Guest Commentary: Deciding about climate change

Mr. Beck, your persistence (Sept. 21 commentary) has finally drawn me into the conversation about climate change. There is enough talk of climate change from other sources, so I won’t waste (too much) space re-hashing what you can look up yourself. My goal is to lay down some foundational knowledge that will hopefully provide a better context for all the information you are getting on the topic.

First, a comment on scientific processes in general. The scientific method is a shared process that has been subject to over 800 years of fine-tuning by which all sciences are conducted including social and health sciences as well as STEM fields. To discount the methods and peer review process used in climate science is to discount methods used to study and justify many things that go unquestioned such as medical practices.

I’ve researched publications in both medical and biological journals and have found that the bar for significance is consistently higher for biological studies than medical. There are often ethical reasons for this disparity, of course, but something to keep in mind next time you take a pill or go under the knife. There is no rational explanation for accepting the methods of one field while being skeptical of another.

The process through which a pattern in nature becomes a recognized phenomenon is arduous and rife with criticism from experts in the field and generally garners support from multiple fields of study. Thousands of peer-reviewed articles about the existence and effects of climate change have been published in reputable journals across fields including geology, physics, chemistry, biology, earth sciences and, of course, meteorology (Oreskes 2004).

For the sake of comparison, a single study made famous by news releases linked vaccinations with autism (Wakefield et al. 1998) and this idea quickly took hold and many chose not to vaccinate their children. Other scientists quickly failed to replicate the findings (ex. Taylor et al. 1999) and it soon became clear that the study was based on falsified data. However, it took/is still taking years to undo the damage. A single study, or even several studies are not sufficient to define a relationship. However, I think it’s safe to say that anything over 10,000 should be taken seriously.

Changes in the relative amounts of gas in the atmosphere have been occurring throughout the planet’s history and do result in changes to the climate. Thanks to fossils and core samples, we know that there was initially very little oxygen in the air. Over time, organisms began producing it as a by-product, and slowly the chemical composition of the air as well as the weather shifted (Freeman et al. 2014). We are not experiencing the first major atmospheric change. However, the fast rate of change and the driving forces are what set the current atmospheric changes apart (Crowley 2000, Freeman et al. 2014).

Perhaps the controversial part about this topic isn’t really the phenomenon of climate change, but the cause of it. The notion that human activity could impact weather patterns is not a novel, 21st century idea. It has at least been around for the last 120 years (Arrhenius 1896) and subsequently; the writing on the wall has become more and more clear. Humans are responsible for releasing more chemicals into the atmosphere than would have otherwise been released and some of these (ie carbon dioxide, methane, fluorocarbons etc.) have properties that make them prone to changing the physical properties of the planet (ie the greenhouse effect) (Freeman et al. 2014). It’s become common knowledge that deforestation, burning fossil fuels and beef production release greenhouse gases into the air. The link is painfully clear: human activity releases greenhouse gases and greenhouse gases cause the Earth’s average temperature to rise.

Being aware of these facts doesn’t mean you are somehow obligated to sell your truck, become a vegetarian and boycott palm oil products. It simply means you’ve done your homework and can make more informed decisions based on evidence instead of opinions or politics.

Lastly, I will clear up a few other points from Mr. Beck’s commentary. Los Angeles will likely not be affected by rising sea levels and New York and San Francisco are predicted to be only slightly impacted. However, the coastline from Maryland to Texas is already being affected and will bear the biggest burden (Dahl et al. 2017). Coral is particularly vulnerable to rising ocean temperatures and death to the Great Barrier Reef is now imminent (Hughes et al. 2017). Deforestation is not only happening in South America, but is also prevalent in Southeast Asia where the negative impact is even greater (Sodhi et al. 2004). Rates of extinction are measured over very long periods of time, so while it doesn’t seem like it, we are actually in the midst of a mass extinction (Freeman et al. 2014).

We cannot change the past, but we can impact the future. Just like every other decision you are faced with, you must decide whether you think the cost of changing your behaviors is worth the benefit of reducing your impact on the planet. Scientists can only present the public with their findings; they cannot make someone change his/her lifestyle or habits. My goal is not to tell you how to live your life or force the value of the natural world upon you. I simply hope you make an effort to find the facts among the slants so that which you value isn’t accidentally harmed from your everyday life. May your decisions be well-informed and your impacts be intentional.

*Arrhenius, S. 1896. On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature on the ground. Phil. Mag. 41:237-276.

*Crowley, TJ. 2000. Causes of Climate change over the past 1000 years. Science. 5477: 270-277.

*Dahl, KA, E Spanger-Siegfried, A Caldas & S Udvardy. 2017 Effective inundation of continental United States communities with 21st century sea level rise. Elem Sci Anth, 5: 37.

*Freeman, S, L Allision, M Black, G Podgorski, K Quillin, J Monroe & E Taylor. 2014. Biological Science. Pearson Education, NJ.

*Hughes, TP, et al. 2017. Coral reefs in the Anthropocene. Nature, 546:82-90.

*Oreskes, N.2004. The scientific consensus on climate change. Science 306: 1686-1686.

*Sodhi, NS, MRC Posa, TM Lee, D Bickford, LP Koh & BW Brook. 2010. The state and conservation of Southeast Asian biodiversity. TREE, 19: 317-328.

*Taylor, B, E Miller, CP Farrington, MC Petropoulos, I Favot-Mayaud, J Li & PA Waight. 1999. Autism and measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine: no epidemiological evidence for a causal association. Lancet, 353: 2026-2029.

*Wakefield, AJ et al. 1998. RETRACTED: Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. Lancet, 351:637-641

Keri Wilson, a Ramona resident, is a Ph.D. candidate.