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hillsdale.edu
"The Kyoto Protocol and Global Warming
Sallie Baliunas
March 2002
Sallie Baliunas, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and deputy directory of Mount Wilson Observatory, received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in astrophysics from Harvard University. She is co-host of the Web site www.TechCentralStation.com, a senior scientist and chair of the Science Advisory Board at the George C. Marshall Institute, and past contributing editor to World Climate Report. Her awards include the Newton-Lacy-Pierce Prize of the American Astronomical Society, the Petr Beckmann Awards for Scientific Freedom, and the Bok Prize from Harvard University. The author of over 200 scientific articles, Dr. Baliunas served as technical consultant for a science-fiction television series, Gene Roddenberry's Earth Final Conflict. Her research interests include solar variability, magnetohydrodynamics of the sun and sun-like stars, expoplanets, and the use of laser electro-optics for the correction of turbulence due to the earth's atmosphere in astronomical images.
"The evolution from fire to fossil fuels to nuclear energy is a path of improved human health and welfare arising from efficient and effective access to energy. One trade-off is that energy use by human beings has always produced environmental change. For example, it has resulted in human artifacts marking the landscape, the removal of trees from major areas for wood burning, and region-wide noxious air pollution from coal burning. On the other hand, ready availability of energy that produces wealth through the free market system provides ways to remedy or minimize environmental damage from energy use.
With widespread industrialization, human use of coal, oil and natural gas has become the centerpiece in an international debate over a global environmental impact, viz., global warming. Fossil fuels provide roughly 84 percent of the energy consumed in the United States and 80 percent of the energy produced worldwide. An attempt to address the risk of deleterious global warming from the use of these carbon dioxide-emitting fuels is embodied in the Kyoto Protocol and its attendant series of international negotiations. But on scientific, economic and political grounds, the Kyoto Protocol as an attempt to control this risk while improving the human condition is flawed.
What Would Kyoto Do?
Projections of future energy use, applied to the most advanced computer simulations of climate, have yielded wide-ranging forecasts of future warming from a continued increase of carbon dioxide concentration in the air. The middle range forecast of the estimates of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, based on expected growth in fossil fuel use without any curbs, consists of a one degree Celsius increase over the next half century. A climate simulation including the effect of implementing the Kyoto Protocol -- negotiated in 1997 and calling for a worldwide five percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions from 1990 levels -- would reduce that increase to 0.94 degree Celsius. This amounts to an insignificant 0.06 degree Celsius averted temperature increase. ..."
"...Over the same period, renewable energy sources like wind and solar power have been discussed to the point of distraction. But these are boutique energy sources: they produce relatively minute amounts of energy and do so intermittently. While they may be cost-effective in limited locales, they are unreliable for large-scale electricity generation. (As a side note, often overlooked is the enormous environmental footprint that wind and solar farms would require. For example, to replace a conventional 1000 megawatt coal plant that spans tens of acres would require an isolated, uninhabited area with correct meteorological conditions of roughly 400 square miles on which to place over 2,000 wind turbines, not to mention the associated imprint of high-power transmission lines, roads, etc. Solar panel farms would produce environmental blight and degradation over a similarly sized landscape.) ..."
"...climate simulations predict that a smooth, linear rise of at least twice the observed trend should already be occurring, and that it will continue through the next century. Given that the warming trend has been observed to be at most 0.1 degree Celsius per decade from human activities, these future forecasts appear greatly to exaggerate the future warming and should be adjusted downward to, at most, one degree Celsius warming by 2100. That amount of warming would be very similar to natural variability, which humans have dealt with for thousands of years. Indeed, it would likely return climate conditions to those experienced in the early centuries of the second millennium, when widespread warming is indicated by numerous proxies of climate, such as glaciers, pollen deposits, boreholes, ice cores, coral, tree growth, and sea and lake floor sediments. (It is interesting to note that this so-called Medieval Climate Optimum is associated with the settling of Greenland and Iceland, travel by the Vikings to Newfoundland, higher crop yields and generally rising life spans.) ..."
"...Finally, it should be mentioned that in looking for natural factors influencing the climate, a new area of research centers on the effects of the sun. Twentieth century temperature changes show a strong correlation with the sun's changing energy output. Although the causes of the sun's changing particle, magnetic and energy outputs are uncertain -- as are the responses of the climate to solar changes -- the correlation is pronounced. It explains especially well the early twentieth century temperature increase, which, as we have seen, could not have had much human contribution. [See Chart 5, illustrating the change over four centuries of the Sunspot Number, which is representative of the surface area coverage of the sun by strong magnetic fields. The low magnetism of the seventeenth century, a period called the Maunder Minimum, coincides with the coldest century of the last millennium, and there is sustained high magnetism in the latter twentieth century. See also Chart 6, showing that changes in the sun's magnetism -- as evidenced by the changing length of the 22-year or Hale Polarity Cycle (dotted line) -- closely correlates with changes in Northern Hemisphere land temperature (solid line). The sun's shorter magnetic cycles are more intense, suggesting a brighter sun during longer cycles. Lags or leads between the two curves that are shorter than 20 years are not significant, owing to the 22-year time frame of the proxy of brightness change. ..."
"...Conclusion
Two conclusions can be drawn about global warming and human energy use:
No catastrophic human-made global warming effects can be found in the best measurements of climate that we presently have.
The longevity, health, welfare and productivity of humans have improved with the use of fossil fuels for energy, and the resulting human wealth has helped produce environmental improvements beneficial to health as well.
In light of some of the hysterical language surrounding the issue of greenhouse gases, it is also worth noting that carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels, is not a toxic pollutant. To the contrary, it is essential to life on earth. And plants have flourished -- agricultural experts estimate a ten percent increase in crop growth in recent decades -- due directly to the fertilization effect of increased carbon dioxide in the air. ..."
Regards, Don |
