Holy War Over the Environment

“I believe the purpose of life is to glorify God, and we can’t do that if we’re heaping contempt on the creation.” So said Al Gore in his testimony last week before Congress.

On NPR this past Sunday, Richard Cizik, the vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, had this to say: “Supposing we allow coal burning utility plants to emit mercury into our air that’s then absorbed by fishes, and taken in by women, pregnant, who then transmit that, let’s call it that toxin, to their unborn babies. Isn’t that a sanctity of human life issue? Absolutely. Evangelicals know this. And thus we have to be speaking out about the impacts of our environmental degradation, as much as we need to be speaking out about the degradation of the taking of human unborn life.”

Is the ‘global warming: yes or no?’ debate, played out for decades in a debate over science, giving way to a holy war over the environment?

For many years, environmental debates in this country have been framed predominantly in scientific terms. Are humans responsible for ozone depletion? How much of a threat does mercury from coal-fired power plants pose? Is global warming happening and are we to blame? That’s not to say that other concerns, such as morality, fairness, and intergenerational equity, have not played a role. But science has dominated the terms of the debate. Now we may be witnessing the beginnings of shift toward values-based debate on these issues at the expense of science-based debate.

To the extent that environmentalists succumb to feelings of rapture over this turn of events — and their new-found evangelical allies in particular — they may be doing so at their peril. A values debate, particularly one focused on religious values, is likely to be much more caustic than a scientific one. So don't be lulled by the nice nice now being made between environmentalists and evangelicals.

Witness the well-reported split over global warming between the National Association of Evangelicals, and conservative evangelicals such as James Dobson of Focus on the Family. On the surface, it has centered on the usual question: ‘global warming: yes or no?’ But it has really been a more fundamental argument over religious values. This argument has in turn brought to the surface ideas that environmentalists — and environmental journalists in their coverage — could find much more difficult to deal with.

For Dobson and his contingent, global warming is just one battle in a larger holy war they are fighting against both the materialist philosophy of science (the idea that everything we observe is the result of material interactions), and New Age environmental spiritualism that worships nature itself. In both cases, they see themselves as waging a battle against the idea that humans are nothing special and responsible for the degradation of creation.

"I am today raising a flag of opposition to this alarmism about global warming and urging all believers to refuse to be duped by these 'earthism' worshippers," Jerry Falwell told his congregants in a sermon on Feb. 25 at his Lynchburg, Va., church.

Environmentalists who claim that humans are responsible for environmental degradation are advancing a “one-sided and unbiblical view of human nature,” states a joint paper of the Institute on Religion & Democracy and the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty. “Humans are seen merely as consumers and polluters of the Earth. The Bible describes human
beings as fallen along with the rest of creation, yes; but it still describes us as image-bearers of God, who can exercise dominion, produce wealth, and cultivate creation. The Bible claims that the Earth was shaped by a benevolent Creator to be the habitat that sustains and enriches human life even as humans sustain and enrich the Earth through our creativity and industry.”

The position paper acknowledges that humans cannot be fruitful and multiply forever, because the surface of the Earth is finite. But it says that we’ve not come even close to reaching those limits, and that God, through the bible, commands us to expand our numbers, and in this way improve his creation. This is what stewardship is really about — resisting abortion and expanding our population so as to exert our dominion over the Earth.

In the end, these folks believe that evangelicals like Richard Cizik have thrown in with the enemy. They are unwittingly helping to advance a Godless, materialist philosophy that demotes human beings to a status no greater than bacteria, and as a result sees no problem with killing the unborn in the name of population control. And all this, they believe, to preserve the environmentalists’ Gaian god.

Actually, there is something to the idea that environmentalism often takes on qualities of religion. As much as I hate to admit it, Michael Crichton made a convincing case for this in a speech he gave in 2003. “Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism . . . There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all.”

That judgment day has been dramatically articulated by folks like James Howard Kunstler, author of the ”The Long Emergency”. No religionist is he. But in his scathing, puritanical language (see his bloglike diary: ”The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle”) he demonstrates that he is as convinced of the coming Apocalypse as Jerry Falwell.

On the other side of the holy war, those who see the quasi-religion of environmentalism as a direct threat to their own spiritual beliefs are girded for battle. Go to Environmentalism.com and you will find this: “Environmentalism is not about a desire to have cleaner water and air. It is now a full-fledged religion, and its main tenet is ‘raw nature’ as god-like, and Mankind as a plague infecting it. If you support environmentalism, the fact is that you're supporting an idealogy [sic] that promotes the destruction of Mankind - and concretely, that includes yourself and everyone you care about.”

