It is hard for scientists to comprehend what Donald Trump’s election and policies will mean for the environment, the science related to global warming and climate change, and the habitability of major parts of the Earth. Trump seems to lack any interest, understanding or appreciation of core science issues, especially those dealing with climate change, and he has called climate change a “hoax” perpetuated by the Chinese to undermine the United State’s industrial potential. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, as well as numerous other Republican members of Congress, has echoed the “hoax” claim. In contrast, congressional Democrats are mostly aligned with the view that climate change is perhaps the most important issue we face with respect to the future quality of life, the health of the environment and national security.

It is important to define of what the terms mean. Global warming refers to the increasing surface temperature of the Earth’s surface as a result of increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide associated with fossil fuel emissions. Climate change, on the other hand, refers to how this warming affects components of the Earth’s biosphere, ocean and atmosphere systems. There have been snide comments by various climate change denier groups that because global warming is not taking place, scientists changed the name to climate change. However, there are long-term temperature records that clearly show that global temperatures have increased in the last several decades to values not seen in more than 800,000 years. A recent report in the journal Science shows how climate change has already impacted 82 percent of the ecosystems evaluated.

Well-organized climate change denier groups are largely supported by fossil fuel-based energy industries and wealthy industrialists. Their mode of operation is to attack scientists who publicly speak out on the climate change issue, especially those who suggest how to deal with this in the most effective way (i. e., cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by power plants, decreasing our use of fossil fuels, etc.). As I noted in a 2013 op-ed in this newspaper, I know firsthand about these venomous, coordinated attacks. One of the things they always seem to mention is that I (and climate scientists in general) do not understand the scientific method.

Let’s test how climate change stacks up with respect to the scientific method. As the great physicist Richard Feynman noted: “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” For climate change, the basic theory is that atmospheric carbon dioxide absorbs some of the energy emitted by the Earth that would be otherwise lost to space. The more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the warmer the Earth becomes. As a net affect of this absorption, there is a warming of the overall surface of the Earth. Famous scientists such as Joseph Fourier and John Tyndall first proposed this in the 19th century. In 1896, Svante Arrhenius developed a model to demonstrate how differing amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide influence global surface temperatures and established the basic concepts of climate change. As noted by F.B. Mudge in 1997, “at the turn of the century, the theory of global climate change from increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels was widely accepted.” It had also been suggested that carbon dioxide was accumulating in the atmosphere from coal combustion. The term “Greenhouse effect” was first used by Arrhenius’s colleague Nils Ekholm in 1901 in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. Today, there is a huge body of evidence published in worldwide scientific journals that supports the carbon dioxide climate change concept.


The climate change deniers often ask me, what experimental evidence do I personally have that shows the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere influences Earth’s surface temperatures? My answer to their question is simple: Read the extensive science literature on the role of carbon dioxide in regulating the Earth’s temperature. Moreover, humanity is doing the ultimate experiment: With the release of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning and its accumulation in the atmosphere, scientists have been able to observe firsthand how global surface temperatures respond.

It is not a coincidence that over the last several years, as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have reached record levels in the Keeling curve, there have been record high global temperatures, with 2016 shaping up to be the warmest ever measured.

As a glimpse of things to come, Trump has appointed Myron Ebell to lead his EPA transition team. Ebell does not have a degree in any science field and has been called the “Superstar of the Denialosphere.” In a 2006 article in Forbes, Ebell wrote “higher temperatures are killing people who are likely to die soon anyway.” This is not a good sign.

Bada is a distinguished professor of marine chemistry, emeritus, at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.


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