Authors Last Name 1

[The Writers Name]

[The Professors Name]
[The Course Title]
[Date]
Global Warming and Public Awareness Level in the UK and Japan
Abstract
This paper will discuss and evaluate the issue of global warming as myth and reality. It would
conduct a thorough search as if the discussion of global warming used by politicians in order to
control world standards? It would also cover how this issue is being portrayed by governments
and other agencies. The role of media in this regard is also quite significant and will also be
highlighted. The standard and authenticity of Kyoto Protocol and IPCC reports as represented in
the mass media would also be judged.
 Authors Last Name 2

Chapter 1
Introduction
Background of the Study
Global warming is real, and human beings have something to do with it. We don't have
everything to do with it; but we can't stop it, and we couldn't even slow it down enough to
measure our efforts if we tried. Whether a person believed in an earth-centered universe or a
heliocentric one (a view of Jupiter and its moons soon convinced Galileo of the latter), everyone
pretty much agreed that the sun warmed the earth. So the appearance of black spots became a
curiosity worth recording: Would a darker sun create a cooler planet?
We now know that the opposite is true. A sun with many spots is a hotter sun because the
dark regions are surrounded by larger, whiter areas that are more energetic than the quiescent
state. Since that discovery, myriad scientists have matched the earth's temperature to the output
of the sun. This isn't exactly rocket science. If there were no match, the basic theory of
climatology would be wrong, a theory that simply states that the sun is the cause of our climate.
A review of sunspot records is one way to back-calculate the earth's temperature before
the general use of thermometers, which dates back to the mid-1800s. But there are other climate
proxies. The width of tree rings, for example, is related to total rainfall and summer
temperature. Plants leave fragments, including long-lasting pollen, in the bottom of lakes, and
shallow lakes turn over every year, creating annual striations, called varves, that can be
counted back in time.
The Scope of Study
Global warming has become a hot topic and critical issue of the present day world of
science, politics and economics. It has also certain social and sociological implications as well.
All the new technological changes, progress and industrial advancement, somehow or the other,
depends on this issue from one perspective or another. Hence it is significant to look into the
matter and find the right answer for public, political and corporate leadership.
The Purpose of the Study
The purpose of the study is to elaborate the issue of global warming in its true and rightful
scenario. The study would determine as the claims of the media and political circles are based on
facts or not.

The Rationale of the Study

The issue of global warming is one of the topics most discussed in the world in current
times, and it is usually explained together with global warming caused by human activity. In the
world context, it is usually said that global warming is common sense, and it is an urgent topic
which should be treated by repressing human activities such as production of greenhouse gases,
for instance. Most of the developed countries, apart from the USA and Australia, are moving
toward decreasing greenhouse gases under the name of the Kyoto protocol which has been
ratified by more than 80 countries. Despite the fact of the world tendency towards global
warming, there are several controversies about the causes of global warming.

Skeptics Views
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The anthropomorphic bias of the skeptics is reflected in the ways some of them propose
to manipulate nature to adapt to global warming generated by humankinds use of fossil fuels.
Proposals have been floated to inject sulfur into the atmosphere, so that its cooling effects can
counteract those of greenhouse gases. The skeptics leave unsaid the fact that atmospheric sulfur
is a primary ingredient of acid rain. Bombing the stratosphere with sulfur dioxide also could turn
the sky an opaque, dirty white and accelerate ozone depletion. Other proposals rely on
humankinds biochemical innovations to breed food plants which will survive a warmer, more
humid world. One can almost hear the skeptics enthusiastically describing to one another the size
of the corn that they imagine will grow around Hudsons Bay. (Houlder, 2000, 143)

When they point out that the earth has survived carbon dioxide levels six to eight times
those of the present, very few of the greenhouse skeptics mention that the weather during such
times was rather miserable for warm-blooded animals, as warm as 20 degrees F. higher than
today. Such temperatures may have been a balm for the dinosaurs, but tacking that much heat
onto the daily summer averages where most people live would make much of humanitys present
range nearly uninhabitable for several months a year. Omahas average summer high, for
example, could approach 110 degrees F., or roughly todays averages in the Central Sahara.
(Brown, 2000, 143)

When proponents of global warming cite a growing list of anecdotes indicating that
temperatures are raising, skeptics respond with their own, shorter, list of exceptional recent
cooling. Australia, for example, experienced its coldest winter in 132 years of recorded history
during 1992. The same month, Jerusalem experienced its deepest snow in four decades (an even
deeper snow, 15 inches, fell there in early January, 2000). (Bruce, 2002, 201) During the record-
warm winter of 19992000, Mongolia was beset by killing freezes and blizzards, as more than
60 people died in a cold wave that swept over Bangladesh. While reports indicate that glaciers
are melting worldwide and ice sheets are thinning in parts of the Arctic and Antarctic, skeptics
find a few places where the temperatures are colder or snowfall heavier. (Abrahamson, 1989, 76)

Skeptics point out that yellow fever broke out in Philadelphia during 1793, six years after
the Constitutional Convention was held there, killing thousands of people. Yellow fever took a
similar toll in Memphis almost a century later, also without global warming to blame.
Many global-warming skeptics argue that the sunspot cycle is causing a significant part of the
warming that has been measured by surface thermometers during the twentieth centurys final
two decades. Accurate measurements of the suns energy output have been taken only since
about 1980, however, so their archival value for comparative purposes is severely limited.
The skeptics believe that sulfur does more than negate half of humankinds contribution to
infrared forcing. One group of observers estimates that This perturbation is comparable in
magnitude to current anthropomorphic greenhouse gases, but opposite in sign. (Adger, 1994,
154)

In laypersons English, this statement means: Human-generated sulfur will negate the
effects of human-induced greenhouse gases. (Adger, 1994, 157) This simple statement is full of
assumptions that fail the reality of atmospheric chemistry. Most sulfur compounds leave the
atmosphere within two weeks of their generation, while most greenhouse gases remain in the air
for a century or more. To negate the effects of global warming, the pollution solution would
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require a continuous feed of sulfur into the atmosphere. As has been noted above, the resulting
precipitation of sulfur-enhanced acidity would have disastrous environmental effects at ground
level.

There is little controversy over the greenhouse effect as a scientific theory. The
controversy arises over the global warming predictions: the causes (whether or not they're human
induced), the amount of warming and the timing of it, the implications for life and society, and
most of all, what to do about it. As trumpeted by the popular media, our new alleged certainty
about the effects and causes of global warming stem from two scientific studies: The first, drawn
from a lengthy compendium of climate-change data put together by the United Nations'
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was released this past winter. The second, a
follow-up study on the same subject, released last month by the National Research Council
(NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences.

