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by Derrick Schokman

In the summer of 1988, at a high profile congressional hearing in the US, physicist James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, went public with the view that scientists knew with a "high degree of confidence" that human activities such as burning fossil fuels were warming the world.

Scientists in general were in agreement that the world had warmed by 0.5 degrees celsius over the past 100 years and that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had increased by 30 per cent.

Global warming was discussed at the international level in the Rio Summit of the early nineties.

This led to subsequent climate conferences being held with the objective of mitigating the damage that could be done by the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The International Panel of Climate Control (IPCC) had predicted that global warming would increase from 1.4 degree celsius to 5.8 by 2100, causing abnormal floods and droughts and rising sea levels that would threaten coastal areas and islands.

Wide Range

This widely quoted range for the increase in global warming is the major cause for uncertainty.

Scientists naturally generate a range of results from climate computer models. Not all are equally likely to be true and none are definitive.

This allows people to latch on to whatever figure suits their preoccupations.

At one end are the more or less sceptics who think that the debate on global warming is no more than a lot of "hot air".

They shrug off any danger that can arise from 1.4 degrees increase in global warming.

At the other end are radical environmentalists who shrink in horror at the impending disasters that can be brought on by an increase of 5.8 degrees.

Climate researchers are still not in a position to quantify accurately increases in global warming.

And although computer models are improving all the time to make more accurate assessments of past and future climate, the uncertainty still remains.

Kyoto

Not only about the accuracy of projected global warming, but also on how best to implement any mitigating control measures. The Kyoto Protocol aimed to control the emission of greenhouse gases by using market-based incentives rather than by government intervention.

But it did not specify how much money nations should spend to limit gas emissions.

Nobody knows how much it would cost to control greenhouse emissions, and whether such control measures would yield a net benefit by improving energy efficiency or whether it would stop the economy cold.

Obviously the USA believed that the proposed measures listed in the Kyoto Protocol would leave its economy cold.

That is why it did not sign the Protocol like the EU industrial nations which strongly backed it.

Implement

In any case how does the international community propose to implement any control measures that are proposed.

Do they tackle all greenhouse gases together, or selectively?

Of the greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane are considered to be the most serious heat trappers.

Yet although carbon dioxide is the biggest contributor to global warming, it is less threatening to air quality and less crucial to economic activity than methane.

Accordingly there are those who favour shifting the focus of control from carbon dioxide to methane. On the other hand, even though carbon dioxide is less insulating than methane, it stays in the atmosphere for a longer time.

And for that reason there are people who want to get on with the control of carbon dioxide straightaway, leaving methane for a short-term fix if needed later.

There are yet others who maintain that this is not an either - or question, and that both emissions need to be tackled at once. These alternatives need to be decided and the climate debate transformed into an actuarial one, involving probability times damage expected equals money to be spent on mitigation.

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