An old story speaks of a town meeting in New England. It grew suddenly dark. Some said that the darkness was a sign that the world was about to end, and that the meeting should close. One of the selectmen spoke up. "Either the world is coming to an end or it is not," he said. "If it is not, we should be foolish to adjourn. If it is, I desire to be found doing my duty. Let candles be brought."
This robust response has something to tell us about how we should respond to global warming, the latest of many threats that are supposed to be bringing disaster to humanity.
There have been many threats in the past: some were hugely exaggerated (the millennium, shortage of energy), some turned out to be less catastrophic than expected (AIDS-though it is having disastrous effects in Africa), and some still hang over us as possibilities we have learned to live with (thermonuclear war, asteroid impact, devastating infections such as Ebola disease). Many, but not all, scientists think that global warming is a real phenomenon, and they point to in creased levels of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere causing a greenhouse effect.
The chemistry and physics of the atmosphere are subtle and complex, and it is likely to be a long time before the scientific question is finally resolved: Recall how long it took before the link between smoking and lung cancer-a much simpler system-came to be generally accepted.
What can we do?
The objective of this article is not to discuss the science, but to examine how we ought to respond. It argues that if global warming is actually happening, it is unstoppable. We need to think carefully about the consequences: moralizing is pointless and self-indulgent.
Many thousand tons of aviation fuel have been burned to bring together thousands of politicians and experts to discuss the "problem" of global warming. At the Kyoto conference in 1997, the industrialized countries agreed to do almost nothing, and the less-industrialized countries agreed to do nothing whatsoever. Little is being done to accomplish what was agreed, and last November the Hague conference on implementation measures broke up without reaching an agreement.
Everyone agrees that even if the Kyoto targets were actually met, their effect on climate change would be too small to detect. A genuine decision to bring any human-induced global warming to a halt-in say 50 years-would require a colossal program to develop nuclear and solar power, to shut down the gas, oil, and coal industries, and to switch to nuclear-generated hydrogen as a transportation fuel. Such actions would have enormously negative effects on the global economy and on prosperity across the world. That indeed would be a genuine catastrophe, the kind of which the doom-mongers warn us. Happily, there is no chance whatsoever that it will happen. Though many politicians like to strike attitudes, hardly any of them are serious.
Hypocrisy is at its highest in Europe. The UK Royal Commission on Environ mental Pollution recommended last year that CO2 emissions be reduced by more than 50%, which obviously would have a dramatic effect on living standards and on UK prosperity and com pet it iveness.
The commission did not even discuss the impacts of its policy recommendations. That can be interpreted as an indication of its frivolous attitude and that it did not expect to be taken seriously. In any event, the UK government ignored the com mission, and even signaled its scorn by making small reductions in taxes on some fuels, which produced an effect opposite from that which the commission sought.
US President George W. Bush has generated hostility in Europe by expressing his disdain for the Kyoto measures and by drawing attention to the economic damage they would cause. This has played into the hands of the more shallow types of European politicians, who draw on latent anti-Americanism and focus attention on the US administration as a way of diverting attention from their own inability to take action, leaving aside the question of whether action is necessary.
One such example is the UK Labor party parliament member, who, in a radio broadcast, called for a boycott of all US goods and services. When challenged that it was doubtful he would have any influence on President Bush but that he should try to influence Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and a member of his own party, and that if he believed what he was saying, he could try to persuade Brown to change his energy policy. He replied with more abuse of George Bush, but with a conspicuous silence about Gordon Brown.
Warming's effects
If global warming is a reality, it will have both negative and positive effects. Humanity can respond to both by adaptation and by applying technology to human needs, as it has been doing for many thousands of years.
The balance of advantage and disadvantage is far from clear. The cosmologist Fred Hoyle once speculated about what we could do if very large amounts of energy were available. We could move the Earth into an orbit closer to the Sun, and we could shift the axis of rotation to spread the incoming solar energy differently. The earth would be warmer, and we could use more of its surface more productively for agriculture, fishing, and forestry.
A study by the UK government looked at global warming consequences for that country. Forestry and agriculture would become more productive, there would be an increased incidence of warm-climate pests and possibly tropical diseases such as malaria, and there would be benefits from reductions in energy consumption for heating.