In both cases, publicity about these reports suggested, in so many words, that the debate
about "global warming" was over. Commenting on the original IPCC study, for instance, Time
magazine asserted that Scientists no longer doubt that global warming is happening, and almost
nobody questions the fact that humans are at least partly responsible. A decade ago, the idea that
the planet was warming up as a result of human activity was largely theoretical, the
newsmagazine explained this past April. As an authoritative report issued a few weeks ago by the
[IPCC] makes plain, the trend toward a warmer world has unquestionably begun.

It was precisely because of this discrepancy that the second study was commissioned--in
effect, a study of a study. Because of serious questions about the reliability of the IPCC
summary, in May the White House asked the National Research Council to identify "the areas in
the science of climate change where there are the greatest certainties and uncertainties," and to
comment in particular on the quality of science represented in the IPCC summary that had been
making so many headlines.
And, ironically, the same thing happened all over again. Once more, the report in
question stressed nuance and uncertainty. And once more the media stories took their cues from
the boiled-down treatment available in report's summary.

Literature Review
Basic to any understanding of the dynamics of science is the concept of the paradigm,
elucidated by Thomas Kuhn in a number of academic papers in the 1950s, and more
comprehensively in the oft-quoted The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, first published in 1962
and a steady seller since then. (Indeed, more than 40 years later, it is still in print.)
But Kuhn's brilliant analysis of scientific behavior was developed at the same time that a
remarkable shift took place in the public support of science. Thanks to its success, and thanks to
the scientific bureaucracy that it engendered, the Manhattan Project, which coordinated
American resources in a crash program to develop the atomic bomb, laid the groundwork for
massive federalization of scientific research. Kuhn's work appeared before the impact of that
federalization on his thesis could be assessed. Indeed, it makes Kuhn's view even stronger.
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Kuhn defines science paradigms as bodies of knowledge that define the legitimate
problems and methods of a research field for succeeding generations of practitioners. Paradigms
are fractal. They have the same dynamics whether they refer to an expansive notion, such as
relativity, or a smaller one, such as the notion that we have the quantitative skills to confidently
predict the future climate of the earth from first physical principals.
Some paradigms endure, others do not. Most are highly explanatory and only are
replaced when fatal flaws are uncovered and a replacement paradigm exists. The physics of Isaac
Newton will land you at a precise point on the moon, and will work just fine as long as your
velocity is much less than the speed of light, whereas proper prediction and control require the
newer paradigm of relativity. The Ptolemaic universe was quite adequate until Copernicus and
Galileo blew it to bits. The flat earth couldn't survive the voyage that Magellan didn't survive.
Within climate science and its implied studies, it's reasonable to define this paradigm:
The earth's surface temperature is influenced by human activity, and changes that are
being measured today are largely consequences of that activity. We are developing the
ability to quantify those changes from basic physical principles, and have determined that
the major cause of recent climate change is the emission of carbon dioxide from the
combustion of fossil fuel. Improved quantification of those changes will give
policymakers improved guidance on what might be required to slow, stop, or reverse
those changes.
That paradigm is under assault from a variety of sources, mainly nature itself. Because Kuhn
observes that paradigms do not fall until there is a replacement, perhaps the new one needs a
formal statement:
The earth's surface temperature is influenced by human activity, and changes that are
being measured today are largely consequences of that activity. We know, to a very small
range of error, the amount of future climate change for the foreseeable future, and it is a
modest value to which humans have adapted and will continue to adapt. There is no
known, feasible policy that can stop or even slow these changes in a fashion that could be
scientifically measured.
The implications of the current paradigm are important. Given some projection for future
emissions of carbon dioxide, the existing paradigm says we can forecast the future mean
temperature with some confidence, but not sufficient confidence to be definitive, unless a
massive amount of future research is supported. Being in that gray zone, however, allows
policymakers to have some information to begin to act on this issue.
This paradigm itself represents a remarkable shift that took nearly a hundred years. Despite
the rather obvious evidence that large areas of the Northern Hemisphere were recently buried
under kilometers of ice, climatology was traditionally uniformitarian, similar to many other
sciences. Weather changes from day-to-day but climate remains constant reigned through at
least the 1970s.
In response to the physical mensuration revolution of the late 19th century, physical scientists
became interested in the absorption and transmission of solar energy through the earth-
atmosphere system. Several gases, notably water vapor and carbon dioxide, were found to slow
the release of heat through the atmosphere. At the same time, the earth was transitioning from
animal power to fossil fuels, which were known to burn to carbon dioxide, a fairly stable
compound whose atmospheric residence time turns out to be around 75 years. Svante Arrhenius
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published a paper in 1895 calculating how much those emissions might warm surface
temperatures. It was a curiosity, not taken seriously. It was far outside of the uniformitarian
paradigm.
It took another two-thirds of a century for enough reliable thermometric data to accrue to throw
out the uniformitarian notion. There was undoubtedly a rapid warming of surface temperature in
the early 20th century, followed by four decades of cooling. People began to seriously investigate
whether human influence was involved. The reigning paradigm evolved.
Kuhn tells us that it's not surprising that such a change in worldview would take nearly a
century. He writes
When, in the development of a natural science, an individual or a group first produces a
synthesis able to attract most of the next generation's practitioners, the older schools
gradually disappear. In part their disappearance is by their members' conversion to the
new paradigm. But there are always some men who cling to one or another of the older
views.
And,
Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in
solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to regard as acute.
But,
The transition of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience that
cannot be forced. Lifelong resistance, particularly from those whose productive careers
have committed them to an older tradition of normal science [Kuhn's term for the care
and feeding of existing paradigms] is not a violation of scientific standards but an index
to the nature of scientific research itself.
In climate science, the acute problem is the obvious nonstationarity of surface temperature,
and the paradigm of human influence for changes in recent decades is simply more explanatory
than other mechanisms. That does not prove it correct, however; it merely establishes it as the
paradigm.
Established paradigms have lives of their own. The vast majority of scientists, Kuhn notes,
does not question them, but rather, spend their time supporting them. As he succinctly states, In
science novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background
provided by expectation.
Not long before Kuhn began his investigations, in 1944, President Roosevelt asked Vannevar
Bush, an MIT engineer and director of the White House Office of Scientific Research and
Development, to describe how the unique experiment of teamwork and cooperation that
characterized the Manhattan Project could be continued after the war. Specifically, Roosevelt
saw Manhattan's success as a marshaling of heretofore unexploited technical resources out of a
preexisting scientific backwater, and he felt that a continued effort of such magnitude in the
future could only serve to advance the technical knowledge (and therefore the security) of the
nation.
Vannevar Bush teamed up with 50 of the nation's prominent scientists, and in 8 months they
produced Science: The Endless Frontier, which, according to Claude Barfield, was the
conscious attempt by wartime science administrators such as Bush and leading science educators
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not only to create a new federal responsibility but also to set the terms and rules by which that
responsibility would be carried out. After much wrangling about who would control what,
President Truman finally signed into law a bill that placed what would become the National
Science Foundation (NSF) under the authority of the president.
Thus began a brave new scientific world, at least in America, the only truly viable postwar
economy at the time. Almost all the science Kuhn studied was practiced before The Endless
Frontier, but Bush's paper only served to ultimately strengthen Kuhn's hypothesis.
In reality, Vannevar Bush got much more than he asked for. NSF is only one example of the
massive federal reach into science, receiving about 15 percent of the current federal research
outlay. The rest goes through major departments, such as the Department of Defense or the
Department of Energy. It should be lost on no one that this latter department is an especially
worn political football. President Nixon directed its predecessor, the Atomic Energy
Commission, to carry out project independence, through which he promised that in a mere 10
years we would be free of the need of any foreign oil. President Carter created the department
and pushed synfuels, liquid fuel substitutes made from coal, and then nuclear power, because his
Energy Secretary, James Schlesinger, became interested in global warming caused by the burning
of fossil fuels. In the 1980s, Reagan's Energy Department took the lead in coordinating global
warming science, and in the 1990s, the various Energy Department laboratories at Livermore,
California, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee, were some of the most voluminous producers of global
warming projections and research. The infamous U.S. National Assessment was cocoordinated
by a Livermore scientist, as was the selective use of data in the famous 1996 Nature exchange
(see p. 137).
Very few people should be surprised that Vannevar Bush's report was an advocacy document. It
predicted cures for cancer and heart disease. It predicted a better world because of intensive
federal involvement in science. There's truth in those predictions as well as self-interest. Handing
any profession a pen and a paper and asking it to tell the government what it should do has a
predictable outcome: Give us money, and lots of it.
Already subject to lifelong resistance to change, did paradigms become even more insensitive
with the federalization of science? Absent some change in financial incentive, Kuhn tells us that
there's a lot of human psychology already involved:
Individual scientists embrace a new paradigm for all sorts of reasons and usually for
several at once. Some of these reasonsfor example, the sun worship that helped make
Kepler a Copernicanlie outside the sphere of science entirely.
Here, Kuhn is telling us that the personal philosophies of scientists indeed interact with the
paradigms that they embrace.
When Vannevar Bush injected the political process into science, he therefore had to alter
the dynamics of paradigm-shifting. Truman's successor, Dwight Eisenhower, sensed the danger
in that. The portion of his Farewell Address in which he worries about the possibility of a
Military-Industrial Complex is often quoted, but he had the same worries about science.
Eisenhower said: The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment,
project allocations, and the power of money is ever presentand is gravely to be regarded. Yet,
holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must always be alert to the
equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become a captive of a scientific
technological elite.
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But the community that was served by the federalization of science isn't the purely
logical, linearly progressing, impersonal enterprise that Bush or Eisenhower may have thought it
was. It was a community that parsed itself into paradigms.
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Chapter 2
Science Part
The science structure that ultimately evolved served paradigms more than individuals.
For example, although the National Science Foundation works primarily through individual
awards, each of those individuals applies under a specific program, such as environmental
biology or climate dynamics. The programs are defined by their respective paradigms, and the
individual scientists, as Kuhn repeatedly notes, are likely to devote their careers to the care and
feeding of those paradigms.

