Climate change claims a victim

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Global warming may soon claim its first Northwest casualty, and it isn't an endangered butterfly or threatened flower.

The victim-in-waiting is George Taylor, the Oregon state climatologist. Taylor is an agnostic in a world of climate-change dogma. He has not adopted the official state-sanctioned line that man is the primary cause of the warming trends the world's climate has been undergoing. Instead, he believes that natural warming and cooling trends are the cause.

It's not that Taylor denies that the climate is changing; it's just that he hasn't bought into the theory - taken as fact by many - that man is either causing or accelerating the rate of change.

"It is one of the big unanswered questions in climate science, in my opinion," he told the Capital Press last year. "There are people who say the science is settled on this issue, and this issue really is how much of the change we see is caused by human activity. ... I don't believe we are seeing unprecedented conditions in Oregon, and if I thought we were, I would probably be a lot more alarmed than I am."

A year later, Taylor is still looking for the proof.

"If the facts change, I'll change my mind. So far, I haven't," he told a recent climate-change conference at Oregon State University, where he works.

"I'm probably outnumbered, but there are plenty of people who think like I do," he said.

As a doubter among true believers, Taylor has run afoul of Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who has made up his mind on the causes of global warming. This week Kulongoski joined forces with his western counterparts to address the issue. The governors of five states - Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington - signed a memorandum of understanding to create the Western Regional Climate Action Initiative. Under that initiative, those states will attempt to cap emissions from power plants as part of an effort to convince the federal government to adopt a national strategy to limit the greenhouse gases thought to contribute to climate change.

On the East Coast, nine states have also joined hands in a similar effort to limit power-plant emissions and create an open market for credits tied to reducing pollution.

Those efforts align perfectly with other scientific "experts," including those in Hollywood who this week awarded former Vice President Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim, the director of his global warming movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," with an Oscar for the best feature-length documentary.

As a lonely voice of skepticism, Taylor apparently does not fit into the state's climate change world view. Efforts are under way to strip him of the unofficial title of state climatologist that he has held the past 16 years. Though Taylor would stay on at OSU, a bill now in the state Legislature would install a more orthodox scientist to be director of the state's new climate change center and handle the state climatologist duties.

Which leads to the question: Are our state and federal leaders seeking a full and unfettered debate over the global climate, or are they looking for the scientists who best reflect the political climate?

Perhaps a clue to the answer to that question may be found in a recent development.

Last week, the Atmospheric Sciences Department at the University of Washington put politicians on notice that some politicians and others have exaggerated the speed at which the Cascade Mountains snowpack has been disappearing.

"The bubble surrounding what I have come to call the myth of the vanishing snowpack caused by global warming may be close to bursting," UW research meteorologist Mark Albright said in an e-mail to Portland's Oregonian newspaper.

The department's scientists took the unusual move of trying to set the record straight on the Cascade snowpack by issuing a statement on Feb. 22. Some highlights:

n "While some stations show a 50 percent downward trend in April 1 snow water equivalent between 1950 and the present, we believe the overall observed trend for the Cascade Mountains of Oregon and Washington is smaller."

n "Snow water equivalent is affected by both temperature and precipitation, each of which shows large year-to-year and decadal variations associated with natural variability."

n "It is less certain how precipitation will change in response to future temperature increases associated with global warming and how precipitation changes might affect snow water equivalent in the future."

Translation: The degree to which global warming can be blamed for the fluctuations in the Cascade snowpack is uncertain because the amount of precipitation has risen as temperatures have risen. Exactly what the future holds is uncertain, they said.

That's a far cry from the claims some have made that half of the Cascade snowpack has disappeared since 1950 because of global warming.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels recently said just that, citing a 2004 report to Kulongoski compiled by a task force of scientists, according to the Oregonian. Following the Feb. 22 UW statement, that report will be revised to include a 35 percent reduction in snowpack, according to the Oregonian.

"I'm just worried about the hyperbole and exaggeration related to global warming," Clifford Mass, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences told the Oregonian. "We have to tell the politicians when they've gone too far."

That's one statement about global warming with which few people could argue.

Climate change is an issue that deserves a full, open and robust debate.

That George Taylor and the scientists at the UW find it necessary to question or set straight the public record being compiled by politicians and others demonstrates how far and fast the theories can get in front of scientific facts.

They must also react quicker at times to misinformation, exaggeration or outright faulty research before it becomes spread internationally and used as background or ammunition for everything from adopting local community policies to brokering international agreements.

What is issued as scientific facts must also be developed in the context of seeking accuracy and using sound methodology: The conclusions must be able to stand up to peer review and not be influenced by political, egotistical or financial aspirations.

Academia can provide a cool, reasoned climate for debate away from publicity-hungry politicians; however, the public must also be able to trust the academics and scientists to conduct themselves ethically in their evaluations and research, away from the temptation to skew their findings to guarantee larger grants, permanent jobs and widespread media publicity.

We must seek to find out the true extent and reason for our changing climate.

Unless that happens, the whole truth may join Taylor as a potential victim of the rush to judgment on global warming.