• Als Spam markieren
• Beitrag melden

• 
  Diese Gruppe Alles

• Archiv
• RSS-Feeds

• Kontakt
• Hilfe
• Impressum
• Datenschutz

Global Warming: Truth or Dare?-- NOT THE GREATEST POTENTIAL THREAT TO HUMANITY

Global Warming: Truth or Dare?
Denis G. Rancourt
February 2007.


NOT THE GREATEST POTENTIAL THREAT TO HUMANITY

Global warming is often presented as the greatest
potential threat to humankind and as the greatest
environmental and ecological threat on the planet. It is
also presented as a problem that could be solved or
contained by determined international collaboration -
by political will if it were present.

I argue:
(1) that global warming (climate change, climate
chaos, etc.) will not become humankind's greatest
threat until the sun has its next hiccup in a billion
years or more (in the very unlikely scenario that we
are still around),

(2) that global warming is presently nowhere near
being the planet's most deadly environmental
scourge, and

(3) that government action and political will cannot
measurably or significantly ameliorate global
climate in the present world.

I also advance that there are strong societal,
institutional, and psychological motivations for having
constructed and for continuing to maintain the myth of
a global warming dominant threat (global warming
myth, for short). I describe these motivations in terms
of the workings of the scientific profession and of the
global corporate and finance network and its
government shadows.

I argue that by far the most destructive force on the
planet is power-driven financiers and profit-driven
corporations and their cartels backed by military
might; and that the global warming myth is a red
herring that contributes to hiding this truth. In my
opinion, activists who, using any justification, feed
the global warming myth have effectively been
co-opted, or at best neutralized.


ERODING THE VENEER

Since the global warming myth is presently the
dominant environmental paradigm in the First World
middleclass mainstream, let us put it into the relevant
perspective of planetary warming mechanisms.

One should first recognise that the atmospheric
greenhouse effect is a well known natural
phenomenon, mostly caused by atmospheric water
vapour, that keeps our planet warm and habitable
whereas (anthropogenic = human-made) global
warming refers to a small extra greenhouse warming
(0.5-1 C/33 C; 1-5 %) allegedly arising from an
increase in atmospheric concentration of the minority
greenhouse effect gas CO2 (carbon dioxide) - the
later increase in turn possibly arising from fossil fuel
burning (see below).

This means that the global greenhouse effect gives
earthlings a needed and much appreciated base
warming of 33 C (degrees Celsius), whereas the
alleged "global warming" would contribute an extra
0.5 to 1 C of warming (a 1 to 5 % increase), on a
planet that has seen a dozen or so ice ages since
human kind has appeared.

The most often cited reconstructed global average
temperature curves (themselves somewhat tenuous,
see below) show increases in global mean temperature
of approximately 0.5-1 C in the last 100 years. Let us
compare this to the extremes of temperature to which
humans routinely adapt. Humans have thrived in every
possible ecological niche on the planet, from deserts to
tropical forests to the North Polar Regions, since well
before present technological advances. These
environments show mean temperature differences of
as much as 50 C or more. Many of these environments
also show day to night and seasonal differences of as
much as 20-50 C. A sudden 0.5-1 C increase in mean
annual temperature (not spread over 100 years) would
be imperceptible to any human and indeed could barely
be detected using all of the methods of the modern
scientific enterprise.

In addition, whereas there is evidence of negative
consequences to populations from sustained regional
cooling (e.g., Europe's Little Ice Age, 1300-1850 AD)
and whereas global ice ages (occurring every 40-100
thousand years or so) clearly have significantly
affected human populations, there is no known case
of a sustained warming alone having negatively
impacted an entire population. If it where not for the
global greenhouse effect, the planet would on average
be 33 C colder and inhabitable. As a general rule, all
life on Earth does better when it's hotter: Compare
ecological diversity and biotic density (or biomass) at
the poles and at the equator.

Humans have already adapted to dramatically
different regional climates occurring in every corner
of the planet and the alleged future global changes
are very small compared to these existing variations.
There are more displaced refugees from wars and from
economic aggression than there will ever be displaced
inhabitants from rapid climate-induced habitat
transformations. In both cases, the solution is to
accommodate those loosing their homes and
communities, not to attempt to control planetary
processes and unpredictable events.


IS THERE GLOBAL WARMING?

Before 'climate chaos' became cliché, many scientists
advanced evidence for detected amounts of global
average Earth surface temperature increases occurring
in the post-industrial age. These reports, taken as a
whole, were the main original catalysts towards
constructing the global warming myth, so it is useful
to critically examine their validity.

