Re: Right actions, wrong reasons???

["K.K. Prasad" <tnntpr@hermes.tue.nl>]

Dear Tom

I know you are a sceptic about the hoopla that goes on and on about 
global warming. Scepticism is useful if one could produce evidence to 
the contrary. When we are talking about future alas evidence is 
difficult to produce. Thus it is useful to present facts, talk about 
their possible influences for the future and pose questions.

What are the facts? 

One cannot deny the fact that gases like 
carbondioxide, methane etc. absorb infrared radiation but are 
transparent to radiation at other wavelengths. It seems also clear 
that the burning of carbon based fuels (almost all our energy needs 
are met by such fuels) will produce great deal of carbondioxide which 
winds up in the atmosphere. Thus the percentage of carbondioxide in 
the atmosphere can be expected to increase. Thus more solar radiation 
that is incident on the earth gets trapped in the region close to the 
earth. Thus it is resonable to expect that the earth's temperature 
will increase.

The possible influence of such warming has been calculated on the 
basis of elaborate computer models. We can distinguish three groups 
of people among the commentators on the results obtained from these 
models. (i) The believers; (ii) The non-believers; and (iii) The 
couldn't care less crowd (which probably forms the bulk of the 
population of this world!) Depending on your taste you can either 
compare this to the traditonal religious arguments or to the 
most recent exciting saga of Gerge W.Bush vs Al Gore. Luckily the 
Supreme Court of the US intervened and produced a result in the 
second case. There seems to be no equivalent institution to settle 
the dispute among the categories (i) and (ii) above for the present 
discussion.

I put you in the Category (ii) above. Your argument appears to be 
that the category (i) do not know what they are talking about. You 
are probably right about the "green" politicians. But I am sorry that 
the same thing cannot be said about those who work with models. The 
description they provide of the models, the inputs they use and the 
outputs they obtain are all there out in the open if you care to wade 
through the mountain of literature that has been produced on the 
subject.While I concede that I've not done the complete wading, I am 
satisfied that I have done tons more than glancing the customary news 
magazine articles.

Your principle argument appears that there is a natural variation 
in the climate. For example you have spoken about the ice age some 
8000 years back. Maybe one could expect the Arctic ice to melt and 
switch the gulf stream off and Northern Europe may have to contend 
with another ice age. As a matter of fact a former Ph.D. student of 
mine who works at the Medium Range Weather Forecasting Institute 
at Reading in England several years back working with a model came up 
with a scenario which covered entire area of Ireland with ice! 
Needless to say he was laughed out of court including by his dear 
wife. But the point I'm making is that the Arctic Ice is indeed 
melting and its consequences are not yet felt here. It is not 
unreasonable to attribute this to the global warming.

The other argument I have heard in this connection - not from you, as 
far as my memory goes - that the meteorologists do not get the 5 day 
weather forecasting right on so many occasions.  How can one believe 
about what is going to happen 50 to 100 years from now? Well the 
believers say that they are talking about averages not instantaneous 
chasnges involved in weather predictions over the five day periods.

Another contentious question concerns the life time of carbondioxide 
in the atmosphere. There are the aerosols that seem to react with CO2 
and thus reduce its quantity over a period of time. Some CO2 will be 
taken up by the oceans - this however may not be a blessing either. 
There is evidence of destruction of coral reefs and the effect of 
this on fish population doesn't seem to have been assessed as yet.

The major area where there seems to be a great deal of argument is 
the geographical variation in the warming effect. And even more 
serious is the question of distribution of rainfall around the world. 
In this connection there will be higher evaporation from water bodies 
and water vapour is yet another green house gas. Thus the actual 
warming will be higher than what could be expected from just CO2. 

Of course there is the old adage about computer modeling - garbage in 
and garbage out! There is always the question of completeness and the 
accuracy of the input data. People are constantly working to improve 
matters in this regard. But of course there is the counter argument 
especially in this group by Harry Parker that these characters are 
draining public resources in the name of improving prediction from 
their models. 

I really do not see why we should not take precautionary measures. 
While you work on renewables, according to you the economic reasons 
are imperative. I regret to say that I concur with those who refer to 
economics as that "dismal science". If it were just economics the oil 
companies will say that there is plenty more oil if you are willing 
to pay for it. That is precisely the argument of the aficianados of 
the renewables. 

In my view it is not sufficient to press for renewables. It is not 
sufficient to push for conservation of energy through more efficient 
technologies. There needs to be a reduction in the end uses of 
energy. Things can go haywire if everybody in this world adopts the 
American way. That seems to be the driving principle behind the 
globalization of economies. Maybe the global warming is not the only 
reason for reducing the use of fossil fuels. But I do not agree that 
it is the wrong reason for pushing the renewables, conservation and 
more modest styles of living.

Prasad                                         
                                             
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