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Left journalist and commentator Alexander
Cockburn recently took a strange turn to the right by joining the
ranks of nay-saying climate skeptics in a series of four articles
published in The Nation. The commentaries, which attacked the science
of global warming and the anthropogenic causes of climate change,
were also posted on the Counterpunch website he coedits with Jeffrey
St. Clair.
It is interesting to note that
only a week before Cockburn’s first article appeared, The Nation had
published a special issue entitled "Surviving the Climate
Crisis: What Must Be Done," which included contributions by,
among others, NASA climatologist James Hansen and British journalist
George Monbiot, the author of "Heat: How to Stop the Planet
Burning."
In his "Beat the Devil"
column of May 14, Cockburn rightfully compared the sale of carbon
credits to that of indulgences by the Roman Catholic Church in the
Middle Ages: "a convenient pay now, sin later plan."
Indeed, many serious climate crisis activists agree that phony carbon
trading and the sale of credits are merely a way to privatize Earth’s
carbon-cycling system and turn pollution into a commodity on the
world market.
Such schemes will not reduce
global warming but only contribute to it by granting a license to
pollute while shuffling numbers in accounting books. Likewise, carbon
offsets are just a means to ease the consciences of frequent fliers
and often do more harm than good when natural forests are razed to
plant sterile monocultural tree plantations.
What we need is to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions to zero by completely weaning our society
off of fossil fuels as soon as possible through the implementation of
clean, renewable energy technologies in the form of wind and solar
power.
Cockburn is also highly critical
of those who have illusions in the burning of "clean coal"
or advocate the building of more nuclear power plants, particularly
various "greens" who have sold out on these questions.
Dangerous nuclear power
stations are by no means a carbon-neutral form of electrical
generation and will only increase the amount of radioactivity we are
exposed to through routine emissions and the nucleated wastes that
continue to pile up.
Cockburn and his colleague,
St. Clair, have no love for Al Gore either, whose environmental
record during the Clinton years is indisputably wretched. Under their
administration, many old-growth forests were clear cut, and numerous
deals were made with the pesticide-producing chemical industry.
However, none of these are reasons to reject the empirical evidence
for the human-generated causes of global warming. Yet Cockburn does
just that.
The usual suspects
To defend his position, Cockburn has allied
himself with a crew of junk-science proponents. They include Martin
Hertzberg, who as an explosives expert for the Bureau of Mines, gave
testimony on behalf of the coal company, Jim Walter Resources. An
explosion in their Alabama mine had killed 13 miners, but the judge
levied only a $3000 fine for safety violations, citing Hertzberg’s
testimony in his decision.
Another is Patrick Michaels,
who has been on the take from coal and energy interests. Frederick
Seitz is the former chair of the Science and Environmental Policy
Project and the George C. Marshall Institute, which are both funded
by ExxonMobil. He is notorious for having previously been a
consultant for R.J. Reynolds, challenging the health hazards of
nicotine use and exposure to second-hand smoke on behalf of the
tobacco industry.
The function of this rogues
gallery is to cast doubt on the scientific evidence and sow confusion
among the general public, while getting an unwarranted amount of
media attention and providing a justification for continuance of the
status quo as the planet fries. It is unfortunate that a well-known left
critic of the status quo has joined forces with this bunch of quacks.
Cockburn’s cock and bull
Cockburn begins by questioning conditions
during the Great Depression. When capitalist industry ground to a
halt in the 1930s and carbon emissions tonnage declined from 1.1
gigaton in 1928, to 1.17 in 1929, and to 0.88 in 1932, he asks why
there was no corresponding drop in the atmospheric concentrations of
CO2, which had risen from 306 to 307 ppmv in that five-year period.
He ignores the fact that a
typical molecule of the trace gas has a residence time in the
atmosphere of over a century. Therefore, what had been there from the
beginning of the economic crisis to its peak had remained in the
atmosphere due to inertia, despite the fact that human fossil fuel
emissions had declined by 30 percent because of the capitalist crisis
of overproduction.
If we were to completely halt
all carbon dioxide emissions tomorrow, including respiration, it
would result in only an initial stabilization of the atmospheric concentrations
of the greenhouse gas at their present level, before a slow decrease
begins to take effect. This is because it will take time for the now
overloaded oceans, vegetation, and soils to absorb the excess.
Cockburn admits that carbon
dioxide concentrations have indeed risen from 280 to 380 ppmv in the
past century and that the planet is definitely getting warmer, but he
challenges the role in warming of human-generated CO2 as against that
of water vapor.