It was no easy task to arrive at the most cited original
estimated rate of increase of the mean global surface
temperature of 0.5 C in 100 years. As with any
evaluation of a global spatio-temporal average, it
involved elaborate and unreliable grid size dependent
averages. In addition, it involved removal of outlying
data, complex corrections for historical differences in
measurement methods, measurement distributions,
and measurement frequencies, and complex
normalisations of different data sets - for example,
land based and sea based measurements and the use
of different temperature proxies that are in turn
dependent on approximate calibration models. Even
for modern thermometer readings in a given year,
the very real problem of defining a robust and useful
global spatio-temporal average Earth-surface
temperature is not solved, and is itself an active area
of research.

This means that determining an average of a quantity
(Earth surface temperature) that is everywhere different
and continuously changing with time at every point,
using measurements at discrete times and places
(weather stations), is virtually impossible; in that the
resulting number is highly sensitive to the chosen
extrapolation method(s) needed to calculate (or rather
approximate) the average.

Averaging problems aside, many tenuous
approximations must be made in order to arrive at any
of the  final global average temperature curves.
For example, air temperature thermometers on
ocean-going ships have been positioned at increasing
heights as the sizes of ships have increased in recent
history. Since temperature decreases with increasing
altitude, this altitude effect must be corrected. The
estimates are uncertain and can change the calculated
global warming by as much as 0.5 C, thereby
removing the originally reported effect entirely.

Similarly, surface ocean temperatures were first
measured by drawing water up to the ship decks in
cloth buckets and later in wooden buckets. Such
buckets allow heat exchange in different amounts,
thereby changing the measured temperature. This
must be corrected by various estimates of sizes and
types of buckets. These estimates are uncertain and
can again change the resulting final calculated global
warming value by an amount comparable to the 0.5 C
value. There are a dozen or so similar corrections that
must be applied, each one able to significantly alter the
outcome.

In wanting to go further back in time, the technical
problems are magnified. For example, when one uses
a temperature proxy, such as the most popular tree
ring proxy, instead of a physical thermometer, one has
the significant problem of calibrating the proxy. With
tree rings from a given preferred species of tree, there
are all kinds of unavoidable artefacts related to wood
density, wood water content, wood petrifaction
processes, season duration effects, forest fire effects,
extra-temperature biotic stress effects (such as
recurring insect infestations), etc. Each proxy has its
own calibration and preservation problems that are
not fully understood.

The reported temperature curves should therefore be
seen as tentative suggestions that the authors hope will
catalyze more study and debate, not reliable results that
one should use in guiding management practice or in
deducing actual planetary trends. In addition, the
original temperature or proxy data is usually not
available to other research scientists who could
critically examine the data treatment methods; nor are
the data treatment methods spelled out in enough detail.
Instead, the same massaged data is reproduced from
report to report rather than re-examined.

The most recent thermometer measurements have their
own special problems, not the least of which is urban
warming, due to urban sprawl, which locally affects
weather station mean temperatures and wind patterns:
Temperatures locally change because local
surroundings change. Most weather monitoring
stations are located, for example, near airports which,
in turn, are near expanding cities.

As a general rule in science, if an effect is barely
detectable, requires dubious data treatment methods,
and is sensitive to those data treatment methods and
to other approximations, then it is not worth arguing
over or interpreting and should not be used in further
deductions or extrapolations. The same is true in
attempting to establish causal relationships. This is
in contrast to the precautionary principle which, in this
context, would dictate that humans should reduce their
fossil fuel burning because a resulting increase in
atmospheric CO2 **might** cause serious
environmental harm. I argue that we should stick to
known consequences rather than potential ones -
displacing people displaces people, clearing forests
clears forests, etc. - and that we can apply universally
accepted norms of human justice and respect for nature
in limiting exploiters' impulses.


WARMING,
CLIMATE CHANGE,
AND CLIMATE CHAOS

Global warming myth advocates emphasize that the
alleged extra-CO2-driven warming does not occur
uniformly, in that some regions are warmed more than
others while other regions are cooled below their
pre-warming averages. They claim that many regions
therefore already suffer significant departures from
their pre-warming average temperatures, by as much
as 5 C, even though the overall global average increase
is difficult to detect.

Whereas regional changes in average temperature (e.g.,
warmer poles and cooler tropics) are not in themselves
bad, global warming myth advocates argue that such
changes have significant negative ecological
consequences. They argue that when regional climate
changes occur, rather than simply causing geographical
redistributions of ecosystems and niche creation, they
instead cause permanent damages in the form of habitat
loss and species loss.

Global warming myth advocates also argue that global
warming drives increased climate chaos. That is,
overall increases in extreme weather events, such as
more frequent and more intense tropical hurricanes,
more frequent and more intense heat waves, more
frequentand more intense droughts and floods, etc.

