We are, like so many other large mammals, a rather lazy species. Not that we lie around like male lions waiting for the lady of the house to do the grocery shopping at the Wildebeest store, but many among us transpose our physical sloth into mental sloth. The laziness shows itself in our unwillingness to pursue details; would that our hunger for details were like the hunger of a lion on the prowl for fresh meat on the hoof. But, alas, committed habitually to a diet of generalities and half truths, we prefer to consume the fast food of popular beliefs. One of those beliefs is the very popular myth that climate change poses an “existential threat”—as alarmists are wont to say. What are the details of such a threat? Weren’t there predictions twenty-five years ago that the threat would already have manifested itself by this year, or last, or even the year before? Will it manifest itself next year? Give me details.
I have a feeling—just a feeling, mind you—that my own reticence to explore certain details to the nth degree is a mark of low intellectual prowess. If I’m intent on taking a stand on a topic, do I have all the details to make an intellectually sound argument? In many instances the answer is “No.” But, of course, I could say the same for almost everyone on some topic. Thus, I propose a new test of intelligence: How many verifiable details does one include in an argument. And my new IQ test produces a variable level of intelligence: “He’s ‘smart’ over here, but ‘dumb’ over there.” Or: “He simply infers a truth from details he assumes without specifically knowing.”
In almost every climate discussion, alarmists raise four “details” in support of their position: Rising carbon dioxide from anthropogenic sources, temperatures in the context of the Industrial Age, precipitation or droughts, and big storms. Other details arise at times, such as the start of spring growth, the decimation of some coral reefs, a spread of tropical diseases, and, of course—save the polar bears—a reduction of ice caps that will lead to a sea level rise. Recently, the Secretary for Homeland Security added migration—but that might be in light of the couple million migrants that have come to the border under his watch, just a ploy to, as they say, cover his and the Administration’s derrieres.
With regard to “The Debate,” we should ask about details that we can accept as true and relevant. What is the accuracy of the details we have, and what are the details the public mind might not consider that might be germane to the debate?
The planet is a complex of features and processes, each laden with details. Which of those details affect climate? Taking the lazy route here and risking the cry of hypocrisy, I’ll list major “controls on climate”as generalities you might have learned in high school. I will define climate as both an environmental category and condition that is based on average temperature and precipitation plus type and density of vegetative surface cover over a thirty-year period. A 30-year period is itself an arbitrary duration, especially since there is evidence that some climates have endured for millennia more or less statically. But the duration has to be drawn somewhere and applied everywhere. So, I’ll accept Köppen’s classification as modified by both Geiger and Trewartha based on a minimum period of observations: Three decades of temperature and precipitation readings and the type of vegetation those parameters support.
Some climate controls are planetary-wide, such as the Solar Constant and the overall composition of and stratification of the atmosphere. Another control emanates from Earth’s sphericity: the angle of incoming solar radiation that is different for different latitudes and that changes for the entire planet cyclically over the course of a year, the noon overhead sun ranging from 23.5 degrees south latitude to 23.5 degrees north latitude. I can’t not mention the Milankovich Cycles, also, because orbital shape and precession of the axis of rotation play significant roles. Major wind systems also play a role: Westerlies and Easterlies, surface air masses and high altitude jet streams. But some of the controls are more “local,” such as mountain systems that create “rain shadows,” land-water distribution, ocean currents, semipermanent Highs and Lows, and albedo. Each of these controls encompasses a plethora of details (e.g., Are the highlands near the Equator or near the poles? Is there more landmass north of the Equator than south? Does a particular location lie within a landmass far from oceans and large lakes or near a coast?)
Now, when one engages in a debate with either an alarmist or a denier, which details centered on which controls prevail? And what evidence provides the details? Does one side use different details to make a point?