He cites Martin Hertzberg, the
explosions expert, who claims that the impact on our warming climate
of "the greenhouse gases are by comparison, the equivalent of a
few farts in a hurricane," and who insists that water vapor is
the strongest of the GHGs.
It is true that water vapor is
a powerful greenhouse gas. Alone, it contributes 36% to 66%, and with
clouds 66% to 85%, to the greenhouse effect. However, because it has
a short lifetime in the atmosphere (approximately 10 days) and
precipitates out, it is not considered a climate forcing but rather a
feedback, being itself a function of temperature.
As CO2 induced warming occurs,
humidity rises and increased H2O concentrations act as a significant
amplifier by doubling or tripling the effects of carbon dioxide.
Another claim of Cockburn is that
the General Circulation Models (GCMs) used to make climate
predictions never include water vapor and clouds as factors. This is
a fabrication. They do, but it has taken time for climate modelers to
perfect those components, which they have steadily improved.
Hertzberg maintains that the
warming oceans are simply out-gassing their stored CO2, meaning that
the rise in atmospheric concentrations is the effect of warming, not
its cause, when in fact, warming is a feedback, not a forcing.
Cockburn raises the apparent
time lag between rising temperatures and rising carbon dioxide
concentrations in the paleoclimatological records.
During the planet’s ice ages,
solar radiative forcing due to changes in the planet’s relationship
to the sun is what brought on the termination of each glacial by
melting the ice and warming the oceans. The warming came first and
then released carbon dioxide from sea water along with methane from
once-frozen bogs, which had an amplifying effect and in turn
stimulated further warming beyond that initiated by the sun. That’s
when CO2 began to enhance warming.
The most important aspect of
ice-sheet shrinkage is the loss of albedo or reflectivity of
sunlight. As the white ice on the surface melts, dark pools of water
form and absorb more heat, contributing to further warming. In their
latest study, NASA climatologist James Hansen and his team refer to
this phenomenon as albedo flip and warn that it can lead to very
rapid climate change, which they prove has been the case in the past.
Cockburn points to a
previously held view that carbon dioxide changes lagged global
temperatures by 800 to 2600 years in the past. Granted, thermal
inertia was at work in the termination of each ice age, but Hanson et
al shows that the actual time span was only 600-800 years.
They also point out that
global mean forcing due to Earth’s orbital changes is small in
comparison to what human beings are now doing with the massive
combustion of fossil fuels that began with the Industrial Revolution.
The little ice age
Cockburn claims the reason the planet is
warming is that we are in the thaw from the Little Ice Age (LIA).
This was preceded by the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), which began in
the 1400s, and it would seem, eased off in the early 1900s.
During the LIA, the climate
was much cooler, glaciers advanced worldwide, and there were
significant changes in the atmospheric circulation patterns with
increased storminess in the higher latitudes.
If the Little Ice Age were
truly over, as Cockburn claims, it would be one of the most abrupt
and shortest Rapid Climate Change Events (RCCEs) in the last 110,000
years. Since RCCEs typically endure for at least a millenium, the
combined conditions of both a cool troposphere and generally stormy
circulation should last another two to four centuries, but they have
not.
The average temperature in the
Northern Hemisphere rose 1 degree Fahrenheit from 1900-40 and in the
Southern Hemisphere 1 degree F over the past century. As it has
warmed, atmospheric circulation patterns have remained the same, but
there has yet to be a full return to the previous conditions of the
MWP. Therefore, it is very likely that the LIA has not actually
ended, and the warming we are experiencing is an unnatural,
human-made one.
Some researchers believe, as
stated in “The Ice Chronicles“ by Paul Andrew Mayewski and Frank
White, "that the warming trend appears to be not simply
accelerating the direction in which natural climate is going but
reversing it as a countervailing force." As they have pointed out,
it is not just a matter of hot and cold but of stability and
instability when it comes to the human influences on temperature that
are in play.
As another source, Cockburn
cites Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov of St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo
Astronomical Observatory, who also believes the present warming trend
is due to solar irradiance, which he expects to decline within the
next few years, marking the onset of another ice age.
There are two arguments
against solar variability as the cause of today’s global temperature
rises. First, it should be pointed out that if anything, the sunlight
striking the planet has been lessening, not increasing. Atmospheric
pollutants block sunlight and cause global dimming. From that, it is
logical to conclude that the planet should be cooling, yet even
Cockburn and his co-thinkers agree things are getting hotter and it’s
time to open a window.
