THE FUTILITY OF CLIMATE CONTROL ATTEMPTS

REMEMBER THE STATEMENT released (7 December 2001) in Oslo at the centenary celebrations for the Nobel Peace Prize? It was edited by John C. Polyani of Canada (1986 Chemistry Prize); and the 108 signatory Laureates (30 didn't sign) told us that:

"The most profound danger to world peace in the coming years will stem not from the irrational acts of states or individuals but from the legitimate demands of the world's dispossessed. Of these poor and disenfranchised, the majority live a marginal existence in equatorial climates. Global warming, not of their making but originating with the wealthy few, will affect their fragile ecologies most. _. It cannot be expected, therefore, that in all cases they will be content to await the beneficence of the rich. If then we permit the devastating power of modern weaponry to spread through this combustible human landscape, we invite a conflagration that can engulf both rich and poor. _. (W)e must persist in the quest for united action to counter both global warming and a weaponized world."

Never mind that over the last 20 years and more, almost all warming has been north of 30 0N, with little or none in "equatorial climates" (or in the Southern Hemisphere). Never mind that Osama (Long may he live in Peace) was not "poor"; although, as the 17th of 52 siblings, he could have suffered from a poverty of paternal quality time when young. However, you can see why the Laureates are worried. When the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its Third Assessment Report in 2000, the most-publicized conclusions were: an average global surface temperature increase of up to 5.8 degrees Celsius between 1990 and 2100, and (because warm water expands) resultant sea level rise up to 88 centimeters. Frightening!

Greenhouse is a phenomenon of the atmosphere. Human-caused emissions (for example, carbon dioxide from coal-fired power stations) supplement the dominant greenhouse gas, naturally-occurring water vapour, in the atmosphere - and thus intercept a little more of the heat leaving Earth. The lower atmosphere is supposed to warm as a result; and some of this extra warmth should then be redistributed to the surface, rather than escape to Space as before. We call this consequent surface warming the 'greenhouse effect'.

But from 1979 we have satellite records. The lower atmosphere has warmed only a quarter as fast as the surface; and more, not less, heat is now departing the top of the atmosphere. The simplest explanation is that for this 23 years, at least, most surface warming is not 'greenhouse effect' warming! If there is human-caused greenhouse warming as well, it appears confined to continental areas like Alaska/Yukon, and particularly Siberia, under the very cold (and bone dry) high-pressure cells of winter. The result is a slightly longer growing-season - and stronger growth, too, because of a CO2-enriched atmosphere (think commercial greenhouses).

In Europe, the latest manifestations of a long-running ca 1500-year warm/cold cycle are the Roman Empire Warm Period, Dark Ages, Mediaeval Warm Period, and Little Ice Age. The last cold snap of the Little Ice Age was AD1800-20, with a warming trend since. Warmth is better.

Overprinted on this trend were peaks of warming in the 1870s, 1930s and 1990s. After cooling from the 1940s, the latest cyclic warming began with the Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1976/77. This sharp reduction in the upwelling of cold water in the eastern Pacific was the climatic event of the 20th Century; and it was followed by physical and biological changes far beyond the Pacific. The modest 0.6 0C of global-average surface warming during the 20th Century looks like cyclic rebound from the Little Ice Age - overlain by shorter-term cyclicity. What drives these cycles? We don't know; but I bet it's the Sun - not God's wrath, or acts by the "wealthy few".

The UN's World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg discussed at length how to stabilize global climate. And in Mozambique on 1 September 2002, PM Tony Blair said in support "we can defeat climate change if we want to". But all such efforts must fail; because, inevitably, climate will continue its natural fluctuation on many time-scales. Let me repeat: we can't stabilize climate. The same applies to extreme weather events - of course they will keep coming. Prevention is not on; and timely mitigation is the only plausible solution.

Vain attempts to stabilize climate by restricting emission of greenhouse gases will hurt us all economically, and the poor will suffer most. Instead of tilting at greenhouse windmills, the Summit would better have followed the 'Skeptical Environmentalist' Bjorn Lomborg (New York Times, 26 August 2002). He wanted it to concentrate on ways to "provide every person in the world with access to basic health, education, family planning, and water and sanitation services".

Excerpt from here

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