ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS

Environ. Res. Lett. 2 (2007) 024002 (6pp) doi:10.1088/1748-9326/2/2/024002

 

Scientific reticence and sea level rise

J E Hansen

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025, USA

Received 23 March 2007

Accepted for publication 3 May 2007

Published 24 May 2007

Online at stacks.iop.org/ERL/2/024002

 

Abstract

I suggest that a 'scientific reticence' is inhibiting the communication of a threat of a potentially large sea level rise. Delay is dangerous because of system inertias that could create a situation with future sea level changes out of our control. I argue for calling together a panel of scientific leaders to hear evidence and issue a prompt plain-written report on current understanding of the

sea level change issue.

 

Keywords: sea level, global warming, glaciology, ice sheets

 

1. Introduction

I suggest that 'scientific reticence', in some cases, hinders communication with the public about dangers of global warming. If I am right, it is important that policy-makers recognize the potential influence of this phenomenon.

Scientific reticence may be a consequence of the scientific method. Success in science depends on objective skepticism.

Caution, if not reticence, has its merits. However, in a case such as ice sheet instability and sea level rise, there is a danger in excessive caution. We may rue reticence, if it serves to lock in future disasters.

 

Barber (1961) describes a 'resistance by scientists to scientific discovery', with a scholarly discussion of several sources of cultural resistance. There are aspects of the phenomenon that Barber discusses in the 'scientific reticence' that I describe, but additional factors come into play in the case of global climate change and sea level rise.

 

Another relevant discussion is that of 'behavioral discounting' (Hariri et al 2006), also called 'delay discounting' (Axtell and McRae 2006). Concern about the danger of 'crying wolf ' is more immediate than concern about the danger of

'fiddling while Rome burns'. It is argued in the referenced discussions that there is a preference for immediate over delayed rewards, which may contribute to irrational reticence even among rational scientists.

 

I can illustrate 'scientific reticence' best via personal ex-periences. The examples are relevant to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) process of assessing the state of the science, specifically to the issue of possible sea level rise.

2. The court case

 

'Scientific reticence' leapt to mind as I was being questioned, and boxed-in, by a lawyer for the plaintiff in Automobile Manufacturers versus California Air Resources Board (Auto Manufacturers 2006). I conceded that I was not a glaciologist.

The lawyer then, with aplomb, requested that I identify glaciologists who agreed publicly with my assertion that the sea level was likely to rise more than one meter this century if greenhouse gas emissions followed an IPCC business-as-usual

(BAU) scenario: 'Name one!' I could not, instantly. I was dismayed, because, in

conversation and e-mail exchange with relevant scientists I sensed a deep concern about likely consequences of BAU global warming for ice sheet stability. What would be the legal standing of such a lame response as 'scientific reticence'?

Why would scientists be reticent to express concerns about something so important?

 

I suspect the existence of what I call the 'John Mercer effect'. Mercer (1978) suggested that global warming from burning of fossil fuels could lead to disastrous disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet, with a sea level rise of several

meters worldwide. This was during the era when global warming was beginning to get attention from the United States Department of Energy and other science agencies. I noticed that scientists who disputed Mercer, suggesting that his paper was alarmist, were treated as being more authoritative.

It was not obvious who was right on the science, but it seemed to me, and I believe to most scientists, that the scientists preaching caution and downplaying the dangers of climate change fared better in receipt of research funding.

 

 

Drawing attention to the dangers of global warming may or may not have helped increase funding for relevant scientific areas, but it surely did not help individuals like Mercer who stuck their heads out. I could vouch for that from my own experience. After I published a paper (Hansen et al 1981) that described likely climate effects of fossil fuel use, the Department of Energy reversed a decision to fund our research, specifically highlighting and criticizing aspects of that paper

at a workshop in Coolfont, West Virginia and in publication (MacCracken 1983).

 

I believe there is a pressure on scientists to be conservative. Papers are accepted for publication more readily if they do not push too far and are larded with

caveats. Caveats are essential to science, being born in skepticism, which is essential to the process of investigation and verification. But there is a question of degree. A tendency for 'gradualism' as new evidence comes to light may be ill-

suited for communication, when an issue with a short time fuse is concerned.

 

However, these matters are subjective. I could not see how to prove the existence of a 'scientific reticence' about ice sheets and sea level. Score one for the plaintiff, and their ally and 'friend of the court', the United States federal government.