The available data does not support these claims and
does not allow one to conclude that we have entered
into a period of greater climate chaos, let alone that
any perceived increase in climate chaos would be
caused by extra-CO2-driven planetary warming.
Similarly, it is impossible to reliably establish (see
below) that inferred regional warmings in the Polar
Regions are caused by an extra-CO2-driven global
greenhouse effect increase.

Weather is by its nature chaotic and unpredictable.
Every year weather events occur and will always occur
that have never occurred before in recorded history. A
given July heat spell in North Bay, Ontario, will last
longer than any other such heat spell that has also had
more than three consecutive day-time highs of more
than 35 C, for example. For the first time in recorded
history, three selectively chosen Canadian northern
towns of more than 50,000 inhabitants will not have
snow at Christmas. One hundred year old trees will be
uprooted by a hurricane in some locality in Northern
Quebec in September, etc.

Regional weather (including regional air current
patterns) is well known by climatologists to have
measurable variations over a broad range of
magnitudes and on every time scale, from decadal, to
centennial, to millennial and beyond, as documented in
climate and weather event records such as historical
documents, tree rings, lake sediments, soil profiles,
geological weathering patterns, etc. Climatologists
have, for over one hundred years, studied these
variations occurring on all continents and have
always attempted to relate them to potential causal
factors, with little success. Modern satellite
observations and recent global circulation models have
provided few significant advances, despite the hype.

Media sensationalism notwithstanding, none of the
recent reports of weather events step outside of the
statistical samples gathered by climatologists, as they
have often informed us. Among other things,
climatologists, environmental scientists, and
statisticians have pointed out that:
(1) North America has less frequent but more intense
forest fires because foresters manage forests,
(2) insurance companies pay out more natural catastrophe
claims because there are more people living in more
precarious areas with more expensive installations,
(3) more people suffer the consequences of flooding
because more people live in flood plains,
(4) more urban elderly die in heat waves because they
are older and live in isolation and in high rises,
(5) water tables fall because of deforestation and
watershed management practices, and so on.


GLACIERS AND PERMAFROST:
PHENOMENON VERSUS CAUSE

Although weather is business as usual, there are
significant changes occurring on the planet and some
of these appear at first sight to be regional climate
related.

For example, many high altitude glaciers are receding.
Some glaciers are growing but it appears that more
studied glaciers are receding than growing. The next
question is why? There are no reports of average air
temperature increases in the vicinities of these glaciers.
To melt or sublimate ice one must supply a large amount
of energy, far beyond what could be supplied by thermal
conduction driven by an undetected temperature increase.

The required energy clearly comes from the sun, just as
spring sunlight melts snow in temperate climates much
more than the increase in air temperature ever could.
More radiant energy must be deposited on the receding
glaciers. Either there is more incident radiant energy or
the glaciers are more able to absorb rather than reflect
the incident radiation or both.

The causes of increased incident radiation can be one or
a combination of the following:
(1) there is more solar radiation because the sun itself
is putting out more energy, the solar "constant" has
increased,
(2) more solar radiation directly comes through the
atmosphere because the atmosphere is more
transparent rather than reflective (e.g., less cloudy,
less ozone),
(3) more infra-red is sent back to the glaciers rather than
escaping to outer space because the atmosphere is
more greenhouse active (e.g., higher water vapour
content), and
(4) more ambient infra-red radiation is sent towards the
glaciers via atmospheric greenhouse scattering
because there is more ambient infra-red radiation
originating from neighbouring ice-free cover that has
become more incident-solar-radiation absorbent. The
latter ice-free surfaces could have become more
absorbent by changes in their surface properties (i.e.,
surface coverings). For example, deforested soil is
more incident radiation absorbent than a forest cover,
bare rock is much more absorbent than
snow-covered rock, etc.

The glaciers themselves could have become more
absorbent for incident radiation by various mechanisms.
For example, mineral or organic or pollution
atmospheric dust loads (e.g., fossil fuel burning soot)
could have increased leading to dust delivery to the
glaciers. Such microscopic deposited dust in turn makes
a glacier surface more radiation absorbent. The type of
snow that can cover a glacier will also affect its
radiation (light) absorption and reflection properties and
snow type (granularity, dendrite structure, etc.) is in turn
dependent on several atmospheric properties. Volcanic
activity, large scale forest or grassland fires, dominant
wind patterns, large scale changes in soil humidity and
other conditions arising from changes in agricultural
practices, can all significantly alter atmospheric dust
loads and the latter are known to affect regional scale
solar radiation budgets.

We see therefore that receding glaciers are not even
most directly a sign of global warming and that the
actual mechanism(s) can include a host of other
causes. Indeed, paleoclimatologists studying global
climate and ice age cycles believe the opposite causal
direction: Radiative loading and water cycle factors
change snow and ice cover which in turn change
global radiation balance (planetary surface albedo)
which then provides a positive feedback for further
warming (resulting from increased radiative loading)
or cooling (resulting from decreased radiative
loading). Indeed, the accepted theory of ice age cycles
is based on solar radiation forcing arising from cyclical
Sun-Earth orbital variations.