Sometimes, the rage positively boils over. Last year, University of Texas ecologist Eric Pianka received death threats after he delivered a speech to the Texas Academy of Sciences, where he received the TAS 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist award. In his speech, Pianka made his long-standing case that humans have overpopulated the earth, and that sooner or later our population is going to crash, reducing our numbers by 90 percent, possibly because of a virulent contagion such as airborne Ebola. Forrest M. Mims III, a well-known anti-evolutionist, wrote an account of the speech in which he said that Pianka had actually issued a “call for mass death” — that, in fact, the ecologist actually advocates deliberate genocide through biological warfare.

Pianka says he did no such thing — that he simply was describing what he believes will happen if we do not control our population.

I would like to hope that thoughtful secularists and creation-care evangelicals will continue to find common cause and prevent extremists from recasting the issue as a holy war over the environment. But I don’t have my hopes up. And if you have enjoyed the debate over evolution versus creationism and intelligent design, you’re going to love this new holy war over the environment.

The Goracle's Plan

I'm waiting for the second-day stories delving into Al Gore's policy prescriptions to tame global warming. I'm hoping they'll come Friday, or on the weekend, but I haven't got my hopes up . Gore made a radical proposal on Wednesday — enact a carbon tax and offset that revenue by eliminating payroll taxes. The sniggering classes in Washington no doubt dismissed the proposal as stillborn. But given the fact that this country will almost certainly commit to a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system as soon as Bush skulks back to Texas, I reckon it's worth a look by journalists.

For the record, David Roberts at Grist posted Gore's 10-point plan. But I doubt Washington correspondents will cover it in any detail, if at all. They're more interested in political theater. As glorified drama critics, that's what they do. Analyzing science and technology policy is just too complex and boring. Too much bother. Whereas the Goracle pinning the clown from Oklahoma to the mat is much more fun, and much easier to write.

According to Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post, Gore "was trailed by hordes of reporters" during his visit to the Hill. The New York Times gushed that he is "a heartbreak loser turned Oscar boasting Nobel hopeful globe trotting pop culture eminence." And as Kurtz noted, "Boy, coverage like that could have gotten him those last three electoral votes last time."

Of course, coverage like that is not how the Times usually treats Gore, as William Broad's piece last week demonstrates. And the Washington press corp's current love affair with Gore won't last long. As Kurtz notes, " . . . let's get real--it's the mere possibility that he might run for president again that is tantalizing the same media establishment that was long dismissive of Gore. In fact, many reporters seem to be rooting for Gore to jump in and ignoring his repeated denials that he has any such intention. But if he did take the leap, the honeymoon would end within nanoseconds."

I doubt that a second-day story examining Gore's policy ideas — or any other proposals for grappling with global warming — can compete with that political theater. The closest we'll get, perhaps, is yet more stories examining whether Gore got the science right in "An Inconvenient Truth."

We already got one on Wednesday. Hewing to it's usual pattern, NPR slavishly followed the lead of the New York Times with a report from Richard Harris on that subject. Harris reported that "a couple" of scientists approached him after Gore got a standing ovation at December's American Geophysical Union conference to say that "he didn't exactly get the science right." (THE HORROR!) Does any one else find it bothersome that not one of those scientists is actually named in Harris's report? In fact, not a single interview is referenced at all.

To be fair, it must be said that Harris treated Gore much better than Broad did. Overall, the report concluded that Gore did a pretty good job in "An Inconvenient Truth," and that scientists generally are grateful to have such an effective popularizer out there talking about climate change. Also, I'm guessing that Harris's editors twisted his arm to do this report — as a studio interview with Morning Edition's Renee Montagne.

Let's hear it for NPR's original and in-depth reporting!

-- Tom Yulsman

A Large Majority of Americans are Worried About Global Warming

A new poll by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy finds that 83 percent of Americans consider global warming to be a “serious problem” —up from 70 percent in 2004. Eighty-one percent agree with the following statement: “It is my responsibility to help reduce the impacts of global warming.” And nearly two thirds say that new laws are needed to increase energy efficiency.

Some bad news for environmental journalism here: Just 45 percent of Americans say they trust newspapers as a source of environmental information — down from two-thirds in 2004. Twenty-seven percent say they don't trust major newspapers one iota. Nightly television news also has declined significantly in its perceived trustworthiness on environmental news.

Why is journalism taking such a hit in audience confidence? This week's cover in Time magazine suggests part of the answer. In a reprise of the O.J. Simpson cover debacle (in which Simpson's photo was electronically doctored to make him look more sinister), Time's editors decided to run a bogus picture of Ronald Reagan crying. The problem is that Reagan wasn't crying; the tear on his cheek is a Photoshop facsimile. Check it out in the posting below.

