by Mark Jones of Crashlist
Greg Easterbrook is a former Newsweek journalist, and now best known for his book "A Moment on the Earth," which espouses the falsely optimistic view that many environmental problems have been overstated.
When it was first released in 1995, "A Moment on the Earth" received much attention. The mainstream press erupted over the book's "radical" messages: That the environment in the industrialized nations is improving; that toxic and nuclear wastes aren't as hazardous as they have been portrayed; and that the most important thing about Rachel Carson's famous work Silent Spring is that virtually none of what Carson predicted has come true. Global warming? An exaggeration by overexcited scientists. Ozone hole? A minor phenomena for most of the globe, only severe in lifeless Antarctica.
Simultaneously, in environmental and progressive publications, "A Moment on the Earth" was denounced as being factually skewed and for being "a rousing call to inaction." Jack C. Schultz, professor of entomology at Pennsylvania State University (USA), wrote in Natural History magazine that "A Moment on the Earth" "contains some of the most egregious cases of misunderstood, misstated, misinterpreted, and plainly incorrect 'science' writing I've ever encountered."
Mobil Oil recently took environmental protection to task in ads headlined, "The Sky is Not Falling" (a title borrowed from one of Fred S. Singer's many papers on global warming) and "More Good News." Mobil's supposed good news came in part from Easterbrook's book.
Here is what Lou Proyect had to say about Easterbrook a while back:
Gregg Easterbrook is an authority for much of LM's war on the greens. He is cited extensively on the recent channel 4 tv show "Against Nature" that has attained such notoriety. Easterbrook writes for the neoliberal Atlantic Monthly, which is a source of more neo-Malthusian filth than all of the mainstream green groups put together. Moreover, he plays fast and loose with the facts, which makes him ideal for professional liars like Furedi's cult. The following is extracted from www.edf.org, the web page of the Environmental Defense Fund. They have produced a valuable rebuttal to the disinformation contained in "A Moment on Earth". Check it out for the whole story, including the very useful footnotes. What you see below are corrections to just ONE chapter of Easterbrook's book. There are literally hundreds of untruths contained in this wretched piece of shit of a book.
Louis Proyect
*************************************
In his chapter on global warming, Easterbrook makes many fundamental errors. He continually confuses global, regional, and local temperature trends, which may differ considerably; he mischaracterizes the results of a poll that was undertaken to determine scientists' views on global warming; and he mistakenly asserts that the sea level has not risen significantly, when it has.
Most flagrantly, however, he erroneously claims that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the two most respected scientific authorities on the subject, have substantially lowered their projections of future warming due to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, when they have not.
A Moment on the Earth, p. 277:
"Immediately it got cold. From 1940 through the 1970s global temperatures declined, hitting bottom during the frigid winter of 1977, coldest in a century in North America."
CORRECTION:
Easterbrook is wrong on all three counts. First, global temperature did not decline significantly between 1940 and the 1970's; it wavered up and down by small amounts after having risen for several decades. Second, global temperature did not "hit bottom" during the winter of 1977, but averaged above normal. Finally, the average temperature for North America was also above normal that winter. It was in the eastern United States that it was indeed very cold. [4]
It is the long-term global pattern that is considered significant in the global warming context, not annual or seasonal changes in temperature in particular regions, which can be quite variable.
A Moment. . . , p. 278:
"In February 1992 the Gallup Organization polled members of the American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society, the two professional groups for climatologists. Only 17 percent said warming trends so far convinced them an artificial greenhouse effect was in progress."
CORRECTION:
Though in many respects the poll was confusingly worded and its results difficult to interpret, there was one unambiguous finding: Sixty-six percent of the scientists polled, a large majority, responded "yes" to the question: "In your opinion is human-induced greenhouse warming now occurring?" This is far from the 17 percent cited by Easterbrook and others before him. Only 10 percent of the scientists disagreed with this proposition, and the remainder were undecided. Moreover, only 2 percent believed that there was no chance that substantial human-caused warming would occur over the next 50 to 100 years. [5]
A Moment. . . , p. 278:
"That same year Greenpeace surveyed climate researchers using a poll whose questions were worded so as to elicit alarm. Some 47 percent of respondents said a runaway greenhouse effect is either impossible or highly improbable."
