Climatology: The more things change...

Elizabeth Kolbert's interview in Yale's e360 magazine is a sobering read. But what's even more interesting than the light she sheds on the reasons why the polls keep finding the public is out of touch with the science is the stark reminder I came across in the article's comment section that we've blown the last quarter century.

Greenpeace has posted a PDF of a 1983 New York Times story that, with only minimal edits of a few numbers -- replace the carbon-dioxide concentration, which was 340 ppm back then, with today's 387 -- could easily run today. I've converted the whole thing to HTML and, with the conviction that it's more important to share the story than worry about copyright, posted it below so it gets a higher profile on the web. First, though a sample paragraph to get you started:

The carbon dioxide retains heat rather than permitting it to be radiated from the earth into space. Thus the buildup of C02 will be accompanied by a rise of global surface temperatures, probably in the range of 1.5 to 4.5 degrees centigrade, or 2 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit, the report said. The E.P.A. report estimated a rise of 2 degrees centigrade in 2040 and 5 degrees by 2100. Both reports said there were many uncertainties involved with the
projections.

Such a rise in temperature will be accompanied by "rapid climate change," including changes in rainfall patterns, as well as a rise in the sea level of some 70 centimeters, or more than 2 feet, according to the academy. Roger R. Revelle, a member of the assessment panel, said in an interview that the long-term warming effect could produce a melting of the western Antarctic ice sheet and a sea level rise of about 3 feet every 100 years after the beginning of the 22nd century.

See how far we haven't we come? Remember, in 1983, "Every Breath You Take" by The Police was a new song. Despite the relative immaturity of the science more than 25 years ago, the best estimates of the time aren't all that different from what we heard over the past three days from the Copenhagen Climate Congress. We're still looking at around 3°C for a doubling of CO2 and a sea level rise of upwards of a meter.

Of course, this wasn't the first time scientists had tried to attract attention to global warming. The journal Nature wrote a prescient editorial on the subject in 1979, and you can even find items in magazines as far back as the 1950s discussing it. But what makes the 1983 article fascinating is how familiar the details are to a reader in the 21st century.

Kolbert's comment that scientists

...want new results, new information. They want to break new ground. They need to do that to get funding, really. And global warming, the fact that global warming is happening, that is really old news in scientific circles. It's just a settled question in scientific circles. So scientists moved on to other issues having to do with climate change...

sure makes a lot of sense, after reading that story. Here's another, more tragic,excerpt from 1983:

William A. Nierenberg, chairman of the academy's carbon dioxide assessment committee, which prepared the report, said in an interview: "We feel we have 20 years to examine options before we have to make drastic plans, In that 20 years we can close critical gaps in our knowledge."

Also interesting is that the comment on the e306 piece was posted by one "Michael Keating," which just happens to be the name of a Canadian journalist who was also writing about climate change way back when. Could be a coincidence, I suppose. But the guy was one of my heroes while I was journalism school and I've long wondered what happened to him.

Anyway, here's the entire thing:

Copyright 1983 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
October 21, 1983, Friday, Late City Final Edition
SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 3; National Desk
LENGTH: 1403 words
HEADLINE: HASTE OF GLOBAL WARMING TREND OPPOSED
BYLINE: By PHILIP SHABECOFF

Special to the New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 20

A report issued today by the National Academy of Sciences says that the coming warming of the earth caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is "cause for concern" but that there is sufficient time to prepare for its impact.

The academy's report follows by three days a report by the Environmental Protection Agency on the warming phenomenon, known as the greenhouse effect. The two reports are similar in their findings, but the environmental agency called for steps to begin now to deal with the expected changes in world temperature and climate.

Tonight President Reagan's science adviser, George A. Keyworth 3d, sharply criticized the E.P.A. report and praised the National Academy's. He called the environmental agency's report "unwarranted and unnecessarily alarmist."

"There is no evidence to indicate that the gradual rise in carbon dioxide in the air would have environmental effects pronounced enough to require near-term corrective action," Mr. Keyworth said.

He contrasted the E.P.A. report with the academy's study, which he said "emphasized that, at this time, there are no actions recommended other than continued research on this issue."

The academy's report warns that the greenhouse effect will cause a rise in global temperature in the coming century that has "few or no precedents in the earth's recent history."

Like the E.P.A. report, the 496-page academy document warns that a rapid increase in the earth's temperature and climate now seems inevitable and that its effects will begin to be felt by the turn of the century.

"Viewed in terms of energy, global pollution and worldwide environmental damage, the IC02 problem' appears intractable," the report said. Like the E.P.A., the academy also warned that the greenhouse effect was not likely to be prevented by reducing the use of coal and oil, the major sources of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The tone of the academy's warning is less urgent than the environmental agency's, and the latest report stresses the need for more intensive research. There was no official connection between the two reports.

