Global Warming Talks Go Slowly as Apparent Effects Speed Up

Up in walrus country, unhappy Eskimo hunters say the frozen sea is breaking up early these days. An ocean away, in the balmy mid-Pacific, islanders report the tides are suddenly stealing away chunks of precious land.

Things are going wrong out at the edge of the world, and people there blame global warming. But back in the world’s capitals, where 1997 is the year for action on climate change, things are going slowly.

Behind diplomacy’s closed doors, negotiators are drafting a treaty to control carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse” emissions, gases many scientists say are warming the planet. Emissaries are to gather in Kyoto, Japan, in December to sign the unprecedented new commitments.

After eons of talking about the weather, mankind may finally be ready to do something about it.

But as the weeks tick down and the debate heats up, the outcome looks less and less certain.

At preliminary sessions in Bonn, Germany, in August, the U.S. delegation once again took no detailed negotiating position. Reduction targets were not discussed. Those who favor decisive action grew discouraged.

“I am not very optimistic about Kyoto,” Bert Bolin, a leading atmospheric scientist, said from Stockholm.

The planetary debate pits rich countries against poor, islands against continents, oil producers against conservationists.

It means many things to many people. American negotiator Tim Wirth calls climate change the top “environmental challenge” of our time. But U.S. industrialists describe the treaty negotiations as the century’s most important “economic decision.”

The environment versus the economy: The fear of damage from a changing climate weighed against the fear of lost business and jobs from energy restraints.

In the end, Kyoto may produce an incomplete agreement, a basis for more talk and small steps forward, a process like the world trade negotiations, which covered almost half a century.

And while diplomats duel, scientists work--atop glaciers, in air-monitoring stations, through satellite launches--to clear up nagging uncertainties still clouding climate change.

There is nothing uncertain about the underlying theory.

In 1898, as industry expanded in Europe and America, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius warned that carbon dioxide pouring into the atmosphere would trap more of the Earth’s heat--like the glass of a greenhouse.

Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other gases that trap heat are transparent to incoming sunlight, but absorb the infrared radiation that Earth, maintaining its heat balance, emits back to space.

Fuel combustion--in engines powering everything from automobiles to electric plants--is the biggest man-made source of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide. Decomposition of organic waste is a major source of methane.

From 1800 to 1994, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere jumped from 280 parts per million to 358. And during the last century, the average global temperature rose by about 1 degree Fahrenheit.

Four of the five hottest years on record have occurred since 1990. Glaciers almost everywhere are in retreat, and oceans--which expand when warmed--have risen by 4 to 10 inches.

Reports arrive from across the globe of unusual seas and weather.

In Alaska, Charlie Johnson, a leader of Eskimo hunters, said the walrus harvest is down the last few years because the Arctic sea ice--the place where man meets walrus--breaks up earlier than usual each spring.

“The people in the villages and everybody else feels the ice is leaving earlier,” Johnson said by telephone from Nome.

On the remote Pacific atoll of Nukuoro, in the Federated States of Micronesia, a rising sea has flooded the few acres where islanders can grow taro, their staple crop.

“If something’s not done, Nukuoro is going to be abandoned,” said John Mooteb, a Micronesia government official.

The sea can rise or fall for various reasons, oceanographers note. In the same cautious vein, scientists have long shied from flatly attributing the warming of recent decades to gas emissions. But in 1995 they crossed a threshold.

A U.N. report, produced with the help of more than 2,000 specialists worldwide, concluded that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human impact on Earth’s climate system.”

The scientific panel, led by Bolin, the Swedish climatologist, predicted emissions at current rates would raise global temperatures by an additional 2 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 and sea levels by 6 inches to 3 feet, inundating islands and shorelines.

Weather would grow more turbulent and climate zones might shift hundreds of miles toward the poles, abruptly making regions wetter, drier, warmer or colder.

Some areas might benefit--from crop-nurturing rains, for example. But climate surprises could be devastating: Mosquitoes might bring malaria to new areas, for example, or the northern permafrost might soften, buckling roads and buildings.

Skeptics remain. Some say the link to greenhouse gases still is not shown beyond doubt. Some note the consensus projections have broad margins of error.

“The signal of warming is gradually getting stronger,” said David A. Randall at Colorado State University, who is editor of the Journal of Climate. But although the last century’s warming “is definitely very strong . . . one century isn’t a long time in this field.”

One doubter, University of Virginia climatologist Pat Michaels, acknowledges that man has affected the climate. “My point,” he said, “is not whether human beings change the climate, but how much and how.”

The mainstream majority supporting the U.N. report concedes that big questions remain.

For one thing, a warmer world will evaporate water more rapidly, forming more clouds in the atmosphere. Depending on how and where they form, they may either cool or further warm the surface.

Another question: Will the oceans, absorbing enough warmth quickly enough, hold down rising air temperatures?

Answers would make projections more precise. But answers may not come until after the world begins feeling the worst effects of warming.

“Despite the uncertainty, the risk of a significant change of climate does not go away,” Bolin said. He said political leaders must act on “risk analysis.”

In 1992, they acted by postponing. A 165-nation treaty on climate change called for voluntary emissions cutbacks. That failed, and in 1995 governments agreed to toughen the treaty by negotiating mandatory rollbacks by industrial nations.

Island states proposed that by 2005, emissions be cut by 20% below 1990 levels. The European Union favors a 15% reduction by 2010.

Such proposals don’t prescribe how to do it, but studies suggest a range of ways: switching from coal and oil to nuclear or solar energy; developing more fuel-efficient engines; ending subsidies and imposing heavier taxes on carbon fuels; saving forests, which consume carbon dioxide.

President Clinton has pledged a “strong American commitment to realistic and binding limits.” But the United States, responsible for one-quarter of global emissions, has yet to commit to specific targets and timetables.

American business lobbyists contend that emissions reductions could wipe out hundreds of thousands of jobs in the coal, oil, chemical and other industries--in part because companies would move operations to developing countries. And the U.S. Senate declared, by a 95 to 0 vote, that it will not ratify a treaty that does not also require emission cutbacks in the developing world.

Behind the scenes, the Clinton administration is readying a proposal expected to bring developing countries under the treaty in some new way and to introduce emissions-quota “trading” and other devices making compliance more flexible.

To build U.S. public support, Clinton has scheduled a White House conference on climate change for early October. But the slow movement in Washington still worries others.

“We should take care that what the U.S. Congress has proposed is not going to stalemate the rest of the negotiations,” said Robert Wester, a spokesman for the Dutch Environment Ministry.

Washington is not alone. Japan, Australia and some other nations, under pressure from local industry, also are reluctant partners in the talks, whose complexity is producing unlikely alliances.

British Petroleum, for example, a big player in solar energy, has broken ranks with other oil producers to stand with environmentalists. And insurance companies, fearing mounting damage claims from higher sea levels, floods, storms and other severe weather, support quick action against climate change.

“A lot is going on behind the business lobbying,” said Michael Zammit Cutajar, the Maltese official who is executive secretary for the negotiations.

With the treaty in mind, industry is working hard on energy-saving technologies, he said. “Those who get there first with a low-emission car engine, for example, stand to make a lot of money.”

He believes Kyoto may produce an immediate accord on cutback targets--most think no more than 10%--and agreement in principle in other areas. Those might include coverage of developing countries and market-based compliance systems.

Then the talks would continue, round for round, like the long-running trade negotiations, Zammit Cutajar said.

“Kyoto is another step on a long road.”