Editorial Comment

	Vol. 226 No. 7
PERRY A. FISCHER, EDITOR

Solo warming. The reason I’m writing this is because it suddenly occurred to me that I do not personally know anyone who would advise me to do so, let alone agree with it; quite the contrary. Much of that is probably because I live in Texas and work in the oilpatch, so to speak. I’m referring, of course, to global warming. Notice that I did not call it the more politically correct, mushy term, climate change.

It has always struck me as odd, how folks with absolutely no scientific training, as well as people well out of their field of expertise, will have strongly held beliefs about things that they know little or nothing about. They typically are educated by the press, by columnists like me who know as little as themselves, and especially by ideological sources with a strange ax to grind.

I do not hold a heartfelt opinion on matters that I am not well schooled in and, more importantly, matters that cannot possibly achieve certainty, since they deal with an uncertain future. CO₂, CH₄ and H₂O: To me, these are just molecules with well-known greenhouse properties. A wealth of non-political, credible sources are now telling me that global warming is true or, at least, true enough.

On the main points, there is now so little disagreement that it makes me wonder what’s really at the root of the dispute. Forget unanimity; you can always find a few scientists who will disagree with the most basic theories, whether it’s plate tectonics, the age of the earth, evolution, and so on. On global warming, nearly everyone agrees that: the planet has, on average, grown a degree or so warmer over the last century or so; direct measurements of atmospheric CO₂ have shown a substantial increase during the last 50 years, while the rate of increase has tripled; CO₂, methane, water vapor and N₂O are greenhouse gases; most of the world’s glaciers are melting; the Arctic ice cap is thinning; over geologic time scales, the Earth has experienced climate variations that exceed the present condition; and, no matter what anyone does, the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gasses will continue to increase for decades.

The disagreements are mostly about fine points: disagreement over the decimal point on that one-point-something degree (F) rise; whether even strict adherence to the Koyoto Protocol would matter much, given that the so-called developing nations are exempt; whether world economic growth, particularly in the US, would be stifled.

Recent news on this point is that it is relatively cheap. That finding by the US’ EIA, an arm of the DOE, contradicts President Bush’s repeated statements that limits on greenhouse gases would seriously harm the US economy. EIA estimated the cost to each household, using a market-based approach to limit greenhouse gases, would be $78 a year, from 2006 to 2025. That would reduce the gross domestic product in 2025 by about one-tenth of one percent, it said.

Another disagreement is whether CO₂ increases are self-limiting. Perhaps. It depends on how long the world uses carbon fuel-based energy sources without CO₂ sequestration. But whether sequestered CO₂ would stay put is still unanswered. Costs are mostly guesses at this point, with just a handful of purely CO₂ sequestration experiments available, such as Norway’s Sleipner field.

Sequestration aside, as fossil fuels are finite resources, wouldn’t their eventual, natural decline result in less CO₂? The answer, of course, is “yes,” but eventually might be measured in centuries, given that one of the main, proven roads to continued, relatively cheap energy is paved with coal, shale oil, tar and heavy oil.

Then there’s the retort, “Limiting greenhouse gas emissions is useless unless you get the developing nations to sign off on it as well.” To me, this is sort of like saying, “I’m going to continue to drive my Hummer Barn-On-Wheels model, unless Mali agrees to put emission control devices on their camel dung-burning stoves.”

Then there’s the scientific question: Is global warming part of natural variability? That’s a great scientific question that should be pursued for centuries. However I do not see it as a potential call for inaction. It’s like two guys on a mountaintop, holding a 5-gallon can of gas, with a fire encircling the base of the mountain. One guy suggests burying the gas in the ground, while the other wants to first know whether the fire was due to natural causes, such as lightening or swamp gas, or manmade causes, such as cigarettes or campfires. At the very least, you know that gasoline is an accelerant for fire and, in an analogous way, so is CO₂ for global warming.

Suppose an asteroid was heading toward Earth, with a 42% chance of a direct hit. Would it make you feel better knowing that mass extinction from asteroids was part of natural variability? If you could do something about it, wouldn’t you want to try? The “naturalness” of calamity does not comfort me. It’s like asking, “Do you prefer a natural or an unnatural death? What’s my third choice?

There’s also the question of whether more CO₂ would have a net beneficial effect. This net effect is not calculable, and is even more difficult to answer than the comparatively easy question of whether there is global warming. The “net” part means that there would be winners and losers. What we know, or at least should have learned by now, is that Earth’s atmospheric processes are extremely complex. And we know that complex systems can change in unpredictable ways.

So, without question, doubling (or whatever the amount) atmospheric CO₂ could easily have profound effects. But the net of good or bad, no one knows. You normally wouldn’t gamble with your family’s life or health, nor put your only property at risk, so why would you do that with your only planet?

The academies of science in Japan, Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Russia and the US have all said that global warming is real and something should be done to keep it from worsening. Who am I to argue? I took two courses in meteorology, and that was 30 years ago. BP’s head, John Brown, proved that by changing attitudes and picking the “low hanging fruit,” our industry could easily exceed Kyoto Protocol targets in a fairly short time. And it’s debatable whether he lost or made money doing it.

Sometimes, you do things for your friends that you may not want to do, but you do them anyway because, well, they’re your friends, and you want to keep it that way. The US increasingly finds itself alone in a room. I know the feeling.