Debate regarding climate change (and global warming)—whether it exists or not, and if so what is causing it or what isn’t—can be healthy and unhealthy. Debate is unhealthy when we ignore the obvious truth: People through their policies and politics have been the established and obvious driving force or cause of air pollution, commodification of natural landscapes, desertification, disintegration of ecosystems, dispersal of invasive species, extinctions, and water pollution—so why not climate change?

Regarding global warming, George Will, the conservative newspaper columnist and pundit, is fostering unhealthy debate by intentionally cherry picking arguments—many of which are blatantly false—but he ignores obvious evidence.  Furthermore, he has made false statements before in order to give credit to his positions. For example, concerning offshore drilling, he made misleading claims in a column that the former Vice President Dick Cheney relied:

As for other locations, George Will pointed out in his column the other day that oil is being drilled right now 60 miles off the coast of Florida. But we’re not doing it, the Chinese are, in cooperation with the Cuban government. Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply.

However, according to FactCheck.org:

Cheney was right about one thing: George Will wrote in his June 5 column that “[d]rilling is underway 60 miles off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are.” But the substance of Cheney’s and Will’s claim is false, according to independent experts, diplomats in the region and elected officials whose states could potentially have been affected by such a deal.

So it’s established that George Will has made false statements and will most likely make false statements in order to bolster support for his beliefs.  Most recently, the paranoid George Will linked the nonexistence of global warming to a conspiracy amongst “eco-pessimists” and scientists. I have no other explanation for George Will’s claims, because he presents the same weak arguments, outright false claims, or nitpicking that does disservice to the climate change and global warming debate. If we accept climate change, global warming, environmental degradation, and unsustainable use of nonrenewable resources, then we accept an argument typically made by the left—and George Will can’t have that. However, environmentalists, scientists, the left, and anyone else who can make the simple connection between human activity and environmental degradation, are correct.

Taking into consideration that he isn’t a scientist but a conservative pundit, if George Will is going to make weak arguments that amount simply to nitpicking or blatant false assertions, then why not consider the overwhelming and obvious evidence? For me, data showing long-term surface and ocean warming trends, long-term changes in hydrology, long-term sea level rise, long-term ocean acidification trends, long-term glacial and polar melting trends, and data connecting the industrial revolution to increased carbon dioxide concentrations—for me, are convincing beyond a reasonable doubt. Since we burn fossil fuels on such a large scale, it is insane to believe that negative impacts do not result from our great dependence on them. Every other excessive or gluttonous action taken by people has had a negative impact on the environment so why not the anthropogenic release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Climate change is controversial, because climate change is a complex problem, (since it occurs on such a large scale and many things impact climate). It’s not like other forms of environmental degradation where our actions may result in quickly observable impacts. For example, if we pollute a stream, we may observe negative impacts quickly—through a fish kill for example. However, climate change is not so readily observable.

Nonetheless, the occurrence of anthropogenically-induced climate change is happening, so there is no doubt in my mind we are changing the climate, because it just makes sense.  We extract, produce, and consume millions of barrels of oil and tens and millions of tons of other fossil fuels every year. We burn and consume these materials, but these materials don’t disappear upon consumption—they enter the atmosphere or oceans for example. Energy or matter can’t be destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another—usually to a less useable form (e.g., charcoal to ash).  So, why wouldn’t all of this extra stuff that has laid trapped in the ground for millions of years, which is removed and burned by people, not impact the Earth’s natural processes in some way?  It’s dishonest or naïve to believe that burning fossil fuels on such a large scale will not impact the Earth’s climate. According to ESRI, discussing research from the Woods Hole Research Center:

Ecologists have been interested in carbon for a long time, according to WHRC scientist Richard Houghton, primarily because all plants and animals are carbon based. More recently, carbon has become interesting to scientists—and many other people—because carbon dioxide is the major greenhouse gas produced by human activity.

“The continued release of greenhouse gases is raising the temperature of the earth, disrupting the climate we and our agricultural systems depend on, and raising the sea level,” Houghton said. “The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has already increased by about 30 percent since the start of the Industrial Revolution, sometime around the middle of the nineteenth century. It will continue to increase unless societies choose to change their ways.”

Most of the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations has been and will continue to be from the use of fossil fuel for energy. About 25 percent of the increase over the last 150 years came from changes in land use—the clearing of forests and cultivation of soils for food production. Much of the carbon stored in trees and soils is released into the atmosphere when forests are cleared and cultivated. Some of the release occurs rapidly with burning. Some of it occurs slowly as dead plant material decomposes. When forests regrow on cleared land, they withdraw carbon from the atmosphere and store it again in trees and soils. The difference between the total amount of carbon released into the atmosphere and the total amount withdrawn from the atmosphere determines whether the land is a net source or sink for atmospheric carbon. WHRC scientists therefore study the rates of land-use change or deforestation and the sources and sinks of carbon that follow.

