TO: EARTHSAVE@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU at NOTE<br>
Subject: Global Warming Editorial<br>

To: exec.office<br>
From: pkk@ORNL.GOV (Paul Kanciruk [(423) 574-7426]) (by way of<br>
 mmaccrac@earth.usgcrp.gov (Mike MacCracken))<br>
Subject: Global Warming Editorial<br>

01/29/96 -- (C) 1996 The Washington Post<br>

                   Editorial- In Denial About Global Warming<br>
                              By Jessica Mathews<br><br>

    With the agreement reached by the world's governments last month that
global warming is underway, climate change has moved from "Is there a
problem?" squarely into the "What do we do about it?" phase. The closer
countries come to taking action the louder one can expect the opposition to
become and the more intense the efforts to push the issue back over the line
into the limbo of scientific uncertainty.<br>
     There is nothing about global warming that should make it a partisan
issue, though it is sliding toward becoming one. As many corporate and real
estate interests are likely to be hurt by doing nothing as by curbing
emissions. What's most troubling is that by and large we (legislators, the
public, the media and many industries) are ill equipped to separate the
serious arguments from the phonies and red herrings that dominate what passes
for a greenhouse debate.<br>
     Chief among the latter is the effort to debunk the issue by discrediting
those who are concerned about it. In Congress, the natural approach is to
impute a political or ideological motive. Global warming, says Rep. Dana
Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), chairman of the House subcommittee that allocates
research funds, is "liberal claptrap" pushed along by "PC scientists." It is
"a politicized instead of a scientific concept."<br>
     The liberal conspiracy is international. House Majority Whip Tom DeLay
(R-Tex.) explains this year's Nobel prize in chemistry to the discoverers of
chlorofluorocarbons' role in ozone depletion as "nothing more than the Nobel
appeasement prize" awarded because Sweden is "an extremist environmental
country."<br>
     A commentator who dislikes environmentalists sees a different motive.
Global warming provides "environmental fundamentalists" with a "primitive
religion" that attributes "everything bad" to the greenhouse effect. "Rarely
daunted by fact" and aided by a gullible media, they blame industrialized
man's "sins" and promote "hysteria." The issue is an all-purpose outlet for
environmental "scolding."<br>
     A second strategy is the appeal to selected scientific opinion, in this
case, to a group of about half a dozen men and women who believe that global
warming won't happen or will pose no problem. This tiny handful of
individuals provides almost all the expert ammunition for the debunkers and
testimony for the fossil-fuel industry.<br>
     Their voices, incalculably amplified by editors and producers seeking
"balance," give the impression of a scientific debate that simply no longer
exists. One can always find a few qualified contrarians on any scientific
frontier. But if you subtract the ideologues and the self-interested on both
sides of this issue, you find that the overwhelming body of expert opinion
now takes greenhouse warming as a serious challenge to man and nature's long
term well-being, by a ratio of 20, 50 or a 100 to one. That doesn't mean they
are right, but such a heavy disproportion has to be reflected by anyone who
deals with this issue seriously. There remain myriad complexities,
unexplained phenomena and uncertainties to fuel valid scientific debate, but
the fundamentals now rest on a solid base of theory and empirical evidence.
There may still turn out to be some offsetting phenomenon, a negative
feedback loop of some kind that removes the risk. But for more than a decade
research results have moved consistently in the opposite direction.<br>
     The third strategy is to choose ignorance. For those who want to leave
the choices to others that's okay. But for those who have a role to play in
the debate it is not. In this group are the don't-confuse-me-with-the-facts
crowd in Congress. "I'm not going to get involved in peer review mumbo jumbo"
says Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.), who nevertheless wants to make policy.
Others brush the issue aside with uneasy and now somewhat tired jokes or are
satisfied with their own instincts: "Warming and blizzards? Droughts and
floods? Give me a break." (Counter-intuitive perhaps, but true.)<br>
      Global warming is a national -- no, an international -- security issue
with stupendous economic and ecological stakes. Directly involved are some of
the global economy's largest industries: the fossil-fuel business, banking
and insurance industries, with trillions of dollars of assets, are
potentially at risk. Other industries -- agriculture, for example -- and
national economies are scarcely less affected. All parties need to be able to
address questions on behalf of the public or private interest they represent
for which there are as yet no satisfactory answers.<br>
      How does one treat high uncertainty when possible outcomes are
irreversible? Should we postpone steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for
a few decades until knowledge is greater and technological alternatives to
fossil fuels are more advanced? Or will technology not advance without policy
signals to guide it?<br>
            Are present and likely future trends in energy use moving in the
right or the wrong direction? Is gradual change despite high uncertainty
preferable to the possibility of having to make an abrupt and drastic change
of course at some later date, and if so, at what premium? What economically
efficient mechanisms can be devised to ensure that all countries act in
concert?<br>
      It is time and past to move beyond the jokes, the sneers, the name
calling, the know-nothingism and the false controversies and on to the real
choices. The solid body of scientific evidence obliges us to ask what we're
going to do about global warming and how much we are willing to pay.<p><p>

The writer is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.<p>

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