May
05 , 2006
Global
Warming
I just returned
from vacation in Hawaii where I read a very interesting
book on global warming, written by Tim Flannery.
It’s called “The Weather Makers.”
Tim Flannery has written a great addition to the
debate on perhaps the most difficult and important
question of global public policy, namely, are
humans responsible for climate change, and do
we need to do something about it right now?
This is in fact a very complex scientific question,
and Flannery is certainly in the camp that would
answer yes. He has written a thorough and well-argued
brief for his position. He is clearly familiar
with the range of scientific evidence that has
been developed, and he does an excellent job of
making it understandable and accessible to the
average intelligent layperson.
In brief, Flannery shows that our modern industries,
based on fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural
gas, are generating so much carbon dioxide that
they are raising the concentration of that gas
in our atmosphere at a significant rate. Carbon
dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps the heat
energy of sunshine and warms the Earth. By raising
the concentration from 280 ppm to 380 ppm over
the last century, Flannery argues that we are
having a significant impact on the atmosphere
and climate. Business as usual will push this
number over 750 by the end of the century, and
lead to so much warming that we will face significant
environmental catastrophe.
Flannery is on his strongest ground when he describes
the impact of warming on biodiversity. While the
environment has weathered much climate change
in the past (e.g. for much of Earth's history
we had no polar icecaps, and even in the last
million years we have had repeated ice ages come
and go), the cold-adapted species would have nowhere
to run in a warmer world. Tropical mountaintops
and the polar regions have very vulnerable biodiversity
that could not stand much warming.
Flannery is weak in a few areas. He overstates
the vulnerability of human society to climate
change. There is a reason why malaria does not
occur in Hawaii or Singapore, and that is wealth
and resources. Human society will grow much wealthier
over the next century and this will provide ample
resources to adapt to climate change. The global
economy is growing at about 4% per year, and even
at 3% per year, we will transform our current
global economy of 35 trillion dollars into one
over 600 trillion dollars by 2100. That will certainly
make it affordable for all of humanity to survive
climate change.
The biggest weakness of the book is that although
Flannerty is intending to write the definitive
argument in favor of immediate action, he does
not address a number of serious objections to
the scenario of doom that he posits. Although
some global warming skeptics are shills for coal
and oil producers, not all of them are. Richard
Lindzen is a respected atmospheric scientist at
MIT, and his arguments are not addressed, and
another reputable scientist, Fred Singer, is dismissed,
incorrectly, as a Moonie (not sure how that is
relevant anyway). Lindzen has argued that the
theoretical basis of global warming, the "global
circulation models" that are used to model
and predict the long-range climate outlook, are
simply not good enough to answer the question
at hand, and to rely on them to make this huge
public policy decision is flawed.
Another major critic of immediate action is Bjorn
Lomborg, a statistician in Denmark and author
of the book "The Skeptical Environmentalist".
Lomborg accepts the basic theory of global warming,
but argued that the IPCC scenarios for global
warming are flawed and exaggerated by three critical
factors. They overestimate human population growth
in the coming century, they use market exchange
rates rather than purchasing power rates to estimate
the size and predict the growth of Third World
economies (these make for huge errors in India
and China's predicted emissions), and they assume
both massive increases in fossil fuel use along
with persistent low prices, something we can see
is unrealistic. Lomborg argues that if one uses
correct assumptions, and takes into account the
dampening effect of rising prices and falling
costs of solar and wind power, we will never reach
the doomsday scenarios.
Flannery should have addressed these major issues
to strengthen his own case. Even still, his is
a very important contribution to this issue, and
should be read by those who are true believers
and by skeptics with an open mind. The future
may depend on it. Comments can reach me at Nali@socal.rr.com.