CORRECTION:
Easterbrook's reference to this finding, unaccompanied by any further discussion, and repeated later on the same page, on the jacket of the book, and in the preface, reveals that he either misunderstands the technical meaning of this term or is attempting to mislead the reader. A "runaway greenhouse effect" means not merely rapid warming, but an unstable feedback, leading to the complete evaporation of the oceans. There is little or no chance that a "runaway greenhouse effect" will occur, but there is a definite possibility that the warming will be rapid and substantial. [6]
A Moment. . . , p. 279:
"It turns out that the late 1800s was a cold period. Earth could experience `record' warmth relative to the 1880s and remain cool compared to the bulk of its past."
CORRECTION:
Although, as Easterbrook notes, accurate temperature data did not exist before 1860, the best available evidence suggests that the late 1800's were warmer than most of the previous 400 years, and close to average for the previous 10,000. Therefore, the observed warming since then has indeed been significant. [7]
A Moment. . . , p. 279:
". . . conditions environmentalists would call a global- warming disaster [would entail] typical temperatures higher than today's by 10 to 22 degrees Fahrenheit. A temperature rise in this range would surely render the Earth inhospitable to genus Homo and thousands of other present species; but not even worst-case projections anticipate warming of such magnitude."
CORRECTION:
Not true. The computer climate model developed by scientists at Princeton University projects that if CO2 concentrations were to quadruple, which may well occur after 2100 without concerted international actions to reduce emissions, temperature increases in this range would follow. [8]
A Moment. . . , p. 279:
"Artificial greenhouse gases did not become significant until the postwar industrial boom of the late 1940s. According to greenhouse theory, sharp heat increases should have followed. Instead the warming rate slowed down."
CORRECTION:
Climate models do not predict sharp temperature increases following immediately upon rises in accumulated greenhouse gases. Easterbrook ignores the lags in the system, caused by many factors, including the behavior of the ocean, non- linearities in the CO2 effect, reflection of sunlight by sulfate particles, and random fluctuations of climate, which combine to ensure that the release of greenhouse gases and temperature increases will not occur at exactly the same time. Indeed, computer models for climate warming that take account of these factors predict global temperatures in reasonable agreement with the observed temperature rise over the past 100 years. [9]
A Moment . . . , pp. 279-280:
"The studies that find a global warming trend during the 1980s rely on surface-temperature readings taken near cities. Researchers know that the urban "heat-island effect" distorts such readings, and they adjust data to compensate. The degree of adjustment required is controversial, however. The Goddard Institute, whose greenhouse studies are downbeat, subtracts about 0.1 degree Fahrenheit. Other researchers maintain that about 0.3 degrees must be subtracted to remove the heat-island effect. If the Goddard Institute adjusted by 0.3 degrees, this would cancel out the entire claimed global temperature increase of the 1980s."
CORRECTION:
Not true. Easterbrook appears to confuse not only Fahrenheit and Celsius, but decades with centuries. The correction applied by Goddard for the urban "heat-island effect" is 0.1 degrees Celsius, not Fahrenheit, as Easterbrook states, and the correction is made over a century, not a decade. The correction would work out to about 0.01 degrees Celsius per decade, while the surface data show a warming of about 0.15 degrees Celsius over the 1980's. Thus, taking into account the urban "heat-island effect" does little to cancel out the observed warming, and this would be true even if one applied Easterbrook's hypothetical 0.3 degree figure for a century's correction. [10]
Finally, the warming is also apparent in sea-surface data and in surface data for the Southern Hemisphere, where there are few urban areas compared to the Northern Hemisphere. [11]
A Moment. . . , p. 280:
"Studies of the total heat in atmospheric air volumes conflict with studies confined to ground temperatures. National Aeronautics and Space Administration data from atmospheric satellites show a small global temperature decline during the past decade."
CORRECTION:
The supposed "conflict" has largely been resolved. There are several reasons why temperatures aloft and at the ground should behave differently over the short period of fifteen years for which satellite data exist. These include different responses to volcanoes, to El Nino, and to the effects of ozone depletion. [12]
A Moment. . . , p. 280:
"In the United States, six of the ten years of the 1980s were indisputably warm in urban areas. This was taken in many quarters as proof that an inexorable global warming had begun."
