Don’t Burn Your House to Smoke out a Rat: Climate Change Interventions

M. Dinesh Kumar, Meera Sahasranaman, Mahendra Singh, MVK Sivamohan and Nitin Bassi

While the uncertainty about global warming and its impact on climate and hydrological systems deepens, scientists and ‘climate crusaders’ are somehow ready with solutions for third world countries.

This famous English proverb advises us to use solutions that are appropriate to the magnitude of the problem in hand. But this universal principle that the methods we use to solve a problem should not cause any collateral damage or create a bigger problem does not seem to have gone into the head of our ‘climate change experts’. This is reflected in the recent proposals of a group of climate experts from United States to the world community for saving the planet Earth from the catastrophe of global warming.

“The nation (read it as United States) needs to ramp up efforts to suck heat-trapping gases out of the air to fight climate change”, a new U.S. report said. The report from the National Academy of Sciences claims that technology to do so had gotten better, and climate change is worsening. By mid-century, the world needs to be removing about 10 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the air each year. That’s the equivalent of about twice the yearly emissions of the U.S.

According to Steve Pacala, a biologist from Princeton University and chair of the panel, having ways to remove heat-trapping gases from the atmosphere would make the job of tackling climate change “much easier.” The report comes on the heels of a United Nations science report that painted a bleak picture of the world’s ability to avoid dangerous warming.

The technologies outlined include the ‘simple’ and the ‘futuristic’:

• Plant more trees and manage forests better, and limit the amount of land used by people. Plants take carbon dioxide from the air and use it to grow.

• Conserve soils better so they can store more carbon dioxide and produce more food.

• Conserve and restore coastal plants, like marshlands and sea grass beds.

A relatively new technology called ‘direct air capture’ has also come into vogue. Pilot projects have started using giant fans that pull in air, use a chemical reaction to suck carbon out, and then inject it underground.

All this is going to cost trillions of dollars. Well,it is worth spending that much money if it is to save a living planet, provided we are able to mobilize that much of financial resources to invest in these technologies and scientific skills to manage them, without serious adverse impacts on our livelihoods. Let us, for the time being, assume that there is sufficient wealth available with the rich countries and these countries are willing to part with it for a global public good. Then the question would be at what level of confidence we can say that this spending would save the planet from the catastrophe.

The answer is that we are not sure of the outcome, because we don’t even know what the side effects of such interventions would be, if implemented on a massive-scale.

Trying such solutions to contain the global temperature is like treating a patient, who is at the terminal stage of cancer,with a high-risk therapy whose side effect is far greater than what the patient can endure.

Some might still like to take such treatments, as the opportunity cost of ‘not taking the treatment (imminent death of the patient) could be bigger than the damage the treatment can cause on the patient’s body. Here in this case, the most sickening fact is that we don’t even know how catastrophic the climate change effect on human populations could be. So, in a nutshell, we have already taken the ‘man’ to the operating table, while we don’t even know what the disease is or whether the person is really suffering from any disease that requires a surgery for recovery.

What Climate Models Say?

Change vs Variability: Global warming is to affect climate change. The doomsday prophets say that the regions currently receiving low rainfalls could receive lower rainfall, and regions currently receiving high rainfall could receive excessively higher rainfall and floods. But climate variability is a much bigger problem we are confronted with in many regions on annual and seasonal basis (Sub-Saharan Africa, and many countries in the Asia Pacific Region, including India, China and Australia). Its impact on our water resources and biophysical systems sometimes is much higher than the predicted impact climate change can induce even in the worst-case scenario (Kumar, 2018). From a utilitarian perspective, ‘climate variability’ has significant implications for the way climate change predictions need to be made for the sub-continent.Unfortunately, these concerns were very narrowly addressed by the advocates of climate change (Niranjan et al., 2013).

If they are confronted with data on climate variability and questions as to what such phenomenon means for the utility of climate models such as General Circulation Models and Regional Climate Models, their response would be that the frequency of occurrence of floods and droughts would increase!

Believe me, this is just an afterthought. In fact, no climate model can predict the future climate with inter-annual variability factored in.

The downscaled (regional climate) models are not even capable of handling the inter-annual variability in the parameters such as temperature and rainfall.They all work on aggregate values, signifying nothing. Sound and realistic models are still wanting (Kumar, 2018).