George Will claimed that his column discussed “whether global warming is occurring and what can and should be done“—but he did not consider all evidence for global warming in his editorial or presented any remedies to global warming. He simply asserted the same handful of republican talking points attacking global warming and climate change, and his 1970s global cooling claim seems to be the republican talking point du jour. However, The Vine at The New Republic debunked the global cooling myth intentionally perpetuated by George Will:

In his Washington Post column today, George Will writes that climatologists were all forecasting “global cooling” back in the 1970s, and, because they were so spectacularly wrong about that, we shouldn’t pay much heed to their current predictions about catastrophic global warming, either. My, what a fascinating column idea! Or, rather, it might have been fascinating if this was only the first time Will had tried this stunt. But it’s not. He’s peddled the “global cooling” canard numerous times before, and it’s been debunked again and again. Why George Will would want to use his platform to mislead readers rather than enlighten them is his own business, I guess, but someone has to sweep up the wreckage, so here goes.

The short version of the debunking goes like this: Back in the 1970s, yes, a few popular media outlets like Newsweek were, in fact, making overblown claims about a coming ice age, but if you read what actual scientists were writing—say, in this 1972 National Science Board report or in this 1975 National Academy of Sciences report—it’s clear the mainstream consensus held that there simply wasn’t enough evidence (yet) to estimate the future trajectory of the Earth’s climate.

As an example, one oft-cited paper in Science from 1971, by S. Ichtiaque Rasool and Stephen Schneider, observed, correctly, that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide had a warming effect on the earth, while aerosols and particulate pollution like smog had a cooling effect. They just weren’t sure which effect would predominate, though they noted that sufficiently large amounts of aerosol pollution could theoretically bring about a new ice age. The paper had a few flaws (for one, it underestimated the sensitivity of the earth’s climate to carbon dioxide by a factor of about three), but it’s basically in line with what we know now: Clean-air laws have helped mop up particulate pollution over the years, but greenhouse-gas emissions are still increasing, and that’s why the planet is heating up.

Furthermore, George Will oddly attacks California drought at a time when California is under a state of emergency due to drought conditions. From George Will’s “Dark Green Doomsayers” in the Washington Post:

Chu recently told the Los Angeles Times that global warming might melt 90 percent of California’s snowpack, which stores much of the water needed for agriculture. This, Chu said, would mean “no more agriculture in California,” the nation’s leading food producer. Chu added: “I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going.”

No more lettuce or Los Angeles? Chu likes predictions, so here is another: Nine decades hence, our great-great-grandchildren will add the disappearance of California artichokes to the list of predicted planetary calamities that did not happen. Global cooling recently joined that lengthening list.

However, after a “third consecutive year of drought conditions” California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently declared a state of emergency in his state of California. Furthermore, due to dwindling supplies, the federal government may cut off water to some of California’s largest farmers.

Regarding nonrenewable resources, Will makes a dangerous argument, where he seems to suggest that nonrenewable resources are immune from exhaustion. With the rate of consumption climbing, he is insane to make the argument below. A nonrenewable resource is one that “cannot be produced, re-grown, regenerated, or reused on a scale which can sustain its consumption rate, [and] these resources often exist in a fixed amount, or are consumed much faster than nature can recreate them [emphasis added].” Just like the 1970s global cooling argument, I’ve heard conservatives/republicans cite the 1970s oil scare to attack current peak oil or other nonrenewable resource worries—in order to debunk some nonrenewable scaremongering myth they believe liberals and scientists are perpetuating, but we’re merely trying to promote conservation in order to preserve society’s needs (by promoting commonsensical or progressive policies or new and better technologies).

Ehrlich predicted the imminent exhaustion of many nonrenewable natural resources, Simon challenged him: Pick a “basket” of any five such commodities, and I will wager that in a decade the price of the basket will decline, indicating decreased scarcity. Ehrlich picked five metals — chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten — that he predicted would become more expensive. Not only did the price of the basket decline, the price of all five declined.

George Will on sea ice decline:

As global levels of sea ice declined last year, many experts said this was evidence of man-made global warming. Since September, however, the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began. According to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979 [emphasis added].

George Will has a Wikipedia problem regarding his false sea ice claim:

In a Washington Post column which doubted the effects of global warming, Will stated that: “According to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.” This and several other claims attracted the attention of British environmentalist George Monbiot. Asked to respond, the website of Arctic Climate Research at the University of Illinois states that: “We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979.

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