What about Solar activity? Volcanic eruptions? Unpredictable changes in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)? What about the effects of clouds? Of atmospheric stratification? Of other greenhouse gases, like NOx, CH4, or even CFCs? What of fluctuating ocean horizontal and vertical currents? What of wavelength absorption and reabsorption by different molecules in their sundry stages of formation and breakup? And what of the effect of forest growth or denudation? Oh! What of the forest and tundra soils as both absorbers and emitters of greenhouse gases? And which model for or against climate change as an “existential threat” includes all the details of all the controls and ramifications? Whew! Now, I know I might have a low score on my new IQ test.
What’s that humans have said for 200,000 years? Climate change: Can’t live with it; can’t live without it. Ask the Anasazi, the Mayans, and the ancient Egyptians. Ask the Romans during their “warm” period or the Vikings during theirs. Take a time machine back to the Little Ice Age, or father back to the Wisconsin glacial period. Check through all the proxy records, such as tree ring analysis, oxygen isotope analysis, and ice cores. Imagine a debate, an actual debate replete with all the details. “Not going to happen,” you say. And you would be correct. No one wants to spend the time pursuing all those details, organizing them into something intelligible, and presenting them logically. We’re mostly male lions waiting for someone else to do the work. We don’t care how the female lion got the Wildebeest; we just want to devour it. Just tell me the climate is changing and support your statement with a few details. You know that I’m too lazy to look them up or to find other details. Whatever side of the debate I’m on, I’m happy with a few details from which I can make an inference. In this I’m a purely inductive thinker.
We can do a bunch of guessing in addition to inductive thinking, of course. Seems true that most of the past warming and cooling periods were not the product of human activity, but times have changed. We do have the ability to alter the environment quickly, as remnants of the Aral Sea demonstrate. And obviously, humans can add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels and rainforests. But what details support the alarmist position that humans are under “existential threat” because of “climate change”? Isn’t it possible that conditions favorable to human life might arise from climate change? Aren’t the people of California, Nevada, and Arizona already facing that “existential threat”?
Yes, you are correct to point out that the American Southwest is under an extended droughty period that politicians and alarmists shout about. The level of Lake Mead is falling like Chicken Little’s acorn. But the detail that is missing there is that humans moved into a semiarid landscape and exacerbated the aridity by drawing water for millions from a single river. Las Vegas has 150,000 hotel rooms. That means at least 150,000 showers, sinks, and toilets. Those using the facilities aren’t permanent residents; they’re in; they’re out, and in the interim they use more than half of the water allowed to the city, amounting to an average 63 gallons per tourist per day. And those hotels? The “lake” for Bellagio’s fountains yearly loses through evaporation a dozen million gallons of water. Now there’s a detail I didn’t know until I looked it up. * Want to shout “existential threat,” move to the Southwest, buy a home, and water a garden or lawn or wash your car or dog. Yet, those proxy records, those details, suggest that the American Southwest has been the site of cyclical droughty periods, some lasting a couple of centuries. Are we under existential threat from climate change, or have we put ourselves in jeopardy by moving into an area prone to drought? Can humans survive a projected two- to four-degree rise in temperatures?
In the Smithsonian’s online page entitled “What does it mean to be human,” the author(s) refer to the hypothesis proposed by Dr. Rick Potts of the Human Origins Program. Potts calls his hypothesis “variability selection.” As he argues, hominids were not limited to a single type of environment. Over the course of human evolution, human ancestors increased their ability to cope with changing habitats rather than specializing on a single type of environment.” * *
Climate change, one can rationally argue, led to advances in our ability to adapt. Climate change, one can also argue, might be the reason that we are bipedal.
For alarmists, there is no debate because they rely on “settled science” backed by a study of just 928 articles Naomi Oreskes used to arrive at her “75% consensus” that Al Gore then morphed into the “established 97% consensus” that Barack Obama repeated and masses of the population consumed. Orestes got the Wildebeest, and we were happy to have it. The details of that transition between Oreskes’ original study, a later survey, published by couple of professors, and the Al Gore movie, require as much research as climate scientists put into their favorite climate topic. Seems that the survey of 10,000 “scientists" by some college professors got 3,000 responses with 77 responders claiming the title of climate expert, and 75 of those 77 said that humans were at least partly responsible for climate change. That 75 is 97%, not of 10,000, and not of 3,000, but of SEVENTY-SEVEN. Yet, the number has stuck as a confirmed detail repeated by many.