2.1 Uncertainty of Science (legitimacy of science of rationality)

Given such wide natural variability, how does the IPCC distinguish the human
contribution to climate? According to its summary report, it used computer models to estimate
what the 20th century temperature trend would have been in the absence of humans, then
attributed any discrepancy between the models' predictions and recorded temperatures to
greenhouse gas emissions.

Computer Models
"Some recent models produce satisfactory simulations of current climate,"(Plass, 142).
Yet the NRC found that "climate models are imperfect. Their simulation skill is limited by
uncertainties in their formulation, the limited size of their calculations, and the difficulty of
interpreting their answers that exhibit almost as much complexity as in nature." It added:
"Uncertainty remains because of... the questionable ability of models to accurately simulate
natural variability on... long time scales of decades to centuries." (Plass, 142)
But if the accuracy of the models is questionable, how do we know that the discrepancy between
the models' predictions and observed temperatures lies with problems in the atmosphere, and not
in the models?
The NRC notes that models "show forced responses of the global-mean temperature that
corresponds roughly with its measured history over the past century, though this requires model
adjustments." How useful are predictions made by a model that requires such "adjustments" in
order to correspond "roughly" with history? The NRC diplomatically avoids pointing out that
such "adjustment" is normally called "fudging."
The scientific method requires testing any model against real-world data to determine the
model's predictive accuracy. As the NRC put it, that the greater the sophistication and complexity
of an atmospheric model, the greater the need for detailed, multiple measurements, which test
whether the model continues to mimic observational reality.
In fact, the models have been dismal at modeling historical climate--estimating for the
20th century, for example, nearly twice the warming actually observed. As the NRC report
delicately phrases the problem, the warming that has been estimated to have occurred in response
to the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is somewhat greater than the observed
warming. When run forward from historical data, the models have drastically overestimated
regional temperature over the 20th century, and missed even vast historic global climate changes
such as ice ages. Models, as the NRC notes, can not yet provide for continuous evolution over
longer intervals transitions between ice ages.
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Future Model Predictions

