Global Warming Above Tom's Diner

7/28/2019 Global Warming Above Tom's Diner

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Global Warming Above Tom's Restaurant

B y M ic h a e l S c u l ly

C o lu m b ia G r a d u a t e S c h o o l o f J o u r n a l i s mClass of 1997

Adviser: Ken Brie f

C op yr i gh tBy Michae l Scul ly

1997


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G l o b a l W a r m i n g A b o v e T o m ' s R e s t a u r a n t

Working with Mother Nature

On a winter af ternoon, Shaler McR eel w alks over a crusty-sheet of white snow tothe center of a f ield. His farm rolls out around him. With hands in pockets, he shrugs hisshoulders and recalls his favorite time of year, a June evening at the height of the plantingseason:

"Have you ever smelled the smell of a f ield of corn in full tassel? There's nothinglike it . There's this aroma in the air with the pollen everywhere," the 39-year-old farmersays, standing, looking down on a frozen field that slopes to the edge of a NewHam pshire wood . His gaze is d is tant l ike a daydream .

"You know what it smells l ike? I t smells l ike new money, li terally," he says."You know, the way it smells r ight from the presses."

For nine years , McRee l has farmed 14 acres in M adbu ry, N.H. , growing f rui ts andvegetables which he sells to local grocers and at a roadside farm stand. To him, the


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venture is his livelihood, a self-described "capitalist venture" that depends on his staminaand almost entirely on the graciousness of Mother Nature.

Soon, the snows from this mild winter will melt away and the planting will begin.His days will shift from hou rs in the kitchen sipping coffe e and ma naging his deceasedmother's estate, to waking at 5 a.m. and tending the fields until well after sunset.

Before his hand s com b the dirt, he and the commun ity of farm ers along thePiscataqua River, dividing New Ham pshire from M aine, will look for clues to the com ingseasons. Their research is part science, part tradition and part farmer's lore. They'll watchthe television and papers, consider the past seasons and watch the weather of the Marchskies the night of the full moon. They search for a chilling dew known as the last "killingfros t," the ecological end o f the winter. The planting beg ins soon after .

To most, the weather is a topic of conversation, an obstacle to be transcended, acuriosity that shatters the pattern of a daily routine. But to farmers like McReel, theweather rules. It engineers their days like the way the Dow Jones might control a WallStreet broker.

"W hat effe ct does it have over m e? The weather is my life," M cReel says. Hisprosperity is factored upon the balance of sunshine and rain. He can control one but isvictim to the other. "You can always make it rain," he said referring to irrigation. "Butyou can't make the sun come out." A shift in the balance of the two can dictate whatcrops he'll grow: "If it 's a hot, dry year, you're not going to grow lettuce that year. You'llgo with tom atoes."


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M cReel has found success in mixing his crops. Every year, he ' l l grow corn, garlic,lettuce, melons, onions, potatoes, pum pkins, squash and fresh-cut flowers, a m ajor cashcrop. Ho w mu ch of each depe nds on the weather.

In McReel's world, all weather is local. Rain can fall on his farm and blow overanother a few miles away. A rise in the landscape can lift one farmer above the frost orflood line but place it in the pathway of heavy winds. Ultimately, each farmer must knowhow the shape of the landscape can influence the natural elements and their effect oncrops.

On this local level, farmers like McReel and his friend Barry Hayes will tell youthat after watching a lifetime of seasons, the New England climate has gotten mo resevere. Of course, that opinion is based on memory and speculation.

In the greater scheme of things, McR eel and Hayes tend tiny farm s. "A po stagestamp compared to the farm s in Iow a," says McReel and smallness has its advantages.Their farms are small enough to be irrigated but when drought sweeps through theMidwest as it did in 1988, the great corporate farmers are powerless. Knowing theweather and the chemical influences that control climate become increasingly moreimportant and Mother Nature 's temperament could be changing for the worse.

Scientists are saying that an outpou ring of man-m ade pollutan ts - calledgreenhouse gases - are shifting the chemical makeu p of the planet 's atmosphere alteringthe climate, making it more volatile. That trend is called global warming. Today, mostscientists agree that the Earth has warmed, increasing by one degree - from 57 degrees(F) to 58 degrees - since the beginn ing of the century. Bu t few are certain of thesignificance or what it will do to weather patterns on the Earth.