-- Tom Yulsman

"Post-normal science," global warming, and the implications for journalism

After William Broad's silly and unsophisticated "hit" on Al Gore in Tuesday's Times, it's refreshing to read something really thought-provoking about climate change — and the very nature of science itself: this column in the Guardian by Mike Hulme. A professor in the school of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia, Hulme is the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the UK.

Hulme comments on a new book by Fred Singer, a well known global warming skeptic, and Dennis Avery. The authors argue that a 1,500-year cycle in Earth's climate, driven by changes in solar energy, are largely responsible for the warming of the last 100 years. But Hulme does not take on the science offered in the book per se. Instead, he uses it as a jumping off point to discuss what has been called "post-normal" science.

Scientists traditionally are supposed to separate their work from values and cultural context. They work in tightly circumscribed disciplines, with little or no interaction with outsiders, most especially non-scientists. And the entire enterprise is "binary" in nature: With enough investigation, it can be determined whether a scientific claim is right or wrong. When enough research is done to whittle away the uncertainties, the answer can be found. If policy makers want to do something with this information, fine. That's their business. But ultimately, the purpose of the exercise is not to produce policy-relevant knowledge. It is to create new knowledge for knowledge's sake.

But with complex global issues such as climate change, Hulme and others argue that a different approach — post-normal science — is necessary. With these issues, uncertainties are great, values are absolutely relevant and in dispute, and the stakes are very high.

As a briefing paper from the Tyndall Centre puts it, action on complex, multi-dimensional issues such as climate change depends "on many value-driven decisions made in the face of uncertainty. It moves beyond traditional research, where 'truthful output' is everything to a method where the quality of the process of research is paramount." With issues like this, action has to be taken before a full understanding is gained. Research must be directed not simply at creating new knowledge but expressly to guide action. Consequently, the research must be conducted jointly by scientists and those who will have to carry out the actions. This means both experts and stakeholders work together.

The IPCC is a classic example of post-normal science. Although much of the heavy lifting is done by scientists, experts from government, business, and the policy world become involved in the process too, and ultimately the assessment reports are handed off to government officials for comment and amendment before the final drafts are published.

Singer and Avery clearly believe in the normal science paradigm. If only policy makers would pay attention to the correct science, then the proper descisions would be made — meaning policy makers would not waste time and precious resources trying to stop climate change. They, along with their opponents on the other side of the issue, frame it in this simplistic way. Pure Enlightenment science has provided an answer to the "global warming: yes or no?" question. The problem, of course, is that they have reached opposite conclusions.

William Broad's story naively fit this mold — from the journalistic perspective. Give readers enough information about the science on both sides of the debate, and they will eventually reach the right conclusion. Broad's story was an attempt to correct the scientific record by bringing to light the alleged distortions made by a politician.

Yet the debate is not driven simply by scientific facts and observations. Most important are the underlying values of the debaters. Hulme writes: "Too often with climate change, genuine and necessary debates about these wider social values - do we have confidence in technology; do we believe in collective action over private enterprise; do we believe we carry obligations to people invisible to us in geography and time? - masquerade as disputes about scientific truth and error."

A more fruitful public discourse about climate change would focus on these issues, not just the data. And when appropriate, I think journalists should take every opportunity to reframe climate change in these terms.

Hulme says that "in order to make progress about how we manage climate change we have to take science off centre stage." And "if scientists want to remain listened to, to bear influence on policy, they must recognise the social limits of their truth seeking and reveal fully the values and beliefs they bring to their scientific activity."

Journalists should push them to reveal those underlying factors. But that's exactly the opposite of what William Broad did in his story this week — no doubt because of his own undisclosed values and beliefs.

-- Tom Yulsman

Bill Broad to Al Gore: "cool the hype"

The blogosphere has been afire with criticism of William Broad’s story in Tuesday’s New York Times. ("From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype.") The story tried (and failed) to make the point that many scientists believe Al Gore not only exaggerated impacts of global warming but also got many aspects of the science wrong.

The blogofire started Monday with an item in the Drudge Report on a planned New York Times “hit on Gore.” After publication of the Times story, David Roberts at Grist weighed in, saying, “This may be the worst, sloppiest, most dishonest piece of reporting I’ve ever seen in the NYT. It’s got all the hallmarks of a vintage Gore hit piece: half-truths, outright falsehoods, unsubstantiated quotes, and a heaping dose of innuendo.”

At Deltoid, Tim Lambert wrote wrote that Broad’s article “gives global warming skeptics (who are ‘centrist’ according to Broad) free rein to say anything they want, without checking the accuracy of their claims. Worse he adds his own statement on the science that seriously misrepresent scientific reports.”

And over at Realclimate, Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt eviscerated the scientific criticism leveled at Gore in Broad’s article. “The first rule when criticizing popular science presentations for inaccuracies should be to double check any 'facts' you use,” they wrote. “It is rather ironic then that William Broad's latest piece on Al Gore plays just as loose with them as he accuses Gore of doing.”

