Sustainability

Oregon is in a drought. That’s undeniable. The U.S. Drought Monitor says so. Global warming caused by manmade greenhouse gases is for real. That’s also undeniable according to the results of a recent study of ocean temperatures.

As I wrote in an earlier post, “Global warming: the big truth,” Oceanographers analyzed more than seven million recordings of ocean temperatures from around the world. They compared the rise in temperatures at different depths to predictions made by two computer simulations of global warming.

Bingo. Right on. No doubt about it. Man-made greenhouse gases are the cause of observed changes in ocean temperatures. One of the researchers, a marine physicist, said: “We’ve got a serious problem. The debate is no longer: ‘Is there a global warming signal?’ The debate now is: ‘What are we going to do about it?’

Yet Oregon’s climatologist, George Taylor, denies that global warming is occurring. In September 2004 Taylor was part of a group that sent a letter to Sen. John McCain, who was chairing a Commerce Committee hearing examining recent scientific research concerning climate change impacts. The group was quoted as saying that “there is little supporting meteorological evidence” for global warming.

That’s ridiculous. Take a look at the New Scientist “Special Report on Climate Change” and the first thing you’ll read is, “Climate change is with us. A decade ago, it was conjecture. Now the future is unfolding before our eyes.” Scientists at the University of Washington have studied changes in northwest snowpacks and concluded that global warming could shrink already diminished snowpack water content by over 50% in coming decades.

Meanwhile, George Taylor gives speeches where he says that global warming actually isn’t an imminent threat.

I hope Taylor will change his mind. Oregon can’t afford to have a state climatologist who doesn’t understand that global warming almost certainly is a major influence on our state’s climate. Its worrisome when the climatologist for a coastal state doesn’t believe that oceans are warming because of greenhouse gases. By contrast, the climatologist for Washington state says that global warming is no myth and the repercussions could be severe in the Pacific Northwest.

They already are. Close to home here in Salem, Detroit Lake, along with other reservoirs, probably won’t fill up with enough water for boating this year, just as in 2001—another drought year. This will hammer the Detroit economy. A recent Salem Statesman-Journal article lists other impending drought problems: “shortages of irrigation water for farms, tight municipal water supplies, inadequate river flows to nurture salmon and other wildlife and extreme wildfire danger.”

Right after this list of impending catastrophes, the article says, “State climatologist George Taylor, calling himself an eternal optimist, said he thinks a wet spring is possible.” Well, we’ll see. Longer term, Taylor believes that Oregon will be cooler and wetter than normal for the next 15 years. That’s hard to imagine given the trends of the past few years.

During most of the past winter the jet stream took storms to the south, into California and away from Oregon. To my understanding, this is a typical El Nino pattern. In his paper, “Impacts of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation on the Pacific Northwest,” Taylor writes that the warmer ocean temperatures associated with an El Nino results in lower than normal precipitation for the Northwest.

Which is just what is happening. And it has been happening for years. A 1998 NOAA (National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration) report said that global warming might be exacerbating El Nino’s effects on the weather. After this report was issued Al Gore urged Congress to act to reduce greenhouse gases. His advice was ignored. People are more likely to believe in the reality of El Nino than in the reality of global warming. Politically, says this analysis, the two have been disconnected.

Yet almost certainly they are connected. It isn’t difficult to make a persuasive argument that Oregon is going to suffer through a drought because manmade global warming has raised ocean temperatures, which has created El Nino conditions, which divert Pacific storms away from the Northwest.

Oregon’s policy-makers shouldn’t be focused only on dealing with the effects of global warming, as the group Taylor is associated with has argued. This group advised that emergency preparedness should be the focus of efforts to mitigate the effects of Florida hurricanes. Since Taylor doesn’t accept the reality of global warming, I expect that he isn’t supportive of the West Coast Governors’ Global Warming Initiative that Oregon is a part of.

Doesn’t it seem strange that Oregon’s climatologist is at odds with not only most of the world (which has adopted the Kyoto Treaty) but also the official policy of our state? The above-linked Oregon Department of Energy page says that “on September 22, 2003, Governors Kulongoski, Davis and Locke announced that they have concluded that Oregon, California and Washington must act individually and regionally to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because global warming will have serious adverse consequences on the economy, health and environment of the west coast states. (Governor Schwarzenegger has continued California’s participation.)”

It isn’t too far off the mark to say that a meteorologist who doesn’t believe that global warming is occurring is akin to a zoologist who doesn’t believe in the theory of evolution, or a cosmologist who doesn’t believe in the big bang. Taylor’s writings (such as this, and this) point toward a conclusion that he is out-of-touch with the broader scientific community.

Hopefully he is keeping his mind open. I look forward to learning whether recent research has led George Taylor to change his opinion about global warming.

When even evangelical leaders are getting behind the effort to fight global warming, Oregon’s climatologist should become a convert to doing what’s right for our state and the earth. (See post continuation for a New York Times article on this evangelical movement)