H is for HUMANS who made things too warm

To keep the attention of those readers who might disdain college basketball but have a jones for the potential extinction of humankind, let's switch gears. I was interested to see this piece in the Times today about scientists who are trying to temper some of Al Gore's rhetoric about global warming, though they believe his broader concern is warranted.

Criticisms of Mr. Gore have come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists like Dr. Easterbook, who told his peers that he had no political ax to grind. A few see natural variation as more central to global warming than heat-trapping gases. Many appear to occupy a middle ground in the climate debate, seeing human activity as a serious threat but challenging what they call the extremism of both skeptics and zealots.

Kevin Vranes, a climatologist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said he sensed a growing backlash against exaggeration. While praising Mr. Gore for "getting the message out," Dr. Vranes questioned whether his presentations were "overselling our certainty about knowing the future."

That "natural variation" remark grabbed my interest, because I've always wondered about the role it plays, which would seem potentially significant and almost impossible to untangle from our own influence. The article picks up the same thread later on:

"Hardly a week goes by," Dr. Peiser said, "without a new research paper that questions part or even some basics of climate change theory," including some reports that offer alternatives to human activity for global warming.

Geologists have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with ignoring such rhythms.

“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,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. "Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change."

In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore’s claim that "our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this" threatened change.

Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to "20 times greater than the warming in the past century."

Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore’s assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had corrupted. "I've never been paid a nickel by an oil company," Dr. Easterbrook told the group. "And I'm not a Republican."

This has always been my feeling about this issue: The planet might be clearly warming. And we clearly play a role. But when the "medieval warm period," which ended around 1600, is described as "20 times greater" than the current warming problem, it becomes pretty clear that nature is capable of wild swings that have little or nothing to do with us. In a best-case scenario (read: impossible scenario) in which we eliminated human pollution entirely, there still might come a time when we started baking like pigs in a blanket. That's not a more comforting thought, of course, and I still don't think it means we should be stinking up the place, but a little open-mindedness when it comes to fatalism might be a good thing. As Edward Gorey knew, there are many ways for us to perish -- let's not be rash about which one we choose to envision.