Given the uncertainty in the temperature record and of the human contribution, it is hard
to see how models can accurately predict future warming. To do so, they would not only have to
model natural variability, historical climate, and current atmospheric temperatures accurately--
but also the interaction of various as yet poorly understood factors, such as aerosol emissions
and, even more important, clouds. Moreover, if current trends continue, the IPCC's predicted
future greenhouse gas emissions are likely to prove to be overestimates. "The increase of global
fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions in the past decade has averaged 0.6% per year, which is
somewhat below the range of IPCC scenarios," (Houghton, 1992) In sum, a false impression of
certainty, warned the NRC, could lead the public to serious blunders: "Without an understanding
of the sources and degree of uncertainty, decision-makers could fail to define the best ways to
deal with the serious issue of global warming."
At the agency level, the interaction of politics and science is more direct. It's interesting
to run a thought scenario demonstrating the logic and the inevitability of this dynamic. Some
examples are brutal and blatant, some more subtle. In late winter, 2004, Fortune magazine
trumpeted an illogical study of an extreme-case climate change scenario published by two
Pentagon contractors, Peter Schwartz and Douglas Randall, with little experience in climate
science and no track record of scientific publication in the field. The report, titled An Abrupt
Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security, made little
sense. Fortune wrote about the climate of Great Britain possibly becoming like Siberia in 15
years. That's simply impossible. Siberia is extremely cold in the winter because it is the center of
a huge land basin, with considerable mountains on three sides and the North Pole on the other.
The snow-covered land radiates outward into the long winter nights, and the resultant cold air is
trapped by the mountains, forming a deeper and deeper pile. For England to become Siberia,
then, it is necessary to drain the Atlantic Ocean for thousands of miles around London. Then
some considerable mountains need to build up on the edges of this dry basin. That might take a
few dozen million years, not a dozen single ones.

2.2 Politics and Science

But the report received considerable coverage, which put it in the political sphere. Within
a month the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, under the direction of
John McCain (R-Ariz.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Olympia Snowe (RMaine), and Ted Stevens
(R-Ark.), approved legislation creating a $60 million study of the impact of abrupt climate
change on federal property. That's a small example of a pretty gross scientific excess. Other
excesses are more subtle, expensive, and pervasive, and demonstrate how paradigms create
funding.
Consider the larger picture. A Lexis-Nexis search reveals literally hundreds of news
articles in the last year on the perils of climate change. Those stories create public concern.
Politicians are under pressure to act. The reigning paradigm is that we are in the process of
developing, via the first principle of physics, quantitative methods that can inform public policy
on climate change.
Now, imagine yourself as, say, the administrator of NASA, or EPA, or any one of dozens
of federal entities that expect budgetary gains from global warming research funds. Imagine
yourself as the principal witness at a hearing on funding for climate change research. Can you
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see yourself telling McCain's committee that your agency really doesn't need any additional
climate change funding? To do so would deny the paradigm, which holds that, while we are in
the process of increasing understanding of climate change, much more research is required to
provide quantitative guidance for the policy process?
Anyone in that position who states that his agency doesn't need the funding is committing
professional suicide, for two reasons: denial of the paradigm and denial of the opportunity of
employment and advancement of the agency professionals. In fact, after the hearing, after
receiving congratulations from all who would have risen up had you refused the money, you turn
to your colleagues and tell them you need a report, within two months, about how your agency
will effectively spend however many millions or billions of dollars the taxpayers just dropped off
on you. Don't expect that any of your senior administrators are going to tell you they don't want
the funding. Because they are now competing with each other for shares of this new pie. So, as
soon as they can, they will e-mail their working scientists demanding research proposals
designed to spend all of this money. Those administrators who produce the best proposals will
receive the most funding.
The paradigm-political process is a classic example of a positive feedback loop. As Kuhn
notes, most of the rank and file, now funded for more research, will devote that research to the
care and feeding of the reigning paradigm. So, when that funding finally does produce research,
the ultimate outcome will be a manuscript sent to a major journal such as Science or Nature.
Who are going to be the peer reviewers? The people journal editors pick for peer review have to
have established a reputation in the fieldthat is, to have published a lot. Which means,
inevitably, that there is a high probability that they are recipients of the same funding stream that
the manuscript writer is, and therefore that that they, too, are devoted to the paradigm. Which
means, inevitably, that any manuscript arguing that global warming is exaggerated is going to
have, to put it mildly, a very low chance of acceptance? To reiterate Kuhn: Novelty emerges
only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation.
The body of scientific writing that makes up the peer-reviewed literature defines the canon of
science. It holds more weight than anything else when presented in public, whether by the New
York Times or to a Senate Committee debating a bill on global warming. The way we fund
science practically guarantees that this literature must be biased toward the reigning paradigm.
There's no other way out, ever since Kuhn's paradigms and Vannevar Bush's federalized science
were married.
The paradigm-political interaction also determines who ultimately makes the team and who gets
cut. That decision occurs at the crisis time in the life of most university facultythe six-year
review for promotion from assistant to associate professor, which almost always is coincident
with the granting of tenure, or a contract without term.

2.3 ICPP Reports

The reports published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are said
to be the most reliable reports available on this subject. According to the Fourth Report of IPCC
(2007), the report aims to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant
for the understanding of climate change, and IPCC has now published four assessment reports,
in 1990, 1995, 2001 and 2007, renewing the contents each time by taking account of up-to-date
information.
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In recent times, it can be said that the idea of global warming is largely accepted and
taken for granted among the public, however, there are large amounts of skepticism about it.
These counter-arguments are advocated from several points of view which are indicating, for
instance, scientific uncertainty, other possible causes for global warming apart from human
activities, global warming as a part of long-term natural cycle of the Earth, and so forth.

2.3.1 Function and Assessment of IPCC

When the IPCCs fourth assessment report was published in February 2007, there was an
interesting difference in how the contents of the report were broadcast in the UK and Japan. For
instance, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC, 2007) emphasized a figure that the average
temperature of the world will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees by the end of the twenty-first
century. Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK), the Japanese public broadcaster, reported that the
temperature will increase by a maximum of 6.4 degrees (2007).

These differences of scientific aspects of global warming and the way of broadcasting
them in different parts of the world imply two possibilities, in brief. Firstly, the media aim to
frighten the public and make them start acting towards preventing global warming by adopting
extreme figures, or, secondly, there are political aims in the background of this fact of different
attitudes against global warming, and a quest to achieve those aims by controlling the
broadcasters and scientists.

