No consensus on prime cause of global warming
Financial Times >By Gerald Marsh
Nuclear physicist Gerald Marsh, a science advisor at the National Center for Public Policy Research
Sir, The claim by the science academies of the Group of Eight nations that, as you put it in your main editorial ("A clarion call on climate change", June 9), "the scientific evidence about man-made climate change is now clear enough for there to be no further excuses about the urgent need for cost-effective steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions" is a political statement not a scientific fact.
While the majority of climate scientists may believe there has been some slight warming of the globe, there is no consensus that the primary cause is due to emissions of carbon dioxide by human activity.
To claim that the status of the science has now exposed "the remaining sceptics as an extremist rearguard" is unjustified and insulting.
For those who believe that cost-effective steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions are justified in the current climate of scientific uncertainty, there is a cheap insurance policy: vastly increase the use of nuclear power to replace coal-fired electricity generating plants.
If the environmental impact of coal burning were made an in-house cost rather than treated as an externality, use of nuclear power would not only greatly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but easily pay for itself by the reduction of coal-burning pollution and the resulting tens of thousands of excess deaths each year about which there is a consensus.
Contrary to popular misconceptions, nuclear power is safe, environmentally benign and sustainable for many thousands of years.
Gerald E. Marsh, Chicago, IL 60615, US
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