much warmer 1,000 and 2,500 years ago, when the atmospheric CO2 concentration was much lower than today. Both paleoclimatological and historical data confirm the existence of a multidecadal warm period, or MWP from 950-1250 AD, and a little ice age, or LIA, from 1400 to 1850 AD. This record makes it difficult to distinguish any evidence of recent anthropogenic global warming from natural variation.
What Is The Global Average Temperature
No, that isn’t the answer to a Jeopardy question, but rather a serious and difficult-to-answer question in climate science. Singer encourages us to look at temperature data from 1979 - 1997, an interval that lies between step-changes in temperature that cannot be explained by the greenhouse theory. During this period, the IPCC global database of surface temperatures, called HadCRUT, shows an increase of 0.5-0.7 degrees Celsius. By contrast, the US surface temperature database shows approximately zero increase, as do measures of sea surface temperatures and atmospheric temperatures measured by weather balloons or satellites. The latter measurements are particularly noteworthy, since CO2-driven climate models predict warming in the atmosphere. Indeed, Singer devotes a whole chapter to the gap between observed temperatures since 1979 and the much higher temperatures predicted by climate models. If the models’ predictions cannot match the real-world observations from recent decades, they cannot be considered validated for predicting future temperatures.
About Those Natural Disasters
Extreme weather events are relatively uncommon. Otherwise they would be called seasonable weather events. But they do occur from time to time. And nowadays it has become de rigueur to include in any report of extreme heat, cold, drought, flooding, fire, hurricane, or tornado, the statement that such events are increasing in frequency and intensity due to climate change. Singer shows persuasively that all these statements are false. And he devotes a whole chapter to the topic of sea level rise, which has held steady at 1-2 mm per year for the past several centuries, including during the period 1915-1945 when temperatures actually rose approximately 0.5 degrees Celsius.
Beneficial Effects Of Climate Change
Higher CO2 levels increase plant growth and reduce plants’ water requirements. This effect is already visible in satellite measurements of the increasing area of leaf cover over the planet’s surface. Moderate increases in surface temperatures result in longer growing seasons and higher crop yields. And far more human deaths are attributable to cold than to heat.
What Should We Do About Climate Change
Singer notes that a reasonable answer, given the science and economics presented earlier in the book is “nothing at all”. However, he recognizes that this approach may not appease the general public, or satisfy the army of academics, NGOs, and government leaders who have made careers out of advocating for immediate action. He thus explores the three general options of: mitigation, i.e., reducing CO2 emissions; sequestration, i.e., storing CO2 somewhere other than the atmosphere; or adaptation, which is how humans have responded to climate change throughout history. Our money is on option three. Read this book and you might agree.