As another example, let us accept, for the sake of
argument; that Polar Region warming is occurring
beyond statistical variations of the last 100 years, say;
that permafrost (permanently frozen subsoil) is less
extensive; and that polar ocean ice coverages are less
prominent. The next question is why? Ocean currents
have not dramatically changed, nor have measured
sea level air temperatures.

These changes can again be due to solar radiative
effects, along the same lines as explained above for
receding glaciers. For ocean glaciers the above
discussion of mechanisms for receding high altitude
glaciers applies exactly whereas minor modifications
are needed for receding permafrost.

In the case of permafrost, the seasonal duration of
direct solar radiation loading to the soil is probably
the dominant factor. This duration is inversely
related to the duration of soil snow and ice cover
which in turn can be controlled by the same factors
discussed above that control high altitude glacier
recession.

In conclusion, all the main easily observable and most
cited regional warming effects are probably driven by
radiative mechanisms having nothing to do with (i.e.,
not being caused by) global warming or increasing
atmospheric CO2 concentration. More likely causal
factors include: soot from coal-powered plants,
mineral, soil, and organic matter dust from changes
in agricultural practices, fires from changes in water
and land management practices, increased
high-altitude and polar atmospheric transparency,
changes in the solar constant, etc.

This is not to say that these local and regional warming
phenomena are not important and do not affect
ecosystems and people's lives. But then if we want to
help these people (mostly Polar Region and high
altitude aboriginal people) then we need only help them!
For example, we could ask what help they most need
rather than continuing to pollute their environment and
destroy their lands by resource exploitation. If we want
to stop destroying habitat, we could stop destroying
habitat.


SCIENCE IS NOT THE ANSWER

Environmental scientists and government agencies get
funding to study and monitor problems that do not
threaten corporate and financial interests. It is
therefore no surprise that they would attack
continental-scale devastation from resource extraction
via the CO2 back door. The main drawback with this
strategy is that you cannot control a hungry monster by
asking it not to shit as much.

Somewhere First World middle classers will need to
abandon the lies that we live in democracies, that the
corporate profit motive guarantees environmental
protection, that servicing manufactured debt advances
society, that corporate agri-business is the best way to
feed people, that making a mess everywhere to serve
share holders is the best way to generate well being,
and that exploiting others is a good way to help them,
not to mention that war is an acceptable method to
bring justice and freedom to enslaved populations.

The planet will continue to change, adapt and evolve,
with or without us. Recurring episodes of increased
volcanic activity will continue to alter our climate. Ice
ages will continue to come and go. Meteorites will
continue to impact our planetary home. Disease and
insect outbursts, wild fires, floods, and earthquakes
will continue to wash over us as we adapt and respond.
The sun will continue to vary its output and will
eventually burn out. The atmosphere will continue to
change as it always has under the influence of life
and of geology. We can't control these things. We can
barely perceive them correctly. But we can take
control of how we treat each other.

The best we can do for the environment and for the
planet is to learn not to let undemocratic power
structures run our lives. The best we can do is to
reject exploitation and domination and to embrace
cooperation and solidarity. The best we can do is to
not trust subservient scientists and to become
active agents for change beyond head-in-the-sand
personal lifestyle choices.

We need to get political, beyond corporate-controlled
shadow governments and co-opted political parties.
We need to take charge more than we need to recycle.
Concentrated power and capital are not about to give
up their practices or their imperative for profit.
Resistance to the insane return-on-investments hydra
that inhabits our planet is our main responsibility if
we are concerned about future generations.

There are real environmental problems on the planet.
Agriculture, especially large-scale corporate chemical
fertilizer and pesticide-based agriculture, is the main
human force that has transformed the planet. Resource
extraction and use is a close second, including energy,
minerals, building materials, etc. Toxic substance
pollution vies for an important place, with everything
from persistent organic pollutants, to heavy metals, to
radioactive substances, to pharmaceutical metabolites,
all the way to industrially prepared food products. The
industrial food-animal cycle is another wonderful
experiment in attempted mass suicide, not to mention
its grotesque inanimality.


THE BEST WAY TO STOP IS TO STOP

All in all, the best way to not pollute and destroy the
environment is to not pollute and destroy the
environment. The best way to not exploit others is
to not exploit others. I am not talking only about
personal lifestyle choices, alternative information
sources, and volunteer work. I am talking about
taking back control from undemocratically run
corporations and illegitimate concentrations of
power, by all the effective means we can muster and
as though our survival depended on it. I am talking
about activism.

