I had the privilege to see Al Gore give an update on “Inconvenient Truth” as a keynote talk at the 2009 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
This was very motivating talk as you might expect from someone of his stature and was targeted at scientists to help him communicate the urgency of action about global warming. This was a very receptive audience as some of the attendees were part of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the theme of this year’s meeting is “Our Planet and It’s Life – Origins and Futures.”
Mr. Gore showed some evidence of recent changes in polar sea ice that have been documented since his 2006 movie. This was an animation over the last 30 years of the advance and retreat of permanent and seasonal ice that hints at the possibility of an ice free arctic in perhaps 10 years. A related talk on Friday discussed the history of polar exploration and pointed out that in 2007, for virtually the first time, the fabled Northwest Passage was free of ice and navigable. This contrasts with the many years of arduous expeditioning that has been fodder for so many heroic arctic tales. This year it was accessible to pleasure boats for virtually the first time.
Mr. Gore showed a bar chart of “natural disasters” versus time – things like wildfires, strong hurricanes, floods and indicated that instances of these disasters have increased dramatically over the last 30 years. He then went on to show on-the-ground pictures of devastation visited by some recent disasters in the news; the floods in the upper Midwest this past summer and even the wildfires in Australia that were still raging this past week while we were in Chicago.
The connection between the disaster statistics, the pictures and global warming was left as an excercise for the audience. The talk was meant as illustration of the strong points that the IPCC has already made in its report and the scientific evidence supporting the talk is to found there. It was quite obvious that the overwhelming majority of the AAAS audience has accepted this evidence as strong indication of anthrogenic causes of global warming.
I personally feel that this is the case, that the majority of evidence supports this conclusion. As another speaker said during the course of the weekend: Incontrovertible evidence for anthrogenic causes of global warming will not arrive for years, perhaps too late for us to take action if we wait to be certain. This changes the question from scientific certainty to that of managing risk. When asked what the chances of catastrophic change in ten years he replied maybe 10%. The questioner scoffed, but quieted when asked if he would eat that great steak tonight if he knew that the chances of it harboring fatal salmonella were about 10%.
