The latest alarmist climate change report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) tells of "severe irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems." This follows a series of such IPCC reports, all of which have over estimated actual global temperature rise which has been a modest one degree or so since the Little Ice Age ended about 1800.
Last year, as the Twins took the field for a frigid opening day, I was reminded of a recent comment from one of my college's most distinguished professors. "Global warming forecasts," said Stanford's Nobel physicist Robert Laughlin, "have the difficulty that one can't find much actual global warming in present day weather observations."
A check with the National Snow and Ice Data Center shows that Arctic ice sheet coverage is below the 30-year average, but it is near average for the past five years. And the Antarctic, with 80 percent of the world's ice, is at its greatest sea ice levels since radar coverage began in 1979.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's data on world sea levels indicate that sea level rise since the last glacier melted has slowed to about 1 inch every decade. That is a long-term concern for Venice and other low lying flood plains.
The IPCC and many governments like ours have changed to the term climate change from the awkward term global warming, since there hasn't been much warming. Climate change allows blaming every current storm, tornado, and drought on CO2 emissions, even though none of those recent events are unusual.
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As to the frequency of extreme weather events, we have a recent TV interview by Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, one of world's largest casualty insurers. Buffett noted on CNBC, "While the question of climate change deserves lots of attention, it has no effect on the prices we're charging this year versus five years ago. And I don't think it'll have an effect on what we're charging three years or five years from now. Hurricanes in recent years have been all profit. Future weather catastrophe forecasts appear to be no different than in the past."
The major threat from our CO2 releases is in the oceans. Oceans are less alkaline than in the recent past, and this is a serious problem which affects the ocean's many calcifiers, coral reefs and shellfish who build structures and shells from calcium carbonate, a process which suffers in more acid sea water.
Few of these alarmist reports suggest tough and effective measures like carbon taxes to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Our legislators fear offering unpopular taxes. Those who endorse even a few cents more tax on gasoline tend to lose in the next election. Coal use worldwide is rising. Legislatures provide big money for renewables like wind and solar which lack scale and are too variable to replace base-load coal fueled power supply. In 2013, wind and solar combined provided a little over 1 percent of the total U.S. energy supply. They have a role in our energy future, but it will take more, such as round the clock carbonless nuclear, if we are really concerned about carbon emissions.
That is why China, choking in coal dust soot, is building so many new nuclear plants, including the Westinghouse AP 1000 model. Four of those AP 1000s are going up in Georgia and South Carolina. One of them could replace MInnesota's largest coal plant.
ROLF WESTGARD of St. Paul is a professional member of the Geological Society of America and teaches for the University of Minnesota's Lifelong Learning program. He recently taught the class 17016 "America's Climate and Energy Future: the Next 25 Years".
