Hardly a day goes by that there is not some story in the daily press related to climate change. This was especially true last month, due to the United Nations Conference on Climate Change taking place in Nairobi, Kenya (November 6–17). Personally, I’ve become desensitized by daily reports about “the latest scientific findings” citing evidence either for or against the premise that global warming and climate change is, or is not caused by the increased concentration of greenhouse gases released by human activities. Frankly, in today’s political climate, it’s difficult to know whom to believe anymore. My humble suggestion is a proposed list of just three pieces of required reading.
First, give science the voice that it deserves, unfiltered by politicians, commercial enterprises or news pundits, and read the “IPCC Third Assessment Report — Climate Change 2001” published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; Geneva, Switzerland). It can be downloaded for free at IPCC’s website (www.ipcc.ch), and is available in English, Chinese, Russian, Arabic and other languages. I’ve read it and frankly, after seeing the graphs and correlations presented by the thousands of scientists from around the world, I don’t need to wait for IPCC’s Fourth Assesment now being prepared for release in 2007 to be convinced. [While you’re at it, you can also download IPCC’s special report “Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage,” released September 2005, for an overview of the state-of-the art in technology available.]
Second, give the philosophophers a hearing, and read the “White Paper on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change,” which was prepared by 17 institutions and representatives from academia and non-governmental organizations around the world. This report — compiled by the Rock Ethics Institute [with Secretariat at Penn State University (University Park, Pa.)] and presented at the U.N. conference in Nairobi — draws strong ethical conclusions about positions taken by some governments in climate-change negotiations on several issues. To save time, just see if any of the positions analyzed are your own, then see what they have to say. [Among the eight positions that are analyzed, the two I’ve heard most frequently are scientific uncertainty and cost to national economies.] The report can be downloaded at http://rockethics.psu.edu/climate.
If metaphysical arguments are not your cup of tea, consider instead the following comment made by Steve Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and 1997 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, addressing some 400 delegates at the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center on September 18th at the second annual research symposium, hosted by the Global Climate and Energy Project: “Taking [climate change] seriously is really not a matter of personal virtue; it’s hard economics.”
This leads to the final bit of required reading. Readers of Chemical Engineering magazine should be interested in “The Greenhouse Gases Handbook,” just published by SRI Consulting (SRIC; Menlo Park, Calif.; www.sriconsulting.com), which provides practical information needed to estimate emissions of COâ‚‚ and other greenhouse gases from chemical processes. A summary of the report can be found on pp. 15–17.
Let the debate continue. But at the end of the day, sooner or later, we’re all going to have to bite the bullet, roll up our sleeves, and get the job done. The chemical process industries may not be the biggest offender when it comes to releasing greenhouse gases — the chemical industry accounts for about 10% of global emissions, according to SRIC — but one thing is certain, if there is a solution to reducing emissions it will be found by chemical engineers doing what they do best.