The present Holocene Epoch,
which began 12,000 years ago, has been an unusually long period of
warming, and it is what has enabled the birth of agriculture and the
rise of civilization. Typically, a glacial period lasts many tens of
thousands of years in comparison with interglacial phases that last
for only about ten thousand years. In terms of the normal timescales,
this puts us due for another ice age, but we can hardly consider the
alarming disappearance of the planet’s ice masses and symptoms of
warming everywhere as signs of another glacial on the way, can we?
They are an indication that something
is terribly out of synch. So it would be greatly appreciated if Mr.
Cockburn, his co-thinkers and everyone else who is in denial would
wake up, take their heads out of the sand and pay attention to what
is going on around them.
The cosmic ray connection
A new study published by “Proceedings of
the Royal Society” blows the natural variability theory out of the
water once and for all.
Skeptics have tried to draw a
connection between solar activity, cosmic rays, and clouds. Because
cosmic rays seed the atmosphere with trails of ions that aid water
droplet formation, they can increase heat-reflecting, low-altitude
clouds. The magnetic field around the sun reduces the flux of cosmic
rays that reach the planet, and if the solar wind is strong, there are
fewer cosmic rays and clouds, meaning higher temperatures.
In other words, the skeptics
say, solar activity has induced global warming. However, researchers
Mike Lockwood and Claus Foelich found that the sunspot number, which
is timed on an 11-year cycle, peaked in 1985 and the sun’s magnetic
field or open solar flux peaked in 1987. This occurred while the
total solar irradiance fell from 1365.5 Watts per square meter to
1365.3 W/sq. m., which is to say, there has been a lessening in the
sun’s energy striking Earth’s surface despite a steady rise in the
mean global surface temperature.
Consequently, interplanetary phenomena have
been moving in the opposite direction and cannot be an influence on
the present warming.
The isotopic “smoking gun”
Outraged by Cockburn’s attacks on
climate science, Dr. Michael Mann, a major contributor to
www.realclimate.org, responded by saying that the isotopic evidence
for human climate forcing via the combustion of fossil fuels is
indisputable.
In his third article, dated
June 11, 2007, Cockburn counterattacked “the fearmongers” at
RealClimate for being “naive and scientifically silly.” Let’s see
just how “silly” the scientific position is.
As Mann explains, carbon has
three isotopes: "C14, C13 and C12,” isotopes being different
atoms with different masses but the same chemical behavior. The C14
isotope, used for dating purposes, amounts to one in one trillion
carbon atoms, (a mere fraction of a percent), C13 is 1%, and C12 is
the most common, making up nearly 99%.
Carbon dioxide from the
burning of fossil fuels and forests has a different isotopic
composition from that in the atmosphere. This is because through
photosynthesis, plants preferentially take up C12, the lighter
isotope, from the air. Consequently, their ratio of the C13 to C12
can be measured through geochemical means in tree rings, which
provide a snapshot of the air’s composition at the time each was
forming.
If the C13/C12 ratio in the
atmosphere goes up or down, it will be reflected in the tree-ring record.
Sequences of annual tree rings go back thousands of years. Because
the age of each ring can be precisely determined, a graph of the
atmospheric C13/C12 ratio can be constructed.
Carbon dioxide produced by the
burning of fossil fuels has a different isotopic ratio than CO2 in
the atmosphere because of the fact that living plants prefer the
lighter isotope and thus have a lower ratio of C13/C12. Being derived
from ancient plants, hydrocarbons all have the same ratio, which is
2% lower than the atmosphere.
As carbon dioxide from their
combustion is released into the atmosphere and mixes with that
released by plants, the isotopic ratio drops. As a result, the
burning of fossil fuels leaves a distinctive signature in the
atmosphere so there can be no question from where the growing surplus
carbon dioxide comes.
At no time in the last 10,000
years are the C13/C12 ratios in the atmosphere as low as they are
today. They began to decline dramatically just as human-generated carbon
dioxide surged in 1850 when heavy industrialization came into full
swing.
Not only is this evident in
tree-ring data, but in the oceans as well. Although the record is not
as complete and covers only a few decades, the C13/C12 ratios can be
measured in the surface dwelling phytoplankton that require the
lighter isotope for building soft tissue.
Again, the ratio in the
ocean’s surface waters has dropped. Measurements of C13/C12 on corals
and sponges whose carbonate shells reflect ocean chemistry just as
tree rings do that of the atmosphere also underscore the decline.
A time series was done by
Florian Boehm and colleagues at the Leibnitz Institute for Oceanic
Studies in 2003. It examines the isotopic ratios in Caribbean
sclerosponges, which can live many centuries and build massive
skeletons of aragonite, a particular kind of calcium carbonate.