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Like most Americans, McReel and Hayes have heard of the issue but won ' tspeculate on its meaning. Instead, they'll continue on as they have, watching theirproduce and live stock for clues. During the drier seasons, they'll pray for rain as theytwist the valves f il l ing the veins of their irr igation systems with costly municipal water;during the rainy seasons, they'll simply pray.

Watching the Weather from Broadway

In New York City , James Hansen, one of NASA's leading atmospher ic scient is ts ,has committed his life's research to the issue of global warming. This expert believes thatthe warming trend is altering the planet 's weather patterns making them more severe: an

arid climate will be drier; a humid climate will be wetter; and the cycle of weather thatmoves moisture between those two regions will be harsher.

"Clearly, global warming is going to have an impact. Over the next century, theclimate change is going to occur faster than it ever has," he said, during an interview inhis office off Bro adw ay. "I t 's going to m ak e the planet warm er than it 's been in a millionyears."

The increased temperature m ake s the deser ts of the western plains more prone todrought while the islands of the Caribbean will be soaked with heavier rains. Ultimately,the weather patterns of the planet are changing and no one knows what the long termeffects will be.


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"People are affected by climatic extremes and the frequency of extremes w ouldchange greatly," he said. He wouldn't speculate on the long term damage.

But there are clues. In 1993, the Mississippi River flowed over its banks andswallowed Missouri and Indiana. In 1996, the East Coast was smothered with theheaviest snow fa ll in 100 years.

Although Ne w Y ork City recorded mo st of its record high temperatures during thelast decade, Hansen said that no one local weather event can be seen as proof of thewarming. That pattern of extreme weather conditions repeats around the United States.

He calls global warming "loading the climate dice," which means that while a citylike New York may once have had one mild winter per decade, soon, the region will havetwo or three. The shift could be havoc on local farm ers, waterfront hom eowners andothers.

"It's a little difficult trying to get the full picture," he said. "But under thoseconditions, some parts of the ecology are going to have a hard time adapting."

Only now are scientists like Hansen beginning to understand the science. Hansenis not alone in his quest. Today, more than 2,500 scientists worldwide, subscribing to thetheory that the Earth's temperature is increasing, search for clues. They measure thethickness of glaciers and the polar ice caps, track m igratory patterns of bug s, birds andanimals, and study the atmosphere. After years of intense research, the issue hasn't lostany of its luster or its mystery.

There are skeptics of the warming trend as well. Those scientists believe that theEarth's average temperature is constantly influx. At its extremes, it was hot enough tohost cold-blooded dinosaurs, and ancient ancestors of the crocodile swam in the Hudson


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River, and cold enough for glaciers to extend from the poles to Northern Virginia,burying M anhattan a mile deep in ice. To these scient ists , the plane t 's tempe rature iscyclical. In their eyes, this cen tury 's one degree increase is jus t part of that greaterthermal calendar .

The more apocalyptic scientists say no. In the past, the Ice Age was brought on bynatural shif ts in the chemical balance of the atmosphere but this t ime the Earth iswarm ing because of pol lut ion. Like Hansen, they bel ieve that those man-m ade pol lutantsmust be regulated so that the plane t 's atmosphere can f ind i ts balance.

Fear ing this wo n ' t h appen, those scientis ts have created subordinate theor ies onthe byproducts of that weather change. They say ice caps will melt, sea level will r ise,migration patterns for animals and birds will shif t , tropical diseases will spread into themore temperate region s, and f inal ly , farmers wil l have to m ove toward s the poles orchange their crops. All have an economic impact. Beyond this, scientists can onlyspeculate on the huma n misery.

Somewhere Between Sand and Ice

The Ea r th 's atm osphere can best be descr ibed as a com plex viscou s goo thatswirls in patterns around the planet. White clouds skate over blue skies high enough toscrape the belly of space; heavy black rain clouds commute over city skylines minglingwith the urban smog; the sun, r ising and setting, remains a constant but the winds, ever-


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shifting, blow in from the coast, or down from the north or up from the gulf. Those arethe visible produces of the weather patterns on this planet and each has a mission.

Weather, in simplest terms, is the movem ent of water and heat from one region tothe next. Predicting that movement is a more difficult matter.

Picking the weather fo r cities like New York is a game of estimates as the Ea rth'satmosphere with its convections continue to stir. Television weathermen can call the near-term weather with great accuracy but predicting the it five-to-seven days in advancebecomes more difficult. With each added day comes variables that make weatherprediction a guessing game.