Global warming is strictly an imaginary problem of
the First World middle class. Nobody else cares about
global warming. Exploited factory workers in the Third
World don't care about global warming. Depleted
uranium genetically mutilated children in Iraq don't
Care about global warming. Devastated aboriginal
populations the world over also can't relate to global
warming, except maybe as representing the only
solidarity that we might volunteer.

If we want to help island dwellers threatened by a
predicted sea level rise then let's help those island
dwellers. If we are worried about victims of weather
events then let us help those victims. The poorest
Hurricane Katrina victims are still waiting.

It's not about limited resources. ["The amount of
money spent on pet food in the US and Europe each
year equals the additional amount needed to provide
basic food and health care for all the people in poor
countries, with a sizeable amount left over." (UN
Human Development Report, 1999)] It's about
exploitation, oppression, racism, power, and greed.
Economic, human, and animal justice brings economic
sustainability which in turn is always based on
renewable practices. Recognizing the basic rights of
native people automatically moderates resource
extraction and preserves natural habitats. Not
permitting imperialist wars and interventions
automatically quenches nation-scale exploitation.
True democratic control over monetary policy goes
a long way in removing debt-based extortion. Etc.


BACK TO SCIENCE: THE PROBLEM WITH CO2

Regarding planetary greenhouse warming, by far the
most important greenhouse active atmospheric gas is
water vapour - it is a major constituent of the
atmosphere whereas CO2 is a trace atmospheric gas.
This is well known and it is established, for example,
that even doubling the present atmospheric CO2
concentration, to the unattainable value of 800 ppm
(parts per million) say, without changing anything
else in the atmosphere, would have little discernable
`effect on global temperature or climate.

All of the climate models that relate CO2
concentrations to climate effects do so by arbitrarily
linking a model increase in CO2 to an induced and
larger increase in atmospheric water vapour. In other
words, all the climate models postulate a large and
positive feedback between CO2 and water vapour.

Several scientists have argued that these models are
computer realizations of the tail wagging the dog.
Water vapour is the dominant greenhouse factor and
the behaviour of water in the atmosphere is far more
complex than that of CO2 (clouds, rain, snow,
evaporation, etc.) yet CO2 is taken to drive the water
cycle rather than water taken to drive CO2 dynamics;
using a fictitious multiplicative feedback factor.


On the contrary, for example: Water is often the
determining factor in vegetation growth. Vegetation
growth in turn consumes CO2 and is the greatest
active bound-carbon (C) pool on the planet. Therefore,
it is more correct to say that water drives the carbon
cycle. Atmospheric CO2 concentration is only a
remote witness to all the natural and anthropogenic
processes that consume and produce CO2.

There is no known mechanism whereby an increase
in CO2 concentration could directly cause an increase
in water vapour concentration in the amount required
by climate computer models. On the other hand, there
are many known mechanisms whereby water vapour
concentration can be dramatically affected by various
external agents. Some examples are as follows:
(1) solar input drives convection and winds which in
turn largely determine atmospheric evaporation
loading,
(2) deforestation and agriculture expose soils which
are sources of mineral and organic dust which in
turn can induce precipitation or can affect solar
radiation balances,
(3) solar winds of cosmic rays can induce high altitude
cloud formation thereby reducing solar radiation
penetration, etc.

Ice core data shows strong temporal correlations
between average global temperature (as recorded by
the water oxygen isotope proxy) and atmospheric CO2
(as recorded in trapped gas bubbles) yet these
correlations do not show causal relations. CO2
increases may accompany temperature increases rather
than causing them. Indeed, some high resolution
studies have suggested that the temperature increases
precede the CO2 increases. Interestingly, also, ice core
data shows strong temporal correlations between
inferred temperature and amount of dust preserved in
the ice core. Finally, the older geological record shows
several dramatic examples of where CO2 concentration
and global average temperature were either unrelated
or even anti-correlated.

Just as solar radiation intensity and inclination
determines our seasons and the differences between
day and night, so too solar radiation variations related
to solar winds, magnetic shielding, and solar intensity
cycles (e.g., sunspots) probably have a greater impact
on the water cycle than changes in any greenhouse
active trace gas.

There is of course much more wrong with
state-of-the-art global circulation models (climate
models) than the assumption and implementation
of CO2-H2O feedback. Although these models are
among the most elaborate predictive models of
complex non-linear phenomena, they are nonetheless
sweeping oversimplifications of the global climate
system and its mechanistic intricacies.


IF IT WERE CO2 THEN COULD WE CONTROL IT?

