Global Warming Debate Heats Up


By Sheldon C. Plotkin, Ph.D., P.E.

The Southern California Federation of Scientists, SCFS, has been disseminating scientific information to the public since 1953. Our radio program, The Wizard Show, was on KPFK for 15 years attempting to explain technical phenomena to untrained people in terms they could understand. We claim that science is not wizardry, apparently complex matters are that way because a large number of simple and easily understood aspects are combined together which then makes the overall situation very difficult to understand. It is in that light that I have a few comments to make after reading the James Lovelock article about global warming in the February issue of the Beachhead.


Lovelock referring to the Earth as Gaia and then treating this physical entity as a living body with biological characteristics may provide some worthwhile analogies, but it also may provide some erroneous characteristics. It is true that much contamination will be cleaned up naturally once the polluting process ceases. However, phenomena like global warming requires the specification of necessary human actions beyond just saying we have to cease burning fossil fuels. Even the time scale is dependent on which course of action is taken, e.g. although the U.S. can cease burning coal with relative ease in my judgment, China appears to require a much more gradual cessation and probably a much different basic course.

Much of Lovelock’s description of Gaia sounds like that of Native Americans with their references to Mother Earth. Violent treatment like stripping the earth of its natural resources needs more than just ceasing or being more gentle when extracting such basic minerals and the like. It might be noted that many strip mining actions in U.S. coal resource areas have been followed by elaborate replanting of needed forests and using good trees for the purpose, i.e. fast growing so they will consume as much CO2 as possible. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should continue the strip mining as compared with underground mining.

Addressing global warming in particular, it is noted that more than 90% of the greenhouse gases is CO2 from combustion of fossil fuels, i.e. petroleum, natural gas, and coal. While this is a self regulating problem in the long run, i.e. fossil fuels have a limited lifetime after which the atmosphere will gradually return to its original condition, we really cannot afford to wait that long.
A significant scientific problem is to confidently specify exactly what will happen along the way.

This is particularly applicable to predicting the likely weather effects of an increase in atmospheric temperature. Considering simply the melting of glaciers with rising water levels doesn’t include effects on ocean currents, tornadoes and hurricanes, or weather conditions in general. The problem should be addressed before we know what is going to happen.

Analogies from Lovelock like humans being “the nervous system of the planet” may be helpful for some people but a distracting analogy for others, e.g. myself. Directly addressing the deleterious situation, i.e. problem aspects and technical solutions, is probably better than using clever analogies which shift the focus. This rationale is also applicable to spirituality in general as applied to technical societal problems. It is generally hard enough to specify exactly what actions are needed without emphasizing the connection to philosophic spiritual beliefs.

While Lovelock looks at global warming and environmental pollution as being the result of a diseased earth, it might be more helpful to think of society as simply being in a dynamic state of flux. Human behavior follows the economic system, technical development, and long versus short range planning. I believe much of what Lovelock views as a diseased earth can be more specifically viewed as people behaving so as to achieve short term gain without considering the welfare of future generations.

This is essentially how we have created the present environmental mess we are in. It is not just global warming but ozone layer depletion, sustainable use of natural resources, and reducing of worldwide populations to levels adequate for sustainability that must be addressed. While most of our problems result from aggressive, greedy, and self-centered human nature, there is one potentially catastrophic problem, and perhaps more, that has occurred quite by accident.

I’m referring here to the atmospheric ozone layer depletion. When creating such a non-reactive refrigerant like Freon, a chlorinated-hydrocarbon that was easy and cheap to manufacture, there was no way a’priori of knowing that the chlorine molecule would eventually be released in the upper atmosphere and produce such devastation with its catalytic destruction of ozone molecules.

In fact, it is indeed a bit of pure good luck in my view that the Ph.D. research project at UC Irvine years ago would have such an impact on the world. Very little basic research ever sees the light of day. Perhaps this is a part of the inherent dynamics within society. I prefer to look at this as an excellent example of why pure basic scientific research needs to be supported at the maximum level economically possible. The value of this one chlorinated-hydrocarbon research project is worth more than all unused basic research combined.

In this case, if we had to wait until the ultra-violet rays from the sun getting through the ozone layer begins killing the plant life on earth and, therefore, our food supply, it would probably be too late to take corrective measures. As it is, we discovered the atmospheric ozone layer depletion problem (as distinguished from local air pollution from combustion apparatus) soon enough to take corrective action, and we will probably be able to stop further ozone depletion very shortly. At that point we can expect a very slow recovery, perhaps 100 to 150 years for the full recovery process.

In conclusion, with regards global warming, it essentially makes no difference at this time what the effects are really going to be. The real problem now is to motivate the masses of our society, politicians, government bureaucrats, industrial leaders, etc. to take immediate action to stop the release of greenhouse gases, particularly CO2 from combustion processes. We cannot wait for fossil fuels, i.e. petroleum, natural gas, and coal, to run out which automatically stops the major source of these greenhouse gases.

Long-range planning coupled with immediate action toward establishing alternate sources of energy, electric energy specifically, should have been done yesterday. The specifics of what’s available and what’s on the horizon is another article for the Beachhead. Needless to say, conversion from petroleum fueled transportation can be switched to electricity but it will take many years to develop and construct the system of trains, electric buses, and electric passenger cars.
Convenient, efficient, and inexpensive mass transit is possible for the Los Angeles area. Small short range electric vehicles would then be quite convenient. The sooner we start such development of a future long range transportation system, the better off we are going to be. e
Shel Plotkin is a member of the executive board of the Southern California Federation of Scientists <www.scfs-la.org>

Posted: Wed - March 1, 2006 at 03:44 AM          

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