"It's Going to Make a Huge Mess"

The man who coined the term "global warming" looks back at 35 years of climate change.

INTERVIEW BY ELIZABETH DICKINSON | AUGUST 3, 2010

View a slideshow of Tibet's melting glaciers

Wallace Broecker has written some 460 academic papers in his half-century-long career as a geologist. But this week, everyone seems to remember just one of them: an Aug. 8, 1975, paper in Science titled "Climate Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?" It was the first time anyone used the term "global warming," and his paper's predictions about planetary warming proved remarkably accurate.

Not that it makes him sleep any better. "I really feel that this is something we're going to have to do something about," he tells FP's Elizabeth Dickinson. "It's not going to make a disaster on the planet, but it's going to make a huge mess, and it's a mess that could be avoided or lessened if we started to take action."

For More

Wally's World
Why Broecker's prediction was all too prescient.
By Brad Johnson

Foreign Policy: Tell us a bit about how you came to coin the term "global warming" in Science magazine back in 1975.

Wallace Broecker: I came to Columbia University as a senior in college in 1952 and was immediately employed in the radiocarbon-dating lab. And I'm still here, 58 years later. I studied various aspects of the carbon cycle there, and [as we watched] carbon dioxide levels going up, physics said the planet should be warming. Yet between about 1941 until the early 1970s, there was no warming.

I wondered, "How could it be that we're not seeing a warming?" Then, in the early 1970s, one of the first long records of climate was released based on an ice core drilled in northern Greenland. I extrapolated [that data forward] and found that there [should be] a natural cooling between the 1940s and about 1980 -- half of an 80-year [warming-cooling cycle seen in the ice core]. So I said, "Aha!" Maybe what had happened is that, by chance, the carbon dioxide-induced warming that [physicists] expected had just been balanced by a [natural planetary] cooling. If that were true, we were in for a turnaround when the natural cooling became a natural warming -- which would join forces with the carbon dioxide warming. In Science, I argued that we were on the brink of a pronounced global warming, using that term. It was the natural [terminology] to use; I never thought I was naming something. It was only three or four years ago that people picked up on this and realized that I was the first to use it.

I taught a course in the carbon cycle in the spring term at Columbia, and I offered a $250 award to anybody who could find an earlier mention of "global warming." It didn't take much of a literature search to find it in the title of a Science article -- that would stand out like a sore thumb. My idea [with the reward] was to get it off my back! I've written 460 papers -- I hope I'm not remembered for two words in one title!

FP: How was the article first received? How did the scientific consensus about climate change emerge?

WB: In those days, we were intellectually interested in global warming. I don't think it had sunk in that it could be as much of a problem as we think of it being now. [I think] most people have gone through a similar evolution to mine. Now we're seeing a huge backlash of conservatives who don't want to spend the money to do anything.

I don't know how long it's going to be before people really wake up. I suspect we're going to have to wait until the impacts grow larger. So I'm not exactly unhappy that this is a record year for warmth.

David Breashears, Courtesy of GlacierWorks

 

Wallace Broecker is Newberry professor of geology at Columbia University. Elizabeth Dickinson is assistant managing editor at Foreign Policy.

PLEN

1:23 PM ET

August 4, 2010

Global Warming or Climate Change?

I look forward to reading comments on this piece.

It is unfortunate that they start off with a photo of the melting glaciers in the Himalayas (as a sign of global warming). Last I remember, the glaciers are not melting due to global warming. Also I am surprised that there is no discussion on how the term “Global Warming” is now faux pas. The term has been superseded by “Climate Change” as it is clearly shown how some parts of the world become warmer and others cool down – I bet Canadians are hoping there part of the world won’t be the part that cools down.

I have long been a skeptic of global warming/climate change. I accept that we cannot go on polluting the world. It’s like visiting a friend and messing up his place - simply not acceptable – so why are we doing it to the world? My biggest fear is that some scientist trying to get more funding concocts figures, gets bust and we have more fuel for the anti-pollution drive and the whole momentum is broken. Alot of the Global Warming arguments (like the photo of he Himalayas) are starting to draw a pattern of concocting a propaganda that is receiving a knee jerk reaction (and hence the reason I get irrate).

I really like the argument that, simply put – unloading carbon into the atmosphere must have an impact. On that principle alone something should be done. The invention of carbon scrubbers …. That may even convert back to fuel is simply amazing!

 

WITSENDNJ

8:28 PM ET

August 11, 2010

denial

I'm sorry, but Professor Broeckner is a case of an old man who doesn't want to die knowing the horrible future his grandchildren will inherit. To dismiss accelerating feedbacks is not supported in the paleoclimatic record. Tipping points such as the albedo effect are crucial to the trajectory of global warming.

To even suggest that CCS is some sort of solution is to condemn the human race and most other species to unimaginable deprivation, since it completely ignores two other absolutely critical aspects of carbon emissions:

1. The warming and acidification of the ocean, a process well underway and for all intents and purposes irreversible on any scale that matters. The food chain in the ocean is already in collapse, and this will lead to enormous numbers of climate refugees, and mass starvation.

2. The "other" greenhouse gases, usually ignored, create toxic ozone when nitrous oxide, sulphur dioxide, and acetaldehyde interact with UV radiation. Ozone causes cancer, emphysema, and other respiratory conditions in humans. Vegetation is even more sensitive. Ozone poisons plants by damaging the stomata of foliage, interfering with the ability to photosynthesize and produce chlorophyll. Decades of cumulative exposure have made trees more susceptible to disease, fungus, insects, and weather. They are now in a rapidly accelerating, terminal decline. Without trees - their lumber, fruit, nuts, habitat, shade, carbon sink, and beauty, the terrestrial ecosystem based on forests will collapse. Wildfires are already raging. Annual crops losses are also increasing at a time when more food is needed for a growing population. More famine, and who knows what wars, will result.

It's lovely that the originator of the phrase "Global Warming" is so sanguine. I think "Global Boiling" would have been more appropriate.

photographs and links to scientific research at www.witsendnj.blogspot.com

 

DARLIN

5:00 AM ET

August 30, 2010

My friend suggested me to

My friend suggested me to visit your blog. Very well explained. I would like to say that it is very interesting to read your blog.Thanks for mac cosmetics outlet the write up! This is really some great stuff here!