A Moment on the Earth: The Coming of Age of Environmental Optimism.

• Author: Oppenheimer, Michael

Gregg Easterbrook, in his book A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism, asserts that the world's environmental problems are not as severe as is often portrayed and characterizes environmentalists as alarmist "doomsayers." In this Review, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) challenges Easterbrook's perspective by focusing on particular passages in the book regarding global warning, ozone depletion, the northern spotted owl, and species extinction. Drawing upon scientific literature, EDF contends that many of Easterbrook's claims are either unsupported by, or reflect a poor understanding of, the existing scientific evidence.

1. INTRODUCTION

   In his book A Moment on the Earth, Gregg Easterbrook argues that environmentalists "are surely on the right side of history, [but] increasingly on the wrong side of the present, risking their credibility by proclaiming emergencies that do not exist."(1) Yet his account of environmental issues is replete with errors and misinterpretations of the scientific evidence. This is especially notable in regard to the four chapters dealing with habitat loss, global warming, ozone depletion, and species extinction. According to a recent report by the Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, these are probably the four most serious threats to the natural environment.(2) We believe that the record should be set straight on Easterbrook's critical scientific errors, for the faulty statements in these four chapters substantially undermine his thesis that many environmental problems have been overstated.

   Although some mistakes may be inevitable given a work of this size, Easterbrook's errors are so numerous and so one-sided in minimizing the seriousness of environmental problems that they must be addressed. Moreover, he has retained some assertions in his book even after technical experts told him that the statements were incorrect.(3)

   The author's views continue to receive wide attention. For example, Mobil Oil has chosen to highlight the conclusions of the book and repeat many of its dubious claims in a series of prominent editorial page advertisements in The New York Times.(4) In a recent issue of his newsletter, Rush Limbaugh has quoted copiously from Easterbrook's remarks concerning the spotted owl in support of his argument that the entire environmental regulatory apparatus of the federal government is untrustworthy and should be dismantled.(5) Given the current fervor in Congress to roll back the government's role in protecting the environment, a closer examination of the scientific claims featured in A Moment on the Earth is especially critical at this time.

   This Review by no means constitutes a complete account of the misstatements found in Easterbrook's work, but it provides a sample of some of the most egregious errors in just four chapters. Unlike Easterbrook, who cites few sources to back up this claims, our corrections of disputed scientific statements are supported by sources from peer-reviewed technical literature. According to Easterbrook, "[w]hen no source for a fact is indicated in the text or these notes, this is because the assertion is not generally in dispute among specialists."(6) Despite this claim, throughout the text he makes numerous unsupported scientific statements that are not only open to dispute, but, as we shall show, are just plain wrong.

2. EASTERBROOK'S CHAPTER 17: "CLIMATE II: GLOBAL WARMTH"

   In his chapter on global warming, Easterbrook makes many fundamental errors. He continually confuses global, regional, and local temperature trends, which may differ considerably; he mischaracterizes the results of a poll that was undertaken to determine scientists' views on global warming; and he mistakenly asserts that the sea level has not risen significantly, when it has. Most flagrant, however, are his erroneous claims that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), two highly respected scientific authorities on the subject, have substantially lowered their projections of future warming due to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere when, in fact, they have not.

   A Moment on the Earth: Immediately it got cold. From 1940 through the 1970s global temperatures declined, hitting bottom during the frigid winter of 1977, coldest in a century in North America.(7)

   Correction: Easterbrook is wrong on all three counts. First, global temperature did not decline significantly between 1940 and the 1970s; it wavered up and down by small amounts after having risen for several decades.(8) Second, global temperature did not "hit bottom" during the winter of 1977, but averaged above normal.(9) Finally, the average temperature for North America was also above normal that winter. It was in the eastern United States that it was indeed very cold.(10)

   It is the long-term global pattern that is considered significant in the global warming context, not annual or seasonal changes in temperature in particular regions, which can be quite variable.