Bruce C. Douglas, a research scientist at the Laboratory for Coastal Research inHyattsville, Md., compared weather prediction to a study of chaos.

"Sure, you can predict that it will be warmer in the summer than in the winter.That 's a simple broad fact we h ave learned from measuring weather over time but whenyou start asking specific questions like 'what will be the soil moisture content during theplanting season?' well, that would be impossible," he said. "The system just gets toochaotic after a while because there are too many variables. That's why no one can predictthe weather a mo nth in adv anc e."

What makes the atmosphere complex are the invisible chemicals - man ma de orotherwise - that prod uce w eather patterns. Just as imp ortant as the sun shine and theclouds, those gases, called "greenhouse gases," collect under the troposphere, a lowceiling in the atmosphere. They accumulate, trapping heat that warms the Earth. Scientistscall this the "greenh ouse ef fe ct" because like the glass roo fing of a gree nho use, thesegases allow sunlight in but prevent it from escaping.


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Since the beginning of the century, the level of those gases has increasedsubstantially and the planet's temperature has risen. The scientific community is unitedon this point. What divides them is over what will happen next. Hansen and othersbelieve that at the current rate, the Earth's temperature could rise three to six degrees (F)by 2050.

To Hayes and M cReel, the one degree increase this century seemed nom inal.There logic was, push the thermostat up a degree and see if the spouse or the powercompany notice. But on a global scale, that average has more value.

According to Hansen, a decrease of nine degrees (F) would plunge us back intothe ice age leaving an ice shed a mile thick over Manhattan. Add nine degrees and theplanet would b e an arid dese rt. It seems tha t a shift of less than 10 degree s in eitherdirection is all that stands b etwe en us an d a lifeless planet.

Skeptics dispute H ans en's finding s, saying his computer sim ulation of theatmosphere is inaccurate. Further , those sk eptics are curious why the planet - with itsdelicate balance - ha sn 't turned to sand or ice.

One of the leading skeptics is Patrick J. Michaels, an atmospheric scientist fromthe University of Virginia.

"If the plan et 's so damn sensitive, why are we here?" M ichaels said. "W hy is theplanet still liquid and not an ice ball?"

Michaels is joine d by Richa rd S. Lind zen, an atmosph eric scientist atMassachusetts Institute of Technology, in his skepticism.

Both believe that Hansen and h is supporters have been using hollow data to ma ketheir argument. One key ingredient, water, has been excluded from many of the computer


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simulations of the atmosphere because of the complexity of the data. On a planet where70 percent of it is covered with water , that 's an important ingredient to be leaving out.

"Has there been an increase? We don ' t know," Lindzen said . "We don ' t knowbecause the greatest greenhouse gas - water vapor - h asn ' t been m easured."

Of course, Hansen disagrees with Lindzen and Michaels , bel ieving that they 'vebeen corrupted by special interest groups. However, Hansen admits that his computerresearch has f laws but the science is improving. Further, Hansen said that while the planethas experienced shif ts in temperature that have allowed for the Ice Age and dinosaurs,those climates were created naturally. This time, manmade pollution is the cause and thewarming trend must be researched.

Roll ing the Cosmic Dice

On the corner of 112 th Street and B road wa y, just four blocks f rom the gates ofColumbia Univers i ty , s tands a New York City landmark. To many, Tom's Restaurant isfamous because its facade and neon sign have starred for years on "Seinfeld," an

American sitcom. Few realize that the building, Armstrong Hall, is part of ColumbiaUniversity and has been home to a NASA laboratory for nearly 40 years.

The NA SA Goddard Inst i tu te for Space Studies was opened in 1960 as a publicrelations office but today , under Jam es Ha nse n, i ts director, i t has becom e a center foratmospheric research. The tiny lab has 40 scientists working on the issue of global


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ng other issues dealing with sky. Most of the labs fun ding comes fro m the

In 1996, the United States government invested $2 billion in the science. Most of

olar ice caps. At NASA GISS, the scientists take the information and plug it into insupercomputers to measure climate changes. Ultimately, they hope to further anunderstanding of the warming trend.

Hansen describes global warming this way: It 's more about extreme weatherbeing more extreme. In fact, he believes that media accounts have misrepresented his andother research of global warming and that generally, the public doesn't understand theissue.