 

3. On the ice

 

A field glaciologist, referring to a moulin on Greenland, said: 'the whole damned ice sheet is going to go down that hole!' He was talking about his expectations, under the assumption of continued unchecked growth of global greenhouse gas

emissions. Field glaciologists have been doing a good job of reporting current trends on the ice sheets. It is the translation of field data into conclusions needed by the public and policymakers that is at issue.

Ice sheet disintegration, unlike ice sheet growth, is a wet process that can proceed rapidly. Multiple positive feedbacks accelerate the process once it is underway. These feedbacks occur on and under the ice sheets and in the nearby oceans.

A key feedback on the ice sheets is the 'albedo flip' (Hansen et al 2007) that occurs when snow and ice begin to melt. Snow-covered ice reflects back to space most of the sunlight striking it. However, as warming causes melting on the surface, the darker wet ice absorbs much more solar energy.

Most of the resulting melt water burrows through the ice sheet, lubricates its base, and thus speeds the discharge of icebergs to the ocean (Zwally et al 2002).

The area with summer melt on Greenland increased from 450 000 km 2 when satellite observations began in 1979 to more than 600 000 km2 in 2002 (Steffen et al 2004). A

linear fit to data for 1992-2005 yields an increase of melt area of 40 000 km2 /year (Tedesco 2007), but this rate may be exaggerated by the effect of stratospheric aerosols from the 1991 volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo, which reduced the summer melt in 1992. Summer melt on West Antarctica has received less attention than on Greenland, but it is more important. Satellite QuickSCAT radiometer observations reveal increasing areas of summer melt on West Antarctica and an increasing melt season length during the period 1999-2005

(Nghiem et al 2007).

 

The key role of the ocean, in the matter of ice sheet stability, is as a conduit for excess global-scale heating that eventually leads to the melting of ice. The process begins with increasing human-made greenhouse gases, which cause the atmosphere to be more opaque at infrared wavelengths. The increased atmospheric opacity causes heat radiation to space to emerge from a higher level, where it is colder, thus decreasing the radiation of heat to space. As a result, the Earth is now out of energy balance by between 0.5 and 1 W m?2 (Hansen et al 2005).

 

This planetary energy imbalance is itself now sufficient

to melt ice corresponding to one meter of sea level rise per

decade, if the energy were used entirely for that purpose

(Hansen et al 2005). However, so far most of the excess

energy has been going into the ocean. Acceleration of ice sheet

disintegration requires tapping into ocean heat, which occurs

primarily in two ways (Hansen 2005): (1) increased velocity

of outlet glaciers (flowing in rock-walled channels) and ice

streams (bordered mainly by slower moving ice), and thus

increased flux and subsequent melting of icebergs discharged

to the open ocean, and (2) direct contact of ocean and ice sheet

(underneath and against fringing ice shelves). Ice loss from the

second process has a positive feedback on the first process: as

buttressing ice shelves melt, the ice stream velocity increases.

Positive feedback from the loss of buttressing ice shelves

is relevant to some Greenland ice streams, but the West

Antarctic ice sheet, which rests on bedrock well below sea level

(Thomas et al 2004), will be affected much more. The loss of

ice shelves provides exit routes with reduced resistance for ice

from further inland, as suggested by Mercer (1978) and earlier

by Hughes (1972). Warming ocean waters are now thinning

some West Antarctic ice shelves by several meters per year

(Payne et al 2004, Shepherd et al 2004).

The Antarctic peninsula recently provided a laboratory to

study feedback interactions, albeit for ice volumes less than

those in the major ice sheets. Combined actions of surface

melt (Van den Broeke 2005) and ice shelf thinning from below

(Shepherd et al 2003) led to the sudden collapse of the Larsen

B ice shelf, which was followed by the acceleration of glacial

tributaries far inland (Rignot et al 2004, Scambos et al 2004).

The summer warming and melt that preceded the ice shelf

collapse (Fahnestock et al 2002, Vaughan et al 2003) was

no more than the global warming expected this century under

BAU scenarios, and only a fraction of expected West Antarctic

warming with realistic polar amplification of global warming.

Modeling studies yield increased ocean heat uptake

around West Antarctica and Greenland due to increasing

human-made greenhouse gases (Hansen et al 2006b).