2.3.2 The Controversial Parts of IPCC

Having stated the scientific controversy and the possible influences to the media by
politics about global warming, this study will examine whether the wide discussions about global
warming are controlled by the world politicians to create a more convenient world for developed
countries, by adopting a case study of the media in the UK and Japan with reference to the IPCC
report.
In this competitive environment, paradigms are advantaged when they are back grounded
by lurid threats. Further, such threats provide justification for the outlay of taxpayer dollars.
Politicians can then claim, with the backing of the nation's most serious scientists, that their
activities are saving us from certain peril. All of this calamity-hyping, perfectly rational on the
part of all the participants, sells newspapers and television time, which only serves to recycle the
political importance of climate change.
There are several criteria for the dubious benefits of lifetime employment at a university.
Most important for scientists is the number and quality of publications in the refereed scientific
literature, which we have already demonstrated must necessarily be biased toward the view that
global warming is a problem so important that it merits massive taxpayer funding.
At promotion time, a professor's contribution to that literature is judged by outside
reviewers, all of whom, like the reviewers in the refereed literature itself, have acquired expert
status by repeated publication in that literature. In Kuhn's analysis, those people are almost
always going to be supporters of the extant paradigm. So the candidate who is on record as
working against the paradigm is profoundly disadvantaged.
So tenure is largely granted to supporters of the paradigm. Now they are the middle
managers, the principal investigators, the literature reviewers, and those who sit in judgment of
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the next group of candidates for tenure. That does not guarantee a monolithic paradigm, but it
surely increases its probabilities. Further, the interaction with the political/funding process makes
existing paradigms even more entrenched. It's no wonder that, in general, academics don't speak
against the reigning paradigm, because tenure has had the exact opposite effect as to its stated
goal of diversifying free expression. Instead, it stifles free speech in the formative years of a
scientist's academic career, and all but requires a track record in support of paradigms that may
have outgrown their usefulness.
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Chapter 3
Media Part
It should come as no surprise that many environmental scientists go into their field
because of a concern for the environment. That's no different from what happens in another field
of applied science: medicine. People become doctors because of (among other reasons) concern
for others' well-being. In that light, the following statement by Stanford University's Stephen
Schneider becomes completely logical for a paradigm-supporting scientist:
We are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but.
On the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most
people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our
working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we have to
get some broad-based public support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course,
entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make
simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.
This double ethical bind that we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any
formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and
being honest. I hope that means being both.
If that statement were philosophically divergent from the paradigm supporting rank and file in
climate science, it would surely have harmed Schneider. Instead, it enhanced his reputation, and
established him as a leading defender of the paradigm. Thirteen years later, Bjorn Lomborg
published The Skeptical Environmentalist, a compendium arguing that the specter of ecological
gloom and doom is highly exaggerated. Lomborg's book is especially anti-paradigmatic with its
claim that the body of scientific evidence has already determined that global warming is likely to
be modest (which is formally expressed in our counter-paradigm). Scientific American
recruited Schneider to knock Lomborg down. It is hard to argue that there is a more paradigm-
centered publication in world science than Scientific American.
3.1 IPCC Report Broadcasting Behavior by Mass Media
Self-interest is another parameter that Kuhn repeatedly claims is involved in the
maintenance of paradigms. A good definition of self-interest is behavior that promotes what a
person perceives as success, which may be personally equated with virtue. Schneider defines his
particular version of success as achieving certain environmental policies. That's a value system
that is perfectly acceptable and logical. There are other definitions of scientific success, also
perfectly logical. They include promotion and advancement, either in the university or in
government laboratories.
To use Schneider's words, that creates another double ethical bind. To him, the belief
system of the paradigm-keepers is one in which future climate change is minimized. (It must be
noted that there has never been any formal study to determine the degree to which this is true.
But Schneider's accelerated prominence after his statement is some supporting evidence.)
There were other changes in science occurring as Kuhn was writing. As a result of
Vannevar Bush's success, large amounts of money began to flow to American scientists.
Whenever this happens because of any legislative or executive activity, powerful lobbying
interests appear on behalf of the recipients. Before Vannevar Bush, the American Association for
 Authors Last Name 15

the Advancement of Science (AAAS) was mainly known as the publisher of Science magazine.
Now it's our lobbying organization, headquartered in a fancy building on New York Avenue in
Washington, not far from the National Association of Homebuilders' National Housing Center,
the Air Line Pilots Association, and the American Society of Association Executives, a lobby that
could only have a home in Washington.
According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Deputy Secretary for
Oceans and Atmosphere James Mahoney, taxpayers have already disbursed $20 billion at the
scientific community for global warming work since 1990. That money would not have arrived if
AAAS promoted either the notion that climate change was likely modest or claimed that we
knew enough about it that little further research is needed.
Rather, it has demonstrably done the opposite in Science, arguably the most prestigious
scientific journal in the world. Science publishes a section called Compass that includes
perspectives and commentaries, which are subject to peer review. Since 2000, roughly 75 of
those commentaries have been consistent with the view that global warming is a serious problem
requiring a massive solution. Not one has emphasized the obvious truth, detailed throughout this
book, that warming in the next 50 and 100 years is already known to a rather small range of error
and that it is likely to be very modest. But the bias is obvious and understandable. It is what
climate scientists expect. Their lobby exists to support research that supports the paradigm that is
increasingly commingled with the political process. Britain's Nature is similar, with five recent
opinion pieces editorializing about the perils of warming and the need to do something about
it, plus one editorial and one insight on the same. Nothing whatsoever on the other side.
Again, nothing here is illogical, nor is it particularly nefarious. Rather, it is predictably human.
What is illogical is a belief that science and scientists would behave in any other way given the
nature of science and the world in which it is enmeshed.
Kuhn is careful to note that paradigms do not change all at once. In the face of anomalous
data, certain scientists are converted before others:
Still, to say that resistance is inevitable and legitimate, that paradigm change cannot be
justified by proof, is not to say that no arguments are relevant or that scientists cannot be
persuaded to change their minds. Though a generation is sometimes required to effect the
change, scientific communities have again and again been converted to new paradigms.
Though some scientists, particularly the older and more experienced ones, may resist
indefinitely, most can be reached in one way or another.
NASA scientist James Hansen is an interesting example of this process. He's often called the
Father of Global Warming because of his congressional testimony on June 23, 1988, that there
was a cause and effect relationship between the current climate (then horribly hot and dry in
the East and the Midwest) and human alteration of the atmosphere; in other words, global
warming from human beings was creating a climate hell in the United States. More than any
other single event, Hansen's testimony turned on the $20 billion spigot, resulting in the currently
intransigent paradigm.
On February 11, 1989, Hansen wrote in the Washington Post that he felt it was his duty to
call the issue to the attention of the political process. By 2001, however, he had turned against
the paradigm of insufficient knowledge, stating that we know future warming to a very small
range of error, and citing a figure very close to what was originally published in my 2000 book
The Satanic Gases. In a subsequent 2003 publication in the journal Natural Science, Hansen
 Authors Last Name 16

