Global Warming

There can now be no reasonable, science-based, doubt about the reality of global climate change effects brought on by the cumulative and rapidly growing emission of so-called "greenhouse" gases - primarily carbon dioxide - into the atmosphere. As these effects become increasingly more obvious worldwide, so commercial interests, groups of concerned individuals and national governments have been gripped by what amounts to mass panic about what to do about it. To many, Paul Ehrlich's Malthusian "Population Bomb" of 1968 appears about to explode in the world's face in an indirect version of his millenarian vision of population growth which outpaces agricultural production capacity - with predictably catastrophic results for humanity. And his three-part crisis scenario does indeed seem now to be present: a rapid rate of change, a limit of some sort, and delays in perceiving that limit. Ehrlich's work was roundly criticized at the time, and later, from many quarters, and much of what he predicted did not come about. Nevertheless, can the world afford to take the risk that the climate scientists have got it wrong? Is it not in everyone's interests to apply the Precautionary Principle in attempting to avoid the worst of their predictions - now, rather than at some future time? As the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Mr. Rajendra Pachauri, has recently pointed out, eleven of the warmest years since instrumental records began have occurred in the past twelve years, while major precipitation changes are taking place on a global scale.