My Concluding Thoughts on Global Warming

At last after days of reading journals, online articles, reports, forum discussions, debates, and multi-media presentations and years of collective reflections, I was able to provide myself a stable and concrete disposition on this issue. The first time I heard about GW/CC was in High School. That time I did not pay much attention because it was only a topic under my environmental science class and I was also busy figuring out the world of biology, chemistry and physics. During college we got to discuss this issue with my friends and because of my cockiness and arrogance, and partially influenced by activism, I took the stand pointing to man being responsible for all the changes that were happening to the world without even deeply looking into the scientific underpinnings of the issue. When I started to shift my interest to Physics, I stayed away from major current events debates and discussions, for I realized that they were so temporal and trivial. I haven’t concerned myself with GW for years until last year when the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” had been released and it became the talk of the town and somehow also caught my attention. It was not missed from our afternoon coffee klatsch. I revisited my stand on this issue and I realized that there was a sudden change in my views. What changed my views? It was “who” and not “what.” It was Richard Feynman who changed my views towards social, political, cultural, and scientific issues. From his works I learned the true value of science. Science is not about knowing everything, it is about knowing what you know and what you don’t know and it is only through doubts that you can affirm that you know something about something. This may sound cliché but somehow I find it true especially in our generation when a lot of scientific works are being released everyday that make truth indiscernible.

My views here are standing on the principles of science as how I learned it from R. Feynman. In the issue of GW/CC, I learned that currently there are two views being discussed and debated anywhere and they are: (a) the Non-Anthropogenic GW or the GW caused my natural processes and (b) the Anthropogenic GW, also known as AGW in scientific community. The scientific community has varying opinions and it is currently divided into these views. Even the society as a whole, some would argue that man is the major culprit of this climate change and some would say it’s nothing it’s just the normal climate cycle of our planet. In my case, I would stand on the grounds that would eliminate the bias of anthropocentrism. I always believe that the universe will go on with her processes that planet earth will go on with her processes with or without our existence. But this is not the reason why I would take the side of Non-anthropogenic GW. My reason stands on what I know and what I don’t know.

What I know (minus political and cultural views biases):

1. A good science behind climate change, physical, chemical and atmospheric principles.
2. The stands claimed by GW and AGW. For GW it is a natural phenomenon and it is deeply connected to the bio-geological processes of the planet For AGW, it is man-made caused by the abused of man of his environment and reliance on Fossil Fuels that produce exponential growth of CO2 as waste product of his processes.
3. Climate science is not linear and it is a complex system that current data modeling and scientific investigations cannot provide reliable and correct data projections. And there are a lot of uncertainties with it come to the final determination of the effects of this on the global perspective.
4. Earth is historically since her birth changing, and all her innate properties are fluctuating, like the CO2 content of her atmosphere, the GHG content, ocean salinity, tectonic movements, cooling and warming or temperature, etc.
5. Earth processes are dependent not only on the interior content but also affected by cosmic or space processes such as the cosmic radiations, solar activity, spatial location, etc.
6. Man has evolved extrasomatically in tremendous ways that it has to source his energy needs from all efficient and cost-effective sources to cope-up with the exponential needs quota.
7. Man is dependent on energy to survive, such as electricity, heat, organic and other forms to sustain his society.
8. We are part of this society and we are enjoying all the good things brought by our development that requires tremendous amount of energy.
9. Man intervened in the natural processes of our biosphere because also of our development (in all aspect).
10. Earth science is complex and man is part of this complexity but he is a negligible part when the dynamics of our planet is plotted in space and time.
11. Anthropocentrism centered man in the universe and will always view things in the perspective of human activities.
12. Anthropocentrism provide erroneous view of the physical reality in the sense that it eliminates other world-views.
13. Human activities are all politically and economically motivated and even scientific works are not excused from this bias. Some scientists are having hard time in getting funding because of some politically reasons and economic reasons and this is the major hindrance in the correct forward movement of scientific breakthroughs. Like for example the usage of Nuclear energy had been slowed down for years because of political and economic reasons.
14. Mass media is good a medium to capture a great audience. A theory will only matter when there is mass on it based on the number of people who believe it. Once there is mass there is inertia and things will go smoothly even they are not scientifically sound.
15. Only few will dare the concepts established by the giants, both scientific and political.

So far these are the things I know about GW.

What I don’t know:

1. The detailed science on the atmospheric dynamics, like how much we are influencing the rate of warming, the absolute equation that can express the whole components of climate, etc… and it is because we don’t have yet reliable and accurate data modeling tools that can project future events. Even IPCC has released there own data uncertainties.
2. The validity of 90% confidence of the IPCC report.
3. The future of mankind and future atmospheric and geological processes of the Earth.
4. The current world disposition on GW is purely out of activism or of political manipulation. That there exists some sort of conspiracy theory.
5. This is a mere coincidence that we are experiencing that these climate turnovers exactly happen at the time when we are aggressively aware of our environmental stewardships.
6. The other world-views on this issue, like for example the view of the migratory birds. Do you think they would say this thing is happening because of the how man runs his society?
7. The future energy production paradigm of our society.
8. The reasons why most people believe in the AGW view.
9. We can survive eliminating all technology that produces GHG as waste product.
10. We are aware that everything we have now somehow contributes to the GHG content of the atmosphere and we are willing to let go of them.

Based from the above points, I would personally conclude, in my own perspective, that GW is not man-made. Global Warming is just the natural shift of the earth’s atmospheric cycle when viewed in the earth’s history perspective.

But it doesn’t mean that we are going to be complacent, that we are going to do nothing and wait for the time when worst effects of the shift will occur. As I always say, we are looking at the wrong solution. For the policymakers, we cannot stop GW but we can adapt to its erratic dynamics and that is what we are supposed to do, to find ways on how to adapt with the moody conditions of the Earth’s climate. Did we do anything to stop earthquakes? To stop tectonic movements? I am very convinced that GW is not an induced phenomenon by man but rather a natural phenomenon just like earthquakes or tectonic movements. On this ground, now uncertain future can be faced by us because we have already prepared our civilization (society) to adapt with external erratic forces. The only possible path of solution I can provide to this problem is described by the following:

1. Stop wasting funds on proving that man is the cause of this phenomenon but instead divert them to find out the basic laws governing this phenomenon.
2. Stop bickering about the usage of fossil fuels because for now we don’t have any available solution that is cost-efficient and popularly accepted. Actually we already have, but for some other political reason it was not pursued, the Nuclear energy.
3. Stop looking things in our perspective but in the perspective of all important views. We tend to miss important factors because we tend to look at things on our world-view only. Eliminate activism and anthropocentrism in all observations.
4. Stop designing policies to stop this because this cannot be stopped but instead design policies that would minimize human contribution in natural processes and human intervention in the normal flow of natural processes. It is on how we strategically position ourselves as a species in the complex web of the biosphere. Remember we are still bounded by the law of evolution: we change as our environment changes.
5. Stop paying attention to biased media coverage but start reading scientific papers on the matter. In this way you can see the light without any political or cultural interference.

I believe I have already said everything I need to say about this matter. It is time for me to close my book and move on with the next issue.

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