Automakers Shift Gears on Climate Change
and This week, we ask auto companies for their climate positions, we talk with the oceanographer Sylvia Earle, and we look forward to spring (during a snowstorm here in New York). At auto shows and on dealership floors, automakers are quick to talk about the latest green technology electric vehicles, hybrids, even hydrogen cars. But in Washington, the industry is sending a different message. Last month, one of the largest lobbying groups argued that the basic science behind climate change is not to be trusted. In the same filing, the lobbying group, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, also cast doubt on the negative effects of tailpipe pollution on human health. Both arguments go against well-established, widely accepted scientific research. And they represent a significant escalation of the industrys fight to roll back aggressive rules adopted by the Obama administration to rein in tailpipe emissions, a major contributor to air pollution and global warming. The industry argues those rules cost too much and must be relaxed. Quoting news articles and studies, the Alliances filing suggests that climate scientists may be tuning their models to achieve desired results. Nearly every model has been calibrated precisely to the 20th century climate records otherwise it would have ended up in the trash, reads a quote from on climate modeling. Choices and compromises made during the tuning exercise may significantly affect model results, reads another quote from . But the Alliance appears to have cherry-picked such quotes to support its argument against the tailpipe emission standards. Those quotes are accurate, but they are selective and do not accurately represent the entirety of the news story, Paul Voosen, the author of the Science article, said in an email. Any uncertainty in climate modeling, he said, is about the speed of warming how fast sea level and temperature will rise not uncertainty about warmings direction or cause. No, climate scientists do not tune their data to support their conclusions, added Frederic Hourdin, the lead author of the Bulletin study and a researcher at the Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique in Paris. The Alliances document also quotes , which says that most of the hundreds of papers on the relationship between air quality and mortality have serious statistical problems. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology for publishing studies funded by the tobacco industry that blur the links between tobacco smoke and health. The publication lists Dr. Gio B. Gori, an epidemiologist and former tobacco industry consultant now at the Health Policy Center in Bethesda, Md., as its editor. Calls to the center, a private company with no website, went unanswered. This is a deliberate attempt to cast doubt on this science, said Janice Nolen, assistant vice president for national policy at the American Lung Association. Its well established that particulate matter shortens human life. Its a settled issue. Automakers have a long history of fighting regulations on tailpipe emissions. But in 2009, they seemed to turn over a new leaf, working with the Obama administration to design new emissions standards that are some of the toughest in the world. But just a day after Donald J. Trumps election in 2016, and urged a reassessment of emissions rules the group said posed a substantial challenge for the auto industry. The Trump administration is now reviewing those rules, with a decision expected at the end of the month. Automakers have invested billions of dollars to address the climate challenge by successfully increasing fuel efficiency and reducing carbon emissions, Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the Alliance, said in a statement. She declined to comment on whether automakers accept climate science. We asked the automakers the Alliance represents for their own positions on climate change. General Motors, Ford, Fiat Chrysler, Volkswagen, Toyota, Mazda, Mitsubishi Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar Land Rover and Porsche all either did not respond or referred the query to the Alliance. A BMW spokeswoman, Rebecca Kiehne, said the automaker was committed to reducing emissions through improvements in fuel economy but did not address climate science. Honda, which is not an Alliance member, was the only automaker we contacted that clearly acknowledged the reality of human-caused climate change. A spokesman, Chris Martin, said Honda supported the stricter Obama-era rules as well as efforts to curb climate change caused by carbon emissions. Sylvia Earle, 82, is an oceanographer who has spent thousands of hours underwater studying corals, algae and wildlife. She was the first person to walk untethered on the ocean floor a quarter of a mile deep and once for two weeks in a NASA experiment. She also spent two years as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations chief scientist. I interviewed Dr. Earle to ask her whether, having seen what she has seen, she thinks we have time to mitigate climate change. (The following has been condensed and edited for clarity.) There was a period in the 1970s when I dived in an area called Lee Stocking Island, in the Bahamas. We got to know the individual fish and there was one giant boulder, a big brain coral, that was just thriving with life. It was a destination: Lets go see Rainbow Reef and admire that monstrous coral. It was in 1980 that it turned into a snowball [it bleached]. It was shocking. That was climate change in action. I think about poor Galileo, 500 years ago or so, when he had evidence that Earth is not the center of the universe and was ostracized. Now, we have evidence that we are totally dependent on the natural systems that hold the planet steady within the temperature range that is safe for us. You can measure the shrinking Arctic and Antarctic ice. Half the coral reefs have either gone or are in a state of sharp decline. I think its getting easier, because the ocean is beginning to speak for herself. Quoting a former Republican president who was not widely celebrated for his environmental ethic, Ronald Reagan: Protecting the environment is not a liberal or conservative thing, its just common sense. He at least could see the connection between the economy and the environment. When you lose the quality of a place environmentally the trees, the water, the space, the air there are economic and human social consequences. Its taken a longer time for people to realize that the ocean is vast and resilient, but its not too big to fail. This is the best time ever to be around, because we have the power of knowing. Look in the mirror to recognize your personal power. Its a matter of using what youve got. Take a kid out to some wild place and see the world through that childs eyes. Look at the future and imagine youre there, 50 years out. Weve reached a time when we really have to choose between our wants and our needs, and we need a planet that works. Last week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued its , a prediction of broad weather patterns expected in the United States over the next three months. But for much of the country, that look through a climate crystal ball was like looking out the window. Many of the weather patterns in the forecast were already underway before springs arrival this week. For example, NOAAs outlook for the Ohio River Valley and lower Mississippi River calls for minor to moderate flooding over the next few weeks. But the Mississippi has already reached flood stage, a month earlier than usual. Similarly, the Ohio River flooded in February, which was one of the wettest on record in the region. Even as those regions dealt with too much water, too little water plagued Southern California and the Southwest. Ordinarily winter in the region is a relatively wet season, building up water supplies. But this years winter ended in drought, likely aided by the La Nina conditions that began at the end of 2017. La Nina is the yin to El Ninos yang. During a La Nina year, winter temperatures are warmer and drier than normal in the South and cooler than normal in the Northwest. NOAA predicts that parts of California, the Great Plains and the Southeast will remain in drought through at least June. NOAA also expects that the spring will be warmer than usual for the southern two-thirds of the United States, stretching from California into the Northeast. This comes on the heels of a February that was 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average nationwide, and a January that was 2.1 degrees above average. That February was warmer than average may come as a surprise to Northeastern states now slogging through the fourth noreaster in a month. Its perhaps less surprising to those in northern Alaska. On Feb. 20 the temperature in Utqiagvik, formerly known as Barrow and the northernmost town in the United States, was 40 degrees warmer than the historical average. is a climate reporter. She joined The Times in 2008, and was part of the team awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. She previously wrote about Japanese economics, business and technology from Tokyo. is a freelance journalist based in New York and Melbourne, Australia. is a reporter on the climate team. Before joining The Times in 2017, she covered science and the environment for Popular Science.