The message of the illustration was of course that global warming is simply true, and there is no good reason not to believe it, and if people don’t believe it, they are ignorant, irrational, evil, or manipulated by evil forces. The article reflected the same all-knowing, insufferable attitude.
The editors evidently hoped that their strong-arm approach to the issue would push readers to drop any lingering or burgeoning doubts and declare that they love Big Brother.I’m happy to report that a bunch of Columbia alumni are having none of it. Their letters, appearing in the Winter ‘08-‘09 issue of Columbia Magazine, are smokin’.
Cool on Global Warming
The Fall issue of Columbia prompted dozens of letters disputing the cover article’s central premise—that climate scientists agree the earth’s atmosphere is warming because of human activity. Many readers proposed instead that natural factors, such as sunspots or variations in the earth’s orbit, are warming the atmosphere. These factors were addressed in a 2007 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, available online at www.ipcc.ch. To read additional letters from our readers, visit www.columbia.edu/cu/alumni/Magazine.—Ed.
A large part of the American population openly challenges the theory of human-caused climatic change, not because they have been duped by big industry, as Dana Fisher theorizes, nor because the media have failed to properly groom the message, as Elke Weber claims (“The Deep Sleep,” Fall 2008). Such notions are naive and egotistical; they fail to consider the egalitarian access to higher education that is available in this country and the plethora of information available from independent media.
Social opinions in other developed nations are shaped by a cadre of academic elites and government-dominated media. A relatively small percentage of citizens in most countries qualify for a university education; those who do are often very limited in their respective disciplines and depend on other academics to inform them in areas outside their own expertise. It is little wonder that they so often fall in step with one another. By comparison, an independent and informed American citizenry is at least moderately qualified to investigate many sides of an issue. Is it surprising that we find ourselves out of step with so many other cultures when we welcome so many differences within?
Americans are not snoozing, stupid, or lazy; we are won to scientific ideas by courtesy, respect, scholarship, and open debate. Controversial data, sensationalized anecdotes, and Machiavellian manipulation are the tools of desperation, not liberty. Condescending attitudes will continue to undermine any legitimate scientific arguments that support human-induced climate-change theories.
Edward A. Smith ‘85GSAPP
Burton, MI
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When just about an entire class flunks a course, logic suggests that the first place to look is not at the students but at the quality of the offering. From the start, the global-warming message presented by the coalition of environmentalists and social scientists who speak for the movement has been mixed. The former see a pressing need to clean up the atmosphere, and the latter see this as an opportunity to right social injustices around the globe by excusing poor countries from carbon caps and thus boosting their economies.
Americans might be inclined to support a reduction in carbon output and the costs involved, but they are not willing to fund the redistribution of wealth worldwide. This unpopular political component of the message, combined with the insulting exaggeration used to get the attention of the unwashed, has soured many Americans on the call to do something significant about global warming.
Buying indulgences that allow an enterprise to a) offset carbon contributions and b) piously claim to be carbon neutral if it is willing and able to contribute enough financial resources also flunks the smell test for most Americans.
Those interested primarily in cleaning up the environment might want to think about forming a new coalition and separating the science from the social engineering and politics in their message.
Neil Markee ‘60CC
Port Jefferson, NY
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Did I miss it, or did David J. Craig’s article about global warming somewhere mention the words “nuclear energy”? Why was there not one reference to what has been termed the cleanest, most dependable, and longest-lasting form of energy currently available?
Could the use of nuclear energy possibly be a political issue? Is everything nuclear off-limits, even though it still is widely used throughout this country and is far more popular in Europe? Would spending still untold billions of dollars to develop other so-called cleaner forms of energy make more sense than utilizing an already-proven energy source whose cost and safety factors are well known and controllable? Are the nuclear opponents still having nightmares about the accident at Three Mile Island instead of praising the antidisaster safety features that worked as they were designed?
