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Global warming: Fact or fiction?

Scientists square off over climate change

Alan Rogers

John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, debates William Schlesinger on the topic of global warming during a forum at the Hickory Metro Convention Center on Wednesday.

The scientists

Dr. William H. Schlesinger is president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. He previously served as professor of biogeochemistry and dean of the Nicolas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University. He has investigated climate changes for more than 30 years.

Dr. John R. Christy is professor of Atmospheric Science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville where he began studying global climate issues in 1987.

Who won?

The forum attracted an audience of several hundred. There were students among the crowd. An informal, unscientific survey revealed that many attendees, regardless of age, think global warming is overblown and people should not panic about the future.

Schlesinger said most people don’t want to recognize the problem, that they hope it will just go away. “It won’t,” he said. “It will only get worse.”

Show me the evidence was Christy’s mantra. The data doesn’t justify the gloom and doom, he said. Wishful thinking or not, a lot of people who attended the forum agree with Christy.

By Larry Clark | Hickory Daily Record

Published: February 12, 2009

HICKORY - The Earth is getting warmer. No argument there. Science is in collision over whether it's a portent of global crisis.

Dr. William H. Schlesinger says man-made carbon dioxide has the Earth and humanity plummeting toward catastrophe.

Dr. John R. Christy says otherwise. Climate change is cyclic and the dire predictions are wrong.

The two climatologists squared off Wednesday night at the Hickory Metro Convention Center in a forum sponsored by Lenoir-Rhyne University's Reese Institute for Conservation of Natural Resources and the John Locke Foundation based in Raleigh.

"I hope we go from talk to action," Schlesinger said, citing a preponderance of support from scientists studying the problem. "We're beyond guessing about global warming."

Schlesinger said carbon dioxide levels are rising at unprecedented rates that began with the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Carbon dioxide is a gas given off by photosynthesis and the burning of carbon-based fuel such as gasoline.

Schlesinger said life needs the presence of CO2, but the vast amounts generated today are having a negative effect on climate.

He cited polar temperature shifts and breakup of ice shelves as evidence.

"More science remains to be done," Schlesinger said, "but it's past time when we must begin treatment of our feverish patient."

He said climate models show warming in high and low latitudes, that polar ice melt and glacial breakup are causing rising sea levels and deepening drought will grip the American Southwest and Central Plains.

Rising sea levels will flood areas in eastern North Carolina and leave the Outer Banks under water. "I advise against buying a beach house as a long-term investment," he said.

"We will allow our climate to change at our economic peril," Schlesinger said, adding that offshoots of global warming are famine, societal and political upheaval.

"Fossil fuel has given us comfort," he said, "but we can't let the CO2 buildup to continue.

"It is highly unlikely that this problem will go away by itself," Schlesinger said.

Christy isn't worried.

"Science is numbers," he said, and the numbers don't back up the doomsayers who he concedes are the majority in the debate.

Yes, the Earth is warmer, but "Climate is always changing, up and down."

Carbon dioxide is plant food, he said. There has been a 16 percent increase in global food production linked to the CO2 the industrial societies have put back in circulation.

Scientific models — a synonym for theory, Christy said — fail when subjected to actual testing.

He said his conclusions are based on empirical data that shows the Southeast is cooling, not heating; that thousands of years ago, the Arctic was warmer and Greenland did not melt; the snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro were already melting when Ernest Hemingway wrote his novel; places like Bangladesh are seeing their land mass grow; and as one pole loses ice, ice is gained at the other.

Christy is not worried about rising sea levels.

"You don't want to build a house on the Gulf Coast because there will be another hurricane," he said, but dismissing the notion that weather is more severe than in the past.

Christy said energy resources will evolve, but he's not afraid fossil fuels will condemn Earth and humanity.

"Without energy, life is brutal and short. We owe our civilization and probably our lives to carbon energy," he said.

Using California as an example, Christy said strict emissions controls would have a negligible effect on temperature and climate, even if adopted worldwide.

Neither would a massive nuclear plant construction program.

"Our ignorance of our climate system is enormous. Climate cannot be predicted," Christy said.
Schlesinger defended the current scientific models as "the best we have. It's unrealistic if we think nothing should be done."

Christy was unmoved, reiterating that when dire hypotheses are tested, the models fail.

"We are innovative. We will decarbonize," but he doesn't see the need to rush drastic action.

The Earth is warming, he said, but it's not devastating.

"Don't demonize energy," Schlesinger said, also refusing to budge, "demonize fossil energy. We must act now."