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Carbon Dioxide – Friend AND Foe

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I have to call out the Princeton professor, William Happer, who implied recently on CNN that carbon dioxide cannot be a pollutant because we exhale it. And yes I feel comfortable calling out a Princeton professor despite my lesser credentials because – and this is important – I have common sense, and common sense is all that’s needed here. Here’s what he said:

“There’s this myth that’s developed around carbon dioxide that it’s a pollutant, but you and I both exhale carbon dioxide with every breath. Each of us emits about two pounds of carbon dioxide a day, so are we polluting the planet? … Carbon dioxide is a perfectly natural gas, it’s just like water vapor, it’s something that plants love. They grow better with more carbon dioxide, and you can see the greening of the earth already from the additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”

Say what?! Saying something can’t be a pollutant, or in other words something that’s bad for the environment and for those of us who live in the environment, because it’s natural is nonsense. What matters is the amount of the substance that occurs. Too much of anything can be a bad thing. Take water for example. We need it to live. We mostly think of it as a good thing. But it can also be bad – very bad, as in lethal – if the water occurs in excessive quantities. Think floods and drowning.

And here’s another example. We have the same situation with carbon dioxide. It’s necessary for life. We exhale it; plants inhale it. It’s a very important part of the life cycle. So there’s the good. The bad is when it occurs in excessive quantities. This can happen in two places – indoors and outdoors.

Indoors. Breathing in a confined space without adequate ventilation can cause the amount of carbon dioxide to build to levels that cause headaches, dizziness, nausea, and eventually loss of consciousness and death. The oxygen in the room is gradually displaced by carbon dioxide which causes asphyxiation.[1]

Outdoors. Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are causing more heat to be trapped in the lower atmosphere. The warming brought on by the thickening layer of atmospheric gases is predicted to cause continued sea level rising and shifting weather and climate patterns, according to NASA.[2] Just because carbon dioxide in the atmosphere won’t directly poison us like it can in a confined space does not mean it can’t be harmful to us.

Arsenic anyone? A person who says a naturally-occurring substance can’t be bad for us is either ill-informed or attempting to deceive – both of which are equally dangerous to our individual and collective well-being. There are many naturally-occurring substances – like arsenic, lead, and asbestos, for example – that are perfectly safe at naturally-occurring levels. But when humans get involved, they can occur in deadly amounts – in water, paint, and insulation, respectively.

Let’s be real. Simply put, natural does not always mean safe. Excessive amounts of naturally-occurring substances can wreak havoc on the well-being of individuals or large groups of people. It’s OK to debate the specifics of how data collection and modeling are conducted as part of the scientific process, but to make a blanket statement like ‘carbon dioxide can’t be a problem for us because it’s natural’ is naive. We need to pay attention to the amount of the substance in question if we want to make informed choices about our collective future.

And another thing. To only focus on how much plants love carbon dioxide is missing the forest for the trees (literally in this case!). It doesn’t make sense to ignore the many concerning effects of global warming and only focus on a single harmless-sounding one. That would be like saying “I don’t know why everyone’s so worried about the hurricane that’s coming – all that water will be excellent for the plants!”

[1] https://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/text_version/chemicals.php?id=6

[2] https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/

“Believing” in Science

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When I hear people say “I believe” (or “I don’t believe”) in a scientific theory, I find it kind of odd. Is accepting the overarching explanation for a natural phenomenon tested and developed by a large number of scientists over many years really a matter of faith? If the goal of science is to gain an understanding of the physical world around us, wouldn’t there just be different levels of knowledge, not wholesale acceptance or rejection of a collaborative and culminating body of work?

A matter of faith. We might expect to encounter the word “believe” more often in religion than in science because religion is not based on things we can see or test. In fact, a reasonable definition for religion could be “a set of beliefs.” There are many different religions in the world and therefore many different choices of things we can believe in.

Not so for science. We don’t have a distinctly different set of science principles depending on country, culture or family. So there’s something different about science and religion. But do they have anything in common?

It seems to me that people use both science and religion to: 1) understand the unknown, and 2) help us predict the future. For example, we’ve used both science and religion to answer: 1) Why do people die? and 2) What happens after we die? We get different answers, but both religion and science can play a part in answering our questions.

So science and religion sometimes try to answer the same questions for us. But how are they different then?

It’s all in the wrist. I think the differences have to do with how we do each.

Religion starts with a set of beliefs being passed on to others, often from a parent to a child with the help of a religious organization. If we engage in a religion, we accept what we are taught at face value because we have no way to prove or disprove the elements of that religion.

Science starts with an observation being made of the physical world followed by an effort to develop an explanation for that observation. If we engage in science, we can test explanations over and over until we’re satisfied that they are valid.

Both religion and science are important, but they help us in different ways. The process of science is, by definition, designed to help us learn specific things about the physical world around us. The process is imperfect because science is conducted by humans, but is there really a place for “believing” in science?

Selective science. It seems to me that people who say, for example, “I don’t believe in global warming,” are engaging in selective science, cherry picking the science theories they choose to believe in while casting aside others. I’ve never heard anyone say “I don’t believe in the science behind the medication I take, the planes I fly on, or the cell phones I use.” Why is it different with global warming?

What does this equation mean? I do understand one reason we use the word “believe” when referring to science theories and that is that none of us has the time or the expertise to fully evaluate the evidence behind the many science theories we encounter in our lifetimes. Even scientists outside a given field don’t have the time or expertise to fully evaluate the theories outside their own specialized area of science.

So practically speaking, we all need to trust what the scientists who specialize in a particular area tell us. We trust the germ theory of disease (and the doctors and pharmaceutical companies who apply their knowledge of this theory) when we take the medicine prescribed to us. We trust the theory of lift when we board an airplane. We trust quantum theory when we buy and use a cell phone or any other device made of semiconductors.

To trust is to take a leap of faith and believe, which is easier for some people to do than others. But why are some science theories easier to trust than others?

Seeing is believing. One explanation for the “belief” factor is that some areas of science are just so darn difficult for us to understand and “believe” in because we can’t see or experience them. It’s one thing to “believe” in gravity because we experience it every day. But it’s another to “believe” in the theory of evolution when it’s not something we can look out our window and see happening within the scale of our human lifespan.

Global warming poses similar challenges in that it’s not something we experience every minute of every single day (like gravity). The unmistakable global trend towards a warmer Earth that we see in climate data does not mean that every minute is going to be warmer than the previous minute on every spot on the planet. There are ongoing natural variations in temperature due to many factors (seasonal changes, weather patterns, etc.). What’s causing the concern is the overall trend upwards – which is something we don’t experience on a day-to-day basis.

Say what?! Speaking of things we can’t see or experience directly… I often think back to how strange it must have seemed for people in the 1850’s and beyond to start hearing doctors and scientists talk about these tiny alien creatures that live inside our bodies and sometimes make us sick. When people first heard about germs, it must have seemed laughably unbelievable and/or extremely unsettling. My takeaway: We limit what we believe in, just because we can’t “see” it, at our own peril.

Question. So, here’s my question: Why do people talk in terms of “believing” or “not believing” in global warming and the resulting climate change?