Science is Golden
Page 4
It’s getting hot in here
The Greenhouse Effect
Earth has natural greenhouse gases in its atmosphere (such as water vapour, methane and carbon dioxide). These gases are found between the ground and Space. They absorb heat radiated from the surface and in the process re-emit the heat.
In Fact, It’s a Gas…
Way back in 1824, the French scientist Joseph Fourier wrote one of the first papers on greenhouse gases. He was followed by John Tyndall in the 1860s, and Svente Arrhenius in 1896.
Today, we have worked out the mechanism of the Greenhouse Effect. It should really be called the Semi-Silvered Mirror Effect (but then it would sound like the title of a romantic ballad).
The Sun heats up the surface of both the Earth and the Moon—each of which is the same distance from the Sun. The surfaces of the Earth and the Moon then radiate their warmth back into Space until, eventually, a balance is reached. So how come the Earth has an average temperature of about +15°C, while the Moon is much colder at –15°C?
The answer is the Natural Greenhouse Effect.
If there were no atmosphere, the average surface temperature on Earth would be –15°C—same as the temperature on the Moon. Because the Moon has no atmosphere, all the energy that its surface radiates out into Space actually manages to reach Space.
However, our planet has natural greenhouse gases in our atmosphere (e.g. water vapour, methane and, yes, carbon dioxide). These gases, located between the ground and Space, absorb heat radiated from the Earth’s surface. They then re-emit the heat.
If the gases sent all of this re-emitted heat straight out into Space, the average surface temperature of the Earth would still be about –15°C. But the greenhouse gases send half into Space and reflect half back down to the ground. (This is because half of the ‘field-of-view’ of the carbon dioxide molecules is the Earth’s surface and the other half is Outer Space. Imagine that you are standing in the middle of an empty desert. If you look in all directions, half of everything you see is the desert floor, the other half is the sky.) The greenhouse gases act like a semi-silvered mirror, which lets some heat through and reflects some heat back. Therefore, the more greenhouse gases that there are in the atmosphere, the more heat is ‘reflected’ down to the ground.
These natural greenhouse gases lift the average surface temperature of the Earth by about 30°C to a more pleasant +15°C.
Carbon Dioxide
It’s normal to have natural greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The big problem is that we humans have pumped additional amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Around 1750, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were approximately 280 ppm (parts per million). Then modern industrialisation took off. We burnt fossil fuels, pumping up carbon dioxide levels worldwide by 36%, i.e. from about 280 ppm in 1750 to around 380 ppm in 2008. This might not seem much in terms of the total atmosphere, but increases so rapid and so high haven’t been seen for nearly a million years. (We have very accurate records of carbon dioxide levels dating back about a millon years. This has been made possible through the analysis of ancient air bubbles trapped in the Antarctic ice.)
Throughout the 20th century two bad things happened because of the additional amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
First, the temperature rose by about 0.6°C. Second, the ocean level rose by an average of about 20 cm. About half of this 20 cm rise is caused by the melting of land glaciers. And as the oceans warm, the water expands causing a further 10 cm rise.
But what about all the geologists, meteorologists and other scientists who claim that there is no such thing as Global Warming or that, if there is, carbon dioxide has nothing to do with it? The answer is that they are not climatologists—they are talking outside their area of expertise.
But It’s So Small…
Since 1750, carbon dioxide has increased by 100 ppm. This is a very small fraction, equal to one part in 10,000. Some sceptics ask how such a small increase of just one gas in the whole five trillion tonnes of atmosphere can have any effect at all.
But think about a car weighing one tonne, i.e. 1,000 kg or 1,000,000 g. A big handful of long, sharp nails weighs about 100 g. If you were then to wedge the sharp nails hard up against the four tyres of a car and then drive the car, you would end up with four flat tyres. Something made up of just 100 ppm caused this devastating effect on the car.
And antibiotics and other drugs can have very powerful effects at concentrations much lower than 100 ppm.
So yes, the amount of extra carbon dioxide as a percentage of the total atmosphere is small, but the theoretical mechanisms for how it would affect Global Warming have been calculated, and they agree very closely with what we see happening.
If You Have a Dog, Don’t Bark
Now an important thing to realise in this Greenhouse Consensus debate is the role of the specialist.
My Polish parents had a saying, ‘If you have a dog, don’t bark’. (The English equivalent is ‘There is no point having a dog and barking yourself’.)
In other words, a specialist is usually an expert in a particular field. You would not expect a specialist in one field to be an expert in another field. So if you need some carpentry done, you would call a carpenter. You wouldn’t expect a builder to also be a plumber, nor would you expect a plumber to also be a chef. These are all different fields of expertise.
The saying also applies to health. When I was working in the hospital system, I learnt the truth of an old medical saying: ‘If there’s a single treatment for something it usually works. But if there’s a bunch of treatments, then none of them really works.’ For example, there are many treatments for psoriasis, but none of them are cures. However, there is a single treatment for appendicitis—removal of the appendix. And it usually works.
