It seems you can’t turn around these days without hearing the latest news report or editorial about global warming and our precarious state of affairs. As a human on Spaceship Earth, I very much want the world to be livable through my lifetime and beyond. As an analytical thinker and scientist, I question the validity of the claims being made. There are those claiming that we’re on the crux of environmental changes unlike any we’ve seen before, that radical swings in climate will happen if we don’t do anything.

While the changes in our climate are real, there are many open questions. The first (and probably most important) is ‘What will happen to Earth and to terrestrial life if we don’t do anything?’. The fact is, we don’t know the answer to that question. Another is ‘How much of this is caused by human action?’. Again, we don’t know the answer. One question we CAN answer is ‘What can we do to improve the environment?’. Notice I didn’t say ‘to reduce global warming’, because it’s not clear that we can (more on that next week)… I am simply asking what we as individuals can do to reduce the human impact on the environment.

Today I’d like to look at one single type of statistic being used in the environmental debate and put it in perspective. My goal is not to suggest climate change isn’t real, it’s to bring about a change in how we approach the issue. Rather than using scare tactics and manipulation, I believe the best way to effect change is to bring comprehension and understanding. For instance, while I disagree with some of the claims Al Gore makes in “An Inconvenient Truth”, I fully respect his ability to make the science understandable when he explains, for instance, carbon dioxide’s effect on the atmosphere. Knowledge and analysis is the way to lasting change (see my editorial below for thoughts on this philosophy).

So what claim am I going to analyze? If you follow news reports from areas affected by hurricanes, you’ll often hear statements like ‘three of the five most expensive hurricanes in history occurred in the last 4 years’ (I’ve heard several variations on this statement, depending on the source). Let’s look at what a statement like that means.

First, we must ask ourselves if it sounds possible. In this case, it does. In 2004 and 2005 we experienced several significant storms make landfall in the US, including Katrina in New Orleans. Katrina alone basically destroyed a city and would obviously be very expensive as a result. So the statement, on the surface, is plausible.

The next thing to do is to ask what other factors might influence such a statement. You see, it’s possible that these years were very expensive but the storms weren’t actually worse than we would see under the natural course of events. I am going to suggest a few factors that would, in fact, make the claim sound worse than it actually is.

• There are more people living in areas where hurricanes would hit. Face it, there are more people living everywhere, including the coasts of Florida and other storm-prone areas. With more people, there are more buildings that can be damaged, and therefore more expense. In fact, if you look back 100 years, Florida was mostly empty. A storm in 1907 would have affected a few hundred households, perhaps a few thousand; that exact same storm today would impact tens or even hundreds of thousands of households. More expensive? Yep. That doesn’t directly indicate the storm itself is bigger.
• The per-house cost has increased over the years, due to both inflation and the trend to build bigger and more affluent houses in general. Even if the same number of houses were impacted, the cost will be higher in recent years than in past years. 100 years ago, a house didn’t have consumer electronics at all; these alone can account for thousands of dollars damage per household. Most statistics will account for inflation, but how? It is not possible to calculate exactly how much more houses cost, because we are comparing apples to oranges.
• This could be a statistical anomaly; just like sometimes you have a bad day where things just don’t quite happen as usual, sometimes there is a bad sequence of storms. In fact, some research has shown that there is a roughly 100 year storm cycle that goes back thousands of years, and it’s about time right now for some big ones. What causes such a cycle? We don’t know. Could it be CO2 emissions? Yep. Could it be something else. Yep. We don’t know.

Finally, we should take a look at where the claim is coming from. Are there any political or economic interests that would stand to gain if such a statement were true? In this day and age, the answer is almost always ‘yes’, so we should look for a response from the opponents. Sometimes the response will be weak, but often it will be an alternate hypothesis to explain the facts. In our case, the facts are being used to suggest that we should expect even more and even bigger storms in the next few years. Opponents demonstrate several valid scientific explanations for the seemingly stronger storms. Could the storm damage claim be part of a bigger political plan to, for instance, change the balance of power in US government? Yes, it could. That doesn’t mean it is, just that it could be.

So where does that leave us? Hopefully, a little more likely to ask questions. Rather than accepting a news report at face value, maybe we’ll dig deeper and come closer to the truth. Rather than parroting the claims of others, perhaps we’ll be able to make informed decisions and bring understanding to others. Question what you read. Find the opposing viewpoint and see if you can understand it, as well.

And this brings us back to the bigger questions from earlier. Is global warming caused by people? We don’t know. We have guesses, but that’s all they are. The claims made by both sides on the issue are opinions. They are, in many cases, backed by research showing one piece of the puzzle. However, the puzzle has thousands of pieces and we don’t have a picture on the box to tell us how they all fit together. It’s far more complex than, say, first semester chemistry experiments. We don’t know what’s going on.

What can we do? How about if we revert back to the Friends of the Earth slogan: ‘Think globally, act locally’. For example, we can clean the air in our neighborhood by driving less, using public transportation, and walking more. Our daily life will be improved with less pollution in each breath we take. And if carbon emissions really are causing global climate change, our local changes will be a step in the right direction.

Read a book, attend a talk, and make one change in your life that reduces the impact you have on the earth. Share your concerns with others from a place of teaching and learning. Come from a place of love (not force or violence or anger), and make the world a better place. That’s what you can do.

Resources:

• Insurance Companies Staggering Under Global Warming Damages
• The Next Big Storm: Can Scientists and Journalists Work Together to Improve Coverage of the Hurricane-Global Warming Controversy?

Other news

• More of the same: Binge drinking, pill abuse intensify at colleges
• That’s it! Lock ‘em up forever: Prison’s deadliest inmate, hepatitis C, escaping
• Sharpen the saw: Boost your brain power with exercise

Healthy thoughts,
Jeff