"I realized that many people would misunderstand it the next time the temperaturein a given season was colder than n orm al," he said. "In th is case, the attention draw n tothe greenhouse effect may have done m ore harm then go od."

In other words, global warming do esn't necessarily m ean that New Y ork City willsoon be experiencing Miami-like weather all-year-round. Instead, Hansen believes thatboth cities will, on average, see an increase in the fr equ enc y of war m er seasons.

"Even though climate fluctuates chaotically, greenho use w arming should load theclimate dice enough for the informed layman to notice an increase in the frequency ofwarmer than normal seasons," he said. In other words, instead of having one mild seasonper decade, there could be two or three.

Last winter, for example, the climates in New York and New England were verymild.


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Colin M arquis , a meteorologis t at The W eather Chann el , at t ributed the warmseason to an anomaly in the atmosphere that trapped the mild weather over the region.

"Norm ally , a weathe r pat tern goes in s ix week cyc les but for som e reason theweather pat terns have been especial ly s tagnant ," he said . "That 's why New York 's winterhas been especially temperate." The cycles, he said, extended to six months. Was it globalwarming? Marquis was skeptical but could not explain the warming trend either: "I haveno idea what caused i t . . . . But I do n ' t kn ow of anyone w ho can give you an idea."

So, what about the informed " layman" as Hansen said . Are they not icing? There 'sat least one: a retired chicken farmer from Long Island.

Clues in the Sky, the Sand, the Surf

Standing near the platform of an outdoor train station, Richard G. Hendrickson, an84 -year-old chick en fa rm er and weath erm an, waits. He raises the ca p from his h ead,rubbing long weathered f ingers over his scalp as commuters walk around him and off intoBridgehampton. Few realize that he is a watchman of sorts.

For most of his l ife, Hendrickson has carefully measured the weather for this t inyhamlet on eastern Long Island. During that t ime, he has seen the ocean creep in, averagetemperatures r ise and "nor 'easters" tear across this narrow fork of sand jutting 125 milesout into the Atlantic Ocean. To him, these are dangerous climate changes, all symbols ofglobal warming.


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For over 60 years he's collected data that makes him believe the Earth is warming.His figures match those taken by leading scientists around the country:

"I have seen an increase of one degree in 100 years. Now, does that mean that in500 years that we are going to have a climate that is going to be five degrees hotter thanwe have now?" he said. "In that climate, the plants we grow now w on 't grow ."

Hendrickson is a tall man, stooping now after years of tending to hens that waddlea mere 15 inches abov e the earth. His fa ce is ruddy and rou gh like a jagg ed cut of gra nite,sandy with flecks of red spots - skin cancer - brough t on by years of unsh ielded sunsh ine.He has a tightly cropped mustache and wears glasses and dresses in flannel and tandungarees.

Retired now, having sold all his chickens in 1976, he's lived off the value of hisland and indulges in other passions including collecting antique guns. He also continues

to take weather readings for National Weather Service, something he's done since 1930.As a weatherman and casual observer watching the shifting changes on L ong

Island's south fork, Hen drick son's conclusions on global warm ing are at best, raw. H ehas no scientific degrees and actually dropped out of high school at 16. He does ,however, have a lifetime of experience walking over the same shorelines and 67 years ofreading weather gauges for the government. Based on his raw weather data and hisobservations of the ever-shifting coastline, he makes a rather convincing argument thatthe weather on the east end of Long Island is changing. A change, he believes could bedisastrous.


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"Due to the pollution in our upper atmosphere, there will be more tropical storms

at 's going to happen to Long Island? It 's going to wash it away."To make his point, he pointed to a bluff standing a quarter mile away, looking

ront and the rest will be und er w ater ."He was so compelled by his conclusions that the ecological balance on his bit of

Winds of the Fish's Tail, an unpolished collection of historic inform ation,

xperts on global warming.

His book is a microcosm of the global problem. It 's a biography of the weather inBridgehampton, a small resort tow n 100 miles east of Ne w Y ork C ity.

"We've got the changes of seasons four times a year," he said. "And it never gets20 below zero like in other places." Th e reaso n is the coastal effe ct. Brid geh am pton issurrounded by water on three sides and the ocean makes the weather mild the yeararound.

In his book, the weather information tells an interesting story. He reports that theaverage temperature for his com mu nity is 51 degrees, w hich is 1 degree ab ove w hat itwas at the beginning of the century. T hat ec hoe s fin din gs made on the glob al scale.