Now think about it. Who would you ask to remove the diseased appendix? You would definitely consult a medical person, not a plumber, a builder or a chef. But what kind of medical person do you consult? You would not consult a pathologist, an oncologist, a radiologist, a haematologist or an immunologist—even though they are all health professionals. The appropriate person to consult is a surgeon.
So treat the discussion on climate in the same way. If you want an opinion on climatology—ask a climatologist. Meteorologists, virologists, botanists, metallurgists, geologists and physicists are all scientists. But they are not experts in the field of climatology. The only true expert in this field is a climatologist.
The Climatologists Speak
Among climatologists, there is agreement that carbon dioxide levels are increasing. They also agree that this is raising temperatures and ocean levels.
On 3 December 2004, Dr Naomi Oreskes from the University of California analysed 928 scientific papers dealing with ‘global Climate Change’ that had been published in peer-reviewed journals between 1993 and 2003. Not one of these 928 papers disagreed with the consensus position, even though they may have disagreed on minor details. To quote the paper, ‘Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.’
Since then, climatologists have become more convinced about their stand on ‘Climate Change’.
So why do half of the articles about Climate Change in the popular, non-scientific press claim that climatologists are deeply divided over the fundamental concepts of the Greenhouse Effect?
Consensus
The word ‘consensus’ means ‘general agreement’. It comes from the Latin verb consentire, meaning ‘to agree’.
Why the ‘Debate’?
Because, according to The Royal Society, huge companies that make their profits from the burning of fossil fuels stoke the fires of deliberate disinformation. And they start with the blatant lie that climatologists have not reached a consensus.
The Royal Society, which has had Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein as members, is the oldest and most prestigious scientific society in the world. It is also deeply conservative.
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On 4 September 2006, Bob Ward, the senior manager for Policy Communication at The Royal Society, wrote to Nick Thomas, the director of corporate affairs for ExxonMobil in the UK. This is the very first time since The Royal Society was founded in 1660 that it has written to a company to challenge its activities.
ExxonMobil is not just any company. In 2007, it was the largest company in the whole world, with a revenue of US$404.5 billion.
Mr Ward asked why ExxonMobil paid millions of dollars to groups that ‘misrepresented the science of Climate Change by outright denial of the evidence’. Such a strongly worded letter is very unusual for The Royal Society. In essence, The Royal Society accused ExxonMobil of funding mistruths. In the letter, Bob Ward wrote, ‘ExxonMobil last year provided more than $2.9 million to organisations in the United States which misinformed the public about Climate Change through their websites.’ He further wrote, ‘…the statements in your documents are not consistent with the scientific literature.’
On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, ExxonMobil gave $50,000 to the International Policy Network, a group that claims that the scientific community is deeply divided on the issue of Climate Change. ExxonMobil has also provided lavish funding to many other climate sceptic groups around the world.
Exxon (before it merged with Mobil in 1999) participated in a 1998 meeting at the American Petroleum Institute. A memo from this meeting described the strategy of supporting the climate sceptic groups by providing ‘logistical and moral support…thereby raising questions about and undercutting the prevailing scientific wisdom’. Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times: ‘The people and institutions Exxon Mobil supports aren’t actually engaged in climate research. They’re the real-world equivalents of the Academy of Tobacco Studies in the movie Thank You for Smoking, whose purpose is to fail to find evidence of harmful effects.’
Mistakes Do Happen…
But what if it turns out that, even with the best intentions, the climatologists are wrong? After all, everybody can make mistakes—and scientists are no exception.
For example, until the 1960s, geologists believed that the continents were locked in place on the surface of the globe—but they were wrong. Once the hard data was available, they quickly admitted their mistake. Today we know that the continents drift around the surface of the globe at roughly the speed that your fingernails grow—about 5–10 cm per year.
In the same way, even though the overwhelming majority of climatologists agree on the fundamentals of Global Warming, there is a microscopic possibility that they could be wrong. (I use the term ‘microscopic possibility’ in the sense that there is a microscopic possibility that the Sun will not rise tomorrow, or that a warm lake in a warm climate will spontaneously freeze over.)
But because Climate Change has been studied very closely for a long time, in this case, the scientific consensus is almost certainly correct. This leaves us with the hot problem of what to do about it.
Doubt is Our Product
In 1969, a Tobacco Industry memo stated ‘Doubt is our product’.
Professor Robert N. Proctor, from Stanford University, discussed this in the symposium ‘The Sociopolitical Manufacturing of Scientific Ignorance’ at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco on 18 February 2007.
By the middle of the 1950s, there was medical and scientific consensus that smoking caused lung cancer. But Big Tobacco (the combined tobacco companies) undermined this consensus very effectively in the public eye for several decades. They funded sceptics, funded bad research that claimed that most lung cancers were actually caused by asbestos or the keeping of birds, and funded ‘health’ reassurance campaigns that ran advertisements in the medical and general press. For a few decades, Big Tobacco succeeded in their goal. Professor Proctor said: ‘Millions of people in the 60s, 70s and 80s didn’t know that tobacco caused lung cancer and heart disease. An increasing number knew, but not everybody knew. And not everyone knew because the industry was manufacturing doubt, fomenting ignorance. Industry executives created a climate of untruth that people bought into and died from.’