William A. Nierenberg, chairman of the academy's carbon dioxide assessment committee, which prepared the report, said in an interview: "We feel we have 20 years to examine options before we have to make drastic plans, In that 20 years we can close critical gaps in our knowledge."

He said that the environmental agency's report was based on the much of the same data as the academy's and that the two reports were similar to a large degree.

Mr. Nierenberg, a scientist with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., said that while more was known about the greenhouse effect than about acid rain, it was necessary to cope with the acid rain problem immediately because its effects are already severe.

"In our judgment," the report says, "the knowledge we can gain in coming years should be more beneficial than a lack of action will be damaging. A program of action without a program for learning could be costly and ineffective.

Like the environmental agency, however, the academy found that since there is no politically or economically realistic way of heading off the greenhouse effect, strategies must be prepared to adapt to "a high temperature world."

The E.P.A. report said even a total ban on coal would only delay the process for a few years.

The academy, a private organization chartered by Congress to do research on scientific and technological issues, found that the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, now 340 parts per million, is likely to double by the third quarter of the 21st century. There is a chance the buildup could be even faster,
the report said.

The carbon dioxide retains heat rather than permitting it to be radiated from the earth into space. Thus the buildup of C02 will be accompanied by a rise of global surface temperatures, probably in the range of 1.5 to 4.5 degrees centigrade, or 2 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit, the report said. The E.P.A. report estimated a rise of 2 degrees centigrade in 2040 and 5 degrees by 2100. Both reports said there were many uncertainties involved with the projections.

Such a rise in temperature will be accompanied by "rapid climate change," including changes in rainfall patterns, as well as a rise in the sea level of some 70 centimeters, or more than 2 feet, according to the academy. Roger R. Revelle, a member of the assessment panel, said in an interview that the long-term warming effect could produce a melting of the western Antarctic ice sheet and a sea level rise of about 3 feet every 100 years after the beginning of the 22d century.

The report, entitled "Changing Climate," sought to forecast some of the economic and social effects of the greenhouse phenomenon. While humanity has experienced climate changes in the past, the academy said, "we are deeply concerned about environmental changes of this magnitude."

It said other "greenhouse gases," such as chlorofluorocarbons, methane and
nitrous oxide, add to the trend.

"We may get in trouble in ways we have barely imagined, like release of methane from marine sediments," as rising temperatures cause new effects, the report warned.

On the other hand, it said, carbon dioxide by itself should have a beneficial effect on agriculture by improving the efficiency of photosynthesis, the process by which plants create carbohydrates and hydrogen to nourish themselves. It also said the benefits and damage stemming from climate change would fall "unequally on the world's people and nations" and could therefore be a new, divisive factor in world affairs.

"The foreseeable consequences of climate change are no cause for alarm on a global scale but could prove to be exceedingly bad news for particular parts of the world," the report concluded. "Generally, the more well-to-do countries can take in stride what may prove to be a reduction by a few percent in living standards that will likely be greater per capita by more than 100 percent over today's.

It went on to "question whether this relatively calm assessment can be applied to a country, say Bangladesh, where food production is already at the margin of subsistence and coastal flooding is already serious."

In the United States, the effect may be felt on agriculture starting around the year 2000, the report said. With warming of about 1 degree centigrade by then, the growing season in the northern part of the country would be about 10 days longer. In the southerly farm belt, where most of the country's wheat, corn and soybeans are grown, drier conditions could decrease crop yields between 5 and 10 percent. But this decline because of less moisture, the report added, may be balanced by the more efficient photosynthesis enduced by higher C02 levels.

In the longer run, a 2 degree warming and decreased precipitation could "severely affect" the Texas Gulf, Rio Grande, upper and lower Colorado River regions, California and and other Western regions, the report warned. One of its projections shows a possible reduction in water supply in this area of nearly 50 percent when the full effect is felt.

Much irrigated farmland in these areas "might have to be abandoned unless water could be imported from other regions with more abundant supplies."

Paul E. Waggoner, a member of the assessment committee, said in an interview that "people in California will be drinking their water," instead of using it for irrigated farming. On the other hand, the decline in irrigated agriculture in the West could be accompanied by a revival of farming in the Northeast. The rise in sea levels, meanwhile, may necessitate "a gradual retreat to higher ground" in some coastal areas, the report warned.

Other members of the academy's carbon dioxide assessment committee are Peter G. Brewer of the Woods Hole Oceangraphic Institution; Lester Machta of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; William D. Nordhaus of Yale University; Thgomas C. Schelling of Harvard University; Joseph Smagorinsky of Princeton University, and George M. Woodwell of the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Mass.