Unrealistic Assumptions: Most of us know that the climate change model predictions are always based on certain assumptions regarding how temperature is going to rise in the next few decades. The moment we change the assumptions with regard to temperature rise,the value of the ‘predicted variable’ (here rainfall) would change. So, mean annual ‘temperature’ is the most crucial parameter to which the model is very sensitive. Interestingly, it is quite common to find the modellers resorting to various assumptions regarding future temperature change–say, one degree, two-degree or four-degree rise in temperature by the year 2050,2080, 2100, like that. But, no one seems to question the veracity of these assumptions. In fact, one would have never seen a scientific paper on climate change from this part of the World discussing the temperature change in a region over the past 30-40 years based on observed data. The reason is simple. The real data would speak the truth that the observed changes are not consistent with the claims. Instead of performing the serious job of collecting and analyzing data, which has to be done painstakingly, the modellers would cast aspersions on the quality of our weather data. This is the moment when the dark secret will be out: These modellers were actually using very coarse data derived from ‘global climate data-sets’ for running their models.

Simulating the Monsoon Weather System: For the Asia-Pacific region, the challenges associated with climate predictions are far bigger. It has the monsoon weather system. Understanding the cause of monsoon is crucial to deepening our understanding of how monsoon in India would change as a result of larger changes occurring in global and regional climate. There are contesting theories about the cause of Monsoon. The differential heating between ocean and land is widely considered as the basic mechanism for the monsoon by several scientists (Webster, 1987). In an alternative hypothesis, monsoon is considered as a manifestation of the seasonal migration of the inter-tropical convergence zone (Charney, 1969). The two hypotheses have very different implications for variability of the monsoon.For example, as per the first hypothesis, we expect the intensity of the monsoon to be directly related to the land-ocean temperature difference. But it is already found that the observations of the space-time variations of the monsoon over the Indian region are not consistent with the first hypothesis (Simpson, 1921). The global and regional climate models which simulate the temperature effect on pattern of wind circulation are not robust enough to simulate the monsoon weather system. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that predictions of these models are anywhere near the reality. 

Solutions are Ready; Looking for a Problem!

While the uncertainty about global warming and its impact on climate and hydrological systems deepens, scientists and ‘climate crusaders’ are ready with solutions for third world countries.

One of their main target countries is India. While giant machines that can capture heat-trapping gases are not yet ready for India, the menu of ‘practical solutions’ for it include renewable energy systems such as solar PV systems and wind farms. Knowing fully well that these technologies will not work for India for socio-economic and environmental reasons, they are being pushed as ‘green and clean technology’.

The rich and the middle class in India have already managed to access conventional energy systems that are based on fossil fuel for their social and economic well-being. While the government is making sincere efforts to make it accessible to the poor as well through a massive rural electrification programme, the environmental groups are forcing it to offer the undependable and expensive Solar PV systems to them for ‘lighting’their homes. In the absence of good uptake, heavy subsidies are offered. It is forced to promote them as an alternative to conventional grid-based electricity for farmers who are currently using polluting diesel engines for pumping water. Here again, the subsidy offered is very large–up to 90%. Unfortunately, this subsidy is misappropriated by the rural elite to create back-up power system for use during power cuts and load shedding.

The ultimate result is, the tax-payer’s money which otherwise should have been used for welfare schemes, is being thrown in the drain in the garb of clean energy production and environmental protection.

If some reports are to be believed, these ‘clean energy’ systems might pose a major environmental hazard in future if allowed to make deep penetration in rural areas. The solar PV systems, which are claimed to have a life of 25 years, might become defunct within 6-7 years of installation in tropical countries like India, given the high temperature and the presence of dust particles in the air which can severely harm the panels. While the fast panel degradation can seriously affect the economic viability (Bassi,2018), the larger issue is what do we do with these panels after their productive life is over. India still does not have regulations that make recycling of these PV panels mandatory for manufacturers. Imposing such regulations means raising the prize of the panels, by amounts required to cover the cost of recycling. Also, it is noticed that by the time the system is due for some maintenance, the company which sold the product no longer exists.

Recently ecologists have warned that wind farms, which is the darling of climate crusaders, can be a great threat to birds and ecology.