 

Observations show a warming ocean around West Antarctica

(Shepherd et al 2004), ice shelves thinning several meters

per year (Rignot and Jacobs 2002, Payne et al 2004), and

increased iceberg discharge (Thomas et al 2004). As the

discharge of ice increases from a disintegrating ice sheet, as

occurs with all deglaciations, regional cooling by the icebergs

is significant, providing a substantial but temporary negative

feedback (Hansen 2005). However, this cooling effect is

limited on a global scale as shown by comparison with the

planetary energy imbalance, which is now sufficient to melt

ice equivalent to about one meter of sea level per decade (table

S1 of Hansen et al 2005). Yet the planetary energy imbalance

should not be thought of as a limit on the rate of ice melt, as

increasing iceberg discharge yields both positive and negative

feedbacks on planetary energy imbalance via ocean surface

cooling and resulting changes of sea ice and cloud cover.

 

Global warming should also increase snowfall accumula-

tion rates in ice sheet interiors because of the higher moisture

content of the warming atmosphere. Despite high variability

on interannual and decadal timescales, and limited Antarctic

warming to date, observations tend to support this expecta-

tion for both Greenland and Antarctica (Rignot and Thomas

2002, Johannessen et al 2005, Davis et al 2005, Monaghan

et al 2006). Indeed, some models (Wild et al 2003) have ice

sheets growing overall with global warming, but those models

do not include realistic processes of ice sheet disintegration.

Extensive paleoclimate data confirm the common sense expec-

tation that the net effect is for ice sheets to shrink as the world

warms.

 

The most compelling data for the net change of ice sheets

is provided by the gravity satellite mission GRACE, which

shows that both Greenland (Chen et al 2006) and Antarctica

(Velicogna and Wahr 2006) are losing mass at substantial rates.

The most recent analyses of the satellite data (Klosco) confirm

that Greenland and Antarctica are each losing mass at a rate of

about 150 cubic kilometers per year, with the Antarctic mass

loss primarily in West Antarctica. These rates of mass loss

are at least a doubling of rates of several years earlier, and

only a decade earlier these ice sheets were much closer to mass

balance (Cazenave 2006).

The Antarctic data are the most disconcerting. Warming

there has been limited in recent decades, at least in part due

to the effects of ozone depletion (Shindell and Schmidt 2004).

The fact that West Antarctica is losing mass at a significant rate

suggests that the thinning ice shelves are already beginning

to have an effect on ice discharge rates. Warming of the

ocean surface around Antarctica (Hansen et al 2006a) is small

compared with the rest of world, consistent with climate model

simulations (IPCC 2007), but that limited warming is expected

to increase (Hansen et al 2006b). The detection of recent,

increasing summer surface melt on West Antarctica (Nghiem

et al 2007) raises the danger that feedbacks among these

processes could lead to nonlinear growth of ice discharge from

Antarctica.

 

4. Urgency: this problem is nonlinear!

 

IPCC business-as-usual (BAU) scenarios are constructs in

which it is assumed that emissions of CO2 and other

greenhouse gases will continue to increase year after year.

Some energy analysts take it as almost a law of physics

that such growth of emissions will continue in the future.

Clearly, there is not sufficiently widespread appreciation of

the implications of putting back into the air a large fraction

of the carbon stored in the ground over epochs of geologic

time. Climate forcing due to these greenhouse gases would

dwarf the climate forcing for any time in the past several

hundred thousand years, when accurate records of atmospheric

composition are available from ice cores.

However, the long-term global cooling and increase of

global ice through the Plio-Pleistocene provides an even more

poignant illustration of the implications of continued BAU

burning of fossil fuels. The global oxygen isotope record

of benthic (deep ocean dwelling) foraminifera compiled by

Lisiecki and Raymo (2005), repeated in figure 10a of Hansen

et al (2007) for comparison with solar insolation changes

over the same period, reveals long-term cooling and sea level

fall, with superposed oscillations at a dominant frequency of

41 ky. The long-term cooling presumably is due, at least

in part, to the drawdown of atmospheric CO2 by weathering

that accompanied and followed the rapid growth of the Andes

(Ghosh et al 2006) and Himalayas (Raymo and Ruddiman

1992), which was most rapid in the late Miocene. Changes in

meridional heat transport may have contributed to the climate

trend (Rind and Chandler 1991), but the CO2 amount providing

a global positive forcing seems unlikely to have been more

than approximately 350-450 ppm (Dowsett et al 1994, Raymo

et al 1996, Crowley 1996). The global mean temperature three

million years ago was only 2-3 ? C warmer than today (Crowley

1996, Dowsett et al 1996), while the sea level was 25 ± 10 m

higher (Wardlaw and Quinn 1991, Barrett et al 1992, Dowsett

et al 1994).

