Letters

From the February 1998 issue

(Page 3 of 5)

Daniel John Sobieski
Chicago, IL

I agree strongly that if global warming were treated as a technical problem instead of a moral outrage we could cool the world. Having said that, I wonder whether the world really needs cooling. The idea that anyone knows the "global" temperature in 1897 to within 0.5 degree Celsius seems bizarre, to say the least.

Most of the alarm about global warming appears to stem from a prediction made by a computer program. Perhaps Dr. Benford can help me there. Whose computer program? Where is it documented? Where are the peer reviews of the program and its predictions? I spent most of my professional career creating and running computer models of physical systems--including gas-to-surface and gas-to-gas radiant energy transfer--and interpreting the results. I learned early to be extremely wary of programs until they have been shown to agree with results observed in a physical system. To the best of my knowledge, the global warming program fails that test. Does it, for example, predict that the tropopause is much higher and colder over the tropics than over the temperate zone, as a wealth of observations testify? How is the exchange of air across the tropopause modeled?

As an engineer I firmly believe that given incentives, we could cut energy consumption in half within a couple of decades without significantly impacting anyone's standard of living. How? Simply shift a major portion of the federal tax load from income to carbon fuels and let consumers decide how and where to cut. To anticipate the cry, "This will hurt the poor!," start by replacing the Social Security tax with a carbon tax. Certain lead-
footed drivers might have to settle for accelerating from zero to 60 in 11 seconds instead of eight, but that doesn't seem like a severe burden.

Benford's suggestion of white roofs to reduce air-conditioning loads is well taken. Similarly, reducing the huge expanses of glass in office buildings would be a step in the right direction. We could also use 480-volt electricity instead of 120; the big saving there would be in the transformers that supply our homes. Railroads can move a ton of freight a mile for about one-fourth the energy of trucks, and that doesn't even take into account the energy needed to build and maintain highways. We could go on and on in that vein.

Another point: I don't know what Benford means by operating aircraft jet engines "rich." Does he mean an over-
stoichiometric fuel-air mixture? Gas turbine engines operate with a huge amount of excess air. Even to approach a stoichiometric mixture would quickly melt the turbines down to slag. Furthermore, independent of cost, fuel is such a large part of an airliner's takeoff weight that to require them to carry still more would quickly become prohibitive.

About Benford's other suggestions: We should wait until we're sure they're needed before we tinker with the world's atmosphere.

Leon Billig

While I generally like REASON, I found "Climate Control" to be below the general quality of the magazine. I especially disliked the idea that some of the climate control solutions could be foisted on the public without their suspecting it. Not what I would expect in a magazine that generally favors lessening government intervention in our lives.

Gabe Gargiulo
Manchester, CT

Gregory Benford replies: I applaud Dallas Weaver's ingenious idea, which is just the sort I sought to stimulate with my article. Markets can mitigate warming effects better than a Greenhouse Czar.

Daniel Sobieski and Leon Billig want me to write another sort of article, arguing whether warming is real. I simply take the preponderant opinion of atmospheric scientists, who use a panoply of indicative effects (not just computer simulations) to conclude that warming is at least partially human-driven. Sallie Baliunas's signs that the sun is getting warmer may explain much of it (a discussion of this was cut from my article for space reasons), but even if so, we will still need mitigation methods (mostly increased reflection) if it persists.

The offsettings cited by Greg Parsons are apparently real, but don't fully compensate for greenhouse effects from humans, who make a substantial contribution to the overall CO₂ balance.

Gregory Wojak and Frank Albini are right: Emotion and posturing have dominated discussion so far, but I hope they can be bested by reason (and REASON).

I found amusing Gabe Gargiulo's notion that I would advocate foisting solutions on an unsuspecting public in a national magazine; one would think that would ruin the supposed secrecy. Of course, I merely said the best methods will not be intrusive, and keeping out of people's backyards will provoke less resistance--always a good idea.