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Wind speed has also increased. Hendrickson said that the average wind speed onhis end of Long Island has increased fro m 9 mph to 15 m ph. F aster wind s hav eaccelerated soil erosion on the island, he said.

"There's a saying among the farmers here that the top three inches of Long Islandhave blown away into the ocean since the white man took over from the Indians," he said,adding that the added wind is also tearing away at the shoreline . "M othe r Nature ca n'trebuild the sand dunes so we're losing six to seven feet of ocean front every year. Thatadds up."

His book also docum ents a warm ing trend.In it is a graph showing the number of 90 degrees days for each year this century.

During the f irst 30 years of the century, Bridgehampton averaged one day annually; todaythat average is up to three day s.

These are the statistics gathered by Hendrickson, information that the NationalWeather Service has relied on for nearly a century and they merely said thatBridgehampton has a shif ting weather system. Or so says a chicken farmer with a quirkyunderstanding of the weather and a memory for patterns in the sand dunes along theAtlantic Ocean. But is this proof of global warming?

Hansen, the expert, thought so.

Sunny, Soggy and the Rising Tide


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Hansen explained that weather is merely the transfer of water and heat from oneregion to the next. This process begins with evaporation, clouds form, the jet streamblows them eastward and the water vapor turns to rain. To him, turning up the heat onlyspeeds up the process. Like with a pot of water, turning the heat up causes the water torise to a steam a little faster. On the planet, the increased heat m ean s the desert region swill hold w ater less; wetter regio ns will see mor e rain.

Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at National Center for

Atmospheric Researc h at Bou lder, Colo., sum me d it up this wa y: "w ater vapor is thegreat air conditioner of our planet," he said, believing that global warming makes thiscooling process more pronounced .

"Most of the heat from global warming goes into evaporating water which makesthe water vapor very dynamic," Trenberth said. "With the warming, it is going toevaporate quicker, so the droughts are also going to be occurring quicker."

The increase in average temperature means the air at ground level warmer whichcauses mo isture in the soil to evaporate faster. To farm ers, this is especially dang erou sbecause it reduces the tim e for crops to drink th e w ater.

The other end of the water cycle also suffers. Once in the atmosphere, the watervapor blows off towards the Gulf of Mexico. The added water means heavier rains andthe increase chance of floo ding .

"You get heavier rains because there 's more m oisture aro und ," he said. "This iswhat we mean when we say that global warming makes the natural events a little moreextreme."


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Under the worst of cases, farmers would have to move further north aw ay fromthe drier climates. People settled along river banks will have to move to higher ground toadjust for a river that may swell beyond its banks. The economic impacts could bedisastrous.

Scientists also say sea level is rising. This occurs because the increasedtemperature melts glaciers and the polar ice caps, and the added heat causes ocean watersto expand. Since the beginn ing of the century, sea level along the east coast h as risen 15inches, according to Bruce Douglas, of the Laboratory for Coastal Research.

Like so many other aspects of measuring weather, sea level is an arbitrarymeasurement - with low and high tides - but when the average tide rises dramatically,their is substantial coastline erosion.

"When the tide comes it, it pulls at the shoreline like a claw," Douglas said. "Thehigher the tide, the stronger th e claw pulls away at the san d."

So what 's the damage? "Imagine you're building a building with a 30 yearlifetime. If the tide is tearing away two feet of shoreline a year, and your build ing is only30 feet from the shore, you r fo oting s will be gone in half that tim e," he said, ad ding thatdoesn't account for strong storms. "One big storm could come along and knock that[shoreline] out in one ye ar. "

On Long Island, Hendrickson has been watching the tides tear away at theBridgehampton waterfront. One example is a submarine observation tower the CoastGuard constructed on the beach during World War II. The 50-foot-tall tower wasmounted on a concrete base p oure d in the sand 100 feet fro m the ocean. He ndr ickso n


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knew that it was a matter of time before the station was swept away in the tides. Today,only the concrete foundation remains and that can only be spotted at low tide.

That erosion is going on worldw ide.At Han sen 's laboratory, Vivian G rnitz watches the tides and predicts the coastal

future. Using Hansen's estimated increase of three to six degrees, Grnitz, a NASAgeologist, simulated the coastal damage on a supercomputer. She determined that sealevel could rise by another 18 inches.