A new research by an international team of scientists on the effects of wind turbine use in the Western Ghats found that predatory raptor birds were four times rarer in areas of plateau where wind turbines were present, a disruption that cascaded down the food chain and radically altered the density and behaviour of the birds’ prey (AFP, 2018, November 08, 2018).  Our Indian environmentalists, who are otherwise vociferously oppose large hydro power dams, citing reasons of forest destruction and threat to wildlife, still haven’t come forward with their opinion on this.

The pathological hatred of large dams seems to have motivated some of them to suggest releasing water from big irrigation reservoirs for flushing out pollution in the Ganges, and then using solar power for pumping underground water for irrigation by farmers who would be deprived of the water from those reservoirs as a result of such an action (see Shah et al., 2018)

Well, their ‘so-called’ hydrological argument is that if groundwater, which is supposed to be lying un-utilized in the Gangetic alluvium, is pumped out during lean season, it can reduce the floods that occur in the river during monsoon. The economic argument is that the water which otherwise is lying in reservoirs will have some use value, when released downstream–it can reduce pollution in the Ganges, while providing environmental flows (Shah et al., 2018). It is as though one has a solution in hand, and is just looking for a problem. Those who ask questions like ‘how can flooding in north Bihar be controlled by groundwater pumping in western UP, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, and south Bihar? ‘why should one use expensive solar energy to pump groundwater when cheap flow irrigation is available?’; and what is the logic behind using precious freshwater in reservoirs for flushing out pollutants in the river thereby making it unusable? are treated as ‘personae non gratae’.

Conclusions

‘Climate Change’ research is a serious business, and should be dealt with seriously. If the world has to accept climate change as real, the evidence to that effect has to be real and credible. Let us generate sufficient amount of climate data from different regions of the world to prove or disprove it. Let a fraction of the money being spent on the ‘clean technologies’ be utilized on generation of scientific data on weather and climate. The findings from climate research should be global public good, and nations should be putting in money for carrying it out according to their economic might, instead of depending on ‘independent researchers’. A lot of the academic discussion today is mere “scare-mongering” using un-validated data,while there are very few climate scientists who actively participate in serious policy debates. In the process, many who have interest in doing business on‘clean energy’, have hijacked the climate debate.

References

• AgenciesFrance Presse (Nov. 08, 2018) Wind Farms Predator Effect Hits Ecosystems:Study, Agencies France Presse,https://www.afp.com/en/news/15/wind-farm-predator-effect-hits-ecosystems-study-doc-1al2k93.
• Bassi, N. (2018) Solarizing groundwater irrigation in India: agrowing debate, Int. Journal of WaterResources Development, 34 (1): 132-145
• Charney,J. G. (1969) The inter-tropical convergence zone and the Hadley circulation ofthe Atmosphere, Proceedings of the WMO/IUCG Symposium on Numerical WeatherPredict, Japan Meteorological Agency, VIII:73–79
• Kumar,M. Dinesh (2018) Water Policy, Scienceand Politics: An Indian Perspective, Elsevier Science, pp 326.
• Niranjan,V., M. D. Kumar and N. Bassi (2014) Climate Variability in South Asia, in Climate Variability and its Impact on Water,Energy and Food Systems in South Asia: Adaptive Water Management Approacheswithin the Framework of IWRM, proceedings of the workshop organized bySaciWATERs and Institute for Resource Analysis and Policy, February 18-19, Hyderabad.
• Shah, T., C. Ray and U. Lele(2018) How to Clean up the Ganges? Science,362 (6414): pp.503.
• Simpson,G. (1921) The south-west monsoon, QuarterlyJournal of Regional Meteorological Society, 199(17):150–73.
• Webster,P. J. (1987) The elementary monsoon, in Monsoons,ed. JS Fein, PL Stephens, pp. 3–32. New York: Wiley.

The authors are associated with the Institute for Resource Analysis and Policy (IRAP), a non-profit research organisation working on inter- and multi-disciplinary research projects, consultancies and training in the field of natural resources management. Its goal is to promote sustainable systems for management of natural resources and their related services, particularly land and water resources, for improved food security, livelihoods and environment. Its administrative office is located in Hyderabad, India