seemed to reflect the belief system that Schneider feels is characteristic of those espousing the
original paradigm, saying that emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one
time, when the public and decision makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue.
That isn't very far from Schneider's statement that drawing attention to global warming required
getting loads of media coverage. So, we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified,
dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. All of these
processes are a formula for science that's going to bias in the direction of a paradigm, and that
most certainly will give rise to quite a bit of distorted reporting in the press.
3.2 Global Warming and Public Opinion Formation
In the press, many of the same dynamics operate that encourage people to select
environmental science as a career. People gravitate toward environmental journalism in no small
part because they are concerned about the environment, just as doctors are concerned about
people. The Society of Environmental Journalists numbers more than 2,000 members, and a
constant topic of discussion at their annual meetings concerns the ethics of environmental
advocacy in journalistic reporting.
However journalists may strive (or claim to strive) for objectivity, there's an additional
group that makes use of the primary science and science reporting with no pretense for the same:
environmentalist organizations that are very effective at promoting their agendas. Those include
the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and
the World Wildlife Fund, all of which are highly accomplished at weaving the most lurid aspects
of global change research and global change reporting into a very alarming cloth. That, of
course, spurs contributions, which increase their political cloutwhich feeds back into the
federal paradigm-science structure.
In summary, the nature of paradigm science, leavened by a political process that pits
paradigms against each other in competition for funding, produces a climate of sensationalized
reporting, which, unfortunately, can lead to an inevitable policy spiral. The political process
responds to threat and takes advantage of saving us. The review process in the scientific
literature and the judgment for academic tenure are heavily biased toward the paradigm model.
The environmental media, while claiming objectivity, have left a voluminous trail of advocacy
books.
3.3 Influential Implications of Public Opinion
Environmental science funding should not derive from a single provider, but such a
monopoly will inevitably develop as long as the political process provides the vast share of
scientific largesse. In this environment, private sources, meaning individuals and foundations,
have little incentive to fund basic science. Why should a shareholder-owned corporation dilute
its resources to support research with little or no direct financial gain for the company when that
burden can be spread across the entire population?
One solution to the dilemma of predictable exaggeration is to take advantage of the
relationship between science and its funders, recognizing that nothing is free. There is clearly a
broad spectrum of interests on climate change, ranging from those who are threatened by
regulations to those who will thrive from them. These interests are sometimes not intuitively
obvious.
For example, some sectors of the fossil-fuel industry, particularly those associated with
natural gas, are quite positively disposed toward carbon dioxide restrictions. Enron Corp., which
 Authors Last Name 17

both marketed gas and wanted to broker permits that industries could trade for the right to
some limited emissions, repeatedly petitioned both the Clinton and George W. Bush
administrations to promote some Kyoto-like regulation. Some coal producers may view
regulations as a threat, while others see global warming as a vehicle to create clean coal
technologies. Those technologies attempt to sequester or remove carbon dioxide from the
effluent of power production. While producing much less carbon dioxide, these technologies will
almost certainly be much less energy-efficient, requiring an increase in the combustion of coal
for an equivalent amount of electricity. As long as that keeps coal competitive with natural gas
(which will also lose efficiency with this technology), why would coal oppose such regulation?
However, if clean coal technology is economically disadvantageous, obviously that industry
will remain opposed to regulation.
The list goes on. Some automakers, notably Honda and Toyota, see advantage in front-
loading technologies that would be economically advantageous in a Kyoto-like environment.
Consequently, they have led in developing hybrid gas-electric automobiles, which enjoy an
efficiency premium over pure-gasoline cars. American automakers see their own advantage in
producing high-margin SUVs and aren't as likely to welcome emissions restrictions.
Obviously these competing interests have different hopes for global warming science.
Why, then, constrain the base-of-bias to Washington, where lurid views and consequently
expensive policy proposals are an inevitability of the way we do and fund science? There is no
way that science will ever be pure. Steven Schneider is right. Scientists are human beings as
well, and the way to take advantage of our humanity is simply to offer a wider choice of bias.
That approach may not be pretty, but it is realistic.
 Authors Last Name 18

Chapter 4
Methodology
Given the nature of modern science and its attendant biases, a person might be tempted to
argue for strengthening the tenure system to protect individuals who may call attention to these
issues. But that paradigm, too, has changed. The fact of the matter is that the academic world
has increasingly evolved in a diverse fashion, with the proliferation of a large number of
university-like environments of various philosophical hues. These include the plethora of think
tanks that pride themselves on academic research, ranging in Washington from very liberal to
very conservative, as well as neither, which is to say libertarian (such as the Cato Institute,
the publisher of this book). The scholar is now much freer to choose than he once was.
More important, however, is that the tenure process in fact stifles dissent. Promotion and
tenure are largely determined by academic publications that require massive research support,
which mires the young scientist in the paradigm-political process. As long as the primary funding
source remains a necessarily politicized federal monopoly, a lack of scientific diversity and a
biasing in the lurid direction become predictable and unavoidable.
Just as important as academic publication are outside evaluations from senior figures
established in one's field of study. As demonstrated repeatedly, the same biasing process that
results from the current scientific process is likely to be active here. Consequently, the young
scientist will rightfully avoid any research or scholarship that will offend either the funding
apparatus or those who have already benefited from it by gaining lifetime employment.
There is an additional salutary effect of abolishing tenure: Professors will make more
money. With everyone employed for life, there is little ability for lateral movement (and large
pay raises) between universities. Abolishing of tenure will create a much more fluid market at the
senior level, but more significant than that, it will free academics from the necessity of
establishing a career of compliance in order to receive a promotion.
The costs of inaction will be dear. Science issues tend to be distorted by competition for a
single federal source of funds. The resultant exaggerations become tiresome, and life goes on.
Decades of doom saying about global warming collide with decades of prosperity. People notice
and increasingly disregard science and scientists, a process that has already invaded several
aspects of our lives. That is the ultimate tragedy that this predictable distortion of global
warming causes: A society that can no longer rely on the wisdom of science can only be
governed by irrationality and fear.
When life first appeared on our planet, whether by chance or designs, it was possible only
because the climate was friendly; it was neither too hot nor too cold. The atmosphere, containing
water vapor, carbon dioxide, and other components, acted like the glass panels of a greenhouse,
letting the sun's heat in but preventing some of it from escaping, thus warming the planet. If it
were not for this greenhouse effect, temperatures at the earth's surface would be far colder than
they are, and life as we know it could not exist. Global warming has become an issue of concern
because of the perception that increasing greenhouse gases will cause the earth to warm so fast
that nature (and humankind) may not be able to adapt to the rapid change. The atmosphere has
always acted as a warming blanket around the earth. It is not the warmth of this blanket but the
possibility of an abrupt or extreme temperature change that is causing some scientists concern.
The popular view of global warmingthe "myth"has developed over the past decade because
of predictions of computer climate models. This view has been presented in books by authors
 Authors Last Name 19

