Wilder lower wolves

Daniel B. Botkin--president of the Center for the Study of the Environment and professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of "Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century"--pens a piece for today's Wall Street Journal on Global Warming Delusions gone wild (sub req):

The key point here is that living things respond to many factors in addition to temperature and rainfall. In most cases, however, climate-modeling-based forecasts look primarily at temperature alone, or temperature and precipitation only. You might ask, "Isn't this enough to forecast changes in the distribution of species?" Ask a mockingbird. The New York Times recently published an answer to a query about why mockingbirds were becoming common in Manhattan. The expert answer was: food -- an exotic plant species that mockingbirds like to eat had spread to New York City. It was this, not temperature or rainfall, the expert said, that caused the change in mockingbird geography.

You might think I must be one of those know-nothing naysayers who believes global warming is a liberal plot. On the contrary, I am a biologist and ecologist who has worked on global warming, and been concerned about its effects, since 1968. I've developed the computer model of forest growth that has been used widely to forecast possible effects of global warming on life -- I've used the model for that purpose myself, and to forecast likely effects on specific endangered species.

I'm not a naysayer. I'm a scientist who believes in the scientific method and in what facts tell us. I have worked for 40 years to try to improve our environment and improve human life as well. I believe we can do this only from a basis in reality, and that is not what I see happening now. Instead, like fashions that took hold in the past and are eloquently analyzed in the classic 19th century book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," the popular imagination today appears to have been captured by beliefs that have little scientific basis.

Some colleagues who share some of my doubts argue that the only way to get our society to change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe, and that therefore it is all right and even necessary for scientists to exaggerate. They tell me that my belief in open and honest assessment is naïve. "Wolves deceive their prey, don't they?" one said to me recently. Therefore, biologically, he said, we are justified in exaggerating to get society to change.

One of the most frustrating aspects of the debate over global warming, is the notion that THE SCIENCE (as John Kerry calls it) has all come down conclusively on one side and that anyone who remains skeptical of the coming catastrophe if we don't ACT NOW is merely a denier of reality or in the pay of Big Oil. The reality is that there are plenty of rational, thoughtful people who have looked at the THE SCIENCE and have concluded that the facts don't justify the doom saying and scaremongering. You won't see them winning awards from Norwegian politicians, hobnobbing with Hollywood stars, or being lauded by an adoring media. Their only solace will be being able to look back at some point in the future--after the global warming hysteria bubble bursts--with the satisfaction of knowing that they didn't buy the hype.