CORRECTION:
Once more, Easterbrook confuses regional and global temperature patterns. What was remarkable was that six of the ten years of the 1980's hit record warmth, and this was true not of urban areas in the United States, but over the globe as a whole. In the continental United States, on the other hand, the average temperature fell shy of record levels. [13]
A Moment. . . , p. 280:
"Then the trend dissipated, with 1991 and 1992 being slightly cool for American cities. Greenhouse true believers attributed this decline to the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, which ejected large amounts of sun-filtering aerosols into the stratosphere. Tests showed that by late 1992 most Pinatubo effects had washed out of the air, suggesting that if an emergency global warming were in progress it ought to resume in 1993. But global temperatures recorded by NASA satellites for 1993 remained slightly below the 1980s average."
CORRECTION:
Again, late 1991 and the year 1992 were relatively cool over the entire world, due to the Pinatubo eruption, not merely in American cities, as Easterbrook puts it. And warming did indeed resume in 1993, but since not all of the Pinatubo effect had dissipated, the year was not quite as warm as the record years of the 1980's. Moreover, the amount of warming that occurred was almost exactly as predicted by the climate models. [14] Finally, Easterbrook neglects to mention that in 1994, global surface temperatures rebounded close to pre- Pinatubo levels, and it was the fourth or fifth warmest year ever recorded. [15]
A Moment. . . , pp. 281-282:
"In 1988, [James] Hansen told a congressional committee he was '99 percent certain' that summer's heat wave stemmed in some manner from greenhouse emissions. . . . Though it surely was hot in North America in summer 1988, at the same time central Asia experienced a cold wave. The cold Asian area was roughly identical in size to the warm North American region."
CORRECTION:
Again Easterbrook mixes up global and regional trends. Hansen's level of certainty, as clearly expressed before Congress, pertained to the existence of a global warming trend over the past century, and was based not on that summer's heat wave, but on a 100-year record of global temperatures. What happens during any one summer in North America or in central Asia bears little relation to long- term trends. [16]
All in all, Easterbrook's error-filled rendition of the warming trend, and his continual confusion of regional and global temperatures, is remarkable. What is most extraordinary is that he refers only indirectly (on p. 278) to the clearest and most immediately compelling fact in the global surface temperature record, which has been kept for more than a century: that the ten warmest years have all occurred since 1980.
A Moment. . . , p. 284:
"Researchers who have set GCMs [general circulation models] to conditions of the nineteenth century find the models conclude that global temperatures should have risen about five degrees Fahrenheit by now."
CORRECTION:
False. According to the models, this level of temperature change is not predicted to occur until much later, given the mediating effect of the oceans, among other factors. [17]
A Moment. . . , p. 286:
"In 1979, the National Academy of Sciences convened a panel of climate modelers who projected an up to nine-degree Fahrenheit warming from doubled CO2. . . Since 1990 the National Academy of Sciences has backed away from the high end of its 1979 forecast, though the number is still cited by doomsayers as an `official' prediction."
CORRECTION:
Completely untrue. The NAS has not reduced its "high-end" forecast, but in its latest report actually raised it, from 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit to 9 degrees Fahrenheit. To be exact, the range of likely warming corresponding to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 was widened by the Academy panel from 1.5-4.5 degrees Celsius (2.7-8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) in 1979 and 1983 to 1-5 degrees Celsius (1.8-9 degrees Fahrenheit) in its 1992 report. [18]
A Moment. . . , p. 286:
"When in the late 1980s preliminary studies by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change endorsed the nine- degree [Fahrenheit] number, the IPCC's became the doomsday prediction of choice. After the 1992 Rio conference broke up, the IPCC amended to its `best guess' two to 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit from doubled carbon dioxide--a range that could hold nasty surprises for the ecology but is nothing like the emergency numbers that dominated Rio rhetoric. . . . the trend toward lower greenhouse-effect estimates . . . has received little media attention and caused no political stir, being nonalarming."
CORRECTION:
It caused no stir because it never happened. The IPCC has never altered its range of possible warming due to doubled CO2 or its "best guess" estimate. In its first report, in 1990, the IPCC adopted the National Academy's range of 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius (2.7-8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) for the doubling of CO2. [19] Since then, the IPCC has continued to endorse this range of possible warming.