I was one of the people who got tricked, even though I had a degree in science, and was supposedly well educated. I took up smoking in the early 1970s. In the mid-1970s, a friend told me that smoking was unhealthy. I didn’t believe her, but agreed to look it up in the scientific literature. I did, and very quickly realised that I had been fooled by Big Tobacco and promptly gave up smoking.
Big Tobacco still hasn’t stopped spinning their line in the 21st century, more than half a century after the consensus on the dangers of tobacco was established.
In 2003, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published, in good faith, a paper that supposedly discredited the dangers of passive smoking. It apparently showed that the spouses of smokers had the same risks of lung cancer and heart disease as the spouses of nonsmokers. Only later did it become apparent that the data had a 25-year gap, during which the spouses’ exposure to second-hand smoke could not be verified. It was then revealed that the author’s funding came from Big Tobacco, via the innocuously named Center for Indoor Air Research. And even later it emerged that the author was paid to ‘consult’ for lawyers who acted for the tobacco companies R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris. In August 2006, a US Federal Judge referred to this specific BMJ paper as a superb example of how Big Tobacco still used criminal racketeering and fraud to cover up the dangers of tobacco.
Perhaps Big Oil and Big Coal also have the motto of ‘Doubt is our product’.
References
Adam, David, ‘Royal Society tells Exxon: Stop funding Climate Change denial’, The Guardian Weekly, 20 September 2006.
Enstrom, James E., et al., ‘Environmental Tobacco Smoke and tobacco related mortality in a prospective study of Californians, 1960–98’, British Medical Journal, 17 May 2003, pp 1057–1061.
Krauss, Clifford, ‘Exxon accused of trying to mislead public’, The New York Times, 4 January 2007.
Krugman, Paul, ‘Enemy of the planet’, The New York Times, 17 April 2006.
Oreskes, Naomi, ‘Beyond the Ivory Tower: The scientific consensus on Climate Change’, Science, December 2004, Vol 306, No 5702, p 1686.
Oreskes, Naomi, ‘Undeniable Global Warming’, The Washington Post, 26 December 2004, p B07.
Timmons, Heather, ‘British science group says Exxon misrepresents climate issues’, The New York Times, 21 September 2006.
Finger Lifting Good
The ‘Finger Lift’ is a fairly common party game. Basically, four people try to lift another person, each of them lifting with just one finger. At first they can’t. After the group performs some kind of ritual they can then magically lift the person. Is it really magic or did they get in touch with the Spiritual Universal Lifting Force? Nope, it’s a trick.
Stiff as a Board, Light as a Feather
The Finger Lift also goes under the name of ‘Stiff As a Board, Light As a Feather’. It’s used harmlessly enough by primary school kids during sleepovers and by high school students trying to impress each other. Unfortunately, it’s also used by people trying to push a spiritual barrow in order to lift some money from you.
If you have been part of a Finger Lift or have seen it done by others, your memory of the marvellous event is utterly precise—and utterly wrong.
The subject (henceforth known as the ‘liftee’) sits in a chair or on a table, or lies down on the floor. Then four people gather around and try to lift the liftee, each using just one single finger. As you would expect, the foursome is less than awesome and can’t lift the person.
Then the voodoo begins.
First, you chant a song or rub your own two hands together, or pile all eight hands of the potential lifters one at a time on top of the head of the liftee, or press on their shoulders—or something. It doesn’t matter exactly what it is—some kind of silly ritual that doesn’t make any sense is always performed.
The next step makes a lo
t of sense. You are instructed to count in or chant a song and then, at a certain point, to lift. And—lo and behold—your fingers acquire magical strength, enabling you to lift the person effortlessly into the air.
Giving the finger
The ‘Finger Lift’ is a fairly common party trick that involves four people trying to lift another person, each of them lifting with just one finger. At first they can’t, but after a ritual is performed, magically the person is lifted.
History of Finger Lifting
Lynne Kelly gives a lovely debunking of the Finger Lift in her book, The Skeptic’s Guide to the Paranormal. She mentions that on 31 July 1665, Samuel Pepys recorded how a friend saw some French schoolgirls do this trick. ‘This is one of the strangest things I ever heard, but he tells me of his owne knowledge, and I do heartily believe it to be true.’ The schoolgirls sang this song while doing the Finger Lift:
Voyci un corps mort,
Royde comme un baston,
Froid comme marbre,
Léger comme un esprit.
Levons te au nom de Jesus Christ.
The famous sceptic, James Randi, translated the song as:
Here is a corpse,
Stiff as a stick,
Cold as marble,
Light as a ghost.
Let us lift you in the name of Jesus Christ.
So the trick has been around for centuries, but how does it work?