Disregarding the above objections, if we take CO2 to
be the pivotal quantity, then even this CO2
concentration in the atmosphere is not easy for
scientists to understand. While the value of the CO2
concentration can be measured reliably and
accurately and while it is increasing, possibly in
response to fossil fuel burning, the measured
increase is not proportional to the known
increase in fossil fuel consumption. There is not a
simple relation between fossil fuel burning and
atmospheric CO2 in two key respects:
(1) the temporal variations of burning and of
atmospheric CO2 concentration do not follow each
other - the curves do not match, theydo not have the
same shape, and
(2) the net extra (post-industrial) amount of CO2 in
the atmosphere cannot be reconciled with the
amount of CO2 produced by fossil fuel burning.

Regarding the latter point, the resulting amount of
CO2 in the atmosphere depends on many processes
that either produce CO2 (that are sources) or
consume CO2 (that are sinks). Growth of plants is
a sink. Degradation of soil or sediment organic
matter is a source. Burying and preserving
sedimentary or soil organic matter from oxidation
is a sink. Breathing is a form of combustion and is
a source. Photosynthesis is a sink. Fossil fuels are
preserved organic matter not yet degraded by
oxidation (or combustion). Deforestation is a net
source since forests are larger repositories of bound
carbon than are agricultural or grazing lands. The
weathering of rocks and the erosion of mountains
is a source, as is mining. Etc. As it turns out, when
all the known sources and sinks are added up,
scientists are not able to account for half of the
CO2 produced by fossil fuel burning.

In other words, there is a "missing sink" that is
taking up approximately half of the CO2 produced
by fossil fuel burning; that would otherwise end up in
the atmosphere. This is a massive amount that
scientists simply cannot account for. Clearly, the
complex source and sink mechanisms of the bio and
geospheres are far from completely understood, as
are the myriad of feedback mechanisms that can
dramatically either slow or intensify the rates of
sinking and sourcing.

The point here is that CO2 concentration itself, even
if we stubbornly cling to it as a holly grail of climate
mediation, most probably cannot be controlled by
controlling anthropogenic CO2 emissions. There are
more unknown and unforeseeable CO2 evolution
feedback mechanisms then there are climate research
institutes on the planet.

Even among human activities, there are many
practices that can potentially affect atmospheric
CO2 fluxes more than direct mitigation of fossil
fuel burning. These include: distribution-of-wealth
practices; world investment, trading and lending
practices; democratic versus corporate control over
the media, over marketing and over the mental
environment in general; military intervention and
intimidation practices; and so on. Each of the above
areas of societal behaviour and organization can be
shown to significantly alter or moderate global
CO2 fluxes between the atmosphere and other
compartments.

Excluding direct human activities (land and water
use, etc.), there are major natural factors that affect
CO2 atmospheric loading. These are only partially
understood and include: geological weathering,
ocean sedimentation, land plant growth, soil
evolution, sediment diagenesis, ecological niche
invasion, volcanic activity, continental subduction,
and many others. Indeed, there is no accepted model
that quantitatively explains atmospheric CO2
concentration, given our limited knowledge of these
factors.

The atmosphere is one of the smallest pools or
compartments for carbon (as CO2) and it responds
quickly to any flux changes with the other
compartments. These flux routes are varied and
largely unknown, as are the mechanisms that
control flux magnitudes. To believe that we could
control atmospheric CO2 concentration by
controlling only the flux from anthropogenic fossil
fuel burning is naive. Burning mitigation or carbon
sequestration practices could easily have no effect
or opposite effects, even if significant societal
efforts were dedicated to such efforts.


THERE ARE TRILLIONS TO BE MADE

What is more naïve than believing that humankind
could control atmospheric CO2 levels by direct
interventions, however, is the belief that the financial
and corporate interests that benefit from fossil fuel
burning and still have gargantuan profits to be made
from the remaining fossil fuels of increasing value
could in this world be convinced by law or agreement
to voluntarily reduce production and to not exercise
their clout in creating demand for the resource that
they control.

Fossil fuel is the main economic commodity on the
planet. Cheap fossil fuel equals cheap transportation
equals globalized trade and globalized exploitation of
labour and of natural resources. Cheap fossil fuel
drives the automobile industry, the largest
manufactured goods growth area in the developing
world. Cheap fossil fuel is the raw material of the
petro-chemical industry, including fertilizers, and
drives agri-business. Cheap fossil fuel allows rapid
military deployments. The entire planetary web of
corporate and finance exploitation is presently
reliant on fossil fuels. To think that governments of
media-created stand-ins could negotiate restraints
on a remote side effect (CO2) of the present day
exercise of power, without ever addressing the real
issues, is to be delusional. Optimism of the will in
needed but let us start with pessimism of the intellect.
Let us be realistic.

