Questions requiring answers: Global Warming

The discussion regarding global warming has the heated nature of a religious debate, with both sides clinging tenaciously to their views. One gets the sense that if global temperatures dropped to freezing, or rose to boiling, each side would find evidence for its point of view. Some moderation is very much needed to cool down the rhetoric and see if there is something to global warming. As I see it, the scientific evidence for global warming is not so overwhelming that it might shift the burden of proof from those claiming a change, namely those arguing for global warming need to make a strong case. So, on the principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, I submit the following questions:

Is the earth warming? As compared to what? The evidence seems to say yes to the first question, that the Earth is in fact warming over the period of recorded temperatures. Which is to say over, at most, the past couple centuries. There is ample evidence that the Earth has been warmer, even tens of degrees warmer, multiple times in the 2 billion year history of life on the planet. It is not even clear that the current global temperature is greater than the Medieval warm period, when warmer global temperatures had a noticeable effect on agriculture in Europe and other parts of the world. And since the geological and anthropological evidence shows that the temperature of the Earth fluctuates, it is incumbent on global warming supporters to show that the current global warming will continue. A difficult task, made more difficult by the fact that any models of climate have the complications of chaos theory thrown in, making any calculations far out into the future nearly impossible. Chaos(in the scientific sense of the word) makes the weather harder to predict over ten days; how much harder is it to predict over 100 years? Perhaps it is possible to show that the climate models are unaffected by chaos theory, being so large that the chaos simply gets factored out, but that needs to be shown.

Let us assume that the answer to the first question is yes, and that global warming will continue until the earth’s temperature reaches dangerous levels. That brings us to the next question: Is global warming man-made? If this answer is no, we may still need to be concerned about global warming’s effects, but there will not be much we can do if the sun or volcanoes or some other natural phenomenon is the cause of the Earth’s warming. In fact, it will be necessary to create as much economic activity, and therefore wealth, as possible to help combat the deleterious effects of such a warming. Even if global warming is man-made, it still requires answering whether CO2 emissions are the cause of warming. After all, humanity abundantly produces other greenhouse gases more powerful than CO2. Methane has a greenhouse effect something on the order of 100 times as great as CO2.

If global warming is man-made and carbon dioxide is the cause, then one more question remains: Do the positives of global warming outweigh the negatives? Global warming supporters give a lot of focus to the melting glaciers, drowning polar bears, desertification and other ostensible ills caused by global warming. But they seem to forget that a warming planet would have beneficial effects as well. Warmer weather means more rainfall and longer growing seasons, which means agricultural bounty. Places in the far north, like Greenland, are already feeling the effects. A rise in one degree may mean two more weeks of growth, and a bevy of new kinds of plants to sow. A balance needs to be made of both the positive and negative effects of global warming. Moreover, a balance needs to be made of the cost of preventing global warming versus allowing it to happen. After all, it would primarily be man’s economic activities that would contribute most to global warming. We have an global economy based on fossil fuels. That economy fuels much of the waste in the developed nations, but it also feeds billions of poorer people in developing nations. Cheap energy and global trade allows many to move from subsistence farming to more productive and lucrative endeavors, from abject squalor into a much more comfortable, and healthy, existence. A starving man cares little about the state of the environment; he wants solely to provide for himself. That is why Chinese and Indian cities are notably polluted. It takes a certain amount of wealth and productive capacity to be willing to spend it on environmental concerns. Would you begrudge a Nigerian trader his automobile that provides him the money that buys the mosquito nets that keep his children from contracting malaria because it will lead to the destruction of a poison dart frog’s habitat in Nicaragua? Remember that if the poor will bear disproportionately the cost of global warming they too will bear disproportionately the cost of preventing global warming.

We need to move the global warming debate from the level of religious dogma to science, and what the science can bear. The answer to all of the above questions may indeed be yes, and in that case, we have a massive problem that we cannot neglect. Global warming advocates would do well to answer the above questions with well-reasoned and convincing arguments, and then they will have no trouble rallying much of the world to their cause.