Middle Ground

Longterm readers know that this blog laughs – quite a lot, actually – at the extreme histrionics of the global warming fanatics. Why? Because they are almost totally driven by an extremist "blame man for it all" position. Last I looked, man's activities appear – it is not at all conclusively proven despite what extremists say – to have added a few hundred parts per billion of CO2 to the atmosphere. The engineer in me says that that is not anywhere near enough to cause all – or even the majority – of the effects the Earth is seeing right now.

Is there warming? Sure. Is it a global catastrophe? The jury is very definitely out on that despite what you hear from the Algore legions. Is it something we should be at least concerned about? I'll grant that it probably is worth trying to make sure that mankind is not adding to the problem. There are things we can – and should – do to cut carbon emissions. Not out of hysterical belief in a doomsday scenario, but out of simple pragmatism. Some of those things will fly directly into the face of other environmental catastrophe scenarios, however. (We should be pushing like heck for much more nuclear power.)

So today (and I missed this earlier) comes this article from the New York Times that says there is an emerging "middle ground" of scientists who are not a) screeching hysterics crying that we are all going to roast – after all the polar bears are dead or, b) paid shills of the evil energy industry who is just trying to keep us all down, man.

In other words, the sane.

Amid the shouting lately about whether global warming is a human-caused catastrophe or a hoax, some usually staid climate scientists in the usually invisible middle are speaking up.

The discourse over the issue has been feverish since Hurricane Katrina. Seizing the moment, many environmental campaigners, former Vice President Al Gore and some scientists have portrayed the growing human influence on the climate as an unfolding disaster that is already measurably strengthening hurricanes, spreading diseases and amplifying recent droughts and deluges.

Conservative politicians and a few scientists, many with ties to energy companies, have variously countered that human-driven warming is inconsequential, unproved or a manufactured crisis.

A third stance is now emerging, espoused by many experts who challenge both poles of the debate.

They agree that accumulating carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases probably pose a momentous environmental challenge, but say the appropriate response is more akin to buying fire insurance and installing sprinklers and new wiring in an old, irreplaceable house (the home planet) than to fighting a fire already raging.

“Climate change presents a very real risk,” said Carl Wunsch, a climate and oceans expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It seems worth a very large premium to insure ourselves against the most catastrophic scenarios. Denying the risk seems utterly stupid. Claiming we can calculate the probabilities with any degree of skill seems equally stupid.”

Many in this camp seek a policy of reducing vulnerability to all climate extremes while building public support for a sustained shift to nonpolluting energy sources.

They have made their voices heard in Web logs, news media interviews and at least one statement from a large scientific group, the World Meteorological Organization. In early December, that group posted a statement written by a committee consisting of most of the climatologists assessing whether warming seas have affected hurricanes.

Robert Kennedy, Jr. and his attempts to blame Katrina on global warming aside, the hurricane hysteria didn't work out so well this year. There are serious questions about the accuracy – or the sanity – of the worst of the predictions. There is a middle ground and one that is workable and achievable. It is about time some of the less strident and apocalyptic voices had a say in this. More about this here.

UPDATE: And welcome back Scott Burgess  – with some information you will not be reading in the media.