Not surprisingly, some bloggers are reaching exactly the opposite conclusions. Andrew Bolt, for example, writes this in his blog at the Herald Sun (an Australian newspaper):

“Far, far too late, but some journalists of the corporate left may at last be asking Al Gore some questions about his astonishing scaremongering . . . Yes, the New York Times piece airs many criticisms of Gore, but without painstakingly fact-checking each of his mendacious claims, as he deserves. But bottom line: even alarmists think he’s an alarmist.”

Don’t you just love that line! The trouble is that the people Broad quoted to suggest that Al Gore has misrepresented the science are anything but “climate alarmists.” Some actually don’t agree that human emissions of greenhouse gases are warming the planet. And at least one says there is no evidence that humans are causing climate change.

Broad writes that “geologists have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with ignoring such rhythms.” Then he quotes Robert Carter, a marine geologist at Australia’s James Cook University, as saying this:

“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet. Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”

Well, nowhere does Broad tell his readers that Carter is a prominent skeptic of the role of carbon dioxide in global warming. He does not believe that atmospheric CO2 is a primary forcing agent of climate change. Nor does he believe that any signal of human impact on the climate has emerged from the noise of natural variability. Who knows? Maybe Carter is right and the vast majority of other climate scientists are wrong. But Broad’s readers certainly deserved to know that Carter is by no means a centrist on global warming.

Because other blogs have done a thorough job dissecting the scientific claims made in Broad’s article, I’ll say only one more thing about that — because I haven’t seen it mentioned elsewhere and it is so ridiculous that it can’t be passed over. Broad quotes this from a blog posting by Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama: the IPCC report shows “that all we really know is that we are warmer now than we were during the last 400 years.”

Oh really? That’s the only solid conclusion to be drawn from all 8,488 words and 21 pages of the IPCC report? Not that “paleoclimate information supports the interpretation that the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1300 years,” as stated in the IPCC? Or that “the last time the polar regions were significantly warmer than present for an extended period (about 125,000 years ago), reductions in polar ice volume led to 4 to 6 metres of sea level rise”?

Both of these findings, two of many described in the IPCC report, support points made by Gore — points that Broad’s sources say have no scientific backing.

What possible justification could there be for printing something so patently untrue and profoundly absurd? I can only conclude that Broad has a mission when writing about climate change: To correct what he perceives to be errors in the record and restore a sense of balance to journalistic coverage that he thinks has tilted too far in the direction of climate alarmism. Nothing wrong with trying to correct the record, maintaining journalistic skepticism, etc. But as Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt point out in their Realclimate posting, if you’re going to do it, you’d better get your facts straight.

In the end, none of this is really about science per se. As Roger Pielke, Jr., my colleague here at the University of Colorado, told me today, “The debates about the science in the movie are yet another way to scientize political debates.”

It’s really all about politics, not science. And if some scientists are indeed uneasy about Al Gore — and I have no doubt that this is true, although not nearly to the degree that Broad claims — it’s not really because he has exaggerated the science and gotten some of it wrong. What uneasiness exists probably stems from a sense that they’ve lost control of their own science to a politician, that in the process much of the nuance and hedginess of what they do has been lost, and lastly, that Gore has cherry picked the data to make a strong case for action.

The HORROR! A political advocate is ADVOCATING!

-- Tom Yulsman

Believe in global warming? You've been duped by Satan!

Now the truth is finally out, thanks to a recent sermon by Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell. It turns out that it's Satan who is fomenting all the debate over global warming, because it distracts Christians from their true calling: winning over souls for Christ.

So, first he invented the Internet, and now he's leading Christians like Jim Wallis, a leading "creation care" advocate, down a path of evil...

The debate, Falwell said in a sermon at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, "is Satan's attempt to redict the church's primary focus . . . The idea is to divert your energies from the message and the mission and the vision of the church to something less . . . If I decide here as the pastor and our deacons decide that we're going to get caught up in the global warming thing, we're not going to be able to reach the masses of souls for Christ, because our attention will be elsewhere."

Falwell's attack comes as millions of evangelical Christians are getting the message from preachers like Wallis that preserving creation is a moral imperative. In his blog last week, Wallis stood up to Falwell and other bullies on the religious right who are trying to torpedo the creation care movement to cover up their own hypocrisy. "Once again, the hard-core Religious Right has gone on the attack, orchestrating a new campaign to advance their Far Right political views," Wallis wrote. "In a letter to the chairman of the National Evangelical Association Board, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer, and their cohorts claim that 'The existence of global warming and its implications for mankind is a subject of heated controversy throughout the world.'”

