GLOBAL WARMING: SCIENCE OR POLITICS?
HOUGHTON, MI--The pending international Treaty on Global Warming proposed at a recent UN-sponsored conference at Kyoto, Japan has one educator wondering if the treaty's rationale is based more on politics than science.
Dr. Vernon Dorweiler of Michigan Technological University's School of Business and Economics answers his own question by saying, "It's one chance in a hundred it's science."
The proposed treaty binds signatory countries to reduce "greenhouse gas" type emissions--relative to 1990 levels--during the period 2008-2012. Conference participants at Kyoto agreed to a "differentiation" schedule on the degree of reduction that would be required for each nation. Heavily industrialized nations would cut emmissions more significantly than their less industrialized partners. The United States has offered to cut its emissions by 7 percent from current levels, or 34 percent relative to its growth position by the year 2010.
"Unfortunately, China and 77 other developing countries are not participating and will not be bound by the treaty," says Dorweiler. "Moreover, the treaty is based on the premise than human activity is a main source of the pollutants that cause global warming and that's something that hasn't been proven."
Scientists from 120 countries participated in climate research from 1992 as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). "The report of their research," says Dorweiler, "clearly identified uncertainties in factors relating human activities--emissions of carbon monoxide, methane and nitrous oxide--to a discernible increase in global average temperature (GAT). Yet those uncertainties were restated by treaty planners as 'firm' and 'compelling' evidence of human influence on global warming. It is interesting that the chairman of the IPCC was quoted as saying 'Kyoto did not much discuss science.'"
Dorweiler says the dark predictions emanating from the Kyoto conference are similar to the gloom tactics employed by some groups in the 1970s and 1980s that said "we were running out of natural resources and that would result in a severe shortage of energy resources. That gloom is now portrayed as severe climate conditions that will cause oceans to rise, summers to be dryer, melting in polar regions, and rampant disease."
Yet Dorweiler believes the complete set of atmospheric and oceanic cycles, with sea ice and surface land effects, and their effect on global temperature, has not been fully recognized--nor has the full range of human activity compared with patterns of oceanic and atmospheric systems been completely assessed.
"For example," he says, "while carbon dioxide emissions from human activity are increasing, carbon dioxide from natural activity--including that of the oceans--is fifty times the level generated by humans. Consequently, a part of the global temperature variability ascribed to 'greenhouse gases' is due to natural contributions."
Dorweiler says global warming is caused by a number of factors, including the oceans' water vapor and volcanic aerosols.
"The IPCC report states that global average temperature has increased 0.3-0.6 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years and during the past 50 years no warming has occurred beyond 'natural variability," says Dorweiler. "During the last 50 years of the 100 year period, 80 percent of the greenhouse gases were added to the atmosphere. The IPCC report, by climate scientists, states that such increases are within the range of natural variability, and an ability to quantify human influences is limited by uncertainties in model projections and in underlying knowledge.
"The report says it is not possible to attribute all or even a large part of the observed global mean temperature increase of 0.5 degrees Celsius since 1890 to the enhanced greenhouse effect on the basis of observational data currently available."
Dorweiler says that while the world's community of physical scientists have concluded that a greenhouse effect does exist, they have not concluded that that effect is principally induced by human activity. He suggests that the true state of global temperature and its causes needs to be determined before treaty-mandated intervention actions are implemented that could have serious detrimental economic impact on nations, individuals, and energy-intensive industry.
###
For more information, contact Dr. Vernon Dorweiler at 906-487-2180 or e-mail: [email protected].
RSS