 

The Plio-Pleistocene record compiled by Lisiecki and

Raymo (2005) is fascinating to paleoclimatolgists as it clearly

shows the expected dominance of global climate variations

with the 41 ky cyclic variation of the tilt of the Earth's spin axis,

increased tilt melting ice at both poles. When the planetary

cooling reached a degree that allowed a large mid-latitude

Northern Hemisphere (Laurentide) ice sheet, the periodicity

necessarily became more complex, because of the absence of

land area for a similar ice sheet in the Southern Hemisphere

(Hansen et al 2007). However, the information of practical

importance from the Plio-Pleistocene record is the implication

of dramatic global climate change with only moderate global

climate forcing. With global warming of only 2-3 ? C and CO2

of perhaps 350-450 ppm it was a dramatically different planet,

without Arctic sea ice in the warm seasons and with a sea level

25 ± 10 m higher.

 

Assuming a nominal 'Charney' climate sensitivity of 3 ? C

equilibrium global warming for doubled CO2 , BAU scenarios

yield a global warming at least of the order of 3 ? C by the

end of this century. However, the Charney sensitivity is

the equilibrium (long-term) global response when only fast

feedback processes (changes of sea ice, clouds, water vapor

and aerosols in response to climate change) are included

(Hansen et al 2007). Actual global warming would be larger

as slow feedbacks come into play. Slow feedbacks include

increased vegetation at high latitudes, ice sheet shrinkage, and

terrestrial and marine greenhouse gas emissions in response to

global warming.

 

In assessing the likely effects of a warming of 3 ? C, it is

useful to note the effects of the 0.7 C warming in the past

century (Hansen et al 2006a). This warming already produces

large areas of summer melt on Greenland and significant melt

3Environ. Res. Lett. 2 (2007) 024002 J E Hansen

on West Antarctica. Global warming of several more degrees,

with its polar amplification, would have both Greenland and

West Antarctica bathed in summer melt for extended melt

seasons.

 

The IPCC (2007) midrange projection for sea level rise

this century is 20-43 cm (8-17 inches) and its full range is 18-

59 cm (7-23 inches). The IPCC notes that they are unable to

evaluate possible dynamical responses of the ice sheets, and

thus do not include any possible 'rapid dynamical changes in

ice flow'. Yet the provision of such specific numbers for sea

level rise encourages a predictable public response that the

projected sea level change is moderate, and smaller than in

IPCC (2001). Indeed, there have been numerous media reports

of 'reduced' sea level rise predictions, and commentators have

denigrated suggestions that business-as-usual greenhouse gas

emissions may cause a sea level rise of the order of meters.

However, if these IPCC projected rates of sea level rise are

taken as predictions of actual sea level rise, as they have been

by the public, they suggest that the ice sheets can miraculously

survive a BAU climate forcing assault for a period of the order

of a millennium or longer. This is not entirely a figment of the

IPCC decision to provide specific numbers for only a portion of

the problem, while demurring from any quantitative statement

about the most important (dynamical) portion of the problem.

Undoubtedly there are glaciologists who anticipate such long

response times, because their existing ice sheet models have

been designed to match paleoclimate changes, which occur on

millennial timescales.

 

 

 

 

However, Hansen et al (2007) show that the typical 6 ky

timescale for paleoclimate ice sheet disintegration reflects the

half-width of the shortest of the weak orbital forcings that drive

the climate change, not an inherent timescale of ice sheets

for disintegration. Indeed, the paleoclimate record contains

numerous examples of ice sheets yielding a sea level rise of

several meters per century, with forcings smaller than that of

the BAU scenario. The problem with the paleoclimate ice sheet

models is that they do not generally contain the physics of ice

streams, effects of surface melt descending through crevasses

and lubricating basal flow, or realistic interactions with the

ocean.

 

Rahmstorf (2007) has noted that if one uses the observed

sea level rise of the past century to calibrate a linear projection

of future sea level, BAU warming will lead to a sea level rise of

the order of one meter in the present century. This is a useful

observation, as it indicates that the sea level change would

be substantial even without the nonlinear collapse of an ice

sheet. However, this approach cannot be taken as a realistic

way of projecting the likely sea level rise under BAU forcing.

