The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Dissenter

There's an old movie, probably forgotten by a lot of people now, named The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. I won't go through the long explanation of the plot, you can read it here if you're so inclined. The closing scenes are the important ones. Far out in front in a race, the protagonist, Colin Smith, stops and refuses to move along with the rest of the runners. When the movie ends, he is exiled to a menial job – but it is rather evident that he did the right thing, refused to buckle under to authority and accepted his fate. Which is all a rather dramatic introduction to this article about Richard Lindzen, the contrarian on global warming alarmism.

"All scientific issues—and this is no different—are difficult to understand," he tells a group of cadets and locals assembled in an auditorium at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. "Extreme weather events are always present. There's no evidence it's getting better, or worse, or changing."

Lindzen's relaxed delivery gives the audience a comfortable sense that they, like him, are smart enough to question the pronouncements of nervous scientists and high-octane advocates like Al Gore. Skepticism is a good idea, he says, since so many people who sound off about global warming don't bother to read the documents that supposedly forecast climate apocalypse. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, if you read it—and no one does …" he says, and that phrase alone prompts laughter.

This ability to put people at ease helps explain why, after nearly two decades of effort, Lindzen has achieved exalted status among the current crop of global-warming doubters. He has personally briefed President Bush's top science adviser on climate change and is very popular with senior GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill. He publishes opinion pieces in The Wall Street Journal and speaks publicly several times a month, both in the U.S. and abroad. With so many Americans searching for answers on climate change, an endowed MIT professor with pithy quotes offers a level of assurance that few can rival.

In doing so, however, Lindzen is challenging the scientific establishment, which tends to sing in scary harmony about this issue. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an international scientific body, 2,500 researchers strong, that weighs in on the planet's climate health every five years or so. Earlier this year, the IPCC rolled out a series of three massive documents asserting that global warming is an established fact and outlining where it all will lead.

The reports maintain that there's more than a 90 percent chance that human activity—primarily the burning of fossil fuels, resulting in increased levels of atmospheric CO2—is responsible for the earth's recent warming, which amounts to a 1.2-degree-Fahrenheit rise in global mean temperature over the past 100 years. Noting that the current atmospheric concentration of CO2 is higher than it's been in the past 650,000 years, the IPCC predicts that human-induced climate change could spell extinction for 20 to 30 percent of the world's species by the end of this century, cause increasingly destructive weather patterns, and flood coastal cities.

It is rather long, at least in the internet world, but it is well worth reading. As for the rather dramatic intro? Here's why, from the last page:

But while Lindzen and his allies are competitive in the marketplace of ideas, they're losing in America's cloakrooms and boardrooms. Democrats, who control Congress, aim to pass legislation in the coming months that will impose the same regulatory scheme that Lindzen opposes, a cap on CO2 emissions. And a host of traditional foes of such government-driven fixes, including the Big Three automakers and ConocoPhillips, now endorse it.

The 2008 election may determine whether Lindzen will continue to have a meaningful role in the public debate over climate change. If any of the Democratic candidates wins, Lindzen will be sidelined even further, since all of them are prepared to regulate emissions. The GOP field remains mostly in lockstep on the issue: John McCain backs mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases, but the remaining Republican candidates are much less enthusiastic about the prospect of such massive regulation.

In the end, Lindzen may get sent to the machine shop. But he's sure he's doing the right thing:

"My best guess is, 20 years from now it will be accepted that global warming is not an issue, and everybody will claim they knew it all along," he says, adding that he's not holding out hope of being recognized for his work by future generations. "Chances are, 20 years from now I'll be dead," he jokes, "and someone else will want to take credit."

(Hat tip to Lew Rockwell for the link to this article. It popped briefly on Memeorandum, thankfully, or I might have missed it.)