"It could encroach on the lands by 10 to a hundred times that much," she said.Low lying areas like the bayou country in southern Louisiana, the New Jersey and

Florida coasts, the coastal plains along the Nile River in Egypt and countries like theNetherlands, the Marshall Islands, and Bangladesh would be wiped out.

"If the land is low, it doesn't take much to devastate it," she said.

At the very least, the rise in sea level would force people to migrate to higherground. For impoverished countries like Bangladesh, the results could be devastating.

And then there are the health aspects of a warmer climate.In 1993, the New York State Health Department had a documented case of

malaria in Bayside, Queens. What made this case odd, according to Stan Kondracki, anepidemiologist with the state Health Department, was the fact that the disease wasgenerated locally.

"The air temperature has to be appropriate for the parasite to mature in thisclimate and it is apparent that the tem pera ture was fa vora ble," he said. Ko ndra cki saidthat normally when the state hears of a case of m alaria, it is because the patient hadrecently returned fro m a tropical c limate. W ith the case in Queens, the air temp eratur e in


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the swamps near Bayside was warm enough to allow the malaria parasite to grow locally.A mosquito then transmitted the disease to a resident in Queens.

Tom Skinner, spokesman for the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, said thatcases like the Queens' case are exceedingly rare and that there have only been 76 casesreported in the United States since the 1950s. In recen t years, there have been casesreported in California, Florida, New Jersey, Michigan and Texas.

Dr. Paul R. Epstein from Harvard Medical School, said the cases are examples ofglobal warming and expects that there will be an increase in tropical diseases at higheraltitudes and in more tem perate clima tes.

With the case in Queens, Epstein said the fertile conditions for the parasite had tobe sustained for "this to be locally transmitted. This was not somebody traveling to Indiaand getting sick. This is someone who did not travel. This happened in the swamps near

Bayside."But Kondracki doesn ' t expect any epidemics anyt ime soon."Are we concerned that there 's going to be a monstrous problem? No,"

Kondracki said. "But if you get a red-haired, blue-eyed cop in your emergency room, andhe's got a fever and chills, chances are, the local y oke l doc tor isn 't going to think ma laria.That 's what makes this dangerous."

Policy and Polit ics and the Gentle Butterfly


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Blame it on the Industrial Revolution. Factories prospered, cars covered thehighways, exhaust filled the air. During this century, the atmosphere has surged withgreenhouse gases - generated by the burning o f fossil fue ls which have created atransparent ceiling trappin g hot air near the surface of the planet.

Hansen has a simple solution. Reduce the volum e of greenhouses gases pouringfrom exhaust pipes and the warming trend will end. If the problem was isolated in theUnited States, maybe Hansen would have his way. But this is a global issue and affixingguilt and creating a uniform global policy are arduous tasks.

In the United Nations, a debate has erupted between the developed and theemerging nations. Countries including Canada, France, Japan, the United Kingdom andthe United States among others are pressing for cleaner forms of industry whiledeveloping nations like Korea and Indonesia don't want limitations to slow their growingeconomies.

Canadian Economist James P. Bruce chaired a U.N. research comm ittee thatlooked at the problem. His group determined that by eliminating energy subsidies andtaxing wastefu l use of energy, it wou ld be po ssible to c lean up the atmo sphere. In short,Bruce's group figured that by raising the co st of fossil fuels, industry would burn less ofit. Again, a simple idea. But several cou ntries inclu ding the United States are reluctant torewrite public policy and the em erging nations are w aiting fo r the U.S. to set the exam ple.

This brings the debate back to Washington D.C., where the politics are stalled bymoney from special interest groups. On o ne side, the fos sil fuel industry figh ts chang esmade to tax laws; on the other, the research com mu nity argu es that Con gress m ust not cut


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The Congress thought otherwise. Since Hansen's testimony evoked public interestin the issue turning global warming into a priority. The federal government responded bytripling fundin g for research .

In 1990, for example, the federal government invested $659 million inatmospheric research initiatives, according to the U.S. global Change Research Program.By 1996, the government was investing $1.8 billion. During that period, NASA created aresearch program called Mission to Planet Earth, and Congress appropriated $60 millionto launch the project.

The idea of this proposed multibillion dollar program is to launch a constellationof satellites into the atmo sph ere of the Earth so that scientists can better observ e theecology of the planet. In 1996, Con gres s dedicated $1 billion to it, and by 2 004 , m orethan $13 billion will have been spent on Mission to Planet Earth.

