A global warning

Much has been said, and is being said about this phenomenon, if you can call it that, called global warming. Hence I have decided that it's time that I also took a stand; as little as that is going to change anything, it is something that I can do, and there seems to be nothing better to do anyways.

The world has spent so much of its time on this - so many discussions, debates, articles, protest marches, new laws, tv room discussions, news paper editorials, parliament disruptions, research, accusations, counter accusations - the list is endless.

Unfortunately though, in my opinion, most of the people who have been saturating our media and our lives with their bickering and brawling about global warming, have been aiming their fists at the wrong opponent. Having seen many such debates, and having read so many such articles, I have to say, it makes me very sad to see that even many extremely intelligent scientists on either side of the argument fail to realize, that global warming as an issue, is not as much a dichotomy in environmental science, as it is in risk management.

Let me try to explain that statement with a simple example. Consider somebody who is thinking about taking an insurance. A middle aged man, for example. A family man, the bread earner, who is thinking about insuring his new house. Now obviously, he is in no position to predict what will happen in the future. A fire may destroy his house. Vandals may attack his house and burgle it. These are crises that can happen in the future, about which the poor old man has no knowledge in the present. He may feel that such events are highly improbable to occur, but because he is wise, he understands the risk, and the consequence of it and the price he would have to pay in case the fire did occur. And he takes the term policy. This is what risk management is all about. Willing to lose the cost of the insurance to guard against the risk and the bigger price one would have to pay if that risk did turn out true. The wise man did not waste effort debating and fighting with his wife whether or not a fire will occur; because no matter how much he debates on the chances of a fire gutting his house, it would never change anything, and he will always be in the dark regarding the chances.

And that is exactly what all these environmentalists and politicians and scientists seem to be doing. Debating on and on whether the fire is going to occur or not, and not thinking about the insurance. Because let's get the facts straight. As far as I know, the global debate on climate change really started seriously in the 1980's, when scientists started observing the results of a lot of research around the world - credible results - that seemed to indicate that the average temperature on the surface of the earth has been increasing since the 1850's or so.

Now that is a fact that everyone agrees upon - that the average temperature of the surface of the earth is increasing.

All the debate is about whether human activity over the past century has had any sort of effect on this temperature rise. To take one side of the debate, are scores of hundreds of scientists and scientific institutions, with the IPCC as the flag bearer, who vehemently argue that the amount of green house gases that we humans have injected into the atmosphere during the past century or so has resulted in the temperature rise. The IPCC, in its third assessment report in 2001, and its first since the Kyoto protocol, adhered strongly to this view, by publishing what is now very famously known as the 'Hockey stick graph', indicating that the global temperature was always lesser and fairly constant over the past millennium, while it is suddenly increasing since the turn of the 20th century. Also, many computer models exist of the weather pattern on the earth, which seem to indicate drastic increase in global temperature in the near future.

The other side of the debate is taken up by people who are branded by the general media as the 'skeptics'. These people do not oppose the fact that global temperatures are rising. But according to them, the hockey stick graph is a just a farce, and this increase in temperature is not something new to the earth, but it has happened in the past. They say, the earth was going through a mini ice-age till the start of the twentieth century, and this increase in temperature is natural and has nothing to do with human intervention or increase in green house gases. Hence they argue that man-made global warming is a 'myth'. And statements like it is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people".

Even though I would like to say that I am a neutral observer, I actually feel a bit inclined towards being a skeptic. I personally agree with many scientists on the unpredictability of the weather system. I believe it is too chaotic and complex to be understood completely and predicted using computer models, no matter how complex they are. Also, I don't buy the IPCC's claims. I believe that there is enough credible research, even out in the public, to atleast question the theory that global temperatures have increased only since the advent of the industrialized man in the past century.

But that is where my journey with the afore-mentioned skeptics ends. Even though Crichton's idea never ceases to amaze me, I am not sure anybody is intentionally trying to perpetrate a hoax. The fact of the matter is, nobody knows how the future is going to pan out.

That is to say, no matter somebody is a skeptic or a believer, the only way to know what happens in the future, is to get there first. You can be satisfied seeing your computer churn out ones and zeroes about what is going to happen in the future, but there is not enough certainty in it for countries to make policy decisions costing billions of dollars based on that data.
Also, as a non-believer, you don't have anything to prove that the present rise in temperature is not due to human intervention. Just because you have data to show that the earth was warmer in the past, does not prove that the present warming is also fully due to natural causes.

Thus the only logical conclusion I can see in the above debate, and what everyone knows, is that there is no point in debating whether something will happen in the future. Because we just don't know the future.

We must realize that we are in the same position as the guy who took an insurance for his house, not knowing whether something would happen, but knowing that something can happen.

Thus, the believers should change their stand. They should not try and convince the world that man-made global warming is a reality. They should tell the truth, that it can be a reality, but which actually they cannot predict for sure. But if it does turn out to be true as they believe, its going to turn out very bad.
The skeptics should realize that they may be right, but they may also be wrong. And the price that the world is going to pay if man-made global warming turns out to be true, is so huge that it is far better to spend some money now to prevent the disaster.

Thus once people start realizing that there is really no point in arguing on the course of the future, I hope they stop debating on it, and choose the one thing that can be done. Insure ourselves - act and force a policy change.

What harm will happen, if we reduce our pollution a little bit anyway. :)