by Myron Ebell
June 6, 2005

CNN NEWS

Copyright 2005 Voxant Inc.

Lou Dobbs Tonight

June 6, 2005

Doubting Dean; Bush Nominees; Bunkers Busted; Global Warming; Suicide Terrorism's Roots - Part 2

Lou Dobbs, William Schneider, Ed Henry, Jennifer Eccleston, Brent Sadler, Casey Wian, Bill Tucker, Anderson Cooper, Christine Romans

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Still ahead here tonight, is global warming an unavoidable catastrophe or is it nature at work? We'll have a special report. Two leading authorities on climate change join us to debate the matter. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DOBBS: Tonight the debate over global warming. A new government report finds that coastal regions of Louisiana and Texas are now sinking into the gulf of Mexico at a much faster rate than geologists had previously thought. Rising temperatures are melting ice caps, or are they? We know global climate change is happening. What we don't know is why. Are fossil fuels to blame, or is this part of a cyclical, normal planetary pattern? How serious is this problem, and can we poor human beings do anything at all about it? Christine Romans has our report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The worst scenarios of global warming: Floods, dangerous thunderstorms and hurricanes, heat waves and a deadly rise in sea level.

DAN LASHOF, NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL: The pace of global warming that we expect over the next century, if we don't curb the pollution that is responsible, is faster than anything humans have experienced in recorded civilization, quite literally.

ROMANS: The polar ice caps are contracting at a rate of 9 percent each decade. Glaciers and land-based ice sheets are melting into the sea. And as a result, the consensus has sea levels rising up to three feet by the end of this century. That would swamp America's low-lying coastal areas, push saltwater deep into fresh water river valleys, and according to the Environmental Protection Agency, flood 22,000 square miles along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, drenching Louisiana, Texas, Florida and North Carolina.

As the sea rises by one to three feet, temperatures will climb by five to 10 degrees.

JAMES MCCARTHY, PROFESSOR, HARVARD UNIV.: People living anywhere in the world will likely experience more extremes in temperature.

ROMANS: He calls Europe's 2003 heat wave that killed 20,000 people a foreshadowing of how unprepared we are for global warming. Yet other scientist call these forecasts alarmist, and say rising temperatures are normal, because we're in an interglacial period.

MYRON EBELL, COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: We're probably towards the end of it. And the sea levels will keep rising until the next ice age begins.

So it something we have to adapt to, but it happens very slowly. And it's not anything that human beings haven't had to deal with in the past.

ROMANS: And recent mapping shows most of the Antarctic continent may actually be cooling down.

JOHN CHRISTY, PROFESSOR, UNIV. OF ALABAMA, HUNTSVILLE: This is one thing everyone should understand: The climate is always changing. No one has a legal right to a static climate.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: Global warming doubters say the biggest climate catalysts are natural variations conflicting cycles lasting decades, centuries, millennia. Mother Nature is clearly vicious. The question is, does man make it worse?

DOBBS: And can man make it better?

ROMANS: Exactly.

DOBBS: Christine, thanks very much.

For more now on the issue of global climate change, global warming and what can be done, if anything, about it all, I am joined by two leading experts with divergent views. Here in New York, I am joined by Gavin Schmidt, scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He says the global climate crisis is serious. He says it is man-made, and one that we must address immediately.

In Washington, D.C., Patrick Michaels, professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia, author of the book "Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming." He says the threat of global warming has been grossly exaggerated.

Thank you both for being here. Let me begin, if I may, with you, Gavin.

GAVIN SCHMIDT, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: Certainly.

DOBBS: Is there any reason that, with the best minds in the world focused on this issue, that we can't say with conviction and absolute scientific study based on fact, that the ice caps are either melting or that they're growing? SCHMIDT: The ice caps are melting or growing, depending on where you look. The most important things, though, are to focus on what we do know, where are both me and Patrick Michaels in agreement. We're in agreement that the amount of carbon dioxide has increased by 30 percent over pre-industrial levels over the last 100 years. We're in agreement that the world has warmed by about .7 of a degree over the last 100 years. We are in agreement that that is to a large extent due to man-made factors, in particular, carbon dioxide and methane.

DOBBS: Let me turn to you, Patrick. These are alarming statistics. But let me begin precisely as I did with Gavin, why can't the best scientific minds in the world come to conclusions about the totality of impact? Let's start with the idea of -- let me finish -- the snow pack and the size, diminishing or otherwise, of glaciers in Antarctica and the Arctic?

PATRICK MICHAELS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: Well, southern Greenland is losing ice, but the temperature's going down where it's losing ice. Antarctica is gaining ice. The temperature is going down in Antarctica.

