UCSD scientist: 20 years wasted on climate debate

North County Times (San Diego): For UC San Diego scientist and historian Naomi Oreskes, global warming is old news. As early as 1979, Oreskes said, there was broad consensus among scientists that the growing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning was heating up the planet, Oreskes said. The nation's leaders could have -- and should have -- started doing something about it then, she said in a lecture Monday night sponsored by UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "In my view, we have wasted 20 years," Oreskes said.

The view that man-made greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are to blame for climate change is widely held by the scientific community. But some scientists remain uncertain that the planet is on a track toward accelerated warming and have doubts about the role such gases are likely to play.

…Oreskes said there is still time to slow the buildup of carbon dioxide and other gases and slow the warming before it triggers widespread melting of continental ice sheets. Melting on a large scale could flood low-lying coastal regions, reduce California's crucial mountain snowpack and cause widespread famine in Third World countries, scientists say.

…Oreskes, the Scripps scientist, said that…the public is confused because over the last two decades industry advocates have sought systematically to sow seeds of doubt about global warming….

Oreskes said the truth is the scientific community began to suspect greenhouse gases would boost the planet's temperature as early as the 1930s, when the theory was advanced by physicist E.O. Hulburt. After a hiatus from the issue during World War II, research continued in the 1950s and 1960s. And in 1979, Oreskes said, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that a "plethora of studies" had shown the burning of fossil fuels would significantly change the climate.

Not only that, she said, at that time scientists predicted warming would occur faster near the poles, something that already has occurred. Oreskes said weather records show that the average global temperature rose 0.53 degrees Centigrade (1 degree Fahrenheit) while Alaska's rose 2.1 degrees Centigrade (4 degrees Fahrenheit) from just after the middle of last century to this decade. "So, if someone tells you that no one could have predicted this, not only could they have, but they did," she said.