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Gelbspan, R.  1998.  The Heat is On: The Climate Crisis, The Cover-Up, The Prescription..  Perseus Books, Reading, MA.

In this soft-cover "updated edition" of his personal perspective on the theory of CO2-induced global warming and its major scientific opponents, journalist Ross Gelbspan gives a rather one-sided view of the international scientific and political debate that continues to rage over the environmental consequences of the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content; and that one side is the side of those pushing for stringent measures to force a shift from carbon-based systems of energy production to whatever else might do the job.  As with all works that take a strong position on a highly politicized subject, what one thinks of the book will likely be highly colored by which side of the issue one finds most persuasive.

In this respect, I identify myself with the "greenhouse skeptics" that Gelbspan takes to task so stridently; I am, after all, the offspring of one of them and a former student of another.  Almost my entire cognitive life, therefore, I have been exposed to the idea that atmospheric CO2 is the very elixir of life, a substance without which life as we know it would not be possible on earth.

I have watched with my own eyes, for example, as the CO2-enriched sour orange trees that my father studies - which are exposed to air containing an extra 75% CO2 - have, for nearly a decade now, produced more than twice the amount of fruit that is produced on companion trees growing in ambient air.  I have also lived among his "poor man's biosphere" experiments in our bedrooms, family room, den and backyard, where I have observed him, day after day, year after year, use his own breath to enrich both aquatic and terrestrial plants with CO2, stimulating the ones thus favored to grow two, four, and even six times larger than plants exposed to normal air.  And I have seen plants that he partially isolated from the ambient air shrivel and die as they sucked the CO2 content of their biospheric airspaces down below the concentration typical of earth's atmosphere during the last great ice age.

Perhaps I may thus be forgiven if I cringe at some of the things Gelbspan writes.  And if my sentiments run counter to yours, you will have a solid reason (in Gelbspan's view) to dismiss what I have to say.

I note, first of all, a couple of statements hyping the book on its back cover, where The New York Times Book Review is quoted as crediting Gelbspan with "a muckraking passion seen all too rarely these days."  Well, I guess I do agree with some of what is said there.  But the quote attributed to the prestigious journal Nature - where the "climate-change skeptics" are referred to as people "who masquerade as university professors" and "publish no peer-reviewed papers" - is disturbing.  Richard Lindzen, Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling are all university professors and they have all published many peer-reviewed papers in respected scientific journals - even Nature! - as have the other skeptics Gelbspan skewers.  So even before opening the book, I was somewhat jaded in terms of what I expected to find inside.  And peering within, my concerns were only confirmed.

In the book's introduction, Gelbspan cuts right to the "heart" of the matter by evoking the image of his offspring, carrying forward his and his wife's "deepest hopes for the future" and fantasizing (his word) that his grandchildren might one day "thrive in secure and nurturing communities" (p.7).  Some of the greenhouse skeptics, I can attest, have children too, as well as grandchildren; and they also center their hopes for the future in their progeny.  I would like to believe that people on both sides of the debate are equally kind and loving parents (where married with children), but that even if they are not, that fact should have little to do with the validity of their opinions about atmospheric CO2 and the impacts its rising concentration may or may not have on the environment.

Progressing through the book, one is exposed, over and over again, to the litany of apocalyptic prophecies of gloom and doom that comprise the foundation of the anti-CO2 establishment; and I have no problem with anyone stating the case for his scientific beliefs, even if I intensely disagree with them.  What does disturb me, however, are statements of error intended to denigrate scientists on the other side of the debate.

On page 22, for example, Gelbspan quotes Harvard University's James McCarthy as stating, relative to perceived trends in earth's climate, that "there is no debate among any statured scientists of what is happening."  Gelbspan then goes on to say that "by 'statured' scientists he [McCarthy] means those who are currently engaged in relevant research and whose work has been published in the refereed scientific journals."  Nearly all of the skeptics listed by Gelbspan are currently doing what he here implies they are not; and those who are retired used to do it with a vengeance when they were plying their scientific trades.

In the face of such personally disturbing implications, emotions run high on both sides of the issue.  For example, Gelbspan quotes Benjamin Santer, who has been unduly vilified by some of our persuasion for his role in the preparation of the 1995 IPCC report, as stating in the midst of that trying period that "the last couple of weeks - both for me and my family - have been the most difficult of my entire professional career" (p.81).  I can sympathize with him.  Multiply his two weeks' of torture by a couple orders of magnitude and you will begin to get an idea of the personal anguish my father's family has suffered on the other side of the fence.  Unfortunately, Gelbspan's book does nothing to ameliorate the situation and, in fact, throws even more fuel on the fire.

When will we learn that scientific ideas should be discussed on their own merits?  Or as Santer says, that the controversy should "focus on the science itself, and not on the scientists" (p.80)?  Despicable people can be right, and kind and loving parents can be wrong.  Where one gets one's funding may well influence one's perspective on an issue; but if it leads him into error, or even outright fraud, that error or fraud should be readily exposed scientifically.  It is well to remember that all arguments of a non-scientific nature clearly cut both ways.

So, to take a couple of purely scientific jabs at Gelbspan, I will note just two points relative to biological matters.  On page 38 he states that increased atmospheric CO2 "will force more rapid plant respiration" and that "when that forcing is accompanied by slightly elevated temperatures, the plants will stop growing and their yield will dwindle."  In reality, most CO2 enrichment studies have observed either no change or an actual decrease in plant respiration rates when the air's CO2 content is increased.  And more CO2 always tends to decrease plant photorespiration rates.

Gelbspan's claim that plants will stop growing when increases in atmospheric CO2 are accompanied by even slightly elevated temperatures is also false.  In fact, our knowledge of the basic biochemical processes underlying plant photosynthesis suggests that a 300 ppm increase in the air's CO2 concentration should lead to a 5°C increase in the optimum "operating temperature" of C3 plants, which comprise 95% of all of earth's vegetation.  And in the half-dozen or so cases where this phenomenon has been experimentally investigated, plant optimum temperature has been observed to rise by an average of 6°C for such an increase in atmospheric CO2.  What is more, the net photosynthetic rates at the higher CO2-induced optimum temperatures in these experiments were found to be nearly twice as great as those prevailing at the considerably lower non-CO2-enriched optimum temperatures of the plants.

Much more of what Gelbspan states as fact is also false.  Nevertheless, there are aspects of truth scattered throughout the book.  The vast majority of the material, however, falls somewhere in between in the debatable category, which is not surprising, for where was there ever an issue where one side was totally right and the other side totally wrong?

In conclusion, if you want to read about "the most ominous environmental problem ever to confront humanity" (p.126) and "why a transfer of wealth to the developing world is in our country's [the USA's] own basic self-interest" (p.131), you can get one side of the story within the pages of Gelbspan's book.  But remember that there are always two sides to every story; and that people on the opposite side of the fence never seem to portray the other side's perspective quite the way they would portray it themselves.

So, yes, you do have to read more on the subject of carbon dioxide and global change than what the skeptics alone have to say.  It's just that I'm not prepared to recommend Gelbspan's book as the place to start.  Time is a precious commodity, and one could do much better with something of a less "muckraking passion."

Reviewer: Dr. Craig D. Idso, President


Last updated 15 October 1999