In this world, before renewable sources become the
new basis of global economic extortion, oil exploration
will be extended to every sensitive ecosystem on the
globe and the world's massive coal reserves will be
liquefied and gasified. There are enough coal reserves
to keep the wheels of corporate exploitation turning
for another 1000 years or so at the present rate. This
will happen unless citizens force democratic control
over the major planetary economic instruments -
private banking cartels, multinational corporations,
and their government extensions that are the World
Bank and the IMF. In this sense, anti-globalization
activists are at the forefront of environmental
activism.

Even if CO2 emissions could be controlled in actual
practice, this would not impact CO2 concentration
in a predictable way, and CO2 in turn does not
control global climate. People, corporations,
financial webs, and ecosystems all adapt to climate
change. A global corporate and finance machine of
profit and interest extraction based on renewable
energy resources (that it would control) would not
be less devastating than the present system and
would continue to cause irreparable damage.

Climate is not an effectual lever for controlling the
corporate and finance madness that is destroying
human communities and natural habitats. Indeed, it is
the kind of lever that is guaranteed to be ineffectual:
It avoids the root causes, it does not challenge the
relevant power structures, it entices us into
collaboration, it seduces us into personal
consumption responsibility as a substitute for
effective political action, it turns our attention towards
learning about atmospheric chemistry rather than about
the relevant major human-controlled planetary forces,
and it gives us something we relate to (the weather)
rather than sensitizing us to real world problems. The
global warming myth isolates us from the people of the
Third World and from all exploited people outside of
our class, rather than creating meaningful occasions
for empathy and solidarity.


WHY GLOBAL WARMING?
SCIENCE IS A BANDWAGON

Precisely because it is ineffectual... and deflects our
attention away from the necessary confrontations with
established power.

If you accept my critique that the global warming
threat is a myth then the next question is why are so
many resources being spent to keep the myth alive?
Why is it so important to keep global warming at the
forefront of our mental environment? Why have
scientists and First World environmentalists bought
into it with such conviction and dedication? Why
are mainstream politicians allowed by their bosses
to use it in their platforms?

Scientists are simple beings. In general, they have
not studied politics or sociology or human history.
They have had to specialize and to confine their
methods and questions to those that are specific to
their chosen fields. Outside of their disciplines, they
construct a world view largely from the same sources
as most middle class citizens; the mainstream media
and popular culture. Their main comparison points are
colleagues just like themselves that they meet at
specialized conferences and in staff lounges.

At the same time, scientists, like the rest of working
people, often search for a sense of doing something
meaningful at work. They look for ways that their
work might have broader societal implications, even
though it is most often very specialized and has
narrow applications. Ecologists and environmental
scientists like to consider that they might help society
to better treat the environment.

Science is a social construction and scientists must be
seen by their peers as contributing "positively" to their
fields and must mainly cooperate in order to get along
and get ahead. This has the effect of creating an
impetus for scientific consensus. Contrary positions are
rarely deep or long lived and a lot of mileage is
extracted from going along and echoing the dominant
paradigms or opinions. Once something becomes
popular, a scientist can repeat it without new supporting
evidence comfortably and without awakening the ire of
reviewers. Such statements are made in the introductions
of scientific articles in order to motivate the specialized
work or are made in giving broader (and more tenuous)
interpretations or are made in the conclusions of papers
to suggest possible implications of the specialized work.

Global warming has now become just such a popular
theme among ecologists and environmental scientists.
As a result, whereas specialized researchers in climate
change itself continue to debate global warming and
its many facets and continue to critique each others'
methods, data, and conclusions, most articles in
scientific journals that mention global warming do so
gratuitously - in a non-critical, superficial and
self-serving way. Observers of science must therefore
be careful in simply counting opinions expressed in
the introductions and conclusions of scientific articles.

In addition, there are the international commissions
mandated to sort out the scientific literature on topics
that could have public relevance. A main relevant
example is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC). These bodies are mostly composed
of scientists but have political missions.

The board members typically study thousands of
scientific papers written by climate change experts
and others. These papers use different methods and
report different types of data and sometimes come to
contradictory conclusions. Most published papers,
however, report inconclusive results and tenuous
extrapolations, given the difficulty of the area of
study. The authors of the original publications are
usually careful and often do not overstate their
conclusions. They also often qualify their
interpretations and spell out the limits of their work
and the most tenuous parts of their arguments.

Faced with this massive array of inconclusive or
tentative or contradictory and incomplete results, the
international (or national) commission must prepare a
report that will be useful to governments and policy
makers. They must attempt to identify the dominant or
most likely trends, while keeping in mind that scientific
truth cannot be established by a democratic vote or a
popularity contest.