Wallis goes on to show just how silly that statement is. And he got some powerful support from Bill McKibben, author of the new book, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, in a guest blog a few days ago:

"Dobson, Falwell, and their ilk are the voice of a Christianity so deeply compromised by its embrace of American materialism that it needs to treat as a threat our brothers and sisters in Christ who come bearing the news of physics and chemistry. Rich Cizik [vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals] has been faithful in reading the signs of the times, and so it is unsurprising he is under attack. But one way or another, his moral clarity will prevail."

The moral and religious debate over global warming has clearly become quite political — and nasty. In his sermon, Falwell says "naive Christian leaders are . . . being duped. It should be expected that liberal clergymen and theologians would join in concert with Hollywood and liberal politicans on every radical and hurtful issue that arises." He goes on to refer to "extremist ecologists" who are seeking to advance a Godless agenda. They are, he says, "obnoxious radicals." And not surprisingly, he even resorts to red-baiting, referring to "good evangelical scientists" who are doing God's work by reubutting "those other green and maybe red scientists and politicians."

Isn't it fun now that we no longer have to cover global warming as a simplistic "yes or no?" debate? Thank you Jerry Falwell for helping to open up a rich new field of coverage!

Global warming hits Mt. Everest

Ice cores drilled at an elevation of 21,300 feet on Mt. Everest's East Rongbuk Glacier reveal that summer temperatures on the shoulder of the highest mountain on Earth have likely been warmer during the 20th century than during the previous 2,000 years. "Our reconstruction points to an unprecedented warming trend in the 20th Century," the researchers wrote in the Feb. 7, 2007 issue of the European journal "Climate of the Past."

In other news, fresh evidence has emerged that global warming may be causing Atlantic hurricanes to intensify. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin and the National Climatic Data Center say they aligned new and old satellite records dating back as far as 1983 to chart the trend in Atlantic hurricanes. "The data says that the Atlantic has been trending upwards in hurricane intensity quite a bit," says lead author James Kossin, a research scientist at UW-Madison's Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite StudiesKossin. "But the trends appear to be inflated or spurious everywhere else, meaning that we still can't make any global statements."

-- Tom Yulsman

Marine Ecosystems Pressured from the Top and Bottom

A study published in the Feb. 23 issue of Science finds that climate change is contributing to ecosystem shifts in in the North Atlantic. Increased flows of cold, fresh water from increased melting of permafrost, snow and ice in the Arctic region are changing the abundances of phytoplankton, zooplankton and fish that live near the ocean's surface. Scientists had attributed these changes to the collapse of cod fisheries from overfishing In places like the Georges Bank off the coast of Massachussetts (shallow area in the NASA image above). The new study suggests that climate change is also playing a strong role.

"It is becoming increasingly clear that Northwest Atlantic ecosystems are being affected by climate forcing from the bottom up and overfishing from the top down," says Charles Greene, a Cornell oceanographer and lead author of the Science paper.

-- T.Y.

An Excellent Article on Responding to Climate Change

Andrew Dessler, a climate expert at Texas A&M University, has written an excellent posting on the elements of an effective response to global warming over at Grist. If you cover global warming as a journalist, or you simply feel that responding to climate change is all but hopeless, you really should read this article. It compellingly describes how we could respond to climate change over the long haul, with the goal of stabilizing our impact on the climate system at a manageable level. Dessler has also written a "The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change", a book that looks like an excellent resource for any reporter who might have to cover this issue.

-- Tom Yulsman

EU Pledges Unilaterally to Reduce Carbon Emissions by 20%

Earlier this week, the European Union agreed to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases by 20% within 13 years — but you might not have found out about it if you only read U.S. news sources.

In Europe, environmentalists grumbled that a 30% cut was needed if there was to be any hope of stabilizing temperatures. (I'm not sure where they got that figure. Don't we have to zero out emissions to fully stabilize temperature increases?) But EU officials said a bigger cut would be economically harmful if it was done unilaterally. So they plan to press the U.S. and China to commit to a 30% cut in a post-Kyoto agreement.

Is this credible? According to an article in the Guardian, "the EU's original 15 members are well short of reaching their 8% cut by 2012" under the Kyoto protocol. So if they can't do 8% over 1990 levels, how are they going to do 20 or 30% over current levels?

Meanwhile, here in the United States, the EU's new commitment to combat global warming was barely covered in news reports. The Washington Post relegated it to a tiny brief. And Michael Nisbet reports over at Framing Science that global warming did not make it onto the list of the 10 most heavily covered news stories since the first of the year, as indexed by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. This is despite the flurry of coverage around the release of the IPCC report.

I guess we'll have to wait for hurricane season for the next barrage of coverage.

-- T.Y.