The linear approximation fits the past sea level change well

for the past century only because the two terms contributing

significantly to sea level rise were (1) thermal expansion of

ocean water and (2) melting of alpine glaciers.

Under BAU forcing in the 21st century, the sea level

rise surely will be dominated by a third term: (3) ice sheet

disintegration. This third term was small until the past few

years, but it is has at least doubled in the past decade and

is now close to 1 mm/year, based on the gravity satellite

measurements discussed above. As a quantitative example,

let us say that the ice sheet contribution is 1 cm for the

decade 2005-15 and that it doubles each decade until the West

Antarctic ice sheet is largely depleted. That time constant

yields a sea level rise of the order of 5 m this century. Of

course I cannot prove that my choice of a ten-year doubling

time for nonlinear response is accurate, but I am confident that

it provides a far better estimate than a linear response for the

ice sheet component of sea level rise under BAU forcing.

 

An important point is that the nonlinear response could

easily run out of control, because of positive feedbacks and

system inertias. Ocean warming and thus melting of ice

shelves will continue after growth of the forcing stops, because

the ocean response time is long and the temperature at depth

is far from equilibrium for current forcing. Ice sheets also

have inertia and are far from equilibrium: and as ice sheets

disintegrate their surface moves lower, where it is warmer,

subjecting the ice to additional melt. There is also inertia in

energy systems: even if it is decided that changes must be

made, it may require decades to replace infrastructure.

 

The nonlinearity of the ice sheet problem makes it

impossible to accurately predict the sea level change on a

specific date. However, as a physicist, I find it almost

inconceivable that BAU climate change would not yield a sea

level change of the order of meters on the century timescale.

The threat of a large sea level change is a principal element in

our argument (Hansen et al 2006a, 2006b, 2007) that the global

community must aim to keep additional global warming less

than 1 ? C above the 2000 temperature, and even 1 ? C may be

too great. In turn, this implies a CO2 limit of about 450 ppm,

or less. Such scenarios are dramatically different than BAU,

requiring almost immediate changes to get on a fundamentally

different energy and greenhouse gas emissions path.

 

5. Reticence

 

Is my perspective on this problem really so different than that

of other members of the relevant scientific community? Based

on interactions with others, I conclude that there is not such

a great gap between my position and that of most, or at least

much, of the relevant community. The apparent difference may

be partly a natural reticence to speak out, which I attempt to

illuminate via specific examples.

 

In the late 1980s, an article (Kerr 1989) titled 'Hansen vs.

the World on the Greenhouse Threat', reported on a scientific

conference in Amherst, MA. One may have surmised strong

disagreement with my assertion (to Congress) that the world

had entered a period of strong warming due to human-made

greenhouse gases. But participants told Kerr 'if there were a

secret ballot at this meeting on the question, most people would

say the greenhouse warming is probably there'. And 'what

bothers us is that we have a scientist telling Congress things

that we are reluctant to say ourselves'.

 

That article made me notice right away a difference

between scientists and 'normal people'. A non-scientist friend

from my hometown, who had congratulated me after my

congressional testimony, felt bad after he saw the article by

Kerr. He obviously believed that I had been shown to be

wrong. However, I thought Kerr did a good job of describing

the various perspectives, and made it clear, at least between the

lines, that differences were as much about reticence to speak as

about scientific interpretations.

 

IPCC reports may contain a reticence in the sense of

being extremely careful about making attributions. This

characteristic is appropriately recognized as an asset that

makes the IPCC conclusions authoritative and widely accepted.

It is probably a necessary characteristic, given that the IPCC

document is produced as a consensus among most nations in

the world and represents the views of thousands of scientists.

Kerr (2007) describes a specific relevant example, whether

the IPCC should include estimates of dynamical ice sheet

loss in their projections: 'too poorly understood, IPCC

authors said', and 'overly cautious-(dynamical effects) could

raise sea level much faster than IPCC was predicting' some

scientists responded. Kerr goes on to say 'almost immediately,

new findings have emerged to support IPCC's conservative

position'. Glaciologist Richard Alley, an IPCC lead author,

said 'Lots of people were saying we IPCC authors should

extrapolate into the future, but we dug our heels in at the IPCC

and said that we don't know enough to give an answer'.

 

6. Our legacy

 

 

Reticence is fine for the IPCC. And individual scientists can

choose to stay within a comfort zone, not needing to worry

that they say something that proves to be slightly wrong. But

perhaps we should also consider our legacy from a broader

perspective. Do we not know enough to say more?

