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Top climate change expert hopes science got it wrong
THIS UNIVERSE Trends |
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Top climate change expert hopes science got it wrong Germany’s top climate researcher says he hopes he and his fellow scientists around the world have got it all wrong about global warming. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said he gets no pleasure at all in being a prophet of doom and hopes he and his colleagues have overlooked effects that could still arrest climate change. “I would be delighted if it turns out that we haven’t understood the system as well as we think we do and that we might get a 20- to 30-year ‘breathing period’ when global warming slows or is even halted,” the physics professor said. But Schellnhuber, who advises German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the European Union on climate change, said it was also possible scientists were erring in the opposite direction and underestimating the climate change dynamics. Most scientists say heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels are nudging up global temperatures. A minority say the rises are entirely the result of natural fluctuations. Schellnhuber will join world leaders next week in Copenhagen when they will try to work out a new U.N. pact to address global warming. “It’s like we’re on the Titanic,” said Schellnhuber, 59. “But this time we’ve got a clear view of the horizon. We’re not up there in the look-out with a pair of binoculars in the dark but rather with a radar system, a scientific radar system. “The problem is there are 192 captains on the ship,” he said, referring to the number of countries involved in the talks on fighting climate change. “And that is a fatal situation. But I’m nevertheless hoping for a magic moment in
Copenhagen.” Schellnhuber presented a “Copenhagen Diagnosis” last month with 25 experts that said global warming is happening faster than expected and sea levels could rise by up to 2 metres (6-1/2 ft) by 2100. They urged action to cap rising greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 to avoid the worst impact of
climate change. Sceptics, who call the report more scare-mongering, have recently seized on hacked emails as evidence the case for climate change has been exaggerated. “I personally wish it were just ‘scare-mongering’, that this is all exaggerated,” Schellnhuber said when asked about the sceptics. He said scientists face intensive peer scrutiny that ensures high standards of quality, integrity and accuracy. “What special interests are supposedly being represented? Our findings have nothing to do with special interests. The system is constructed to ensure the greatest credibility.” Schellnhuber pointed out Albert Einstein was among the scientists who worked in the same offices he now occupies. “No one goes into science to earn a lot of money or to become famous or to meet beautiful women,” he said. “People go into science because they’re interested in finding the truth. It’s total nonsense (to accuse scientists of scare-mongering). Those people will never believe us.”
—Reuters |
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THIS UNIVERSE If a heavenly body is of the same size and is the same distance from the earth as the moon, then will centripetal forces and centrifugal forces similar to those on the moon act on it? Why does the earth have only one satellite? There are many objects in space which are of same kind as the moon. It is unlikely that on its way the earth might encounter another body that is travelling at the same velocity, at the same distance and with same mass as the moon. If it did it would most likely be the moon itself. But if you are implying that the earth could have more than one moon, sure it could. But there are not too many suitable candidates lying around. It might require a major upheaval or outside incursion to bring it about. Before the Big Bang, if the universe was a small ball, then it would also have been within a larger dimension (just like galaxy is inside the universe, or our solar system inside our milky way? Is that so? When we talk of the universe, it includes everything, including all space and all time. In other words there is no out side and no “before”. Pluto is not a planet, why? Pluto has not disappeared. It is just the same as it was. Astronomers have found other similar or bigger objects and decided to give it a different name. Do not let this worry you. It is just politics of astronomy. Why is the time period of a pendulum in an artificial satellite orbiting the earth infinite? In an orbit around the earth the bob of the pendulum will be weightless. If the bob does not fall how will it come back to its original position? It will always stay there. In other words its period of oscillation would be infinite. Gravitational pendulums will not work in space. But we can use other forces. Readers wanting to ask
Prof Yash Pal a question can e-mail him at palyash.pal@gmail.com
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Darwin debate rages on 150 years after “Origin” PARIS/LONDON: Even 150 years after it first appeared in print, Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” still fuels clashes between scientists convinced of its truth and critics who reject its view of life without a creator. This “Darwin Year”—so named because February 12 was the 200th anniversary of the British naturalist’s birth and November 24 the 150th anniversary of his book—has seen a flood of books, articles and conferences debating his theory of evolution.
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“It would be wonderful if some mechanism that we haven’t yet been able to understand could still have an impact and manage to stabilise global warming at a high level for a while,” he said in an interview in his institute’s office outside Berlin. 