So many questions, so few answers. And we didn’t even touch on the uncertainty of claims of impending doom allegedly awaiting our planet—whose history is filled with natural and unavoidable disasters over which man played no part.
Surely, we can do better than this.
Jack Clary ‘55JRN
Stow, MA
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Watchers of the financial markets over the past two years have witnessed the total failure of computer models to separate good stocks from bad when pooled together as securities. Many of these computer models were developed by brilliant chemists, physicists, and mathematicians who left academia for Wall Street. So, on behalf of the Republicans and other Americans you accuse of ignorance at best and malice at worst, please forgive us for not being so eager to radically reorder the global economy based on the predictions coming from yet another set of models.
Pasha Hamed ‘06GSAS
Wellesley Hills, MA
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In researching my new book, China Mosaic, I had an opportunity to spend extended periods in rural China. Anyone intimately familiar with the backwaters of Yunnan, Ningxia, Hebei, and Sichuan, where most of the population still lack indoor plumbing, knows that China, its environmentally friendly Olympics notwithstanding, will not be answering the global-warming call anytime soon.
The Chinese Communist Party depends on improving living standards for its legitimacy. Without abundant electricity, rural China will not move forward. Without burning dirty coal, enough electricity will never be generated for rural China to prosper. The thrust of the 16th and 17th Communist Party congresses was to urbanize the Chinese countryside, requiring that more and more fossil fuels be burned. Almost 60 percent of the population still lives in the countryside, which means that China’s contribution to global warming will likely grow. Travel to Yu County in Hebei Province, or to hundreds of towns like it, where the roads are impregnated with coal dust. Challenge the burning of coal in China and you are likely to get this response: “You have had your modernization, now it is our turn.”
Jonathan Kolatch ‘70GSAS
New York, NY
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Global warming has its deniers just as the Holocaust has its deniers. The solution lies in more widespread education. Once the general population has been more properly educated about global warming, it will more readily accept the science and demand solutions.
The best way to educate the general public is for the U.S. Department of Education to prepare a curriculum on global warming to be taught in all schools, colleges, and universities. All students should be required to discuss what they learned about global warming with their parents.
Once that is done, each state can then mandate that all motor vehicle owners let their motor vehicle rest one day per week. And how about recommending that all homeowners plant trees in their front and back yards?
Norbert Bernstein ‘53LS
Holyoke, MA
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It was noteworthy that two Columbia alumni expressed similar concerns about population growth that were published in the same issue. David J. Craig’s response to one of the letters, by Frederick C. Sage, in the Fall 2008 edition of Columbia, may be technically accurate but is misleading in asserting that “The latest UN reports on [world population growth] project that the world’s population will plateau, and then shrink, in the 21st century.”
The United Nations Population Division offers multiple projections and has not extended any past 2050 since 2004. If Craig is referring to the median long-term projection issued in that year, technically “the latest” UN report on the topic, but hardly recent, the suggestion there is that world population will briefly shrink very modestly for a few decades this century and then renew its increase after 2200, with no end of growth in sight.
No one knows when world population will decline, or for what reasons (falling birth rates, rising death rates,
or some combination of the two). Although Craig refers readers to Matthew Connelly’s Fatal Misconception, that book does not deal much with likely population outcomes, but rather the author’s unsubstantiated thesis that a worldwide movement between the 1960s and 1980s did more harm than good in attempting to slow the growth of human population. For a more balanced treatment of all these issues, I humbly recommend my own book on the topic, More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want (Island Press, 2008).
Robert Engelman ‘73JRN
Takoma Park, MD
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I was disappointed by the arrogant tone and false premises of David J. Craig’s article “The Deep Sleep.” His explicit premise, typical of most media presentations on this topic, is that man-made global warming is an established fact. His implicit premise is that anyone who thinks otherwise is a gullible victim of industry propaganda. In fact, there are many reasons for intelligent, informed citizens to doubt Al Gore and his legions of followers.
First, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is only about 370 parts per million. The portion contributed by industry is obviously less. It is hard for the rational person to believe that man’s tiny contribution to the carbon dioxide content of our atmosphere can cause catastrophic climate change.
Second, most of us understand that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but a naturally occurring substance that we exhale with every breath and that plants use in photosynthesis. For people to accept that carbon dioxide has suddenly become a dangerous pollutant is a stretch.
Third, media references to “consensus” on the causes of global warming are false. There never has been a consensus that human activity is sufficient to change climatic conditions. Science works by observation and measurement, not by consensus.
Fourth, historical evidence shows cyclical variations in climate predating industrial activity. Near the end of the 10th century, Norsemen settled Greenland, named for its green foliage. After the Medieval Warm Period ended, glaciers wiped out the colonies, and Greenland was icebound by 1410. This is one of many examples that give the lie to anthropogenic global-warming theory.
Fifth, climate data over the last 150 years or so do not show a correlation between increased carbon dioxide emissions and increased temperatures. For example, the warmest period of the 20th century was during the 1930s, which was a period of economic contraction. The period from 1944 to 1976, one of unprecedented industrial activity, was a time of cooling.
Sixth, recent scientific data show that the earth is cooling, not warming. The reason is solar, not human. August 2008 was the first month in almost 100 years in which no sunspot activity was recorded.
Americans with a tradition of economic freedom are understandably skeptical about “cap-and-trade” schemes that would require drastic lifestyle changes by the many while enriching the few. Americans are understandably skeptical when years of global-warming alarmism are belied by real-world observations, such as the earth’s global-warming trend.
Americans have not flunked Global Warming 101. They have just found the professor to be misinformed.
Brad Tupi ‘75CC, ‘78LAW
Pittsburgh, PA
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Although well written, Columbia’s Fall 2008 cover story begs the question: “Why doesn’t Columbia get Americans?”
Americans are less concerned about global warming than about their pursuit of liberty and happiness. Evidence the imposition of toilets that don’t flush, lights that don’t light, and cars that don’t run well, all in the name of energy
conservation. And the Lilliputians of regulation only promise to multiply and burden the Gulliver of personal choice and freedom. Indeed, educated Americans well remember the most recent government fiasco with renewable energy: ethanol. We now harvest the bitter experience of exploding grain, nitrogen, and food costs, which, although a burden in the U.S., have been so severe as to cause civil strife and bloodshed in the developing world.
The young generation that will bear the costs of any carbon tax should require, indeed demand, that the proceeds first be used to shore up the Social Security and Medicare trust fund shortfalls their generation will face, thanks, once again, to prior government equity raids.
Young Columbians have the power to affect the outcome of America’s energy policy, so they should not settle for a solution that is less than American. Unleash our entrepreneurs to harness wind, geothermal, and nuclear power, not only to replace carbon but to supply abundant energy. Demand a policy advocating growth and increased freedom, not solutions demanding progressive scarcity and a mortgaged future.
Thomas Johnson, MD ‘79CC
Vero Beach, FL
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In “The Deep Sleep,” David J. Craig frets that obtuse and perverse Americans have flunked Global Warming 101. He presents seven pages of cherry-picked opinions in support of his hypothesis as he attempts to rationalize this puzzling outcome.
On the other hand, I look at the information and reach the opposite conclusion. Americans have passed Global Warming 101, having rejected the fearmongering and hysteria of the man-made global-warming cult. Many Americans see this as mere speculation, if not nonsense.
Even if the climate is in a warming phase, from whatever cause, it seems futile to fight a battle with Mother Nature that we cannot win and ruin our economy in the process. Would it not be more prudent to prepare and adapt? That is the process of evolution, which has carried our DNA from the heat of tropical Africa through the recent Ice Age to the present. Fighting the inevitable is not a winning strategy.
Richard Hurd, Jr. ‘67PS
Alpharetta, GA
M. Jose writes:
Mark E. writes:
Tim W. writes:
