1. Lecture 6 Moving Forward: Confronting Denial and the Truth About Uncertainty

2. Whitman Miller recorded CO2 level in the room during lecture 3
Lecture ends
Sensor put outside
Lecture begins
CO2 sensor “on”
Zero Calibration

3. At 2,500 ppm CO2, compared with 600 ppm, performance was significantly reduced in seven of nine metrics of decision making
Satisch et al Environmental Health Perspectives vol 120,

4. Allen et al. 2015 Environmental Health Perspectives
Cognitive function scores were 15% lower for the moderate CO2 day (~ 945 ppm) and 50% lower when ~1,400 ppm than on the two Green+ days
Allen et al Environmental Health Perspectives

5. Lecture ends
Sensor put outside
Lecture begins
CO2 sensor “on”
Zero Calibration

6. Discovery and skepticism
Global Warming: How skepticism became denial. Spencer Weart, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists January 2011
Discovery and skepticism
1896 Arrhenius published first calculation of global warming from human emissions of CO2. Doubling CO2 will raise temperature 5-6 C
1900, Angstrom: CO2 and H2O present in the atmosphere absorbed all infrared: adding more CO2 would not warm the planet further.
Doubt cast on Arrhenius’ conclusions accepted; oceans take up CO2; climate self regulating…the balance of nature; global warming ignored.

7. Confirmation and acceptance
1956: Gilbert Plass showed that addition of more CO2 into the upper atmosphere would capture more infrared.
1957: Ravelle and Seuss: oceans cannot absorb CO2 as fast as we are adding it to atmosphere.
1960: Keeling shows that CO2 is rising.
Global Warming: How skepticism became denial. Spencer Weart, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists January 2011

10. Temperature and CO2 correlated
1980s: ice cores show
Temperature and CO2 correlated
Credit: Jeremy Shakun/Harvard

11. 1988 Confirmation and acceptance
Accumulation of evidence over decades confirmed that global warming is real and happening.
James Hansen told Congress that 1988 would be the warmest year on record. He was right.
Polling showed that most Americans had heard about the greenhouse effect and that they would live to see it’s effects.

12. Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, 2010
Denial
Richard Lindzen at MIT, one of the few climate change deniers who published in respected peer reviewed journals. “Tropical clouds would increase and cause cooling” Later shown not to happen.
1990s: Jastrow, Nierenberg, Seitz, Singer: cast doubt on main findings of climate science by denying the data and raising Zombie theories…ones that have been dead for a long time. Marshall Institute, Heartland
Ad hominem attacks on climate scientists. Watermellons!
Journalists try to be “balanced” by having a climate denier respond to thoughts from a climate scientist.
Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, 2010

21. Reason is not enough
Elizabeth Kolbert: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds, New Yorker, February 2017
New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason.
Group identity, confirmation bias are part of our makeup.

22. Sources of Carbon Dioxide

23. The global carbon budget: how much CO2
can we add to the atmosphere before we reach 2°C?
The Global Carbon Budget. How much CO2 have we injected into the atmosphere and how much more do we have to go to cause a temperature rise of 2.0C?

24. http://www. climatecentral. org/news/world-flirts-with-1

25. CO2 emissions level off by 2016

26. Image: Victor Soares/Agência Brasil https://creativecommons

28. As solar prices fall, installations boom

29. Wind power surged in 2015… representing 41%
of all new capacity installed in the U.S.

30. Bloomberg predictions for clean energy in 2017
1,000,000 new Electric Vehicles
1.5 GW of new battery capacity
59 GW of new wind installations
75 GW of new solar installations
7 of the largest corporations to go 100% renewable
Climate debate heats up…again!

31. Can we control rising CO2 and global warming?
You can always trust America to do the right thing…
…after having exhausted all other possibilities.
Winston Churchill