Climate Change & Global Warming: Interview w/ George Taylor

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: What's your view of climate change, the direction that this planet is moving towards in the next, say, 50 or 100 years, by the end of the century? [00:00:16] Speaker 2: One of the key questions in the climate change issue involves the role of human activities, and that's where the disagreement really is. There are a lot of people that believe that climate change is dominated by human effects, largely the so-called greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, to a lesser extent methane and some other things. And they believe that the buildup of greenhouse gases is responsible for a lot of the changes that we're seeing in the Earth. Now, there are plenty of changes, but we know that climate changes all the time on a variety of timescales. So sifting out the human effect from the natural variations, which we know are in there somewhere, is a tough, tough thing to do. And people come up with different answers depending on what they're looking at and probably what they believe as well. I think a lot of people come into this issue with the preconceived idea of what's going on, even scientists do, and their results are usually not unbiased. I admit to having biases of my own, and I think every scientist does, because we're all a product of our education, the things we've learned in school but from other things, our experience, our world view, and quite a few other things. So you get this very disparate set of opinions. Right now there appears to be a majority of scientists and other people that are suggesting that most of the climate change that we're seeing is because of human effects. That has become the politically correct and what appears to be the prevailing view. Certainly that has become the view in much of Oregon, including in the governorship and in much of the legislature. I have a different viewpoint on that, and my sense is that human activities are somewhat smaller in importance than a lot of people claim they are. And I think natural variations have played the key role in climate change in the past. Now what happens in the future is really anybody's guess, and different people are making different guesses based on different kinds of information. Some people look at trends in the past and try to project them into the future. A lot of people use computer models to simulate the Earth's climate system and try to predict using those, but different people get different answers. And so we find ourselves in an area with a lot of uncertainties, and yet we find ourselves having to make decisions that are black and white decisions. Policy makers need yes or no answers. Should we control greenhouse gas emissions from cars or not? Should we do this or not? Science has an awful lot of gray. There are very few black and white issues in science, and this is certainly one where there's a lot of gray. We can make guesses, we can make hypotheses, we can come to conclusions, we can have theories, but in reality there are a lot of uncertainties. And little by little we're trying to reduce those uncertainties and become more certain about what's really going on. [00:03:36] Speaker 1: What do you say to people who say, well, if you look at the historical record even going back, let's say 650,000 years, which is a fair stretch of time, and that you can tell that you can plot out that there is a relationship between CO2 gas in the upper atmosphere and average temperatures, do you think that's just too simplistic? [00:04:05] Speaker 2: There is strong evidence that in the past, in millennia past, based on things like ice cores, bubbles from ice cores, that temperature and CO2 varied in the same way. They both went up together, they both went down together. And for a long time it was assumed that CO2 was the driver, was the influencer, and temperature followed. Once the ice cores were dissected at a smaller time step, at decades rather than centuries, another effect came up, and that is that temperature led CO2. Temperature would go up, and then later on CO2 would go up, eventually temperature would go down, and then CO2 would go down. And it actually makes a lot of sense. When temperatures go up, there's more vegetation, which eventually will decay or burn and release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. In addition, when temperatures go up, ocean water goes up, and when the ocean is warmer, it releases CO2. Cold water absorbs CO2 much more readily than warm water does. So if you have CO2 rich cold water and it warms up, it will release CO2 to the atmosphere. And that seems to be what is shown in the ice core bubbles. Now that doesn't necessarily say that the same thing is happening right now, that we're seeing a buildup of CO2 because of temperatures. I think a lot of, maybe most of the buildup is because of our use of fossil fuels. There may be a component caused by the increasing temperatures, but I think the things that happened in the past are not necessarily applicable to what we're seeing right now. [00:05:49] Speaker 1: Nor is a predictor of the future climate and the change, the direction of that change? [00:05:55] Speaker 2: The difficult thing is to determine exactly what the effect of CO2 is, and there is a wide range of answers to how much. For example, if you double CO2, how much that will change temperature. In addition, when you change one thing like CO2, you tend to change other things as well. For example, you often will change the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. If you just increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere because of higher temperatures because of CO2, then you would tend to raise temperatures even more, and it's an effect we call a feedback effect. At the same time, those increases in water vapor and higher relative humidity could lead to more clouds, and clouds tend to reduce temperatures, so eventually they could actually cause temperatures to go down. It's a really complex situation and one that I don't really think we have a handle on right now, especially the one with clouds. Clouds is something that we really don't know how to model and predict, and so it's left out of most of the future scenarios just because we don't understand enough about it. [00:06:57] Speaker 1: How do you then come to terms with the idea that CO2, which may or may not be a driving force for global warming, but if you go back, you know the CO2 levels have never risen above a certain amount, and now within the last 50 years or so, that level has gone up fairly significantly of CO2, and as far as we know, it's millions of years that have gone by. It's never been that high. What does that, what does that tell you? [00:07:31] Speaker 2: Well, what it tells me is that we're in uncharted territory, and ultimately we don't really know what's going to happen. My sense, and I think the sense of a lot of modelers is that these changes are going to happen gradually, and we'll be able to watch them occur as they do. That doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to fully understand the cause and effect, but it also suggests that reducing our CO2 emissions would be a good thing, and I think there is a lot to be said for easing back on the use of fossil fuels and conserving. I'm certainly in favor of energy independence for this country, and I think alternative transportation is a very good idea. I ride a bicycle to work every day, and it's great exercise, but it also reduces the amount of carbon that I'm responsible for, so I think having a smaller carbon footprint is a good idea. There are some who say this is a dire emergency, and we're about to reach a tipping point and a point of no return. It doesn't seem to be the case for me. I don't think we're seeing the changes happen that fast, and I think the changes we're seeing now are consistent with some of the natural variations that we already know about. That doesn't say that things won't change in the future, but that says for now there seems to be a relatively benign effect of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. [00:08:56] Speaker 1: Do you have a feeling for what the next 50 or 100 years may be in terms of climatic change? If it's not global warming, do you see it going a different direction? [00:09:09] Speaker 2: Lately, some scientists both within NASA and the Russian Academy of Sciences have started suggesting that in the next 15 years or so, the sun is going to become much less active to the point that it was about as active as it was 200 years ago. And that was a very, very cold period. And they're suggesting the onset of an extremely cold period beginning in the 2020s and extending for some time in the future. Now, I don't know about that. I don't know much about the sun, but I know what people are saying. And there are some suggestions that the sun, which is our main driver of energy and perhaps the single biggest influence on our climate, may be taking us to an area that we haven't experienced in a long time. Now, historically, warmer periods have been very beneficial for society because they promote more agriculture and forestry and so on. And even though there are some consequences of the warming, there are also some benefits. But also, historically, cold periods have been very hazardous and not at all beneficial. In fact, detrimental to society, largely because they shorten the growing season and create tremendous problems for agriculture and for society. And more people tend to die during cold periods. So, you know, climate will change. Temperatures will probably go up or they'll go down. And in either case, there are winners and there are losers no matter which way you go. Temperatures will probably go up or they'll go down. [00:10:35] Speaker ?: Temperatures will probably go up or they'll go down. Temperatures will probably go up or they'll go down. Temperatures will probably go up or they'll go down. Temperatures will probably go up or they'll go down. Temperatures will probably go up or they'll go down. Temperatures will probably go up or they'll go down.