As a chemist studying climate change, I have had the unfortunate distinction of confirming dire predictions by Albert Arking in several papers he wrote, by measuring a quadratic absorption to water vapor that is most likely attributable to water dimer. These results were rejected by the scientific community, because they were “hard to believe.” If there were some aspect of my simple measurements that were contested I could do experiments to test whether the criticism was valid. However, “I just don’t believe it” is not testable and leaves me to watch the progress of global warming with an insider’s knowing apprehension.
One silver lining of the economic downturn...
is the effect on CO2 emissions. Less production equates to less emissions. One hope I have had is that a large volcanic eruption like Mount Pinatubo will stave off global warming for another 5 or 10 years by injecting particle sulfates into the upper atmosphere so that we have time to improve our emissions. This would be a temporary effect, though, and might result in less attention to reducing emissions and a larger effect later. We are now involuntarily making cuts across the board that will stave off further damage even more effectively than a volcano.
The news of lives ruined by the economic downturn is horrible to see. People don’t wish for the country and the world to suffer, but cycles in economics are a part of nature. To hope for continuous economic growth is akin to hoping that humans will be a cancerous growth on the earth. One of the deficiencies of the global climate models is that they assume thing will stay the same as they are. How often is that true? Extrapolation is always risky, no matter how fancy the computation. The conclusion that what we have seen is the result of CO2 emissions on the present situation is much easier to conclude safely, despite the oil company experts saying it isn’t, and is a good guide to how we proceed in the future.
This leads me to appreciate greatly the steps taken by the Obama administration. Attempting to stave off a depression that could be as damaging to humans as global climate change, he has put in place the tools to make our future growth less damaging. Like a volcano that has bought us some time, this downturn is being turned into an opportunity to retool and do things better.
As has been reported recently, traffic is better across the country. Idling gasoline engines in heavy traffic is not an efficient use of gasoline aside from being a waste of time. Putting in the incentives to switch to electric cars will allow us to make future delays less damaging as the economy improves. People are adopting a depression era mindset too. Switching to compact fluorescents is even better when you carefully turn off every light that you are not using. People will also be looking for cheaper and smaller appliances. It always bothered me that to get a refrigerator with an energy star rating you had to get a bigger refrigerator. Now people will choose the smaller model because it is cheaper, and they may even look for the one that is most energy efficient. We have a long way to go to get through this economic downturn. The recovery could happen sooner or later, but when it does I think we will be better off.