WASH MDC talk by Dr. Robert Cahalan (NASA) "Appalachian Impacts of Global Warming: Reasons For Hope"

by Gary Berg-Cross

For Earth Day weekend Dr. Robert Cahalan (NASA) will present a free talk on "Appalachian Impacts of Global Warming: Reasons For Hope."

The talk will be held from 2-4 pm at the Chevy Chase Library in Bethesda, Maryland (basement level).

Here is Dr. Calahan's Abstract:

Global disruptions of Earth's climate and biosphere are leading to
loss of biodiversity and ecosystem collapses, depletion of fish and
forests, loss of fresh water, ocean acidification and species extinctions.

What can be done to address these challenges?
Can individuals actually make a difference?
Is there a legitimate reason for hope?

Brief Bio
Dr. Robert Cahalan is Director of Sun-Climate Research at
 NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland.
 He recently retired as Chief of Goddard’s Climate and Radiation
 Laboratory, and President of the International Radiation Commission.

He has been doing science research for more than 40 years,
is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and a recipient of
numerous awards for scientific research including the United States
Outstanding Leadership and Service Medal.

Nature Does NOT have Rights

We need to have a clear notion of what a right is and how and why government should be used to define and protect a right. I think the only coherent source of a “right” is a social agreement between people that their interests are better served with a legally enforced understanding that a right exists. Without an understanding that rights rest only with people we can get the preposterous behavior in the United Nations which resulted in the notion that religions have rights.

Frankly we are now in the embarrassing position of having little to say against the draconian blasphemy laws in Islamic countries when European countries also have blasphemy laws on their books. Ireland is a case in point on this. Irish atheists are trying to challenge the law which imposes a fine of up to 25,000 Euros on anyone who is guilty of "publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion...” Michael Nugent, the Chair of Atheist Ireland said, “This new law is both silly and dangerous. It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. And it is dangerous because it incentives religious outrage, and because Islamic states led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level.” This quote is from the Guardian. As secularists we cannot object to Islamic governments supporting abusive laws punishing blasphemy if we do not have a clear notion that rights of necessity apply to people only.

A right is a liberty or privilege protected by the force of law. Rights do not exist as transcendental artifacts coming from a supreme being or our over active imaginations. Where does this leave the currently popular notion of nature having rights? I will argue that almost every legitimate right that would be in place from a theory that nature has rights can be derived from ascribing those rights to people.

We need to make it clear that people have a right to very limited pollution of their environment. People should have a right to expect that the vast array of services provided by the wider ecosystem will not collapse because capitalists do not want to pay for the devastation they leave behind in their quest for money. Our children should have a right to live in a world that has not been devastated by the early stages of a great extinction that will massively reduce the number of species in their future world.

I think most importantly we should have a right to have the food supply that is critical for the survival of humanity to remain intact. We should have a right to have the fisheries of the world survive into the future. We should have a right to be able to eat fish without ingesting unacceptable loads of mercury from coal fired power plants. We should have a right to see the Midwest, the bread basket of our nation, not be turned into a scrub desert due to global warming. We should have a right to have our beach-front property not be flooded out by a rising ocean. We should have a right to not see our forests destroyed by a vastly longer fire season caused by anthropogenic global warming.

Obviously by the time we list and enforce the all the rights that people should have we will have protected nature also. That is because our survival and positive well being is tightly linked to the preservation of the wider natural ecosystem within which we have evolved as a species.

A Conversation with a Friend

My friend, William Whitesell, is the author of the recently published book, Climate Policy Foundations: Science and Economics with Lessons from Monetary Regulation. On a recent visit with Bill I was the astonished recipient of a gift copy of this book. I had read a draft of the the text and given him some recommendations on how it could be improved. I never imagined though that my modest efforts would be included in the printed acknowledgments in the book or that Bill would buy a copy of this very expensive book (it's list price is $80) as a gift for me. Bill and I share our strongly felt position that global warming is a systemic problem of profound proportions. Bill and I talked about those issues and the vast disconnect in government decision making from what is scientifically known.

There is currently unrest in many countries that has either toppled governments or threatens to topple them soon. One of the major reasons for the unrest is hunger. The cost of food has gone up relentlessly in recent times. Russia had drought and fires that reduced its wheat crop by 25%. They had been a major wheat exporter and they are now cutting off all exports because they need to feed their own people. Crops in Australia have been much diminished because of massive flooding. Few people in our government are making the logical connection between these events and global warming. However, this is exactly what the global warming models have predicted.

A warmer climate will evaporate more water and provide the basic source for more precipitation. However, that precipitation will not necessarily fall where it is needed. The precipitation will fall in larger amounts when it does fall and the greater evaporation and heat when it does not fall will create more droughts and fires.

Bill and I did not talk about Queensland, Australia, now being hit with 186 mile per hour winds from cyclone Yasi. It was not happening yet when we had our conversation. Yasi is happening very shortly after the flooding has receded. According to Reuters “The ocean around Australia is now warmer than at any time in history. Warmer ocean temperatures increase the frequency and intensity of cyclones.”

We did talk about the fact that many of the areas with the most dramatic increases in population are also ones with the greatest vulnerability in the food supply. Egypt has doubled its population over the last thirty years and it has relatively little arable land. Afghanistan is another example with very rapidly increasing population and great risk to its agricultural productivity.

While Bill's book reviews the potential negative effects on agriculture that we discussed it only asserts net damage to worldwide agriculture if average world temperatures rise more than three degrees centigrade. There are many studies that suggest that this is excessively optimistic. The scientific predictions about the long term effects of global warming on the food supply are not in full agreement but the impact in recent times has been horrendous.

Republican leadership is fond of spouting factually false statements such as, “We know that government spending cannot create jobs because if it could we would have a furiously growing economy.” Never mind the fact that Federal stimulus money being spent almost exactly counterbalances the money removed from state budgets. There is no respected theory of economics which would actually predict anything much different than the lackluster jobs recovery we are now having.

Bill's Ph.D. Is in economics. He noted that America was coming out of the Great Depression until 1937. That was when people being concerned about debt and budget deficits sharply cut back on the deficit spending. This is exactly the type of nonsense that Republicans are pushing now. Our country went back into the economic depression and did not get out of it until World War II. We agreed that government spending certainly created a lot of jobs at that time.