The alarmists say there is a link between carbon dioxide emissions and temperature, and they are correct—to an extent. The deniers say there is a possibility of a connection, but that human emissions are just part of a larger story and that no one as yet has identified the exact proportion of influence humans have on climate change. They also point out that a rise in temperature based on greenhouse gases would not be exponential or geometric, but rather logarithmic. Doubling the carbon dioxide will not double the temperature.
Alarmists point out the temperature records derived from actual measurements since the invention of thermometers and the analyses of pre-thermometer indicators like tree rings and oxygen-isotopes show that we are undergoing warming. Deniers don’t deny that warming has been occurring since the end of the last ice advance and acknowledge that we are probably in the midst of an Interglacial Period that we might enhance, preventing a return of the big ice sheets. What, they might ask, are the details that led to the end of the cool period called the Younger Dryas and the warm period called Roman Warm Period?
Earth is, as all planets are, a complex place. And even though it’s not a very big planet by Jupiter standards, it’s large with respect to its human inhabitants. And much of the planet is forbidding: Too cold for permanent survival in some places and too hot in others. Only scientific explorers and visitors venture into the heart of Antarctica, and only people with full gas tanks and good-working cars venture into Death Valley—whose name is about as indicative of its “climate” as any name could be. So, on this complex planet, gathering detailed information isn’t easy. There are just too many places to monitor, and many of them might be artificially altered the way cities produce “heat islands.”
What I find disturbing is that for those on either side of the “debate”—I put it in quotation marks because it is more like an impassable divide than debate—there is a pick-and-choose manipulation of details and actually a dearth of details I want to see. And I, being too stupid according to my New IQ testing results, don’t have the wherewithal to discern which side is correct. IQ testing has long been about problem-solving ability, but in most instances in "real life" problem-solving requires a mastery of details.
*Bruketta, Sam. 2020. A study of water use by casinos in Las Vegas, Nevada: The Transformation of a desert into an oasis. https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1180&context=glj
**https://humanorigins.si.edu/research/climate-and-human-evolution/climate-effects-human-evolution
I have a feeling—just a feeling, mind you—that my own reticence to explore certain details to the nth degree is a mark of low intellectual prowess. If I’m intent on taking a stand on a topic, do I have all the details to make an intellectually sound argument? In many instances the answer is “No.” But, of course, I could say the same for almost everyone on some topic. Thus, I propose a new test of intelligence: How many verifiable details does one include in an argument. And my new IQ test produces a variable level of intelligence: “He’s ‘smart’ over here, but ‘dumb’ over there.” Or: “He simply infers a truth from details he assumes without specifically knowing.”
In almost every climate discussion, alarmists raise four “details” in support of their position: Rising carbon dioxide from anthropogenic sources, temperatures in the context of the Industrial Age, precipitation or droughts, and big storms. Other details arise at times, such as the start of spring growth, the decimation of some coral reefs, a spread of tropical diseases, and, of course—save the polar bears—a reduction of ice caps that will lead to a sea level rise. Recently, the Secretary for Homeland Security added migration—but that might be in light of the couple million migrants that have come to the border under his watch, just a ploy to, as they say, cover his and the Administration’s derrieres.
With regard to “The Debate,” we should ask about details that we can accept as true and relevant. What is the accuracy of the details we have, and what are the details the public mind might not consider that might be germane to the debate?
