That Used to Be Us_ How America Fell Behind in thted and How We Can Come Back - Friedman, Thomas L. & Mandelbaum, Michael [106]
Beyond these well-established core facts lie many uncertainties. We do not know how hot the world will become or how rapidly it will warm. This is so not only because we cannot forecast precisely how much greenhouse gas the planet’s 6.8 billion humans will produce but also because, as many climate scientists believe, the Earth’s temperature may well rise at a rate even higher than greenhouse gas emission alone would cause, through what are called “feedback effects.” Higher temperatures, for example, could melt the tundra found in the world’s northern latitudes (this has already begun), releasing the potent greenhouse gas methane, which lies beneath it, and thereby thickening the heat-trapping blanket that surrounds the Earth. Nor can we be sure what the consequences of higher temperatures will be for the planet. The Earth’s atmosphere and its surface are complicated interrelated systems, too complicated to lend themselves to precise prediction even by the best scientists using the most sophisticated mathematical models. The social and political effects of the geophysical consequences of higher global temperatures involve even greater uncertainties. They could include famines, mass migrations, the collapse of governmental structures, and wars in the places most severely affected. Unfortunately, it is not possible to know in advance how, whether, and when global warming will trigger any or all of these things.
So, yes, there are uncertainties surrounding the effects of climate change, but none about whether it is real. The uncertainties concern how and when its effects will unfold. Moreover, one thing that usually gets lost in the debate about these uncertainties is the fact that uncertainty cuts both ways. True, the consequences of the ongoing increase in the global temperature could turn out to be more benign than the forecasts of most climate scientists. Let’s hope that they do. But they could also turn out to be worse—much worse.
You would not know that, though, from reading the newspapers in 2010. Climate skeptics, many funded by the fossil-fuel industries, seized on a few leaked e-mails among climate scientists working with Great Britain’s University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit to gin up a controversy about the conduct of some of its scientific investigators. Whatever one thinks of this specific case, it hardly invalidates the scientific consensus on global warming based on independent research conducted all over the world, nor do a few minor mistakes in the UN’s massive Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. But for a public too busy to take the time to study these issues, without the background to appreciate fully how little these errors touched on the larger scientific certainties and disinclined to ask why and how climate scientists all over the world could organize a vast conspiracy to get people to believe this problem was more serious than it is, these news stories created doubt and confusion about the issue and helped to stall any U.S. climate legislation.
The climate skeptics took a page right out of the tobacco industry’s book, said Joseph Romm, the physicist and popular Climateprogress.org blogger. “When the whole smoking-causes-cancer issue came up, the tobacco industry figured out that it did not have to win the debate, it just had to sow enough doubt to pollute what people thought. It was: ‘I don’t have to convince you that I am right. I just have to convince you that the other guy may be wrong.’ The tobacco people wrote a famous memo that said ‘Doubt