And by the way, Gavin and I are in great agreement about one other thing he didn't mention, which is it's not going to warm all that much in the policy-foreseeable future. His boss, James Hanson, says, if we stay on the current policy trajectories that we're on, we'll get about three-quarters of a degree of warming in the next 50 years, which is certainly a modest amount.

If you take our climate models, they all predict warmings of different slopes, and adjust them with reality, what you get is the same number, three-quarters of a degree.

SCHMIDT: I'm going to have to (INAUDIBLE). MICHAELS: What that means, what that means, very importantly, is that this issue is not and should not be presented in the stark and dire terms. There's a lot of time for investment in future technologies.

DOBBS: Let me stop you there, if I may, Patrick. Gavin wanted to say something in the midst of this statement of agreement.

SCHMIDT: OK. We can state our agreements a little bit too strongly. Our best models, based on projections of what's going to happen to greenhouse gases in the future, give temperature rises of between .9 and another degree, to maybe two degrees by 2050. Most of that uncertainty is due to what the trajectory of carbon dioxide is going to be like. And that's really a function of the economics and technology, things that as current scientists, we really don't have a good handle on.

(CROSSTALK)

DOBBS: That's what bothers me about, frankly, gentlemen, from both your perspectives. You don't have a good handle on it.

SCHMIDT: The economics.

DOBBS: The economics. But also, the source of that carbon dioxide. You know what it is. We're a world of 6 billion people. I mean, Patrick, the idea that we do nothing, forgive me, just as a layman here, but 6 billion people on this planet, projected to reach 9 by the end of this century, that has to have a huge impact...

MICHAELS: Of course. DOBBS: ... on CO2 levels. MICHAELS: Human beings are putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But while we sit here and chat so amiably about this, nature has declared her hand on warming, unless billions and billions of dollars of climate research is wrong. These climate models -- Gavin has one, his boss has one, NASA has one -- there are about 20 of them. They have a central characteristic, which is this: They predict constant rates of warming, once warming starts.

SCHMIDT: That depends absolutely on the projection of carbon...

MICHAELS: Excuse me, can I finish?

SCHMIDT: ... dioxide that you put in. If you put in a rate of change that isn't changing very much, then you get linear outputs. Linear extrapolation is not good science, I'm sorry.

MICHAELS: Well, unfortunately the models produce linear warming with exponential increases in carbon dioxide. You know that, Gavin. SCHMIDT: (INAUDIBLE) isn't going to be... (CROSSTALK)

DOBBS: Let me ask you this. And it frustrates everyone who's concerned obviously about the planet, the well-being of ourselves, our children, our grandchildren and generations to come.

Let's assume that there is a problem, that whether it is man-made or natural, that these degrees of temperature are going to rise into the next century, that the sea level is going to rise, that we have a pollutant issue that is affecting not only the ozone layer but the quality of our atmosphere. Can we do anything about it?

MICHAELS: Sure. SCHMIDT: Yes, we can. There are forward-looking companies, for instance British Petroleum, who have reduced their emissions, not only of carbon dioxide, but also of methane, with extremely cost-effective strategies, and those kinds of things can be adopted by many other companies, DuPont for instance, IBM, and national economics.

MICHAELS: Let me answer that.

DOBBS: Doctor, you get the last word. MICHAELS: OK. One of the problems on this issue is that the future requires investment in technology. And there are a lot of people out there -- I'm not saying Gavin -- who say we should raise energy prices because of global warming, so much that people will be unable to afford energy.

What will happen then is people will not have the money that is required for investment in the technologies of the future. It would have exactly the wrong effect.

I will tell you, I own a lot of stock in Honda and Toyota. There's a reason for that. Because they are very forward-looking. Now, if the government had taken my money away from me, I would not have been able to invest it, would I?

DOBBS: Well, we're delighted that you have your money and you've invested it of your own free will. I have to say, you get the last word, but it's 15 seconds' worth.

SCHMIDT: Climate change is here. Carbon dioxide will be regulated at some point in the future. Forward-looking companies, forward-looking countries are going to have to do something about that if they want to keep up with what's going to happen.

DOBBS: Gavin Schmidt, Patrick Michaels, thank you both for being here.

Still ahead, the results of our poll tonight, and a preview of what's ahead tomorrow. Please stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DOBBS: Ninety-four percent of you say the federal government should not prosecute doctors who prescribe medical marijuana.

Thanks for being with us tonight. Please join us here tomorrow. One Texas lawmaker will be here to tell us why he's trying to stop Minuteman volunteers in his state. Thousands of invasive foreign plants and animal species causing billions of dollars in damage. We'll have a special report. Please be with us. Good night from New York. "ANDERSON COOPER 360" begins right now -- Anderson. ANDERSON COOPER, HOST, "ANDERSON COOPER 360": Lou, thanks very much.