Iowa Farmer Today
11-17-07
Change is coming
By Hannah Fletcher, Iowa Farmer Today
Mentioning global warming, climate change, or even CO2 emissions in any circle is likely to be met with some sort of reaction.
What some call the “biggest challenge of our times,” others call “a hoax.”
When it comes down to it, notions of climate change in the last decade could be called the “great debate,” with both sides using science to back up their beliefs.
The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which involves hundreds of global scientists, released a report in February saying for the first time global warming is “unequivocal,” and human activity is the main driver.
Dennis Avery says science shows climate change is a natural occurrence and is happening at a much slower rate than some are led to believe.
He says his view is “not a theory.”
“Global warming is a theory,” says Avery, an ag economist and director for the
Center for Global Food Issues in Washington D.C.
Global warming is an unstoppable, natural solar event that is happening at a much slower rate than what most sources proclaim, he argues.
Like his counterparts, he points to proof in ice cores. In 1983, researchers extracted an ice core in Greenland that captured climate data from the last
250,000 years.
Avery says, trapped in the air bubbles of those cores is evidence there have been natural periods of a warming climate that cycles every 1,500 years. The last warming period was 1300-1450 A.D.
Avery is a self-proclaimed history buff and thinks the public would better understand climate change if they went back to their history books. In 1850, we left “a little ice age,” he notes.
In 1940-1975 there was a small cooling period. From 1976-1988, which Avery says is a small climate period, the climate seemed to shift warmer, and people began to wonder why.

“Then we’re off and running looking for the proof we are part of man-made global warming,” he says. “We always think of the recent weather, and the major characteristic of weather is variability .”
Avery believes many people would be surprised to know the total climate change since 1940 has only been two-tenths Celsius. That is mostly, if not all, natural,
Avery says.
“I am willing to give Al Gore half the warming since 1940, which is one-tenth over
70 years,” he says.
“I call that the new math of global warming. The basic tactic of the environmental movement is to ignore it.”
Avery is the author of “Unstoppable Global Warming — Every 1,500 years,” which was released in 2006 and was on the New York Times’ bestseller list.
The book’s popularity proves he is not alone as a skeptic of human-caused global warming, he says.
Avery says “green movement” people have blown climate concerns out of proportion.
“They would like to see everyone riding bicycles and living in mud huts,” he claims.
“It’s based on their own agenda. And, the voters say, ‘yes.’ And, we actually end up with something that is either wrong or meaningless.”
As for other researchers, they see a human element in climate change that is different from past climate records and fluctuations.
The IPCC report concludedglobal warming since 1950 was anthropogenic — caused by humans.
The panel said this was concluded with “very high confidence” or “very likely,” in other words, a better than 90 percent likelihood this conclusion was correct.
This was the IPCC’s fourth assessment and the first to be released with such a high level of confidence. The previous report was released in 2001, in which the panel came to a similar conclusion, but th en it was called “likely,” or with 66 to 90 percent confidence.
In October, the IPCC and Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize in respect to their climate change research.

More locally, scientists note greenhouse gases effect their climate research.
“We know the causes,” says Ray Arritt, Iowa State University agronomy professor and collaborating researcher in the North American Regional
Climate Change Assessment Program.
“That is not in question, not in the scientific community.”
He cited the increased levels of carbon dioxide and other gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, led to a recent warming event.
“There is a strong disconnection between what the public thinks is going on and what (scientists) know,” he says.
Arritt and other ISU researchers have been studying the climate and modeling potential climate changes in the Midwest since the 1990s.
“As gradual warming goes on a global level, it may not be as strong in the central part of the United States,” Arritt notes. “It could mean a tendency for more rainfall and slightly warmer conditions.”
But, Arritt concedes the research on climate and atmospheric change is ongoing.
As the group continues its climate modeling in the Midwest, it will be able to speak about likely effects with “more confidence,” he says.
“That’s the reason we are doing this research. We don’t know all the answers. It’s the surprises we are looking for,” Arritt explains.
As researchers search for surprises, he says the public may want to take note.
“The causes are global, but the effects are going to be local,” Arritt says
ISU climatologist Elwynn Taylor believes local debate about climate change and its cause may stem from past misconceptions when global warming concerns first cropped up.
But, now researchers have more sound evidence, he adds.
Like Avery, Taylor refers to history.
“In the early to mid-’80s people became alarmed at the warming. The
“greenhouse” talk became common. There were reports that we could expect warming of 15 or more degrees in the next 30 year s,” he says.

When those predictions did not ring true, many people became turned off by the idea, Taylor notes.
“This time around, the scientific data seems to be leading the amount of change in temperature expected. The impacts of that change are now the matter of speculation,” he says.
Also, Taylor believes some people are leery because they don’t want powerful laws passed.
“A lot of people don’t want a bunch of laws passed to force us to fix this — the human element. Force is not as desirable as ince ntives,” he says.
Yet, Taylor believes current strategies of encouraging change through incentives is working well for the public, farmers and climate researchers hoping to encourage reduced emissions.
“There are wonderful programs to connect farmers. We’ve got wonderful people here (in agriculture),” he says.
Despite the cause, one uniting factor for climate researchers is changes in agriculture may be in our future.
“We are going to have a lot of adapting to do, even if it is all natural,” Avery says.