Devangshu Datta: Is global warming happening?

TECHNO BEAT

Consensus is the business of politics...there is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science," said Michael Crichton, in a lecture entitled "Aliens cause Global Warming", circa 2002.

His thesis was that the scientific community was exaggerating the danger of global warming by reaching an alarmist consensus.

Crichton's reprised this in his latest best-seller, State of Fear. The villain is an environmental group so desperate to stimulate environmental legislation that it plans acts of ecological terrorism.

Well, Crichton is right because he's wrong. Global warming isn't science; it's politics based on a consensus interpretations of facts. There are two bitterly-opposed schools of interpretation.

Global warming is the dealbreaker in environmental agreements like the Kyoto Protocol. Even Bush and Blair disagree on the subject of reducing greenhouse gas emission! It's also an absolutely mainstream issue, post The Day After Tomorrow.

And, the consensus in the scientific community is that there is serious danger. Most scientists agree that the key early warning signals (EWS) are evident and steps must be taken to retard the process. But this entails huge cutbacks in first world energy consumption and massive replacement costs for industrial technology.

So, there is a politically powerful, rich minority that insists legislating against global warming isn't required until it can be absolutely, unequivocally, proved, that warming will occur. There seems a Catch-22 embedded in the logic.

Be that as it may, Bush belongs to the school of "let's play ostrich". Blair oddly enough, doesn't "" the British prime minister believes climate change "is the No. 1 threat on humanity in the 21st century".

Is global warming happening? The EWS includes heat waves and periods of unusually warm weather. The last 15 years include the 10 hottest-ever on record.

Ocean warming has led to the loss of 13,000 square km of ice in the Arctic Peninsula according a 2004 study by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), which also said glaciers are releasing six times as much melted snow into the oceans now. According to the BAS, the polar environment may disappear in 20 years.

Other EWS such as early spring warming, heavy snowfall, huge storms and long droughts have also been seen across the world. If global warming does drive up ocean water levels by a couple of inches, then we may indeed have a The Day After Tomorrow screenplay.

Let's say, for arguments' sake, that global warming is occurring. If so, it is being exacerbated by industrial production of greenhouses gases such as carbon dioxide and chloro-fluoro carbon (CFC). Some greenhouse gas production is not under human control; volcanic explosions spew out millions of tons of greenhouse gases.

But accords like Kyoto do cut back on human production and this ultimately involves lower per capita energy consumption for first world citizens. The implementation will be expensive and politically unpopular, especially in the rich, profligate US. Hence Bush's opposition.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), headed by Rajendra Pachauri, is the consensus body empowered to be a policy-neutral, apolitical advisor to the world on global warming.

The IPCC is a bit of a contradiction in terms and, to give it credit, it has been a strong advocate for anti-global warming measures. So much so, it's sparked scientific spats and been accused of fudging projections.

David Henderson, former chief economist at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), testified to the British Parliament, that he found fundamental errors in the IPCC's economic projections, which are a vital component in guessing future temperature increases due to human activity.

On another occasion, IPCC's lead-author Kevin Trenberth made an assertion that the 2004 hurricane season had been worsened by global warming, a statement hotly disputed by other scientists.

Well, the IPCC may have been jumping to conclusions and perhaps, compressing the timetable to a possible disaster but it didn't necessarily jump to the wrong conclusions. Stay tuned for further developments at the current "Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change" conference at Exeter.