Colorado River to Take Hit from Global Warming

Anyone who has paid close attention to water issues in the West will find much that's familiar in a new report from the National Research Council about the Colorado River. The report warns that increasing population growth in the interior West, combined with droughts made worse by global warming, will be putting increasing pressure on the Colorado.

The report notes that the Colorado River Compact, which divied up the flow between the upper and lower basin states, was signed in 1922 — right after a particularly wet period in the interior West. The average flow for the purposes of the compact was pegged at 16.4 million acre feet a year. Today, according to the report, the average flow of the river is 15 million acre feet per year. And tree-ring records show that extended droughts lasting decades or even longer are a recurrent feature of climate in the West, causing the Colorado's flow to fall significantly below average.

Now, based on many climate model simulations, "the preponderance of scientific evidence suggests that warmer future temperatures will reduce future Colorado River streamflow and water supplies," the report concludes. "Reduced streamflow would also contribute to increasing severity, frequency, and duration of future droughts."

This is occurring against the backdrop of a burgeoning population in the West. Arizona alone saw its population rise by 40 percent just since 1990. Here in Colorado, population grew by 30 percent. Although Westerners have made strides in reducing per capita water use, continued conservation will not be enough in the face of rising population and dropping availability of water, the report states.

It offers no simple solutions. Instead, it calls for continued conservation, use of innovative technology, greater cooperation between Colorado River basin states to prepare better for drought, increased communication between water managers and scientists, and, of course, more study:

"The report thus recommends a comprehensive, action-oriented study of Colorado River region urban water practices and changing patterns of demand be conducted. The study should evaluate a range of issues, including demographic projections and water demand forecasts, impacts of urban water demands on riparian ecology, and contemporary urban water policies and practices."

No surprises there, but the issues raised by the report are a reminder of the compelling need for good environmental journalism in the West. Reporters who are knowledgabe about the complexities of water in the West are desperately needed — to avoid common mistakes, such as the one made in NPR's All Things Considered broadcast on the report by Elizabeth Shogren yesterday. It wasn't a huge mistake, but it betrayed a lack of knowledge of how the reservoir system on the Colorado River works. Shogren stated that Lake Mead "keeps taps flowing in Southern California, Nevada, Arizona and Colorado. The problem is that Colorado gets no water from Lake Mead.

Lake Powell, impounded behind Glen Canyon Dam, is a kind of hydrological bank for the upper basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. It helps the states meet their obligations under the Colorado River Compact to send a specified amount of water down the river to the lower basin states — Arizona, California and Nevada. When drought prevails, the upper basin states can take water out of the bank and send it downstream, meeting their compact obligations while also satisfying their own water demands. Meanwhile, Lake Mead is used by the lower basin states to store water for their own uses. According to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, "Hoover Dam helps ensure a dependable water supply for municipal, industrial and other domestic uses in southern Nevada, Arizona and southern California. More than 16 million people and numerous industries in these three states receive Colorado River water that was stored by Hoover Dam."

No taps in Colorado depend on water from Lake Mead.

-- T.Y.

Australia to Ban Incandescent Light Bulbs to Combat Global Warming

It's true, according to this article in Australia's Courier-Mail.

Guest Blog: Opinion Column in Science Times

The following is a guest posting:

The addition of conservative columnist John Tierney to the staff of the New York Times's Science Times section has to be one of the most bizarre--and irresponsible--editorial decisions in awhile. Tierney's new column, "Findings," runs on the front page of the section, mixed in with the standard-issue news and feature stories. And while particularly astute readers might pick up on the fact that Tierney is an opinion writer rather than a science reporter, it's a good bet that general readers won't make that distinction. So while the section's staff reporters and other contributors work hard to maintain some shred of objectivity in their stories, those stories are now running side-by-side with Tierney's politically charged commentaries--and the result is a serious blow to the whole section's credibility, and a public misled by opinion masquerading as fact.

Check out Tierney's column from this past Tuesday (Feb. 13). It uses Richard Branson's $25 million prize for a solution to global warming as a way to begin talking about Al Gore (the connection is tenuous). Tierney's real intent is to attack Gore and his film, "An Inconvenient Truth," which is old news at this point, since it's been out for almost a year. One senses Tierney's been rubbing his hands together for about that long trying to find an appropriate venue for his attack. He accuses Gore of "hype" and of extrapolating "a short-term trend into a disaster," and of various other crimes against science (and indirectly against humanity). To those with good working knowledge of climate change, Tierney sounds just half a step removed from right-wing fiction writer and global warming denialist Michael Crichton. But to the majority of readers, he sounds like he's reciting facts that call into question Gore's entire endeavor (which has been, for the most part, lauded by climate scientists).

