The complication of managing the Earth's atmosphere

The complication of managing the Earth's atmosphere

By Bambang Hidayat

BANDUNG (JP): Our comforting belief that the earth's climate
was essentially unchanged through the ages has been shot down.
Meteorological data compiled over the past century, augmented by
recent findings from space observation of the earth, shows
convincingly that the earth is warming and that its atmosphere
has undergone continuous change.

Careful analysis indicates conclusively that the world's
climate cooled down from about 1940 to 1970. Since then the
temperature has been on the increase. There has been a growing
realization that significant climatic changes have occurred on
earth in a broad spectrum of time, ranging from decades to some
million of years.

Astronomically speaking, the changes of the longer periods are
not unexpected, but observed changes of a shorter time scale
affect us more because they impinge on our lives.

Studying short and long-period atmospheric changes is not only
important as an intellectual exercise to understand the past
climatic change on our planet, but also extremely useful for
practical reasons in order to predict the future of humankind.

Problems related to harvests are a good example. In many
areas, in particular in developing countries, the harvest is
closely linked to survival, whether it be on local or regional
levels. Prolonged disturbances of weather in some areas may
affect regional or even national life patterns.

Good crops are indeed results of the combination of weather,
input technology and social planning. Disruption of one of these
factors will change the expected yields, if there is no
additional input for other undisrupted factors. Foresight on
these three aspects is therefore a necessary ingredient for
understanding crops.

Our highly agricultural system in the latter half of the 20th
century -- driven by the heavy use of technology to manipulate
natural environment -- may have created our ignorance about the
very basic factors affecting good crops. This results in a
feeling that our life and activities are insulated from the long
range weather variations. Some of us are inclined to think the
sources of our staple foods come from a nearby grocery, rather
than from lands which farmers cultivate.

Millions of people still depend directly on land and on
weather-dependent harvests. Statistics on world hunger and
malnutrition are still frightful despite the input technology,
the green revolution introduced since the 1960s. It appears that
many who suffer famine are from areas which are deprived,
momentarily or permanently, of "good" weather and scientific
knowledge about weather and meteorology.

It has been shown by agricultural scientists responsible for
the green revolution that the dramatic increase in world
agricultural productivity was only temporary in order to buy a
little more time for humanity to solve the problem of nutrition.
Experience showed that in order to achieve an additional increase
of crops, more energy is needed so that the machinery of climate-
crop-consumer operates properly.

History has its examples. In the winter of 1977, Florida and
California, two major winter vegetable producing regions in the
U.S., were hit by, respectively, frost and drought which caused
crop yields to drop below necessary levels. In 1972, global
weather was erratic due to a solar disturbance. This climatic
anomaly resulted in a harsh winter followed by a dry, hot summer
in many northern countries, as well as monsoon failures in India
and Indonesia. The total world food production was estimated to
drop by 2 percent to 3 percent. Still vivid in our memory is the
1997 drought in the country which caused low rice yield.

Weather is an important ingredient in conducting human affair.
Now, as our awareness increases, we are entering an era
characterized by syndromes of global change that stem from the
interdependence between human development and climate. The change
of lifestyle in human communities may bring about change and
should aim at the improvement of the environment. In turn, the
new outlook embraces the ethics in which human beings view our
natural environment as the most reliable partner to produce a
rich ecological variety to sustain life on earth. Otherwise our
task as the custodian of life on earth could not be fulfilled.

Global change, as it manifests in the warming of the earth's
atmosphere, will affect us all. The important thing is to realize
that the effect of global change may be creeping slowly and
producing different results in different geographic settings.
Poor and rich people, on a national as well as on a regional
scale, are likely to place different values on economic growth
and environmental conservation.

It would take a long time before we can build a consensus
about interactions between people and the atmospheric
environmental. It should be managed in tandem with the ideals of
sustainable development.

Two major areas of global concern, namely the changing
atmosphere and development of living environment in developing
countries, must be addressed without delay and in proper
perspective.

They must be solved to bridge the understanding between the
developed and less developed countries.

Fossil fuel

Concerns are the use of fossil fuel in developed countries and
the atmospheric pollution in developing countries. Rapid and
unfettered economic growth fueled by vast quantities of fossil
fuels in developed countries, and the widespread damaged
stimulated by poverty and high population growth in many
developing countries, have caused worrisome increase in
atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gases.

This may produce shifts in climate. Man has learned how to
cope with gradual change rather easily, but a sudden, disruptive,
abnormality requires better social preparations and understanding
between government agencies and the food-producing sectors.

The threat of global climate change with its accompanying
biological, economic and social disruptions will make the goals
of sustainable development farther away for many nations.

Deforestation

Mismanagement of tropical forests has been considered the
culprit of atmospheric damage. Tropical forests provide a wealth
of goods and services. They contain a substantial bank of stored
carbon and form important reservoirs of biological diversity. Due
to the pressure of population and economic imperatives,
deforestation is occurring in many areas in the tropics.

The result of the deforestation is believed to contribute to
the buildup of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Estimates of
the contribution of tropical deforestation to global carbon
dioxide buildup vary considerably and, most likely, half of the
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is derived from the use of
fossil fuels.

The uncertainties associated with estimating this figure are
due to the difficulties involved in estimating the global
conversion rate. Factors like vegetation regrowth, carbon content
of various forest types and the rate of flux of carbon between
vegetation and atmosphere combine and should not be overlooked.

Forests are not only regulators of the atmospheric transfer of
latent heat and moisture but also processors of trace gases and,
at the same time, an economic asset. So are the fossil fuels and
the production of other greenhouse gases. Planning of economic
growth will therefore implicitly touch these matters.

Unfortunately, many of the discussions related to economic
growth result in a national policy which inadvertently
accelerates the rate of fossil fuel consumption and
deforestation. The policy should be reviewed critically before we
loose our most valuable natural assets of tropical forest which
store so much genetic and valuable biodiversity.

Economic growth is, on the other hand, a battle cry with which
a nation brings prosperity to her people. It is therefore
understandable that taming economic growth would be a political
drawback; it is the last action a politician can afford to do.

A political view should be weighed against long-term
development and global issues of public property, such as the
wealth of forestry. In a sense one should be more aware of the
future of our nationhood and the uniqueness of Earth as the
natural habitat for humankind.

With increasing concern about global climate change, which may
lead to global warming effects due to imbalance in the carbon
cycle, studies have been made to find out how to reduce the
carbon emission to the atmosphere. This implies the study of less
energy-intensive technologies and less carbon-intensive fuels.

It is gratifying to know that such aspects have been taken
seriously and that studies under various economics and
demographic conditions have been carried out.

However, one should not forget that the atmosphere is in fact
a very complicated laboratory where many chemical reactions are
taking place. There is still room for "speculation" about
atmospheric chemistry, but progress in atmospheric sciences is
already encouraging, making people more aware of our atmosphere.

At the same time, the atmospheric science should encourage
development of natural science in our country and should foster
international cooperation. This provides a forum for Indonesian
scientists to participate in worldwide science undertakings.

We have embarked upon what are called "large-scale geophysical
experiments", which lead to the birth of new ethics of using and
exploiting natural resources as well as science of other global-
warming related phenomena.

Indonesia is keenly aware of the adverse effects of the global
warming. Policies are being developed in order to accommodate the
impact of this global phenomena. However, more atmospheric
research and monitoring are needed in order to secure our
position in the world's scientific community.

The writer is head of Bosscha Observatory and a lecturer in
the School of Astronomy, Bandung Institute of Technology.