The Las Vegas Review Journal will never win a Pulizer Prize

The December 29 editorial in the Las Vegas Review-Journal (RJ), "Global warming?" repeats the RJ's past denial of manmade global warming. The editorial claims that there has been no warming in the past decade. The editorial confuses weather with climate: weather has short-term fluctuations, while climate is a running average of 30 years. In the short run, El Nino, La Nina, and solar cycles can affect the surface temperature. In the long run, these cyclical effects average out. The short term temperature fluctuations are often used by the global warming deniers to cherry-pick a beginning and ending date to "prove" a cooling trend or a constant temperature.

Looking at the very long run, in the last 120 years, the global temperature shows an unmistakable increase, as shown in this graph. Global temperature is increasing at 0.2 degrees centigrade per decade, in agreement with computer models.

Among climate scientists, the preferred term is "global climate change" rather than "global warming". Modern scientific understanding predicts an increase in global average temperature, and also an increase in extreme weather events. Here in the Mojave desert, the drought is predicted to continue, and that is consistent with our experience in recent decades. In colder regions, increased snowfall is predicted.

Consistent with the global warming picture, Arctic sea ice is decreasing. Just three years ago, this produced a dramatic development: Early European explorers sought a "Northwest Passage" in order to reach the Pacific Ocean by going through the Canadian Arctic. For five centuries they failed to find a Northwest Passage. But in 2007, the shrinking Arctic sea ice opened up the Northwest Passage to commercial ships without an icebreaker. This is a dramatic change, something new in the last five centuries.

Nor surprisingly, the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are beginning to melt. This has contributed to a rising sea level, and the rate of rise has accelerated from 0.9 mm/year in 1870-1920 to 2.0 mm/year in 1920-1975 to its present value of 3.0 mm/year.

The RJ editorial makes a big deal about the question of whether the rise in temperature leads or lags the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. In fact, rising temperature can lead to increasing carbon dioxide concentrations, and in turn increasing carbon dioxide concentrations can warm the Earth. Thus temperature and carbon dioxide levels can rise or fall together over periods of centuries: the two trends reinforce each other in a positive feedback loop.

Before the industrial revolution, climate change was entirely natural. In the pre-industrial era, temperature rises were triggered by, subtle changes in the Earth's orbital motion, causing small changes in the sunlight reaching the Earth. In the last two centuries, burning of fossil fuels has raised the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by nearly 40% over pre-industrial levels.

So it makes sense that before the modern era, the rise of temperature came first. In the modern era, the rise in carbon dioxide comes first. It's exactly what we expect to happen.

Many scientific societies have issued official statement acknowledging the reality of manmade global warming. In contrast, the global warming deniers are not supported by any scientific society in the world.

The picture of manmade global warming has been understood among climate scientists for a quarter of a century. The blogosphere has lots of deniers, but most of them are not scientists. Many of the deniers are supported financially by the fossil fuel industry or are motivated by ideological opposition to government regulation of the industry. The RJ editorial page, written by people with little or no science background, appears to be motivated by dogmatic Libertarian ideology.

If the RJ editorial were factual, the RJ would have refuted 97% of the world's climate change scientists. If the RJ editorial were factual, the RJ would then win (and deserve to win) at least a Pulitzer Prize, or maybe even the Nobel Prize. The RJ has never won a Pulitzer Prize and its record will be unchanged by this editorial.

Not all Libertarians are global warming deniers. For example, one prominent Libertarian and former denier changed his position in 2005 in the light of new evidence. Journalist Ronald Bailey, science editor of Reason magazine, proclaimed in an article entitled "We're All Global Warmers Now" that "Anyone still holding onto the idea that there is no global warming ought to hang it up."

Let me close with two helpful suggestions: (1) read the comprehensive article in the November 13 New York Times, headlined "As Glaciers Melt, Science Seeks Date on Rising Seas", documenting the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. (2) consult the excellent website www.skepticalscience.com, in which frequently raised objections by global warming deniers are answered convincingly.

Posted by John (We are still working with Blogger)