Tierney also uses this column as a pulpit for a message he's been hammering for years: There's no point in trying to change people's habits, so the only solutions to environmental problems will be technological. "As far-fetched as it seems today," Tierney wrote on page one of the section, "removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere could turn out to be a lot more practical than the alternative: persuading six million people to stop putting it there." Of course, this statement is a lot more true if you are opposed, as Tierney clearly is, to any sort of federal or international environmental regulation. To run political commentary like this on the front page of the Science Times is to etch opinion into the minds of many readers as fact. Why more people haven't raised red flags is a mystery.

Global Warming Bumped by Anna and the Astronaut Scandal

Matthew Nisbet reports on his blog Framing Science that the week after the release of the IPCC report on climate change, the issue failed to make it into the top five news stories. According to the News Coverage Index of the Project for Excellent in Journalism, Iraq policy and events, Smith's death, the presidential campaign, and the obsessed astronaut in diapers, pushed global warming out of the spotlight. (Well, I guess it really doesn't get much better than an obsessed astronaut in diapers allegedly attempting to commit murder.)

As Nisbet points out, there was plenty to report on global warming in the aftermath of the IPCC report, including the fact that both British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German PM Andrea Merkel both said they will be pushing for greater action. But it was all Anna all the time on the cable news channels, as a disgruntled Jack Cafferty himself pointed out on CNN. On air, according to the PEJ, he said, "That’s the only story we reported [yesterday] for two solid hours and we weren’t the only ones. . .Her death was tabloid gold and apparently, we just couldn’t help ourselves.”

Commenting on the tabloid sensitibility of the cable networks, none other than Bill O'Reilly pointed out on his Fox News radio talk show today that when Robert Kennedy, Jr.'s airplane went down years ago, his network focused a camera on the waters off of Long Island for hours on end. They went with that story for an interminable period — with little other than wave-tossed waters to show. Maybe they hoped that the body would just bob to the surface. This time around, they got their body, when Anna Nicole's so-called "death video" turned up (showing her being administered CPR as she was rushed to an ambulance).

How could the single biggest threat to our planet's life support system ever hope to compete?

Global Warming Increasingly a Policy Story

According to a a report from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, 106 bills, resolutions and amendments addressing global warming were introduced into the 109th Congress, which ended in December. This is up from just seven in the 105th Congress (1997-1998).

Legislative activity on climate change has climbed steadily, year by year. The Pew report also notes that the issue is increasingly becoming bipartisan, with proposals being introduced on both sides of the aisle. "The growing interest suggests that a bipartisan consensus is developing around the need to address climate change," the report concluded.

With the Democrats now in power, we might expect a wave of new legislation. I wonder whether the Bush Administration will continue to hold back the tide of bills that would institute mandatory caps on carbon emissions, or a carbon tax. It should be an interesting year.

Environmental Journalism at its Best

Writing for one of our favorite publications, High Country News, Michelle Nijhuis has won a prestigious science journalism award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The prize was given for a series of three stories on climate change in the West. One of the stories, Save Our Snow, describes how Aspen is trying to come to grips with the reality of climate change. Another, The Ghosts of Yosemite, integrates history and the pioneering work of Joseph Grinnell in Yosemite National Park with current day research by biologists who are documenting the changing composition of species in the Sierra brought about by environmental shifts, including a warming climate. And a third story, Dust and Snow, describes the possible impact of a combination of increasing fallout of dust in the Colorado Rockies, perhaps from over-grazing in the Southwest, and increasing temperatures from global warming.

Michelle Nijhuis represents one of the very best in our profession. I urge you to check our her stories to see how she so deftly writes about technical subjects in a compelling and engaging way. As her editors once said of her, she "possesses both the mind of a scientist and the heart of a poet." And she understood early on that a rise in global average temperature doesn't really mean much. What really matters is what's happening on the ground in particular places, like Yosemite, and how people living in particular regions such as the West will be affected by a changing climate. Congratulations Michelle!

-- T.Y.

Hope for Storing Carbon?

Carbon dioxide produced by power plants and other industrial facilities can be safely stored underground, helping to avert global warming, recent research by MIT scientists suggests. The scientists say their research shows that the CO2 should not resurface and enter the atmosphere, as is feared.

Without carbon sequestration, expanding use of coal to produce electricity would present significant climate risks. But many scientific, technical and economic hurdles remain, not the least of which is making sure that pumping CO2 underground isn't done in vain.

Reframing Global Warming While Equating Skeptics with Holocaust Deniers

Although global warming still can't compete with Iraq and the so-called "death tape" of Anna Nicole Smith (yes, one has surfaced on the web showing paramedics administering CPR), it continues to garner attention from columnists and pundits. Toay's installment comes from Ellen Goodman in her Boston Globe syndicated column.

