A harmful climate debate

In 1988, NASA climate scientist James Hansen stood in front of the US congress and made a stark declaration for which the audience was not trained or ready to make sense of. He laid it all out that humans were causing planetary warming and pretty soon the planet would feel the deadly effects of climate change. At the time people could hardly believe or understand what he had said and many laughed him off and labeled him as controversial. Lo and behold, it was a matter of time for him to be proven right. Today, we live on that planet that he had warned about 35 years ago.

This week, Hansen has again come up with another controversial finding. The study that he conducted along with his colleagues makes the case that the earth is nearing the 1.5 degree Celsius warming sooner than earlier thought. They are making the case that the earth’s warming pace is accelerating.

Most staple crops would not be able to grow in such a heat. The resulting global hunger problems, which would trigger wars and migration are other disasters in the making and directly related to the excessive heat. Let us not even go into the details of the potential crises ahead. The most advanced water conservation methods that mankind has so far devised would fail to combat the droughts that would result from such a warmed up planet.

There was a study conducted in 1979, which had concluded that the doubling of the carbon dioxide in the air would cause a warming of the planet ranging between 1.5 to 4.5 degree Celsius. Recently, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had calculated that planetary warming could touch 3 degrees with carbon dioxide doubling. What Hansen and his colleagues have found is that the doubling of carbon dioxide would actually create a whopping 4.8 degree Celsius warming, which is more than even the highest degree predicted to be possible back in 1979. That is what the acceleration of warming does. Unlike previous predictions, the 1.5 degree warming would be achieved by our planet in the 2020s.

Much of the earth would be uninhabitable much before reaching 4.8 degree warming. And we have not slowed down in increasing carbon emissions so that doubling of the carbon dioxide is quite a real and achievable thing. We can count on humanity to do that.

Another very respected, genuine and credible scientist named Michael Mann has actually given his own conclusion of the Hansen study. He has disagreed with it based on two points: one, the ocean’s heat is growing but not accelerating; two, the reduction in pollution, a phenomenon that causes more heat, has not been sudden as Hansen had made the case. That disagreement should be a relief because not only is it a disagreement about a doomed conclusion but it is by someone one can totally believe. However, it is no relief for someone like me who pays attention to climate change and the future humanity holds in a cooked world. Firstly, the average reader who is not a scientist finds it disturbing because both the scientists Hansen and Mann are reputable and credible. Both at one time came up with a finding that was not believed and ridiculed, only to be proven correct later on. Mann is known for his hockey stick report and Hansen for the one mentioned above.

Such a disagreement between these two reliable scientists would only strengthen the fossil fuel propaganda machinery, which is ready to find holes in the arguments of the climate scientists and create this perception that the truth is hardly known and that the warming trend may just be a natural phenomenon instead of it being human caused. The most disturbing aspect of this debate is that it is bad news for people no matter who wins the argument. The disagreement is over the time, not over the results.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 5^th, 2023.

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