What Is The Truth About GLOBAL WARMING?

In the summer of 1988, one of the centurys worst heat waves gripped the
East Coast and had Midwest farmers wondering if the Dust Bowl had returned.
On June 23, at a Senate hearing on global climate change, James Hansen, a
respected atmospheric scientist and director of NASAs Goddard Institute for
space Studies, gave alarming testimony. The earth is warmer in 1988 than at
any time in the history of instrumental measurements, he said. The
greenhouse effect is changing our climate now.
Hansens remarks touched off a firestorm of publicity. A major news
magazine speculated that the Great Plains would be depopulated. On NBCs
Today show, biologist Paul Ehrlich warned that melting polar ice could raise
sea levels and inundate coastal cities, swamping much of Florida, Washington,
D.C., and the Los Angeles basin. And in his recent book, Global Warming,
Stephen Schneider of the National Center of Atmospheric Research imagined
New York overcome by a killer heat wave, a baseball double-header in Chicago
called because of a thick black haze created by huge forest fires in Canada, and
Long Island devastated by a hurricane, all spawned by the "greenhouse effect.
In Paris last July, the leaders of seven industrial democracies, including
President Bush and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, called for
common efforts to limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse
gases." To accomplish this, many environmentalists have proposed draconian
regulations and huge new taxes that could significantly affect the way we live.
Warns Environmental Protection Agency head William Reilly: "To slow down
the global heating process, the scale of economic and societal intervention will
be enormous.
The stakes are high: the public could be asked to decide between
environmental catastrophe and enormous costs. But do we really have to make
this choice? Many scientists believe the danger is real, but others are much less
certain. What is the evidence? Here is what we know:
When sunlight warms the earth, certain gases in the lower atmosphere,
acting like the in a glass greenhouse, trap some of the heat as it radiates back
into space. These greenhouse gases, primarily water vapor and including carbon
dioxide, methane and man-made chlorofluorocarbons, warm our planet, making
life possible.

If they were more abundant, greenhouse gases might trap too much heat.
Venus, for example, has 60,000 times more carbon dioxide in its atmosphere
than Earth, and its temperature averages above 800 degrees Fahrenheit. But if
greenhouse gases were less plentiful or entirely absent, temperatures on Earth
would average below freezing.
Because concentrations of greenhouse gases have been steadily rising,
many scientists are concerned about global warming. Researchers at the
Goddard Institute and at the University of East Anglia in England foresee a
doubling of greenhouse gas concentrations during the next century, which might
raise average global temperatures as much as nine degrees Fahrenheit.
Nature accounts for most of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. For
example, carbon dioxide (CO2), the most plentiful trace gas, is released by
volcanoes, oceans, decaying plants and even by our breathing. But much of the
build-up is man-made.
CO2 is given off when we burn wood or such fossil fuels as coal and oil.
In fact, the amount in the atmosphere has grown more than 25 percent since the
Industrial Revolution began around 200 years ago over 11 percent since 1958
alone.
Methane, the next most abundant greenhouse gas, is released when
organic matter decomposes in swamps, rice paddies, livestock yards--even in
the guts of termites and cud-chewing animals. The amount is growing about one
percent per year, partly because of increased cattle raising and use of natural
gas.
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), a third culprit, escape from refrigerators, air
conditioners, plastic foam, solvents and spray cans. The amount in the
atmosphere is tin compared with CO2, but CFCs are thousands of times more
potent in absorbing heat and have also been implicated in the "ozone hole."
Ozone, a naturally occurring form of oxygen, is of concern for another
reason. In the upper atmosphere it helps shield us from ultraviolet sunlight,
which can cause skin cancer. In 1985, scientists confirmed a temporary thinning
in the ozone layer over Antarctica, leading to a new concern: if ozone thinning
spreads to populated areas, it could cause an increase in the disease.
The ozone hole appears only from September to November, and only
over the Antarctic region, and then it repairs itself when atmospheric conditions

change a few weeks later. It also fluctuates: in 1988, there was little ozone
thinning.
Ozone is constantly created and destroyed by nature. Volcanoes, for
example, can release immense quantities of chlorine, some of which may get
into the stratosphere and destroy ozone molecules.
But the most popular theory to explain the appearance of the ozone hole
is that man-made chlorofluorocarbons release chlorine atoms in the upper
atmosphere.
Despite thinning of upper atmospheric ozone over Antarctica, no increase
in surface ultraviolet radiation outside of that area is expected. John E.
Frederick, an atmospheric scientist who chaired a United Nations Environment
Program panel on trends in atmospheric ozone, has dismissed fears of a skin
cancer epidemic as science fiction. "You would experience a much greater
increase in biologically damaging ultraviolet radiation if you moved from New
York City to Atlanta than you would with the ozone depletion that we estimate
will occur over the next 30 years," he says.
When trees and plants grow, they remove CO 2 from the air. When they
are burned or decay, they release stored CO 2 back into the atmosphere. In
Brazil, thousands of square miles of tropical rain forests are being cleared and
burned, leading to the concern about further CO2 build-up.
Worldwide, millions of acres are planted with seedling trees each
however; and new studies year, reveal that there has been no reliable data about
the impact of forest destruction on global warming. Research by Daniel Botkin
and Lloyd Simpson at the University of California at Santa Barbara and by
Sandra Brown at the University of Illinois at Urbana shows that the carbon
content of forests had been vastly overestimated, suggesting that deforestation is
not as great a source of CO2 as was once thought.
Virtually all scientists agree that if greenhouse gases increase and all
other factors remain the same, the earth will warm up. But "the crucial issue,"
explains Prof. S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric scientist at the Washington
Institute for Values in Public Policy, "is to what extent other factors remain the
same." Climatic forces interact in poorly understood ways, and some may
counteract warming.