such as Al Gore, Stephen Schneider, Isaac Asimov, and Paul Ehrlich, and it has been advanced
by the media and in school classrooms. Environmental organizations have taken up the cause and
demanded political action. At times the reaction to this view reaches a feverish pitch, generating
hysteria. What is the global warming myth? It is a scenario of doom that contains certain facts
and also certain assumptions: Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) causes warming of the
planet.
Mans activities are increasing the amount of carbon dioxide.
The average temperature of the earth has increased approximately 0.5C (0.9F) in the last 100
years.
Global temperature will increase another 1.5-4.5C (2.7 8.1F) by sometime in the next
century if we do not take drastic measures.
Mans activities are increasing the amount of carbon dioxide.
The average temperature of the earth has increased approximately 0.5C (0.9F) in the last 100
years.
Global temperature will increase another 1.5-4.5C (2.7 8.1F) by sometime in the next
century if we do not take drastic measures.
The predicted results of this warming include melting of the polar ice caps, flooding of coastal
cities, massive extinction of species, and the deterioration of civilization as we know it.
The conventional wisdom that the latest IPCC summary and NRC study herald a new certainty
about global warming is simply false. A reading of these surveys imparts a growing awareness of
the vast uncertainties that surround our meager understanding of the earth, and man's role on it--
for good or ill.

In the past, the climate has warmed and it has cooled: it is always changing. For example,
during the early part of the twentieth century, the climate started to warm until about 1940,
recovering from a previous cooling, called a little ice age. After 1940, the climate had finally
started to cool for about 35 years. And you'll see this, by the way, in the graph in Consumers'
Research (special publication Weird Science, which includes the article "The Facts behind
Global Environmental Scares," first published in CR, in October 1991.) Nothing has changed
since this is still an historic fact: the climate cooled between 1940 and 1975.
There was much concern at the time--which some of you might remember--that we were
coming to another ice age. Books were published, people implored the government to do
something about the coming ice age. I don't know what the governments supposed to do, but
they're the same people who are now telling the government to do something about global
warming. Anyway, for the last 20 years or so, the climate hasn't done anything. It hasn't warmed
according to some data, but it has warmed according to other data. Now you might say thats
very strange. How can these be that different? There are basically four different, independent
data sets for measuring temperature. The first are the familiar thermometers at weather stations
around the world. They show warming for the last 30 years--but not in the United States. The
weather stations from the United States do not show warming. But I'll come back to that in a
minute.
The second data set are weather satellites. This is a subject I am quite familiar with. The
weather satellites give the only truly global data we have, covering both land and ocean surfaces,
covering the atmosphere from pole to pole. They do not show a warming. Then we have a third
 Authors Last Name 20

data set. These are weather balloons that carry radiosondes up through the atmosphere. They do
not show a warming either. They support the satellites.
Finally, there's a fourth data set. We have what are called proxy data. Now these are not
instruments, but such things as tree rings, ice cores, lake sediments and so on--stalagmites. They
are various ways of measuring temperature or indicating temperature without using an actual
thermometer. These things can be calibrated. They do not show warming either.
So there you have it: One data set shows a warming. Three of them do not. Well that of course
doesn't prove anything, because you cannot go by numbers in this business. You have to ask,
"What could be wrong with the surface thermometers?" And the answer is: plenty. Surface
thermometers and weather stations are not uniformly distributed. First of all, you don't have any
on the ocean. The ocean covers 70% of the earth's surface. We have very, very few in Africa,
Asia, Arctic and Antarctic. Most of the stations are in the United States and Western Europe.
That's the first problem. The second problem is, outside of the United States and Western Europe,
they're very poorly maintained. If they are not properly maintained, they can give wrong
readings. And indeed, that seems to be one of the problems, particularly in Siberia and other
locations.
And thirdly, these stations are mostly at airports, because that's where you need to know
what the weather is going to be for operational reasons. These weather stations were not put up
to measure climate change. Well, airports used to be outside cities, but they've now been
engulfed by growing urban areas. And these growing urban areas produce an artificial warming
that you cannot really eliminate from the readings. So basically, what these stations are saying is:
"Yes, there has been a warming of the airports around the world." (Syukuro Manabe and Ronald
J. Stouffer 2001)
 Authors Last Name 21

Chapter 5
Conclusion
To conclude, some scientists and many environmental activists are asking, no, they are
demanding, that the governments of the world take drastic action to stop all activities that might
be contributing to global warming. Major national and international action plans and treaties
have been formulated based on the results of computer climate models.
Governmental action should be taken only when scientific theories are substantiated more
concretely than has been done in the case of global warming. Conservation of our natural
resources is vital to sustaining human life and society on this planet. Prudent control of our ever-
increasing population is a critical task. In the long term, overpopulation, not some imperceptible
change in the earth's temperature, will cause the most damage to the human species and its
environment.
The earth's temperature has fluctuated throughout geologic time. Species have come and
gone. Those species that have adapted are the ones that have survived. Humans have proven to
be among the most adaptable of all the species, and we will continue to adapt and survive.
The issue of global warming first emerged when scientists became aware of the amount
of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) being added to the atmosphere as a result of human activity. However,
the first scientists to recognize the relationship between carbon dioxide and climate were
concerned about excessive cooling, not warming.
Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier, a French scientist during the Napoleonic years, is generally
given credit for being the first to describe the greenhouse effect in the 1820s. Fourier was known
for both his developments in mathematics and his studies of Egypt. He studied the properties of
heatits radiation and transferand he developed the mathematics of partial differential
equations. His discovery of the greenhouse effect was a result of his heat studies.
John Tyndall, another scientist interested in the greenhouse gas phenomenon, was an Irish
physicist and Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution in London. ( Tyndall is
best known for his studies of light scattering from the earth's atmosphere, which led to our
understanding of why the sky is blue.) In the 1860s, Tyndall measured the radiation absorption
efficiencies of various gases, a measure of their effectiveness as greenhouse gases. He was
concerned that a decrease in atmospheric CO 2 could lead to another ice age.
In 1896 Svante August Arrhenius theorized that carbon dioxide was a greenhouse gas
being introduced into the atmosphere by the burning of carbon-based fossil fuels. Unlike some of
today's scientists, he concluded that any warming caused by this effect was good propagating
mankind."1 At the time, no one got particularly excited about his global warming theories.
Arrhenius, who taught himself to read at the age of three, did not always operate within the
popular framework of scientific research, being accused of, among other things, manipulating
imaginary data. Ultimately, many of his ideas began to be accepted. In 1903 he became the first
Swede to win the Nobel Prize, and he is now considered the founder of physical chemistry. Even
so, some of his theories remain outside the realm of acceptance, such as his suggestion that life is
spread by bacteria activated by collisions of stars.
Little was written about carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas for the next forty years. In
1938 G. S. Callendar, an English meteorologist, evaluated historical records of atmospheric
carbon dioxide and showed a trend of increasing concentration.2 He, too, welcomed the potential
future warmth and felt that the carbon dioxide would provide fertilizer for increased farm
 Authors Last Name 22

