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<\/p>\nHere\u2019s Why New EPA Chief Pruitt is \u2018Absolutely Wrong\u2019 About CO2 and Climate Change<\/b><\/p>\n
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Not long ago, this would\u2019ve been a remarkable statement from the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact [of carbon dioxide], so I would not agree that it\u2019s a primary contributor to \u2026 global warming.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n But those were indeed the words of new EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, speaking Thursday on the CNBC show Squawk Box<\/a>.<\/p>\n Pruitt\u2019s statement is roughly the scientific equivalent of saying he doesn\u2019t believe that gravity is a primary contributor to making things fall. Although by itself, it was no big surprise\u00a0\u2014\u00a0his record of denying the reality and significance of human-induced climate change has been well known since his days battling federal environmental regulations as Oklahoma\u2019s attorney general.\u00a0His boss, President Donald Trump, too has often dismissed climate change as a hoax<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Pruitt\u2019s statement this past week matters hugely, because he and Trump are now positioned to reverse the US government\u2019s efforts to combat the global climate crisis, with the first specific plans expected in an executive order from the president in\u00a0the coming\u00a0week<\/a>.<\/p>\n In other words, Pruitt\u2019s comments are not exactly news, but they are important to report, as well as to put in context \u2014 to remind ourselves what we know about CO2 and the Earth\u2019s climate, and how we know it.<\/p>\n For that we got in touch with Barry Bickmore<\/a>, a professor of geosciences at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and, it\u2019s worth noting, a Republican<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first thing we know,\u201d Bickmore says, \u201cis that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, which slows down the rate heat can escape from the Earth to space.<\/p>\n \u201cSo the fact is \u2014 and this is just basic physics \u2014 if you put more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it will warm things up. [And]\u00a0we know that burning fossil fuels puts more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n We can also measure how much the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased, Bickmore says, and correlate that with changes in the global temperature.<\/p>\n Doing that shows that the two are closely linked\u00a0\u2014\u00a0as CO2 levels have gone up, temperatures have gone up. Basic physics predict this would happen; careful and widespread real-world data confirms that it has.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say the progression has been in lockstep. CO2\u00a0is only one of many greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and nature also plays a role in changing the levels of those gases along with human activity.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a complicated system,\u201d Bickmore says, \u201cso pinning things like that exactly [is]\u00a0not going to be possible all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n Pruitt and others who reject the well-established science of the\u00a0climate system point to this complexity and uncertainty to suggest that we can\u2019t draw any conclusions about the role of increased CO2 levels in altering the Earth\u2019s climate.<\/p>\n Bickmore says such claims are \u201cdisingenuous.\u201d<\/p>\n We can establish a range of probable impacts, he says, \u201cand the probability that humans are contributing less than half to the recent climate change is probably less than 1 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, there\u2019s a more than 99 percent likelihood that the CO2 humans have put into the atmosphere is responsible for at least half of the planet\u2019s recent warming.<\/p>\n This basic understanding of the link between CO2 and climate change is almost universally accepted by scientists in the field.<\/p>\n So, Bickmore says, Pruitt\u2019s assertions that there is \u201ctremendous disagreement\u201d about the impact of CO2, and that it\u2019s not a primary contributor to global warming, are \u201cabsolutely wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n This, in a nutshell, is what we know about CO2 and climate.<\/p>\n As for how we know it \u2014 which is important to establish at a time when basic scientific knowledge is being challenged from all sides \u2014 the conclusions are supported by what scientists call<\/a> \u201cmultiple lines of evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n Among these, Bickmore says, are thermometers in place around the world \u2014 in some cases establishing a surface temperature record going back more than 150 years; buoys that measure ocean temperatures; and satellites that estimate changes in atmospheric temperatures.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can also go and look at past changes in the climate,\u201d Bickmore says, through things like ocean and lakebed sediments and glacial ice, which can contain traces of atmospheric gases and other clues to ancient climates going back millennia.<\/p>\n Scientists have even been able to learn how much solar radiation \u2014 heat \u2014 the sun was producing in past epochs, and account for how that would\u2019ve affected the global climate.<\/p>\n \u201cSo we can pin down the major players way back into the past, too,\u201d Bickmore says. \u201cAnd it\u2019s really clear that carbon dioxide isn\u2019t the only player in the game, but it\u2019s always been one of the big ones.\u201d<\/p>\n Bickmore himself didn\u2019t always accept all this evidence. Although he\u2019s a geoscientist, climate systems aren\u2019t his primary field of study. And he says he brought an inherent skepticism to the field.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a lifelong Republican, and conservatives generally \u2014 our knee-jerk<\/a> reaction to a thing like this is, \u2018oh, they\u2019re probably overblowing this,\u2019\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cBut once I started looking into it, what I found out was, there was a lot of evidence piled up on one side, and basically a lot of hot air on the other \u2014 some really, really bad arguments,\u201d Bickmore says.<\/p>\n \u201cWhenever I checked, I found out that the critics of the mainstream science were almost always being really disingenuous. That\u2019s probably the most polite way to say it.\u201d<\/p>\n So Bickmore\u2019s personal beliefs and values colored his initial engagement with the topic of climate change, but not his ultimate conclusions. The science spoke for itself.<\/p>\n Which sets him apart from Scott Pruitt and most of his fellow conservatives in a time when acceptance of the reality of climate change and the role of humans in causing it skews sharply along ideological and party lines.<\/p>\n Bickmore says he\u2019s seen this trend developing since at least the 1980s, when the Republican Party began allying itself more with conservative Christians who reject much of our modern scientific understanding of the world. He says it also stems from the same philosophical position that prompted his initial skepticism of the dangers of the human impact on the climate system.<\/p>\n \u201cThe knee-jerk<\/a> reaction of a conservative will always be to downplay problems like this,\u201d Bickmore says,\u201d because if your ideology is that you should try a more hands-off approach to governing, then a problem like this, that requires a lot of cooperation to address, is going to be really inconvenient for that ideology.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it\u2019s gotten to the point where people, just out of hand, instead of saying, \u2018we don\u2019t need to do as much as these other people are saying to solve the problem,\u2019 they\u2019re saying \u2018there is no problem.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But, he says, fellow conservatives like Pruitt and Trump \u201care taking a terrible, terrible risk by just pretending there is no problem\u201d with climate change.<\/p>\n Watch Prof. Barry Bickmore trace his journey from\u00a0climate change \u201cskeptic\u201d to\u00a0outspoken advocate of mainstream climate science.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n This article first appeared on PRI The World<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n The post Here\u2019s Why New EPA Chief Pruitt is \u2018Absolutely Wrong\u2019 About CO2 and Climate Change<\/a> appeared first on Towleroad<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u2018Basic physics\u2019<\/h3>\n
Pruitt\u2019s assertions are \u2018absolutely wrong\u2019<\/h3>\n
Science vs. ideology<\/h3>\n