Answer. Because incoming solar radiation exceeds outgoing radiation at current CO2 concentrations, some atmospheric CO2 must be removed for outgoing radiation to begin to equal incoming solar radiation. So temperature will rise (for about 30 years) until enough CO2 is absorbed by the earth to allow temperature to begin to fall. Only 31 percent correctly chose #3.

If this is difficult to follow, if your eyes glazed over just thinking about it, that's a clue as to why the reality of global warming caused by humans is difficult to understand. And that's why the issue is so easily obfuscated by those pushing a "don't worry, be happy" message.

It's a real and urgent problem. Don't believe the skeptics.

Bob Powell, Ph.D. in physics, is owner of exponentialimprovement.com and a Magellan Center Senior Fellow
__________________

To fully understand why this issue evades public understanding read this paper on the dynamics of global warming at the M.I.T. web site: "Cloudy Skies: Assessing Public Understanding of Global Warming" by Sterman and Sweeney (2002).

Figure 2. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations, parts per million.

Figure 2. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations, parts per million.

Figure 3. Average global surface temperatures, °C. The zero line is set to the average for the period 1961-1990.

Figure 3. Average global surface temperatures, degrees C. The zero line is set to the average for the period 1961-1990.

Figure 4. Zero Emissions Task - Emissions to Zero Input

Figure 4. Zero Emissions Task - Emissions to Zero Input

Figure 5. Simulation of the Zero Emissions Task - Atmospheric CO2

Figure 5. Simulation of the Zero Emissions Task - Atmospheric CO2

Figure 6. Simulation of the Zero Emissions Task - Global Mean Temperature

Figure 6. Simulation of the Zero Emissions Task - Global Mean Temperature

IPCC cites: a rising mean global surface temperature, glacier retreat, a decline in winter snow cover, a 40% decline in arctic summer sea-ice thickness, an increase in extreme weather events, and a rise of 0.1 - 0.2 meters in sea level.

Though mean global temperatures only rose in the 20th century by a seemingly-small 0.6 +/- 0.2 degrees C, reinforcing feedbacks produce exponential changes, which start small but can quickly and irreversibly get out of hand.

More on this:

Global Warming: Bush's "Clear Skies" Means "Cloudy Skies"

Global warming is a major problem that we must address. The paper below from MIT explains the flawed nature of public understanding of the problem, and why George Bush's "Clear Skies" program is more aptly titled, "Cloudy Skies."  Again, this references Cloudy Skies: Assessing Public Understanding of Global Warming by John D. Sterman & Linda Booth Sweeney, System Dynamics Review, 18(2) 2002 (138K).

The column by a libertarian extremist to which this responds is included below.

On Global Warming by Bob Powell

A libertarian stated that the "environmental radicals" and the "social responsibility set," who are concerned about global warming, are "fools" carrying on another "environmentalist scare campaign." The perverse assertion is that environmentalists "want power" and are "red within" communists using "junk science to close down legitimate businesses." This Orwellian distortion and shortsightedness is frightening. Ostrich-like behavior is comforting for a time, but in the long run it's disastrous.

The concern of economic "conservatives" for the alleged "expropriation of stockholder profits" is touching, but it's the public that bears the burden. Corporations act as capitalists as they privatize business profits, but they act as socialists as they externalize costs. Because the climate is a shared global resource, it's vulnerable to the tragedy of the commons dynamic. In this case, corporations and nations benefit in the short-run from high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but the costs are (1) borne by all, (2) shifted from the rich to the poor and (3) shifted from current to future generations.

We humans don't deal well with systems in which delays between action and effect are months, much less decades as in the case of global warming. In fact, humans cannot deal effectively with delays of even seconds when driving, which is why there are laws against driving while intoxicated. What economic "conservatives" promote is the equivalent of drunk driving where the stake is the fate of the global environment and life on earth as we know it. Extremist? Not at all; what's extreme is not taking precautionary action now, before it's too late.

Well-financed industry campaigns discount the science to protect profits, regardless of the future impacts. Most of us have little appreciation of the extent to which humans affect the climate. Studies have shown that aerosol pollution from autos and industry along the eastern seaboard of the United States builds up throughout the workweek and dissipates over the weekend. Data show that the chance of rain is highest on the weekend, while on average the nicest day is Monday, when few are free to enjoy the out of doors. Few of us understand that driving that SUV to work helps spoil our weekend plans.

Conservatives justify inaction by exaggerating the uncertainty that's inherent in any scientific study where delays are measured in decades. But despite uncertainty, the scientific consensus is that global warming is real.

What's more, the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded: "most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities." It noted that, while natural processes gradually remove CO2 from the atmosphere (for example, plants absorb and ocean dissolve), the current "net removal of atmospheric CO2 by natural processes is about half of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions."

So human-caused (anthropogenic) emissions must be cut at least in half to stabilize CO2 at its present record levels. Such cuts greatly exceed Kyoto targets, which would reduce emissions to about 95% of 1990 rates by 2012. Reducing CO2 concentrations will require even deeper cuts.

Mr. Bush's masterfully misnamed "Clear Skies Initiative" calls for continued emissions growth. He stated:

"My administration is committed to cutting our nation's greenhouse gas intensity -- how much we emit per unit of economic activity -- by 18 percent over the next 10 years. This will set America on a path to slow the growth of our greenhouse gas emissions and, as science justifies, to stop and then reverse the growth of emissions."

This misleading statement allows Mr. Bush to use words like "cutting" and "slow," even though his plan increases emissions because increased economic activity  brings increased emissions. In fact, projected emissions in 2012 would rise by 17% assuming his 2002 budget economic growth assumptions. His carefully worded target is contrived to seem large, but it's very close to the 17.4% drop in emissions intensity that occurred over the economic boom from 1990 to 2000. Mr. Bush's "Clear Skies" is a continuation of business as usual.