Michaels believes the Mission to Planet Earth project, like global warming, is ascam to perpetuate government-financed atmospheric research projects.

"The real problem here, frankly, is if there wasn't so much m oney chasing thisissue, it wouldn't be an issue," he said. "It 's the money that created this issue and notvisa-versa..."

Hansen has accused Michaels of being short sighted and believes he's beentainted by special interest money. In fact, Michaels admits that he's taken money from thefossil fuel industry to supp ort h is research but contend s that his research is pure.

Somewhere the environment has gotten lost in the debate and last September, itsent another clue. Af ter years of research , Carm ille Parm esan, a biolog ist at Univ ersity ofCalifornia at Santa Barbar a, released a study co ncluding that g lobal w arm ing wa s k illing


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butterflies. She believes that the Edith 's checkerspot butterf ly, which lives in the westernstates, was not adapting its reproduction patterns quickly enough to survive shif ts in theclimate. As a result , thousands were dying.

Hear ing Parmesan 's conclusions, the scient i f ic community erupted, quest ioningher research and her conc lusions . Few th oug ht to conside r the m essag e: In the grea terevolutionary scheme of things, the butterf ly is easily one of the weaker inhabitants of theplanet, and literally like a canary in a coal m ine, the ir dying could be a predilectionwarning us of global warming.

Down on the Farm

I t ' s ear ly M arch and a snow storm b ares down on Kit tery , Me . Although i t ' s be ena mild winter , Barry and Susan Hayes prepare their farm for the worst. Susan collectswood for the woo d burning stove - the only so urce of heat for the farm hou se - and stacksa half cord in an enclosed porch.

Barry Hayes wonders out to the barn to check on the livestock. His is a tiny farm,with several rows of fruit trees, and two pens f il led with chickens and sheep. Outside, the45-year-old farm er walks the h und red feet to the barn, and c limb s a split rail fenc e intothe sheep pen. Two e we s cluster aroun d a ram. A third is hiding inside the barn . Be foresearching for the third animal, he ta kes a pitc hfork and sm ashes thro ugh the ice sealingthe top of frozen water trough. The sheep cluster around to drink as he turns and walkstowards the barn .


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He enters through the opening in the south side of the structure and finds thepregnant sheep lying on its side. Nearby, three dozen Rhode Island Red hens coo andcackle as Haye s kneels to look at the ewe. Th e tem peratu re drops into the 20s and snowflurries fall throug h the opening in the ba rn.

The sheep is in labor but looks healthy. Hayes decides the animal will survive thebirth and opts not to call the veterinarian, a ne edles s ex pense . In a corner of the ba rn, apear-shaped bantam rooster struts through the straw ignoring Hayes.

For over 200 years, the Hayes fam ily have ow ned this land farm ing itintermittently. Barry H ayes said that his fam ily beg an selling of f parcels of the p ropertyto offset the taxes as southern Maine became more crowded. Hayes earns his living as amachinist at the shipyard in Kittery, he also, occasion ally travels to Ne w L ond on, Co nn.,to work on subm arines for the N avy .

He and Susan revived the dormant farm seven years ago to add to their income,but the last several years have been rough and th e cou ple ha ve learned that an imals arevery sensitive to changes in the weather but ha ve fou nd a balance on their farm .

"On a nice day, I'll get a dozen eggs," Susan Hayes said. "But on a shitty day, I'llbe lucky if the hens will give me six. If it ' s really cold, they just tend to give m e less."

In 1993, a drought turned all the green things on their farm brown and BarryHayes had to buy hay to keep the sheep alive, an un exp ected expense. T he warm weath eralso made the sheep mo re susce ptible to paras ites an d the vet had to be brou ght in.

"If he comes out once, i t 's a bad thing ," Barry Ha yes said because of the exp ense."If he comes out twice, yo u'r e d efinitely in the red. Susan and I have learned to livewithout the vet."


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And in 1996, the bitter cold killed a quarter of his flock ."Since then, we've been going away from the high maintenance kinds of sheep,"

Hayes said. "We want animals that are tough."Together, the couple have taught themselves h ow to deal without outside

resources searching the last seven years fo r a routin e an d a balanc e. An y radical s hifts inthe climate - such as heavy storms or sustained dro ugh t - could me an the end of theirtiny farm. But as farmers like McReel and Hayes go about their lives, the policy makersin Washington D.C. continue to allow pollution to reek havoc on the weather, ultimatelyloading the climate dice. To them , the we ather is a mere distraction , not a way of life.