At any given time, for example, clouds cover 60 percent of the planet,
trapping heat radiating from its surface, but also reflecting sunlight back into
space. So, if the oceans heat up and produce more clouds through evaporation,
the increased cover might act as a natural thermostat and keep the planet from
heating up. After factoring more detailed cloud simulations into its computer
models, the British Meteorological Office recently showed that current global
warming projections could be cut in half.
Oceans have a major effect upon climate, but scientists have only begun
to understand how. Investigators at the National Center for Atmospheric
Research attributed the North American drought in the summer of 1988
primarily to temperature changes in the tropical Pacific involving a current
called El Nio not to the greenhouse effect. And when ocean currents were
included in recent computerized climate simulations, the Antarctic Ocean didn't
warm diminishing the likelihood that part of its ice sheet will break up and add
to coastal flooding.
How heat travels through the atmosphere and back into space is another
big question mark for the global warming theory. So is the sunspot cycle, as
well as the effect of atmospheric pollution and volcanic particles that can reflect
sunlight back into space. Such factors throw predictions about global warming
into doubt.
Two widely reported statistics seem to present a powerful case for global
warming. Some temperature records show about one degree Fahrenheit of
warming over the past century, a period that has also seen a noticeable increase
in greenhouse gases. And the six warmest years globally since record keeping
began 100 years ago have all been in the.
As for the past decade, the increased warmth in three of its hottest years
1983, 1987 and 1988 is almost certainly associated with El Nino events in the
Pacific.
Paradoxically, the historical records of temperature change do not jibe
with the greenhouse theory. Between 1880 and 1940, temperatures appeared to
rise. Yet between 1940 and 1065, a period of much heavier fossil-fuel use and
deforestation, temperatures dropped which seems inconsistent with the
greenhouse effect. And a comprehensive study of past global ocean records by
researchers from Britain and MIT revealed no significant rising temperature
trends between 1856 and 1986. Concludes Richard Lindzen of MIT's

department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, "The data as we have

it does not support a warming.
Taking everything into account, few climatologists are willing to attribute
any seeming warming to the greenhouse effect. Last May, 61 scientists
participating in a green house workshop in Amherst, Mass., declared that "such
an attribution cannot now be made with any degree of confidence."
Atmospheric researchers use complex computer programs called General
Circulation Models (GCMs) to plot climate change. But a computer is no more
reliable than its input, and poorly understood oceanic, atmospheric and
continental processes are only crudely represented even in the best GCMs.
Computer calculations do not even accurately predict the past: they fail to
match historical greenhouse gas concentrations to expected temperatures.
Because of these uncertainties, Stephen Schneider says in Global Warming, it is
an even bet that the GCMs have over estimated future warming by a factor of
two.
In time, the computer models will undoubtedly improve. For now, the
lack of evidence and reliable tools leaves proponents of global warming with
little but theory.
Fossil fuels now provide 90 percent of the world's energy. Some
environmentalists have advocated huge tax increases to discourage use of coal
and other fossil fuels. Some have suggested a gasoline tax. There are also
proposals that the government subsidize solar, windmill and geothermal power;
that some foreign debts be swapped for protecting forests; and that worldwide
population growth be slowed.
The build-up of greenhouse gases is cause for scientific study, but not for
panic. Yet the facts sometimes get lost in the hysteria. Stephen Schneider
confesses to an ethical dilemma. He admits the many uncertainties about global
warming. Nevertheless, to gain public support through media coverage, he
explains that sometimes scientists "have to offer up scary scenarios, make
simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might
have." Each scientist, he says, must decide the "right balance" between "being
effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.
The temptation to bend fears for political ends is also ever present.
"We've got to ride the global warming issue," Sen. Timothy Wirth (D., Colo.)

explained to a reporter. "Even if the theory is wrong, we will be doing the right
thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.
But many scientists are troubled when inconclusive evidence is used for
political advocacy. "The green house warming has become a happening, says
Richard Lindzen. To call for action, he adds, "has become a litmus test of
morality."
We still know far too little to be stampeded into rash, expensive
proposals. Before we take such steps, says Patrick J. Michaels, an associate
professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, "the science
should be much less murky than it is now."
Further research and climatic monitoring are certainly warranted. If the
"greenhouse signal" then emerges from the data, we can decide on the most
prudent course of action.