A Geologist’s View of Climate Change

Huge daily protests in support of the drastic proposals at Copenhagen clouded the alternate point of view. Unfortunately, the lines are drawn sharply and there is no grey area in between. A review of various issues is in order before we make the decisions which have the potential to change the pattern of human life for ever.

One crucial factor in the debate is the data. Unfortunately there are significant year to year oscillations in the data and different trends can be projected depending on the chosen time span. Each side blames the scientists on the other side of bias. There is no doubt that they are both right to some extent. There was a time when the scientific research was the domain of the independently wealthy who could disregard the financial implications of their conclusions. Alas, those days are long gone. Now the scientists depend on the commercial interests for their grants, often for the salaries too. To expect the absence of bias in these circumstances is not reasonable. To confuse the picture, the climate patterns over the life of this planet show indisputably larger changes than being observed now. According to this viewpoint, carbon emissions are only a minor consideration in the climate change. But that does not mean that they are acceptable. Even if they have not been related to particular diseases as of yet, increasing elements of pollution interact with living organisms and change them, perhaps for the worse. Pollution has to be reduced to protect future generations from undesirable mutations. Thus, the dispute is not about the evil but about the urgency and the ways of fighting it.

Large changes during geologic times caused havoc with life forms as they existed and new forms of life took shape in the environment. If this is what is happening now, it behooves us to prepare for the changes as well as to fight them. Not much is being done to prepare the populations whose lives will be devastated by these changes other than their leaders expressing despair in international conferences to deaf years. An example of this neglect is the city of New Orleans after Katrina: it is being rebuilt over the devastated site rather than being moved to safer land.

Human beings are capable of controlling the pollution without economic upheaval as demonstrated by the cleaning up of the atmosphere in Europe after the war and control of CFC emissions after Montreal protocol. Scientific advances are crucial in this endeavour. Just as the motor car solved the problem of horse manure in large cities by replacing horse carriages in the early years of twentieth century, drastic improvements in the internal combustion engine or the invention of new type of engine or energy source could make our desperation a source of amusement to future generations.

The proponents of drastic steps to prevent climate change must appreciate the extent of economic sacrifices they expect from general population. The suggestions of many climate scientists involve drastic changes to the life style which can not be accomplished in a short time frame without changes in economic structure. This will cause immense suffering to a large population who will lose their jobs and would not be willing and/or able to train for new ones. Politicians will not be forgiven by this constituency at the polls and are understandably reluctant to take such actions.

The per capita emission goals are particularly impractical because:
1. They do nothing to reduce overpopulation, in fact may even encourage its growth. The overall number of consumers is the basic element in total consumption and emission counts. Steps are needed to reduce the population, not encourage its growth.
2. Considering the rate of growth of big population nations like China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, the reductions in developing countries, even if they entirely eliminated the emissions, will be more than offset by the increase in developing world if per capita emissions, emission intensity in some circles, were to be the only consideration.
3. The process of accomplishing these goals will involve a large shift of wealth and industry to the developing countries, some of them not on friendly terms. The citizens of developed world will accept this at their peril.

These considerations show that humans are not likely to control emissions by themselves even if they are crucial to counter climate change and for eventual survival of the species. Let us hope that the dire predictions of climate catastrophe scientists are wrong. If they turn out to be correct, technical innovations on a revolutionary scale are mankind’s only hope.