Righteousness plays a strong and proper role in the global warming issue. To the extent global warming represents a threat, it is a worldwide threat. To the extent the problem merits political response, it must be a worldwide response. Absent an international sense of righteousness, no such response will come forth.
But it is not enough for world leaders to be righteous in an issue so potentially important and costly. They also must be right.
LITTLE IS CERTAIN
As earlier editorials in this series have shown, little is certain about global warming. Measured global temperatures have risen by 0.5 C. in the past century. The atmospheric concentration of heat-trapping gases is increasing, partly due to industrial activity. That's what science knows. Science can't prove that the greenhouse gas buildup caused the warming; in fact, it provides other explanations for the warming, such as sunspot activity, which fit observations better. Computer models that assume warming results from the gas buildup haven't made accurate predictions; they have trouble accounting for the planet's capacity to adapt to human influences, even to overwhelm human influences with changes of its own.
The problem with global warming is not that surface temperatures will rise so much next century that glaciers will melt and flood coastal communities. Science has dispelled those early greenhouse warming fears to the satisfaction of all but the perpetually frightened. The problem with global warming is that politics assumes more about it than science knows. With so many questions still unanswered, and with political drums beating as loudly as they are, the potential for costly error is enormous.
Late last month, the East-West Center in Honolulu issued a report that illustrates the hazards at work in this issue. The report, by David T. Isaak and Pamela L. Blake, cites studies indicating that temperatures are rising at night but changing little during the day - the reverse of what the greenhouse theory suggests. Pollution may explain what's happening. Sulfate particles accumulating in the atmosphere, largely from combustion of fossil fuels, may scatter incoming light during the daytime enough to offset greenhouse warming. If that's the case, the U.S. might be aggravating global warming by mandating reductions in sulfur emissions.
Isaak and Blake further question the popular hurry to increase use of natural gas. Methane, they point out, is a greenhouse gas. More of it will leak into the atmosphere as gas use rises. And gas treatment and transportation involve carbon dioxide emissions overlooked in fuel comparisons that focus on emissions from combustion.
Scientists-not to mention natural gas promoters-will challenge the East-West Center analysis, of course. The theory that sulfur pollution offsets greenhouse warming, for example, runs into trouble in the U.S. Sulfur emissions there have decreased since 1970, thinning the theoretical shade. Predicted greenhouse warming nevertheless has not occurred.
A NECESSARY WARNING
Still, Isaak and Blake provide a necessary warning against hasty and simplistic reaction to science so inconclusive and complex. "The willingness to bear the costs of environmental protection is heartening," they say. "The willingness to make massive and expensive commitments without narrowing our range of uncertainty is unnerving."
This editorial series will conclude next week by examining potential costs of the current rush to righteousness over global warming. To some observers, worrying about costs is unrighteous. But what's wrong with being right?
Copyright 1992 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
