Why some scientists are global warming sceptics
By BETTY CAPLANPosted Sunday, January 3 2010 at 18:41
NOT SURPRISINGLY, THE COpenhagen summit was not a great success, partly because there are so many disputes about the nature of the problem itself.
Climate change sceptics believe the earth is a self-regulating mechanism that will adapt to changes, regardless of human activity and that the earth’s history is full of variations in temperature.
Many trace their belief back to James Lovelock’s Gaia theory (gaia means earth in Greek) which came to him in 1965 when the astrologer Carl Sagan told him of the “faint young sun paradox”.
This states that while the sun was 25 per cent cooler when the earth was young, it never froze as it should have. “It was then that the image of the earth as a living organism was able to regulate its temperature and chemistry at a comfortable steady state emerged in my mind,” he writes in his latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning.
THE HISTORY OF CLIMATE SCIENCE goes back a long way, but it was the Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius, who first realised in 1904 that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was increasing because of the burning of coal, which must eventually affect earth’s climate.
Today, a whole scientific discipline called Earth System Science is devoted to understanding the way life regulates conditions such as the temperature on the earth surface. So does the earth have mechanisms to restore its own balance?
It is said that rain forests like the Amazon actually generate their own rainfall and coral reefs increase cloudiness in the air above them through the production of cloud-seeding chemicals, thereby shading themselves from dangerous ultraviolet radiation.
Palaeontologist Peter Ward in The Medea Hypothesis (whose title derives from the mythical Greek heroine who, when jilted by her lover Jason, killed their children in revenge) says: “Earth life is inherently selfish and ultimately biocidal”. He insists that the unit of evolution is the species, not the biosphere “and from this accrues a vicious uncaring lethality toward other species that is one of the three most basic characteristics of life itself.”
From the great methane disaster of 3.7 billion years ago (when the spread of early methane-producing life-forms is thought to have created a “cold buffer” in the atmosphere, which almost ended life on Earth) to the last of the ice ages 20,000 years ago, Ward declares it was life itself that destabilised the climate.
Thus our over-population, destruction of biodiversity and greenhouse gas pollution will soon bring about another great extinction. Lovelock argues that the earth’s system of self-regulation is, however, being overwhelmed by greenhouse gas pollution and that in one of the jumps that is characteristic of its behaviour, it will soon evolve from its “current cool state” into a dramatically hotter one.
Chaos theory prevents scientists from calculating exactly when this might happen, but Lovelock predicts that a new climatic leap will occur in the next few years or decades and will involve an abrupt increase in average global surface temperature of 9°C, triggering the collapse of our global civilisation and the near extinction of humanity itself.
He differs from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which predicts a lesser figure of 2-3°C, because this has not taken into account the habitual temperature jumps of the past. There are indications that Lovelock’s gloom is justified: prior to the Industrial Revolution, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million. Today it is 390ppm.
HE ARGUES THAT IT IS NOT TOO LATE to save the planet — we will just have to adapt. Cutting back damaging land practices such as forest clearance is helpful, but he doesn’t think that developing biofuels and renewable energy is much use because they involve more land clearance and thus a diminution of food supply.
But although this may be true in the case of ethanol, it is not true of more advanced techniques that derive biofuels from algae or crop and other waste. Wind and solar sources are dismissed as unable to deliver a sufficiently large and consistent power supply; nuclear energy is seen to be the only salvation.
But there are “smart grid” solutions for using intermittent sources of supply and Lovelock, at 91, has not taken on board the improvements that have been made to wind and solar energy. Nevertheless, as the great guru whose perspective is broad enough to include ethics, philosophy and moral values, he is still worth listening to. We need to change our way of life regardless. Ms Caplan is a freelance writer and education consultant (betty.caplan1@gmail.com)
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