In addition, some crops that are now marginal at this latitude would thrive: e.g., the UK would have better wine grapes and more tomatoes. There may be an increase in extreme winds and unusually heavy rainfall-there are suggestions that this has even begun, although it is very difficult to prove because of the low frequency of extreme events. A severe storm in 1987 in the UK did cause destruction to woodland and some damage to life and property, and last fall there was damage from severe flooding-made worse by decisions to allow building on known floodplains. Whether or not those events can be attributed to global warming, few, if any, suggest that the costs and environmental effects are not containable.
Proactive prevention
Very low-lying countries fear a rise in sea level. Here again there are complications. The critical parameter is the maximum water level, but that actually depends less on slow changes in sea level and much more on storm surges induced by combinations of wind, low pressure, and tide.
Surges occurred in the Middle Ages that cannot be a consequence of industrial global warming. The 1952 surge that killed 200 people in England and 1,800 in the Netherlands raised the level of the North Sea 10 ft above normal, in about 15 hr. The prediction of some climate models is that global warming would raise sea level by just over 2 ft in 100 years' time.
A surge such as the one in 1952 could raise the level four times as much as that tomorrow night, but no one in the countries that border the North Sea lies awake worrying about it, because those countries have spent money on coast protection and storm barriers. In the Nether lands, indeed, more than a third of the population lives below sea level, but there is no sign of panic related to global warming.
An authoritative Dutch study concluded that the financial impact is less than generally thought and that it might reach 0.5% of GNP, based on today's technology. However, that would probably be reduced by technological development, including new building materials and the application of nuclear energy.
A broad conclusion that sea level change can be countered by technology applies equally to Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest and most densely populated countries. Its people have always been at risk from storm surges, and it needs assistance whether or not the sea level rises.
People live on land at the level of the Bay of Bengal because of overpopulation, inefficient agriculture and the lack of land reform. Given will and energy, the Ganges and Brahmaputra delta could be protected against the sea in the same way as the Rhine delta in the Netherlands.
Only on very low-lying islands in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific is the situation different: there it may prove impossible to protect the land against the sea at any accep table cost, and it may become necessary to evacuate and resettle the population.
Clearly that is something that cannot be undertaken lightly. It will involve pain and hardship to the population, but populated islands have been evacuated in the past (for military reasons-Bikini in the Pacific, Diego Suarez in the Indian Ocean, Gruinard off Scotland, and islands in the Aleutian chain off Alaska-and for economic and social welfare reasons, St. Kilda off Scotland). It is something that humankind can contemplate.
These examples remind us of the human capacity to respond to difficulty by inventing new technology, and sometimes by parallel social change:
- There was a firewood crisis in England in the 16th century, and technology re sponded by developing coal resources and finding means to bring the coal by sailing ships to London.
- A whale-oil crisis was developing in the US in the early 19th century, but the development of crude oil made it possible to replace whale oil for lighting with cheaper and far more abundant kerosine. As has been said many times before, the oil industry saved the whale. Similarly, and more controversially, the population and food crisis that panicked the doom-sayers 30 years ago seems to have been averted by combining the technologies of contraception and improved health care with women's liberation and greater prosperity.
If taking steps to increase the mean temperature of the earth's surface had been proposed as a deliberate policy-and if the means to carry it through had been available-the idea would have been controversial. However, it would have been rejected out of hand only by the small minority terrified of any change and ignorant of human skill and adaptability.
Global warming may be happening-as an unintended and now unavoidable consequence of another collective but deliberate decision: to burn coal and oil to fuel the industrial revolution and to extend it around the world, first to rich countries and now to poor countries. Things will need to be done, some of them unpredictable and some of them expensive, but there is every reason to imagine that technology can respond.
The author
Andrew Palmer is the Jafar Research Professor of Petroleum Engineering at Cambridge University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engin eering, and a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engin eers. Palmer has been engaged in marine pipeline engineering for 29 years and has taken a leading part in many pipeline projects in the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, the Middle East, Canada, and the Far East. He is the author of more than 140 published papers on pipeline engineering, structures, geotechnics and ice, and of a book on structural mech anics. He earned a BA in mechanical sciences at Cambridge University and received his PhD from Brown University, Providence, RI.
"...if global warming is a reality, it will have both negative and positive effects.Humanity can respond to both by adaptation and by applying technology to human needs...."