"It may be, paradoxically, that framing this issue in catastrophic terms ends up paralyzing instead of motivating us," Goodman writes. "Remember the Time magazine cover story: 'Be Worried. Be Very Worried.' The essential environmental narrative is a hair-raising consciousness-raising: This is your Earth. This is your Earth on carbon emissions." Faced with the catastrophe, people just go into a state of denial.

Goodman calls for a reframing of the issue: "Can we change from debating global warming to preparing? Can we define the issue in ways that turn denial into action? In America what matters now isn't environmental science, but political science."

In his excellent blog, "Framing Science," Matthew Nisbet aplauds Goodman for writing "one of the best summaries I've seen on just how central public communication is to this issue," and for issuing a "call to arms" on reframing climate change.

But there are two issues Nisbett does not discuss. They deserve an airing. First, Goodman indulges in a typical liberal rhetorical maneuver to frame the issue of climate change skepticism in apocalyptic terms, not only undercutting her laudable main point but also casting grave doubt on her credibility.

"Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future," Goodman writes.

Excuse me, but being skeptical about the scientific basis for global warming is nowhere near on a par with Holocaust denial. That is an utterly offensive statement — one that seems to comes up more and more in liberal discourse about climate change. If this is reframing the issue, count me out. I'll take run-of-the-mill catastrophism, thank you very much.

The second issue is this: What role should journalists play in reframing climate change from one of catastrophe in the making to a moral and religious issue, a corruption of science issue, and an economic issue, as Nisbet puts it?

I would argue that it's not the job of a daily news reporter to reframe the issue, at least not per se. A daily reporter's job is to ask challenging questions designed to elicit news and essential information, and to go where the story leads. And if the story leads to new details about catastrophe on the way, that's where we have to go. But it is also a reporter's job to try to stay ahead of the story. And if doing that means asking experts like Mathew Nisbet whether a reframing of the issue is in the offing, or essential, that would seem like a great story to me. Moreover, the questions reporters ask may well contribute to a reframing of the issue. Should this be a reporter's mission? That word "mission" makes me nervous. We're supposed to report the news, not make it. On the other hand, if something is happening out there — if others are taking on this mission, that's where we need to go with our reporting.

And please do note: I'm making a deliberate distinction between daily news journalism and other forms. As a magazine writer, I would feel no qualms at trying to change the terms of the debate.

Lastly, I see a story here about the expropriation of "Holocaust denier" for use with reference to global warming skeptics. I suspect there are some people who are mighty angry at Ellen Goodman today. That would make an excellent jumping off point for a potentially compelling story.

— T.Y.

Here's a curious item, courtesy of the BBC: The Norwegian government has unveiled architectural drawings of a "doomsday vault" designed to store seeds from all known food crops and keep them safe from the Apocalypse — that is to say, safe from global warming, nuclear war and asteroid strikes. Construction gets under way next month on the island of Spitsbergen, with the opening of the unique seed bank scheduled for 2008. The vault will be built 364 feet inside a mountain.

Next, what about an ark?

-- Tom

The Next Global Warming Debate: Adapting to Climate Change

The IPCC report last week pointed out that no matter what we do now to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases, we are committed to a warming climate and rising sea level for centuries to come. This is because the oceans have been absorbing something like 80 percent of the heat retained in the climate system by greenhouse gases, and that energy will gradually be released over a long period of time. In addition, carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere today will stay there for at least 100 years (if it isn't absorbed into the ocean).

One might think that the inevitability of continuing climate change would prompt a discussion of how to adapt to stronger storms, more frequent and blistering heat waves, longer lasting and more intense drought, rising sea level, and the like. But among many environmentalists, the subject of adaptation is simply taboo. Those who raise the issue, such as the University of Colorado's Roger Pielke, Jr. are considered climate change skeptics, or worse. Now, Pielke, Dan Sarewitz of Arizona State University, and two other colleagues have made a compelling case for adaptation in a commentary in the journal Nature: "Lifting the Taboo on Adaptation".

Pielke and his colleagues point out that in addition to the change that we're already committed to, "climate-related impacts on society are increasing for reasons that have nothing to do with greenhouse-gas emissions, such as rapid population growth along coasts and in areas with limited water supplies." And "those who will suffer the brunt of climate impacts are now demanding that the international response to climate change focus on increasing the resilience of vulnerable socieites to damaging climate events that — like Katrina — will occur regardles of efforts to mitigate emissions." Overall, the authors say we should be considering policies that would make socieities more resilient to a host of environmental changes and impacts, including but not limited to climate change.

Expect environmentalist knees to jerk on this issue. As journalists, it's our job to observe and describe that jerking, but also to give a fair look at the arguments for adaptation. This is one of the big untold stories about climate change.