The planet is a complex of features and processes, each laden with details. Which of those details affect climate? Taking the lazy route here and risking the cry of hypocrisy, I’ll list major “controls on climate”as generalities you might have learned in high school. I will define climate as both an environmental category and condition that is based on average temperature and precipitation plus type and density of vegetative surface cover over a thirty-year period. A 30-year period is itself an arbitrary duration, especially since there is evidence that some climates have endured for millennia more or less statically. But the duration has to be drawn somewhere and applied everywhere. So, I’ll accept Köppen’s classification as modified by both Geiger and Trewartha based on a minimum period of observations: Three decades of temperature and precipitation readings and the type of vegetation those parameters support.
Some climate controls are planetary-wide, such as the Solar Constant and the overall composition of and stratification of the atmosphere. Another control emanates from Earth’s sphericity: the angle of incoming solar radiation that is different for different latitudes and that changes for the entire planet cyclically over the course of a year, the noon overhead sun ranging from 23.5 degrees south latitude to 23.5 degrees north latitude. I can’t not mention the Milankovich Cycles, also, because orbital shape and precession of the axis of rotation play significant roles. Major wind systems also play a role: Westerlies and Easterlies, surface air masses and high altitude jet streams. But some of the controls are more “local,” such as mountain systems that create “rain shadows,” land-water distribution, ocean currents, semipermanent Highs and Lows, and albedo. Each of these controls encompasses a plethora of details (e.g., Are the highlands near the Equator or near the poles? Is there more landmass north of the Equator than south? Does a particular location lie within a landmass far from oceans and large lakes or near a coast?)
Now, when one engages in a debate with either an alarmist or a denier, which details centered on which controls prevail? And what evidence provides the details? Does one side use different details to make a point?
What about Solar activity? Volcanic eruptions? Unpredictable changes in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)? What about the effects of clouds? Of atmospheric stratification? Of other greenhouse gases, like NOx, CH4, or even CFCs? What of fluctuating ocean horizontal and vertical currents? What of wavelength absorption and reabsorption by different molecules in their sundry stages of formation and breakup? And what of the effect of forest growth or denudation? Oh! What of the forest and tundra soils as both absorbers and emitters of greenhouse gases? And which model for or against climate change as an “existential threat” includes all the details of all the controls and ramifications? Whew! Now, I know I might have a low score on my new IQ test.
What’s that humans have said for 200,000 years? Climate change: Can’t live with it; can’t live without it. Ask the Anasazi, the Mayans, and the ancient Egyptians. Ask the Romans during their “warm” period or the Vikings during theirs. Take a time machine back to the Little Ice Age, or father back to the Wisconsin glacial period. Check through all the proxy records, such as tree ring analysis, oxygen isotope analysis, and ice cores. Imagine a debate, an actual debate replete with all the details. “Not going to happen,” you say. And you would be correct. No one wants to spend the time pursuing all those details, organizing them into something intelligible, and presenting them logically. We’re mostly male lions waiting for someone else to do the work. We don’t care how the female lion got the Wildebeest; we just want to devour it. Just tell me the climate is changing and support your statement with a few details. You know that I’m too lazy to look them up or to find other details. Whatever side of the debate I’m on, I’m happy with a few details from which I can make an inference. In this I’m a purely inductive thinker.
We can do a bunch of guessing in addition to inductive thinking, of course. Seems true that most of the past warming and cooling periods were not the product of human activity, but times have changed. We do have the ability to alter the environment quickly, as remnants of the Aral Sea demonstrate. And obviously, humans can add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels and rainforests. But what details support the alarmist position that humans are under “existential threat” because of “climate change”? Isn’t it possible that conditions favorable to human life might arise from climate change? Aren’t the people of California, Nevada, and Arizona already facing that “existential threat”?
