Hopedale Responds to the Threat of Global Warming 

The Threat of Global Warming is a Unitarian Universalist of America Study Action Issue from 2004-2006. On September 11, 2005 several members of the Hopedale UU Community presented a program dealing with the subject. It was an outstanding program and presented material that a group that met after the service felt was important enough that we wanted to share with the whole Congregation. That material follows:

Climate Change and Industry Disinformation Campaigns
Orie Loucks

The Evidence

Let us start by first considering the argument of Senator James Imhofe of Oklahoma , powerful chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment. He calls the evidence for global warming a great “hoax” by scientists who seek to put their study results ahead of the public interest.

As rebuttal, and for your later study, I've attached a 13 point summary of the evidence that climate is changing. The list begins with the simple physics of the greenhouse phenomenon, which allows calculation of how much the global temperature will change for a 50% or 100% change in CO 2 in our atmosphere. The CO 2 has changed by 38% since 1880 already. The list then leads into other forecasts that are based on the physical foundations. The Figure included here shows how well the predicted change in global temperature matches the observed changes in temperature over the past 140 years.

We've been doing various predictions for 15 to 25 years now, so most of the points on this list deal with forecasts, done years ago, of prospective outcomes from warming that are now being confirmed—including change in flowering times of plants, migrations of animals and parts of food chains, and even the severity of tropical storms, though not the larger number of storms (which is part of a natural cycle).

The list ends with longer term forecasts of severe change, not yet confirmed, in agriculture, sea level rise, and global species diversity effects. But so many earlier forecasts have been confirmed, years ahead of what most observers expected, that we need to consider these later outcomes to be very probable.

Why is There Uncertainty About Corrective Action?

If there is all this evidence, why is there so much debate as to whether to act now and protect the earth and its people? The answer is not in the scientific uncertainty of climate change, but in manufactured allegations of uncertainty and resulting public denial, both the result of a hugely expensive industry disinformation campaign.

 Let me quote from a major report titled “Climate of Denial,” in last spring's Mother Jones , May-June 2005” (for which I am grateful to Sallie Killian).

Bill McKibben wrote the Introduction, and says this:

“The deniers have done their job, and done it better than the environmentalists have done theirs. They've delayed action for 15 years now, and their power seems to grow each year.”

He asks how did the deniers do it?

“It's one of the mightiest political feats of our time, accomplished by a small group of clever and committed people.”

Here is a sampling, from a second article in Mother Jones, by Chris Mooney, on how one company, Exxon Mobil, has directed disinformation throughout our civil society.

Representative “Large Think Tanks”:

American Enterprise Institute , given $960,000 in grants Published a 2004 climate article “Don't Worry Be Happy”

Heritage Institute , given $340,000 It has stated “For the next several decades, fossil fuel use is key to improving the human condition.”

Representative “Science Groups”:

Science & Environmental Policy Project , given $10,000 in grants It has stated “We should have more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”

Center for the Study of CO 2 and Global Change , given $55,000 Calls CO 2 emissions “a force for good, enhancing the…organic matter that sustains all of humanity.”

Representative Consumer Groups:

Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow , given $252,000 It reports “surprisingly green facts on SUVs”

Representative Race-based Groups:

Congress of Racial Equality . given $40,000 Says “No convincing, real evidence that humans are disrupting the earth's climate”

National Black Chamber of Commerce given, $75,000 Says Kyoto could “reverse the…economic progress that blacks and Hispanics have achieved in recent years.”

Representative Religious Groups:

Action Institute for the study of Religious Liberty given $155,000 Calls CO 2 caps “a misguided attempt to solve a problem that may not even exist.”

Representative Journalism & Media:

A website: TechCentralStation.com , given $95,000 Mooney says it's seen as “A virtual HQ for global warming deniers.”

Media Research Center , given 50,000 Blasted the national TV “networks' overwhelmingly one-sided picture of the global warming debate.”

(Robert Novak dubs MRC an “indispensable counterpunch to liberal reporting.”)

Mooney reports that Exxon Mobil alone puts $8 million every year into these and other non-government groups promoting a very sophisticated public relations and disinformation role-modeling effort. And that's just one company, although many others are fighting back. Mooney cites six scientists who receive much of this money, the only scientists out of some 2000 who give any support to the Imhofe view (Two I know very well). The scientists, and their handlers, with thick information packets, regularly visit editorial offices in media centers all over the U.S.A to get their viewpoint covered on editorial and news pages.

Consider for a few moments how much this discrediting of scientific facts, and of the climate change forecasting, has allowed public acceptance of low standards for vehicle miles per gallon in the U.S., and our economic dependence on foreign oil sources and all those risks. Probably the biggest impact is on U.S. overseas credibility flowing from our policy of rejecting the otherwise worldwide consensus on the Kyoto protocol as a starting point for action to protect the earth.

Many economists also have been lined up to say that if the U.S. lost or reduced its use of low cost foreign oil, there would be severe damage to our economy and to domestic employment. However, a few other economists, working with environmental centers, have noted the great employment boom, and related economic momentum, that would come from producing most of our energy domestically—from wind and solar sources, and distributing it broadly to consumers in the form of electricity and hydrogen fuel. Costs in the economy would be different from those currently, especially in the reduced human health externality expense we all bear. But the economy could be quite healthy, if we would embrace new approaches.

The problem is we are all being led by a coalition of business and government agencies in denial. Through disinformation, denial, and lobbying, governments are making choices with no vision of a healthy and productive future. Unitarian Universalists, and our GA resolution do envisage a healthy and productive future. But we have to live it and work hard for it in the face of unmindful opposition.

Summary of the Evidence for Global Warming

• The “Greenhouse” effect is a law of physics: the glass of a greenhouse, or air with CO 2, are both transparent to short-wave radiation (sunlight), but both are opaque to long-wave (heat) radiation, thereby keeping heat in the atmosphere, oceans, and land.
• We can then compute (i.e., forecast) the increase in earth's temperature for a given increase in CO 2 (now 38%), even while considering other factors such as volcanoes and the sun.
• The predicted change in earth's temperature is matched exactly by the 1.4° F change observed over the past 40 years (1.8° F in the past 100 years).
• Reconstructed temperatures and CO 2 for the past 1000 years, and in other studies for the past 160,000 years, show recent rapid change in CO 2, and in global temperature, that is completely unprecedented in its rate of change.
• Computer forecasts of greater temperature change in polar regions than in the tropics are already being observed (5° F), along with thinning of Arctic Ocean ice.
• 100-year observations of freezing and thawing of large lakes and rivers on three continents confirm predictions of significant lengthening of the ice-free season over this period.
• Forecasts of increased rainfall, and severe rainfall and snow events along the coasts of continents, are now confirmed; the projection of more frequent category 4 and 5 hurricanes also is being realized.
• The forecasts of increased glacier melting are confirmed now for 98% of the earth's mountain glaciers.
• Forecasts of an accelerated rise in sea level, due to ocean warming and the expansion of water, are now confirmed.
• Predictions of earlier spring flowering and bird migrations are now confirmed in Europe and North America, with observed changes of about eight days over the past 40 years.
• Predictions of northward and up-mountain spread of tropical diseases such as malaria and dengue fever are now confirmed in Africa and Mexico .
• Shifts in ice thickness and annual animal migrations have threatened the food chain and reproduction of polar bears, penguins, and other high latitude predators.
• Current models project (for our grandchildren) a doubling of 100° days in North America and Europe, a dramatic shift in crops that can be grown in the U.S. corn belt, sea level rise of three feet and the loss of island nations, and the likely mortality of beech, maple and hemlock throughout their mid-continent range.