Furthermore, in both reports, it endorsed the same "best estimate" of an increase of 2.5 degrees Celsius as the most likely scenario to result from CO2 doubling. As the IPCC clearly wrote in its 1992 report, "The range of values for climate sensitivity [to a doubling of carbon dioxide] reported in the 1990 Assessment and re-affirmed in this Supplement, was 1.5o to 4.5o C, with a best estimate, based on model results and taking into account the observed climate record, of 2.5o C." [20]
A Moment. . . , p. 287:
". . . in 1991 it was found that CFCs appear to have different greenhouse functions depending on altitude. At some altitudes they trap heat; at others they reflect sunlight back into space. Taken together the effects form a sort of zany equilibrium: CFCs may be bad for the ozone layer but now appear neutral to climate."
CORRECTION:
CFC's do not reflect sunlight back into space, and on balance they are still believed to be net warmers of the atmosphere. But some of their warming effect is offset by their ozone-depleting action, since ozone itself is a greenhouse gas. [21]
A Moment. . . , p. 288:
"So if sulfur aerosols have been masking the greenhouse effect, global temperatures should have taken off in a spectacular way when sulfur pollution began its sharp decline in the 1970s. This did not occur."
CORRECTION:
This is a gross exaggeration. The models again predict a lag, preventing any "spectacular" warming from occurring. [22] Moreover, sulfur pollution, though it did decline over the United States, actually increased in other places, such as China. Nevertheless, a significant warming has indeed occurred since the 1970's.
A Moment. . . , p. 288:
". . . since the atmosphere of the Southern Hemisphere has greenhouse gases but little sulfur, masking would be absent there. Thus Southern Hemisphere temperatures should be rising relative to the North. Records do not show this."
CORRECTION:
The larger area of the ocean in the Southern Hemisphere also "masks" the warming, counteracting potential temperature differentials. [23]
A Moment. . . , p. 292:
"Scientific support for the notion of a drastic rise in sea level has waned rapidly.. . . The highest observed actual sea-level rise in this century is a mere one inch."
CORRECTION:
This is another stunning misstatement of the scientific evidence on Easterbrook's part. The global average sea level has risen four to eight inches over the past century- -not a minor error, since, for example, this is large enough to have eroded over 40 feet of a typical barrier beach on the East Coast of the United States. [24]
A Moment. . . , p. 292:
"Why isn't the sea rising if temperatures are rising? Because many glaciers are growing, not melting."
CORRECTION:
The sea is rising (see above), and to a level consistent with the measured warming. And almost all mid-latitude glaciers are retreating, worldwide.
The evidence concerning the ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica is more ambiguous. In any event, according to climate models, Antarctic ice is projected to increase, not decrease, at least for several decades, because of additional precipitation in the region. [25]
A Moment. . . , p. 294:
"It's getting colder in Greenland? Isn't the Earth supposed to be warming? . . . Temperature shifts are not uniform . . . But this would seem a strike against greenhouse theory, which holds that artificial warming should center in the high and low latitudes, as equatorial regions seem historically insulated against climate swings."
CORRECTION:
To the contrary, recent cooling around Greenland does not contradict the conclusions of the climate models. Those models that take into account the dynamic role of the oceans show a suppressed warming in the North Atlantic region. Combined with the large natural variability of temperature at these latitudes, a cooling of Greenland for several decades would not be surprising, even as the world warms as a whole. [26]
A Moment. . . , p. 296:
"Greenhouse believers often cite the equilibrium state of the natural carbon cycle to justify an assertion that even tiny human-caused additions of carbon dioxide will cause big problems. Certainly this is possible. But in making the assertion doomsayers leave out a key modifier: The natural carbon cycle is in an approximate equilibrium state. Ice- core records are clear on the point that natural CO2 levels bounced up and down long before the first flint struck steel."
CORRECTION:
The key modifier here is "long before." Natural variations in CO2 have contributed to large climate changes for millions of years. But for the last 10,000 years, the period over which civilization evolved, the earth has been in a fairly steady CO2 equilibrium and thus has enjoyed a fairly steady climate.
