To: "Heublein, Alexander Montgomery" Subject: Re: Aliens Cause Global Warming From: michael stephen fuchs Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 01:32:31 PST Michael Crichton can discourse on global climate change - all kinds of people do - but you might want to consider leavening your reading of him with some scientists, or science writers, who also discourse on the subject. One big problem with the global climate change question is that it's one of the shrillest, most extremist debates - on one side you get the panicked environmentalists who insist the sky is falling (and can generate plenty of evidence to that effect); and on the other side, you get corporations (specifically the energy companies) who insist that there's no problem (and can produce evidence to that effect). I've had a lot of trouble getting to the truth of the matter - but I've had some great resources. At the risk of trotting out too much data, and rehashing the whole debate, I will note: * A couple of nights ago, I saw Jared Diamond (author of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" - as well as his new book, "Collapse - How Societies Choose to Survive or Fail") speak at the Royal Society. (You know, the Royal Society whose past presidents have included Newton and Kelvin; and whose fellows have included Darwin, Dawkins, and Hawking.) His topic wasn't precisly on climate change, but rather on the subject of what we can learn from past societies that totally screwed themselves, such as the Mayans and the Easter Islanders. He happened to say, and I quote, "Every serious scientist who is doing work on global warming is now in agreement that it is happening." You can watch the session yourself at http://www.royalsoc.org/event.asp?id=2662. It's good stuff. He also pointed out the frightening fact that as most of the developing world (particularly China and India) achieves first-world living styles, the overall impact we're going to be having on the planet (water use and pollution, emmission of greenhouse gases, production of waste, use of antibiotics, etc.) is going to increase by about a factor of 9. * Probably more to the point, I saw a panel discussion, also at the Royal Society, on the subject of global climate change. Panelists included the president of Friends of the Earth, some leading British climatologist, some expert in corporate enviro-strategy - and Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist". Lomborg, if you don't know him, is pretty much the poster boy for, well, environmental skepticism. Even HIS position is, basically, Well, global climate change is happening; but we need to assess how big a problem it really is, versus other huge problems - such as AIDS, malaria, malnutrition, drinking water - which we could address to much better effect for much less money. The consensus of the other climate experts on the panel was "Global warming is happening. No, we don't know for sure how much. And, no, we don't know for sure what percentage of it is due to carbon emmissions and other human impact. But we know it's happening." * The scariest thing I've learned recently is from a book entitled "The Ingenuity Gap" by Thomas Homer-Dixon. The book's basic thesis is that we've created a world for oursleves (one good example is financial systems - and crises) that is increasingly complex and increasingly taxing the ingenuity we have available to solve problems. He addresses the issue of the environment by interviewing some top scientists working in the field. One thing he reports is that - looking at the history of Earth's climate in ice cores - the Earth has exhibited significant nonlinear behaviour in its climate, specifically phase shifts where, for instance, the temperature has climbed 9 degrees Celsius in 30 years. It's happened again and again. Nonlinearity is not that surprising in a system that massively complex. One example of the potential problem: there's a current, the "Atlantic conveyor" that circles the globe: I forget the exact details, but the basic notion is that water in the North Atlantic cools rapidly, drops to the ocean floor, circles round the Cape of Good Hope, ends up somewhere else, warms up again, etc. And this cooling of water in the North Atlantic heats up Europe on the order of 25% of the amount that solar radiation does. A quarter! What happens if this flow stops or reverses? Global warming is causing increased rainfall and increased melting/runnoff in Antarctica, which is resulting in decreased salinity in ocean water, and changes in salinity change buoyancy of water - which could stop the conveyor. Thus, global warming could actually plunge Europe into a deep freeze. But the main take-home of this one leading scientist, who has been studying this stuff for 35 years, is "We've radically underestimated the complexity of ecological systems. We're making progress in our understanding, and creating better models, but the horizon is receding faster than we are proceeding - the main thing we're learning, all the time, is how much more complex it is than we thought." Another example is Biosphere 2. This was an attempt to create and maintain a small eco-system. They got a bunch of top scientists and naturalists together, and built this dome, and populated it with like 325 plant and animal species, and put some people in there, and tried to make them self-sufficient for a couple of years. A *very* simplified model of our eco-system. And it all went to hell, typically for reasons they didn't understand. I wish I had the book in front of me, but it was this litany of horrors: most of the animal species went extinct; all of the insects went extinct - thus stopping pollination; the oxygen level plummetted, for reasons they couldn't figure out initially, necessitating pumping in a few tons of oxygen to keep everyone alive; the soil acidity went through the roof. There's more. The lesson being: we are not *anywhere* close to being able to manage the Earth's bio-physical and geo-chemical systems. If we screw it up, for the forseeable future, we are screwed. I agree with both Lomborg and Crichton that we are going to develop technological marvels which will improve things in ways we can't imagine. But I can't possibly argue with the grizzled scientist in the book who said, "Climate is an angry beast - and we are poking it with sticks." Moreover, you can't afford to be wrong on this one, because we've got no where else to go. So maybe you should think about taking up recycling. ;^) m michael stephen fuchs msf@michaelfuchs.org www.michaelfuchs.org