 

Confidence in a scientific inference can be built from many

factors. For climate change these include knowledge gained

from studying paleoclimate changes, analysis of how the

Earth has responded to forcings on various timescales, climate

simulations and tests of these against observations, detailed

study of climate change in recent decades and how the nature of

observed change compares with expectations, measurements

of changes in atmospheric composition and calculation of

implied climate forcings, analysis of ways in which climate

response varies among different forcings, quantitative data

on different feedback processes and how these compare with

expectations, and so on.

 

Can the broader perspective drawn from various sources

of information allow us to 'see the forest for the trees',

to 'separate the wheat from the chaff '? That a glacier

on Greenland slowed after speeding up, used as 'proof '

that reticence is appropriate, is little different than the

common misconception that a cold weather snap disproves

global warming. Spatial and temporal fluctuations are

normal. Moreover, short-term expectations for Greenland

glaciers are different from long-term expectations for West

Antarctica. Integration via the gravity satellite measurements

puts individual glacier fluctuations in a proper perspective. The

broader picture gives a strong indication that ice sheets will,

and are already beginning to, respond in a nonlinear fashion

to global warming. There is enough information now, in my

opinion, to make it a near certainty that IPCC BAU climate

forcing scenarios would lead to a disastrous multi-meter sea

level rise on the century timescale.

 

Almost four decades ago Eipper (1970), in a section of his

paper titled 'The Scientist's Role', provided cogent advice and

wisdom about the responsibility of scientists to warn the public

about the potential consequences of human activities. Eipper

recognized sources of scientific reticence, but he concluded

that scientists should not shrink from exercising their rights as

citizens and responsibilities as scientists. Climate change adds

additional imperative to Eipper's thesis, which was developed

with reference to traditional air and water pollution. Positive

climate feedbacks and global warming already 'in the pipeline'

due to climate system inertia together yield the possibility

of climate 'tipping points' (Hansen et al 2006b, 2007), such

that large additional climate change and climate impacts are

possible with little additional human-made forcing. Such

a system demands early warnings and forces the concerned

scientist to abandon the comfort of waiting for incontrovertible

confirmations.

 

There is, in my opinion, a huge gap between what

is understood about human-made global warming and its

consequences, and what is known by the people who most need

to know, the public and policy makers. The IPCC is doing a

commendable job, but we need something more. Given the

reticence that the IPCC necessarily exhibits, there need to be

supplementary mechanisms. The onus, it seems to me, falls on

us scientists as a community.

 

Important decisions are being made now and in the near

future. An example is the large number of new efforts to make

liquid fuels from coal, and a resurgence of plans for energy-

intensive 'cooking' of tar-shale mountains to squeeze out liquid

hydrocarbon fuels. These are just the sort of actions needed to

preserve a BAU greenhouse gas path indefinitely. We know

enough about the carbon cycle to say that at least of the order

of a quarter of the CO2 emitted in burning fossil fuels under

a BAU scenario will stay in the air for an eternity, the latter

defined practically as more than 500 years. Readily available

conventional oil and gas are enough to take atmospheric CO2

to a level of the order of 450 ppm.

In this circumstance it seems vital that we provide the

best information we can about the threat to the great ice sheets

posed by human-made climate change. This information, and

appropriate caveats, should be provided publicly, and in plain

language. The best suggestion I can think of is for the National

Academy of Sciences to carry out a study, in the tradition of

the Charney and Cicerone reports on global warming. I would

be glad to hear alternative suggestions.

Acknowledgments

I thank Tad Anderson, Mark Bowen, Svend Brandt-Erichsen,

Jonathan Gregory, Jost Heintzenberg, John Holdren, Ines

Horovitz, Bruce Johansen, Ralph Keeling, John Lyman, Len

Ornstein, Maureen Raymo, Christopher Shuman, Richard

Somerville, and Bob Thomas for comments on a draft version

of this letter.

 

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6

 

 

--

 

"While a bubble is inflating, reckless lending seems merely bold, and appropriately well-rewarded. Deteriorating credit quality is easy to conceal so long as the price of property and other assets offered as collateral is going up. The growth in lending fuels demand, so economic growth stays high as well. That reinforces the government's reputation for competence, so the boom continues."

 

The Economist, "A cruel sea of capital : A survey of global finance," May 3rd, 2003.

 

 

 

 

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