October 23, 2007

The Orange Grove: Not your usual warming skeptic
Scholar says the predicted effects are all true, just not anything to fear
By Stan Alcorn

When Patrick Michaels took the stage at Cal State Fullerton's student union, sporting a blue blazer and bright green sneakers, he was ready for controversy. Nearly 200 students, faculty and concerned citizens had filled the theater Oct. 16 to hear the libertarian Cato Institute scholar give a talk titled "Reducing the Effects of Global Warming in Southern California." But the only people who could have been more disappointed than those expecting Michaels, the so-called "global warming skeptic," to argue for government action to achieve his talk's title, may have been those who expected him to express "skepticism" about global warming.

Instead, he began by speeding through a PowerPoint presentation of graphs and maps to demonstrate that not only has the globe been getting warmer, but that the effect in recent decades, unlike during the early 20th century, has been caused by our emissions of carbon dioxide.

Caused by the sun? Then explain why the stratosphere has been cooling. The "urban heat island effect"? Then explain why we see the greatest warming in Canada and Siberia. "You going to tell me beautiful downtown Irkutsk is the center of the urban world?" he asked rhetorically as he crossed the stage. After substantiating greenhouse-gas-caused warming to his own content, he turned and shouted to the audience. "Hey! Y'all who did your research on the Internet! This the talk you were gonna hear?"

"My major concern in most all my lectures at colleges and universities is that the audiences tend to be sort of prebiased in one direction," Michaels told later tell me. Regardless of their scientific background or lack thereof, students tend to see global warming in black and white: an apocalyptic reality or a benign illusion. But the fact that he began his lecture arguing for global warming was more than a means for disrupting this polarized debate; it also reflected that the consensus on global warming's existence now includes former skeptics, from Michaels to every Republican presidential candidate. That Michaels didn't dispute this consensus was why CSUF economics professor James Dietz told me after the talk, "Personally, I didn't find it that controversial."

Michaels nonetheless has come to expect controversy, especially regarding credentials and funding. Science professors at CSUF expressed concern at his visit, pointing out to the campus Daily Titan that although he cites being published in the peer-reviewed journals of Science and Nature, what he had published were letters to the editor.

Last month Michael was in the limelight for refusing to disclose the funding of his consulting company, New Hope Environmental Science. In court documents, Michaels noted, "In 2006, Tri-State Generation & Transmission Association Inc., an electric utility, had requested that its support of $50,000 to New Hope be held confidential. After this support was inadvertently made public by another New Hope client, Tri-State informed me that it would no longer support New Hope because of adverse publicity." Such adverse publicity was exactly the barrier Michaels routinely has to overcome in order to refocus the discussion not on him, but on science.

For this reason, after dispelling the notion that he is a "global warming skeptic," he argued against the mainstream consensus on warming's implications. He didn't resort to vague dismissals or ad hominem attacks (though his Al Gore impression did get a few laughs). Instead, he used scientific evidence to argue one by one – sea-level rise, the melting of the Antarctic ice sheets and Greenland's glaciers, the flooding of Pacific islands and increasingly violent hurricanes – that the effects were not to be feared.

Michaels was not shy about disputing the scientific consensus, but in science it is evidence, not consensus, that resolves disputes. Jitendra Motwani, President of the Economics Association, the talk's host, said of his organization, "We don't really care about the consensus ... as long as the speaker is going to come out and give his opinion." The university's other organizations apparently agreed; the Economic Association's Business Inter-Club Council representative Parth Bhatt recalled, "[The motion to approve the event]passed with a 100-0 vote. All the clubs voted yes."

Regardless of their stances on global warming, on the subject of free speech and judging evidence for themselves, the student consensus seems clear. Perhaps the global warming debate will become more scientific, after all.