production. He hoped that the return of the deadly glaciers would be delayed indefinitely.
Eventually, climatologists became concerned that the increase in carbon dioxide would
cause too much warming. In 1956, Gilbert Plass, a scientist at Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore, Maryland, expanded on a theory that attributed great importance to carbon dioxide.
He suggested that atmospheric carbon dioxide controls the climate, and he predicted that
accumulated atmospheric carbon dioxide from mankind's burning of fossil fuels would cause a
global temperature increase of 1.1C (2.0F) by the beginning of the twenty-first century.3 It was
well known by then that large quantities of carbon dioxide were being emitted into the
atmosphere because of the fuel used to meet the energy and industrial requirements of society.
Increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide were actually observed about this time by
various scientists working independently of each other. The most prominent was Charles David
Keeling of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California. Keeling measured the
atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration at various locations in the United States and found that
it had increased from about 275 parts per million (ppm) in the nineteenth century to 311 ppm in
1956.4 [A part per million of CO 2 means one molecule of carbon dioxide for every million
(1,000,000) molecules of total atmospheric gases.]
In 1967 the warnings became dire (and much more publicized) as Syukuro Manabe and
Richard Wetherald, climatologists working at Princeton University, predicted increases of about
2C (3.6F) by the end of the twenty-first century.5 This prediction was based on one of the first
of many modern complex computer models. Ironically, this study was reported during a time
when many scientists, observing a global cooling trend from about 1950 until 1980, were
predicting the beginning of another ice age.
During the 1980s, computer modeling of the earth's climate and the effect of doubling
atmospheric carbon dioxide became increasingly popular among climatologists. This modeling
activity and heavy speculation concerning the consequences of the predicted warming resulted in
enhanced coverage by the scientific press, including the weekly general science journals such as
Science and Nature. Scientists rarely like to state uncertain events in absolute terms, and it is not
surprising that this group of peers was upset with Hansen for publicly stating speculation as fact.
Even Stephen Schneider, a prominent climate modeler at the National Center for
Atmospheric Research and proponent of the global warming theory, pointed out the weakness of
Hansen's position when he stated, "He's not running a realistic ocean." This is a reference to the
computer model of the ocean that is incorporated into the climate model. Schneider went on to
say, "They [Hansen's group] have been using a pretty hokey ocean, we all have. But you have to
have less confidence because of that." In spite of these statements, Schneider still believes that
global warming is beginning and will cause major problems in the future. There is little
controversy over the greenhouse effect as a scientific theory. The controversy arises over the
global warming predictions: the causes (whether or not they're human induced), the amount of
warming and the timing of it, the implications for life and society, and most of all, what to do
about it.
The earth derives most of its energy from the sun, which continuously emits radiant
energy equivalent to a 6,000C (about 11,000F) boiling caldron. This radiant energy, a very
small portion of which reaches our stratosphere, consists of the full range of radiation, including
the ultraviolet (UV), visible, and infrared (IR) portions of the sun's spectrum. On the one hand,
ultraviolet radiation, the most energetic portion, causes damage to living tissue if it is
 Authors Last Name 23

overexposed; it is UV radiation that causes sunburn and blinds people who stare directly at the
sun. On the other hand, the interaction of UV and visible radiation within plants provides the
energy required for the photosynthesis reactions essential to plant growth. Since plants are the
foundation of our food chain, this radiation is essential for all life.
The visible portion of the sun's radiation is simply that to which our eyes are sensitive.
We cannot see the UV or IR portions of the sun's spectrum, but we can feel the warmth of IR
radiationit is the same as that which is radiated from an infrared heat lamp. The IR energy is
too low to trigger our optical nerve endings, so our eyes are not sensitive to this radiation. The
sun furnishes the earth with a generous amount of ultraviolet, visible, and infrared radiation
because it radiates at such a high temperature. The earth in turn radiates some of the sun's energy
back into space at a very low temperature; about 15C (59F).9 Because of this low temperature,
nearly all of the earth's radiation is in the low-energy infrared region.
If there is a balance between the energy provided by the sun and that returned to space by
the earth, the earth's temperature will remain constant? If the earth retains more energy than it
returns to space, it will heat up; conversely, if the earth retains less energy than is returned to
space, it will cool down. When the sun's radiation enters the atmosphere, many things can
happen to it. When sunlight encounters dust or clouds or any other type of matter, it may be
absorbed, reflected, scattered, or transmitted. Some of the radiation passes through to the earth;
some of it is reflected back into space; some of it interacts with oceans or plants and is absorbed;
some is scattered or reflected from the ice and snow cover.
While solar radiation can interact with all matter, how it acts depends on the portion of the solar
spectrum to which it belongs: UV radiation has higher energy than IR radiation, and visible
radiation is in between. A good example of this interaction occurs in the ozone layer in our
stratosphere. The ozone layer is very efficient at absorbing very high-energy UV radiation, but it
lets much of the lower-energy UV and most of the visible and IR radiation pass right through
into the lower atmosphere, or troposphere. This radiation ultimately interacts with clouds or dust
in the troposphere or with the earth itself, causing the earth to heat up proportionally to the
energy that is transferred.
 Authors Last Name 24

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