Beginning with the 15th century, the scleros show only small
variations until the early 1800s. The isotopic pattern repeats, and
the C13/C12 values begin to drop precipitously in the period of
accelerated hydrocarbon usage.
The CO2 trapped in ice cores
conveys a similar message. Together with the tree ring record they
show that the alteration in the atmospheric isotopic ratio is about
0.15% over the last 150 years. This is five times greater than the
natural variability of glacials-to-interglacials over thousands of
years.
Despite this overwhelming
evidence, Cockburn maintains that “the greenhousers have got it
ass-backward” by not viewing the isotopic evidence as being the
result of warming rather than the filthy human habit of burning
ancient plant material.
A blunder of the 10th magnitude
In his final article, the recreant
foolishly aligned himself with Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, a
Polish co-thinker of fascist demagogue Lyndon LaRouche. Cockburn
referred to Jaworowski’s paper published in the Winter issue of 21st
Century Science and Technology.
This piece of La Rouche pulp
promotes ultra-rightist rubbish in support of nuclear power stations,
genetically engineered crops, and terraforming Mars to create a new
Earth, among other technocratic idiocies. The journal celebrates
capitalism’s most hideous distortions of science and glorifies the
most aberrant forms of its technology which are destructive to human
health and the environment. For example, the same issue has an
article on “The Myth of Fallout Cancer.”
Joworowski, who is not a
climatologist, but the chair of the Scientific Council for the
Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw, maintains
that climate change reflects natural planetary events, and he
promotes the cosmic ray theory.
Among other crackpot notions,
he believes that: “Nature likes warmth” and global warming will
benefit all life; predictions of rising sea levels are fear
propaganda; the cryosphere across the planet including Arctic sea ice
is not shrinking, but growing, despite satellite imagery that proves
otherwise; storms are not increasing in frequency or power; high CO2
concentrations in the past had no influence on climate; another ice
age is upon us and human survival will depend upon the miracle of
nuclear fission, the increased use of which will bring a veritable
Nuclear Utopia on Earth.
To prove his points, he cites
numerous papers, charts and graphs by other skeptics.
Jaworowski is passed off as a
“world-renowned atmospheric scientist and mountaineer, who has
excavated ice out of 17 glaciers on six continents in his 50-year
career.” Yes, he has collected ice samples, but not for the purpose
of investigating Earth’s changing climate. Instead, his “excavations”
have been conducted to monitor the presence of radioactive fallout
and radionuclide deposition in mountain glaciers on behalf of the
United Nations and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Believing that nukes are the
greatest thing since sliced bread, he has written several articles
whitewashing the horrendous health impacts of the 1986 Chernobyl
Reactor Explosion by claiming that the thyroid, blood, and
reproductive cancers, infertility and birth defects, which are
epidemic in the region, are the result of what he terms
“radiophobia,” an irrational fear of radiation.
This is to say that it’s all
in people’s heads, and the thousands who are already dead or the
victims of ongoing exposure to radiation because the reactor
continues to meltdown inside its leaking concrete sarcophagus are
suffering from mass hysteria. Now there’s a worthy entry in the
annals of the bizarre!
When this pro-nuke stance was pointed
out to Cockburn, he defended his source: “Actually, Jaworowski’s
article ‘The Real Chernobyl Folly’ was quite reasonable. He clearly
acknowledges the acute radiation deaths of the ‘first responders.’”
Cockburn also supported the radiophobia nonsense.
The Polish radiation expert
indeed confesses that all 31 young reactor operators died—but asserts
there were only 134 deaths due to acute radiation sickness. Whereas,
the Ukrainian Ministry of Health reported that 125,000 people died
from direct radiation exposure and 40,000 clean-up workers perished
in the decade following the disaster. Even the UN admits to many
ongoing health problems that must be monitored.
Siding with stooges for the
Carbon Barons is bad enough, but why Cockburn did not check the background
of this right-wing crank is another. Mistakes like this are the
inevitable result of cynicism.
Jaworowski is an employee of
the UN’s Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation,
which is subordinate to the International Atomic Energy Agency and
the UN’s commitment to nuclear power. Given how anti-nuke Cockburn
is, we can assume he will forever cringe with embarrassment over his
choice of a source.
More importantly, he needs to
rethink his destructive stance on the anthropogenic causes of global
warming for which capitalism is responsible. Rather than sitting on
the sidelines and kvetching, he should wise up and accept the science.
He could also stop badmouthing
and belittling the left for wanting to save our planetary home from
capitalist plunder and join us in that struggle. We’re sorry, Alex,
but colonizing Mars simply isn’t an option.
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