His obfuscation works. A 1/21/03 NPR news segment reported on administration efforts to get voluntary pledges to meet Mr. Bush's "goal of an 18% reduction in emissions of GHG by 2012." In fact, Bush's goal is continued increases.

Many believe that, if CO2 emissions drop, then global temperature will drop. But at current CO2 concentrations, incoming solar radiation exceeds outgoing radiation. The accumulation of CO2 concentrations must fall to halt warming. This warming has brought retreating glaciers, less winter snow cover, a 40% decline in summer arctic sea-ice thickness, an increased number of extreme weather events and a rise of 4 - 7 inches in sea level, among other effects.

In the 40 scenarios the IPCC considered, CO2 concentrations continue to rise through 2100 with rising temperatures over the next century of between 2.5 to 10.4 degrees F. This is a significant change when one considers that, when thousand foot thick ice sheets covered much of the northern hemisphere, mean global temperature during the last ice age was only about 9 degrees F colder than today.

For more on this see the paper at the M.I.T. web site: "Cloudy Skies: Assessing Public Understanding of Global Warming" by Sterman and Sweeney (2002). They observe that a more accurate statement of Bush's policy is:

"My administration is committed to further growth in our nation's greenhouse gas emissions, ensuring higher greenhouse gas concentrations and continued global warming. If it turns out that sound science justifies further action, it will be too late."

That's the truth about Orwellian George's "Clear Skies" policies.

___________________

The libertarian idealogue's column to which this responds:

Published: Denver Post, Tues., April 22, 2003
Earth Day 2003: Are we better off than last year?
Global warming and little green monsters By Linda Gorman, Golden

It's April, and fools are out in force. 

The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a bellweather for the latest fashion trends in morally smug investing, reports that gadfly shareholder resolutions on global warming showed the most growth in the environmental activism category. Judging from the ICCR report, the social responsibility set thinks that other shareholders ought to be required to finance research for environmental radicals. If passed, the resolutions would require companies to report on economic risks caused by their greenhouse gas and mercury emissions. They also require describing the "operating, financial and reputational risks" derived from "past, present and future greenhouse gas emissions" from their "operations and products."

Problem is, discussing such risks is a waste of time. Nobody knows if greenhouse gases pose any risk or what those risks might be. Even though media outlets and activist propaganda campaigns have succeeded in portraying industry emissions and SUV drivers as the sole source of global warming, on balance the facts we have suggest otherwise.

Currently, carbon dioxide makes up about 0.037 percent of the Earth's atmosphere. Estimates put it at 0.027 percent 150 years ago, and environmental activists assume that industrialization is responsible for the increase. They claim that unless energy use in the developed world is drastically curtailed, rising carbon dioxide levels will trap more and more heat in the atmosphere. Temperatures will rise, triggering disasters of biblical proportions including sea level increases of 4 to 40 inches, floods, hurricanes, Antarctic glacier surges, the demise of the Gulf Stream, the death of coral reefs, drought and marauding icebergs off Portugal.

Fortunately, such predictions come from mathematical climate models, not real data. Though constructing models is a worthy scientific undertaking, modeling climate is a difficult problem. At their present stage of development, climate models are better suited to producing scare headlines than to guiding environmental policy.

Even the most advanced models cannot accurately reproduce such basic phenomena as El Nino, cloud cover, regional rainfall and the variations in the Earth's energy budget. Furthermore, the historical record does not show a consistent relationship between carbon dioxide levels and temperature, possibly because plants respond to higher carbon dioxide levels by growing faster and taking more out of the atmosphere. One group of researchers calculated that the broadleaf forest in North America is capable of removing all of the carbon dioxide created by fossil fuel use in the United States and Canada. If correct, this means that human activity in those two countries has nothing to do with the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Then there's the sun. A number of solar cycles have been observed. The best known is the 10-to-11-year sunspot cycle, which is accompanied by changes in magnetic activity that produce dramatic changes in ultraviolet and soft X-ray emissions. These may have important consequences for the Earth's upper atmosphere, ocean temperatures and atmospheric water vapor. Analyses of tree rings, ocean sediment cores and stalagmite deposits suggest that biological processes are correlated with solar activity. During the Maunder minimum, a period from the mid-1650s to the early 1700s, both sunspot numbers and temperatures in Europe reached record lows.

Should environmental radicals succeed in parleying their mathematical fantasies into the expropriation of stockholder profits, a ban on fossil fuels and the ability to regulate modern industry into extinction, the rest of us can take comfort from the fact that global warming will likely continue. Evidence from a variety of sources - including ice cores, glaciers, tree growth, peat, pollen and sea- floor sediments - suggests that the Earth has been warming in fits and starts since the Little Ice Age (1300-1900). In time, we may even return to the balmy temperatures that characterized the Medieval Warm Period (800-1300). Environmentalists have few scruples about inflicting vast discomfort on other humans. If they get their way, retreating glaciers, more arable land and the kind of climate that let the Vikings settle Greenland will no doubt be welcome events.

Like Lenin, whose birthday is celebrated on Earth Day, modern environmentalists want power. Green on the outside and red within, they'll do anything to get it, including burning buildings they don't like, planting lynx hair to get control of other people's land and using junk science to close down legitimate businesses. We haven't run out of food or raw materials as they predicted in the 1970s, or forests and space to put garbage as they predicted in the 1980s.

Legally used pesticides don't turn children into little green monsters, either. For that, one needs environmentalist scare campaigns like the one on global warming.

Linda Gorman is a senior fellow at the Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Golden.