To Hayes and McR eel it 's a lot mo re.On the day of the storm, Barry Hayes kept a w atchfu l eye on The Weather

Channel knowing the network would track the weather. As the barometric pressuredropped, he knew the ewe would respond to the shift in weather.

"W e've learned," Barry Hayes said, "that the ewes will deliver when thebarometric pressure drops. When we saw the storm coming, we knew that her time wascoming."

That night, his premonition came true. As Barry Hay es watched, the ewe bore twokids.

The End


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Michael ScullyGlobal Warming Above Tom's RestaurantHow I foun d it.March 23, 1997

One should be rather select when choosing a topic fo r the m aste r's pro ject. Imean, you're going to be married to this subject matter for the next six months, youmight as well select som ething you en joy .

I decided that I wanted to write about science, technology, business andgovernment. I also figured that I would pick a public topic because this would grant meimmediate access to the reference material. With this understanding, I began looking for atopic in New York City first by searching the research laboratories on the campus andlater by using the Internet. Ima gine m y surprise whe n I discovered a N A SA laboratoryabove To m's R estaurant, just a few blocks from Colum bia.

Knowing that the NA SA Goddard Institute for Space Studies would be my leadinto the project, I decided to fin d out what sort of research they do there . This is thecenter for global warming research, and the director, James Hansen, made the issue apublic one. I contacted him by e-mail immediately and began punching his name into theNexis directory. For the next three months, I gathered information on global warming,Hansen and developed a source list of every scientist wh ose n am e ap peared in an articleon the issue.

I also called Washington and began working the lobbyists. One key source wasOzone Action, which fig hts to protect the ozo ne laye r. Altho ugh this is an entirely


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different issue, I asked them for potential sources and began contacting them. It didn'ttake me long to find out that the arguments over global warming have divided the sciencecommunity.

In December, I began my first draft. Initially, I thought that I would use a doctoralstudent's work on aerosols as the lead into the piece: "here is a young scientist who couldsolve the problem in the fu ture ...." but the draf t turned ou t to be pain fully dry. M yadvisor, Ken Brief, told m e that "it put [him] to sleep" and that I needed to find som eother way of ma king this piece in teresting. No t an easy task.

I asked myself "wha t peop le are most influenced by the weather?" an d startedinterviewing farmers. I put a request out on the Columbia Graduate School of Journalismchat group asking fo r farme rs. I got fo ur responses and called m ost of them . I finallysettled with Shaler McReel, a 39-year-old farmer from New Hampshire. His tour of NewEngland inspired some of my better writing and he became the lead subject of my piece.

I also got lucky. While cold-calling farming sources on Long Island, I uncoveredan 84-year-old chicken farmer who had been recording weather information for theNational Weather Service. Turns out, this old codger had 60 years of data and was soinspired by his finds that he w rote a book about the weather in the Ham pton s.

In late January, I climbed on the Long Island railroad, and although I was very ill,found my way out to Brid geh am pton , N.Y . to talk to this guy. As I stepped o ff the train,I looked into his eyes and saw a good portion of my story. There's nothing like a weatherbeaten man to tell you a goo d story about a chan ging climate. Ju st to look at him, I kn ewthat Richard Hendrickson had a good story to tell.


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Together, we drove out to his farm, he served me fresh chicken and looked at hisweather data. Althoug h th is guy dropped out of high school at 16, he had enou gh lifeexperience to talk about the ch anging climate. H is research helped me tell the story ofglobal warming.

The Internet was also a remarkable resource. During my research, I read a storyabout a scientist in southern C aliforn ia and afte r several telepho ne calls, decided tocontact her by e-mail. She sent m e a sum ma ry of her research on g lobal wa rm ing and th istoo ended up in the piece.

Ultimately, if had to describe the p roces s, I would o ffer this advice. Us e all thetechnical resources available. Y ou w ill find that th e Internet and N exis are am azingresources for information. But don't rely too heavily on technology. A few hours on thetelephone will g ive yo u a lot of useful quotes but the re 's nothing better than standing toe-to-toe with a subject to really get the m eat o f story. Th e rest is jus t luck and imag ination.

Good luck,

Michael Scully

Documents

Global Warming Above Tom's Diner