Over the last 200 years, however, human beings have added CO2 to the atmosphere at such a rapid rate that the levels are now more than 25 percent above what they had been for the last 10,000 years, hardly a "tiny" amount, as Easterbrook puts it. It is highly implausible if not impossible that the increasing accumulation of CO2, unlike previous ones of similar size, will have no significant effect, as he seems to imply. [27]
A Moment. . . , p. 301:
"No one contends that the warming of the past century has done the slightest harm."
CORRECTION:
As noted earlier, significant rises in sea level, due at least in part to global warming, have already accelerated coastal erosion in many areas. More recently, there has been a radical decline in the observed populations of zooplankton in the California current, which may explain recent declines in fish and seabird populations as well. This seems to be due to a local warming of the oceans, which is itself perhaps linked to an observed global rise in ocean temperatures. [28]
In addition, many coral reefs throughout the world are in decline, in part due to bleaching. One cause of bleaching is warmer ocean temperatures, which could also be related to the global trend. [29]
A Moment. . . , p. 315:
"A little-reported part of Rio was a proposed agreement by which the First World would increase environmental aid to the developing world, for purposes such as water sanitation. Western nations ended up rejecting this proposal, pleading, We'd love to help, but we just committed ourselves to big investments in fighting the greenhouse menace."
CORRECTION:
Easterbrook sets up a false dichotomy. While arguments over funding priorities certainly occurred throughout the Earth Summit in Rio, the conference was specifically convened to address environmental problems from a global perspective. Agreements and funding mechanisms concerning global warming and biodiversity were the major new initiatives that resulted.
Although insufficient, international funds are already made available to build projects like sewage treatment systems, by Multilateral Development Banks and the U.S. Agency for International Development, and in amounts that far outstrip the much more limited funds devoted at Rio to dealing with global warming. [30]
A Moment. . . , pp. 314-315:
"Total 1993 preventable childhood deaths from gross water and air pollution in the Third World: 7.8 million.. . . On the runup to the Earth Summit at Rio, instant-doomsday hyperbole caused the world's attention to focus on the hypothetical threat of global warming to the exclusion of environmental menaces that are real, palpable, and awful right now."
CORRECTION:
In essence, this seems to be Easterbrook's largest objection to the idea of global warming: Why shouldn't we focus on present-day problems of air and water pollution in the developing world, instead of future threats like climate change? Yet his argument, that there is little point in worrying about long-term global threats, when people in the developing world die from poor sanitation and air pollution every day, is as baseless as arguing that during the height of the Cold War, there was little point in trying to avert nuclear war, since every day, hundreds of people were already dying in regional wars and conflicts.
Indeed, Easterbrook's point is even more untenable, for those with the most to lose from global warming are indeed the very people for whom Easterbrook expresses the most concern. The truth is that many public health problems in the developing world will only get worse in a warming regime. For example, substantial declines in agricultural productivity. [31] are projected in those areas of the developing world, including parts of Africa, where many people are already malnourished and episodes of starvation occur. And the effects of air and water pollution in the developing world are projected to worsen significantly in an era of warmer temperatures. [32] Moreover, efforts to control global warming, such as increases in energy efficiency and investments in renewable energy (for example, solar power) will help reduce other forms of air pollution in the developing world as well.
A Moment. . . , p. 315:
". . . there is growing suspicion that . . . developed countries suddenly care about this issue for selfish reasons. Global warming might affect property values on Cape Hatteras; raw sewage in drinking water in Bangladesh will not."
CORRECTION: Those who are most concerned about global warming view it as a critical threat because of its global implications. Indeed, the inhabitants of the developed world will be best able to insulate themselves from the deleterious consequences of global warming, with access to air- conditioning, advanced agricultural methods, modern medicine and drugs, and, most importantly, the resources to defend the coast. It will be the inhabitants of the developing world who will be hit hardest, with the least ability to adapt to the consequences of a warming world.
To use Easterbrook's own example, the water supply in Bangladesh will indeed become more contaminated as the sea level continues to rise. Salt-water intrusion, already a serious problem for the inhabitants of southern Bangladesh, is expected to become more severe as a result. Moreover, Easterbrook also neglects to mention that millions of Bangladeshis are projected to face an even more devastating fate as a consequence of climate change: the loss of their farmlands, their livelihoods, and possibly their very lives. An area of the country where 8 million Bangladeshis presently live may be underwater by the end of the next century, if current trends continue. [33]