Yes, you are correct to point out that the American Southwest is under an extended droughty period that politicians and alarmists shout about. The level of Lake Mead is falling like Chicken Little’s acorn. But the detail that is missing there is that humans moved into a semiarid landscape and exacerbated the aridity by drawing water for millions from a single river. Las Vegas has 150,000 hotel rooms. That means at least 150,000 showers, sinks, and toilets. Those using the facilities aren’t permanent residents; they’re in; they’re out, and in the interim they use more than half of the water allowed to the city, amounting to an average 63 gallons per tourist per day. And those hotels? The “lake” for Bellagio’s fountains yearly loses through evaporation a dozen million gallons of water. Now there’s a detail I didn’t know until I looked it up. * Want to shout “existential threat,” move to the Southwest, buy a home, and water a garden or lawn or wash your car or dog. Yet, those proxy records, those details, suggest that the American Southwest has been the site of cyclical droughty periods, some lasting a couple of centuries. Are we under existential threat from climate change, or have we put ourselves in jeopardy by moving into an area prone to drought? Can humans survive a projected two- to four-degree rise in temperatures?
In the Smithsonian’s online page entitled “What does it mean to be human,” the author(s) refer to the hypothesis proposed by Dr. Rick Potts of the Human Origins Program. Potts calls his hypothesis “variability selection.” As he argues, hominids were not limited to a single type of environment. Over the course of human evolution, human ancestors increased their ability to cope with changing habitats rather than specializing on a single type of environment.” * *
Climate change, one can rationally argue, led to advances in our ability to adapt. Climate change, one can also argue, might be the reason that we are bipedal.
For alarmists, there is no debate because they rely on “settled science” backed by a study of just 928 articles Naomi Oreskes used to arrive at her “75% consensus” that Al Gore then morphed into the “established 97% consensus” that Barack Obama repeated and masses of the population consumed. Orestes got the Wildebeest, and we were happy to have it. The details of that transition between Oreskes’ original study, a later survey, published by couple of professors, and the Al Gore movie, require as much research as climate scientists put into their favorite climate topic. Seems that the survey of 10,000 “scientists" by some college professors got 3,000 responses with 77 responders claiming the title of climate expert, and 75 of those 77 said that humans were at least partly responsible for climate change. That 75 is 97%, not of 10,000, and not of 3,000, but of SEVENTY-SEVEN. Yet, the number has stuck as a confirmed detail repeated by many.
The alarmists say there is a link between carbon dioxide emissions and temperature, and they are correct—to an extent. The deniers say there is a possibility of a connection, but that human emissions are just part of a larger story and that no one as yet has identified the exact proportion of influence humans have on climate change. They also point out that a rise in temperature based on greenhouse gases would not be exponential or geometric, but rather logarithmic. Doubling the carbon dioxide will not double the temperature.
Alarmists point out the temperature records derived from actual measurements since the invention of thermometers and the analyses of pre-thermometer indicators like tree rings and oxygen-isotopes show that we are undergoing warming. Deniers don’t deny that warming has been occurring since the end of the last ice advance and acknowledge that we are probably in the midst of an Interglacial Period that we might enhance, preventing a return of the big ice sheets. What, they might ask, are the details that led to the end of the cool period called the Younger Dryas and the warm period called Roman Warm Period?
Earth is, as all planets are, a complex place. And even though it’s not a very big planet by Jupiter standards, it’s large with respect to its human inhabitants. And much of the planet is forbidding: Too cold for permanent survival in some places and too hot in others. Only scientific explorers and visitors venture into the heart of Antarctica, and only people with full gas tanks and good-working cars venture into Death Valley—whose name is about as indicative of its “climate” as any name could be. So, on this complex planet, gathering detailed information isn’t easy. There are just too many places to monitor, and many of them might be artificially altered the way cities produce “heat islands.”
What I find disturbing is that for those on either side of the “debate”—I put it in quotation marks because it is more like an impassable divide than debate—there is a pick-and-choose manipulation of details and actually a dearth of details I want to see. And I, being too stupid according to my New IQ testing results, don’t have the wherewithal to discern which side is correct. IQ testing has long been about problem-solving ability, but in most instances in "real life" problem-solving requires a mastery of details.
*Bruketta, Sam. 2020. A study of water use by casinos in Las Vegas, Nevada: The Transformation of a desert into an oasis. https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1180&context=glj
**https://humanorigins.si.edu/research/climate-and-human-evolution/climate-effects-human-evolution
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