Having then identified the main trends and having
extensively documented the pitfalls and limits of the
reviewed papers, the international commission must
also write an executive summary, for executives that
want definitive statements. The executive summary is
the only part of the report that has a chance of being
read by the top decision makers and it is probably the
only part of the report from which the media will cite.
Few of the players who will read only the executive
summary have the knowledge to appreciate its careful
language and all the sacrifices of content and accuracy
that have been made to produce it.

The international commission's report then becomes a
milestone that the commission itself, for political
reasons of perceived legitimacy, cannot easily
contradict in future reports. There is also a tendency
for most scientists to accept the commission report's
main conclusions or proposed trends.


THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS

The environmental activists, on their side, are trying to
reduce negative human impact on the natural world by
whatever means they can. Many of them are astute
political activists but more of them are simply
environmentally responsible citizens who are mainly
concerned with personal lifestyle choices to minimize
personal ecological footprints. Environmentalists
generally see global warming as a bonanza in public
opinion outreach that has the potential to transform a
majority of citizens into bicycle-riding
anti-air-conditioning energy saving zealots that will
also be sensitized to other and deeper issues.

Environmentalists also have an urgent sense that
humankind is destroying the planet (which is true) and
therefore do not have too hard a time believing that
fossil fuel burning could directly cause the globe to
burn up in a violent last tempest of floods and
hurricanes that would destroy the last natural habitats
and make civilization as we would like it virtually
impossible. Besides, it makes sense, CO2 is a
greenhouse effect gas and it is a product of organic
matter combustion.

The main arguments I hear from environmentalists are:
(1) that even if we are not attacking a root cause,
forcing all to burn less fossil fuels will slow down
humankind's otherwise unimpeded destruction of
the planet and
(2) concentrating on this issue has much educational
value and will help sensitize members of the public
who may then later go a further step.

I don't agree with either of the latter positions.

Finance-driven exploitation is creative and nimble and
will always maximize short-term gain by whatever
method it can get away with, whether limited (on
paper) in its CO2 emissions or not, and all such
exploitations of humans and of nature are always
destructive beyond what should be tolerated in a
democratic society.

On the "global warming issue as education" front, I
again argue the opposite: That promoting the global
warming myth trains people to accept unverified,
remote, and abstract dangers in the place of true
problems that they can discover for themselves by
becoming directly engaged in their workplace and by
doing their own research and observations. It trains
people to think lifestyle choices (in relation to CO2
emission) rather than to think activism in the sense of
exerting an influence to change societal structures. The
first involves finding a comfort zone consistent with
one's values whereas the latter involves accepting
confrontation and risk in order to challenge power
structures. The first is needed for welfare, as are
community, friendship, etc., while the second is needed
to create sanity and justice in an insane world.

In that sense, the global warming myth is a powerful
tool of co-optation that has even eroded one of the most
fertile grounds of political activism: the environmental
movement.

I find that those who defend the global warming myth
most strenuously are also those who cling most to the
notion that the best way to solve these problems is to
somehow ("through awareness and education") get
everyone (or the majority) to minimize their footprints
and consume responsibly. They usually also argue that
corporate bosses and bank managers are people too and
that we just need to reach out to them. They are allergic
even to the notion of organized confrontation.


MAINSTREAM MIND F#?K

The beliefs of mainstream environmentalists are beliefs
of the First World liberal middle class. As such, the
global warming myth fits right in.

The global warming myth, as propagated by the
mainstream media, also works wonders on the general
population: A global problem that we can solve by just
changing our light bulbs to the energy saving kind or
by voting for the Democrats or by trusting our
scientists to come up with a carbon sequestration plan
or by going nuclear for our electricity...

The media are allowed to talk global warming because
it does not threaten power in any significant way.
Indeed, it deflects attention away from real world
issues. It's perfect. The scientists can debate it. The
environmental activists are largely neutralized.
Everyone thinks it's about CO2. The economists can
work out the carbon credits. The politicians can talk
environment without actually saying anything. Those
who want to do something can change their consumer
habits. The others can just ignore it and continue
chatting about the weather.

The fact that the global warming myth has now
attained this degree of media promotion and
entertainment industry integration means not only that
the issue is not threatening to power but that it has also
come to be understood by power to be quite useful. In
this regard, the global warming myth has joined the
other useful media-supported myths that include:
increasing crime rates, the terrorist threat, the American
dream, that we live in a democracy, that greed and
selfishness are unavoidable overriding consequences of
human nature, that we all attain the economic status that
fits our talents and efforts, that we help developing and
Third World countries (that would be worse off without
us), etc.

I hope that this essay will convert a few myth consumers
into temporarily disoriented environmentalists who will
eventually become dedicated and effective social justice
activists. The global warming myth will then have been
useful for something of value.
-----
=====0=====-----

Denis G. Rancourt is a professor of physics and an
environmental science researcher at the University
of Ottawa.

Antworten