NASA’s Griffin on Global Warming: Don’t Worry, Be Happy

All right, so my headline is designed to get your attention, but I almost couldn’t believe what I heard on NPR’s Morning Edition today. I just about choked on my toast when I heard what NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said about global warming in an interview to be aired tomorrow.

It’s real, and it’s our fault. But we’re “arrogant” to say that its consequences are undesirable.

I could have gone to the NPR website to find a transcript and excerpt from it, but Prometheus has saved me the trouble.

To me the key exchange between NPR’s Steve Inskeep and Griffin is this:

MR. INSKEEP : And I just wanted to make sure that I’m clear. Do you have any doubt that this is a problem that mankind has to wrestle with?

MR. GRIFFIN: I have no doubt that global — that a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change. First of all, I don’t think it’s within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown, and second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings – where and when – are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.

The worst thing about Griffin’s statement is that it contains grains of truth, but it neglects larger issues.

Yes, climate changes have occurred over geologic time periods that go beyond what we are seeing or forecasting for the current century, but that is not the issue. The fact is–and Griffin concurs with this–that we humans are changing the climate, and not in a minor way.

It seems to me that the true arrogance here is Griffin’s assumption that we should continue to change the climate without a thorough examination of the consequences.

That, in my view, goes beyond arrogance. The Greeks have a word for it: hubris.

Thanks to the ability for living organisms to adapt and species to evolve, life on Earth is remarkably fine-tuned to the environment. Rapid changes in environmental conditions, such as climate shifts, massive volcanism, or impacts from space, usually lead to mass extinctions and a different ecology.

Because of this ongoing adaptation, the most reasonable assumption is that today’s climate and natural environment are nearly ideal for today’s ecology, including the species known as Homo Sapiens. By changing the climate, we humans are moving the world away from its recent equilibrium at a rather rapid rate.

Is that good or bad? To use Mr. Griffin’s word choice, it is arrogant to answer that one way or the other without looking at the evidence. And it is equally arrogant to ignore the signs of major problems once we have looked at that evidence.

Does Mr. Griffin deny the projections of spreading tropical diseases? Does he deny the projections of dramatic changes in local rainfall and growing conditions? Does he deny that continued adding of CO2 to the air will eventually cause enough melting of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets to raise sea levels about 10-20 meters? Some changes may take 300-400 years, and some will probably happen in this century. That’s an instant on the geological time scale.

Are those changes good or bad for humanity or for the world as a whole?

Even Mr. Griffin doesn’t deny that we should ask that question, so why does he call it arrogant when we decide to act in response to the answers we find?