   A Moment: In February 1992 the Gallup Organization polled members of the American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society, the two professional groups for climatologists. Only 17 percent said warming trends so far convinced them an artificial greenhouse effect was in progress.(11)

   Correction: Though in many respects the poll was confusingly worded and its results difficult to interpret, there was one unambiguous finding: Sixty-six percent of the scientists polled, a large majority, responded "yes' to the question: "In your opinion is human-induced greenhouse warming now occurring?"(12) This is far from the seventeen percent cited by Easterbrook. Only ten percent of the scientists disagreed with this proposition, and the remainder were undecided.(13) Moreover, only two percent believed that there was no chance that substantial human-caused warming would occur over the next fifty to one hundred years.(14)

   A Moment: That same year Greenpeace surveyed climate researchers using a poll whose questions were worded such as to elicit alarm. Some 47 percent of respondents said a runaway greenhouse effect is either impossible or highly improbable.(15)

   Correction: Easterbrook's reference to this finding, unaccompanied by any further discussion and restated later on the same page, on the book jacket, and in the preface, reveals that he either misunderstands the technical meaning of "runaway greenhouse effect" or is attempting to mislead the reader. A runaway greenhouse effect" means not merely rapid warming, but rather an unstable feedback leading to the complete evaporation of the oceans.(16) While there is little or no chance that a "runaway greenhouse effect" will Occur,(17) there is a possibility that rapid and substantial warming will occur.

   A Moment: It turns out that the late 1800s was a cold period. Earth could experience "record" warmth relative to the 1880s and remain cool compared to the bulk of its past.(18)

   Correction: Although, as Easterbrook notes, accurate temperature data did not exist before 1860, the best available evidence suggests that the late 1800s were warmer than most of the previous 400 years, and temperatures were close to average for the previous 10,000 years.(19) Therefore, the observed warming since then has indeed been significant.

   A Moment: [C]onditions environmentalists would call a global-warming disaster [would entail] typical temperatures higher than today's by ten to 22 degrees Fahrenheit. A temperature rise in this range would surely render the Earth inhospitable to genus Homo and thousands of other present species; but not even worst-case projections anticipate warming of such magnitude.(20)

   Correction: Not true. The computer climate model developed by scientists at Princeton University projects that if CO2 concentrations were to quadruple, which may well occur after 2100 without concerted international actions to reduce emissions, temperature increases in this range would follow.(21)

   A Moment: Artificial greenhouse gases did not become significant until the postwar industrial boom of the late 1940s. According to greenhouse theory, sharp heat increases should have followed. Instead the warming rate slowed down.(22)

   Correction: Climate models do not predict sharp temperature increases immediately following increases in accumulated greenhouse gases. Easterbrook ignores the lags in the system, caused by many factors, including the thermal inertia of the oceans, nonlinearities in the CO2 effect, reflection of sunlight by sulfate particles, and random fluctuations of climate, which combine to ensure that the release of greenhouse gases and temperature increases will not occur at exactly the same time. Indeed, computer models for climate warming that take account of these factors predict global temperatures in reasonable agreement with the observed temperature rise over the past 100 years.(23)

   A Moment: The studies that find a global warming trend during the 1980s rely on surface-temperature readings taken near cities. Researchers know that the urban "heat-island effect" distorts such readings, and they adjust data to compensate. The degree of adjustment required is controversial, however. The Goddard Institute, whose greenhouse studies are downbeat, subtracts about 0.1 degree Fahrenheit. Other researchers maintain that about 0.3 degrees must be subtracted to remove the heat-island effect. If the Goddard Institute adjusted by 0.3 degrees, this would cancel out the entire claimed global temperature increase of the 1980s.(24)

   Correction: Not true. Easterbrook appears to confuse not only Fahrenheit and Celsius, but decades with centuries. The correction applied by Goddard for the urban "heat-island effect" is about 0.1 degrees Celsius, not Fahrenheit, and over a century, not a decade.(25) The correction would work out to about 0.01 degrees Celsius per decade, while the surface data show a...