May 27th, 2007 by John
It seems to be the fashion just now for people to declare themselves “climate change sceptics.” They say that it’s all to do with sun-spots, the Earth’s tilt or natural cycles. All these may be having some effect, but experts say they would expect change to happen much more slowly from these causes.
To a non-scientist like me, the greenhouse effect is simple. The natural greenhouse effect has been well understood and accepted for many years. Greenhouse gases trap heat energy, reducing the amount that is radiated from the earth back into space, acting as a partial blanket and causing a difference of about 21ºC between the average temperature that we would have and the actual average of the earth surface temperature. If there were no greenhouse gases the earth would not be habitable for humans.
If a certain level of greenhouse gases warms the earth by about 21ºC, it would not be surprising if higher levels would warm it further and this is exactly what is happening. The planet is reacting as we expected.
The sceptics, who think we should not reduce CO² emissions or limit deforestation are really saying that we should risk the future of our civilization on the possibility that higher levels of greenhouse gases do not enhance the greenhouse effect.
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On the cover on our book, Famine in the West, the picture of a Western child begging for food from an Arab is intended to symbolise our future dependence on the Middle East for our food, in the sense that farming cannot now function without oil, and as most remaining supplies are in that region, any interruption of supplies from there would threaten our food industry.
However, we could just as easily have used a picture of President Putin or someone representing a future Russian leader, because Russia will soon almost control the Nitrogen fertiliser market and the supply of the gas feedstock used for its manufacture.
Nitrogen fertiliser has been one of the key factors allowing the massive increase in crop yields over the last 60 years that have temporarily raised the carrying capacity of the Earth way above what it otherwise would have been. Around 40 - 45% of grain yield is now due to these fertilisers, and as farmers are careful to use only the optimum amounts, any reduction in availability would cause yield losses.
Russia and a few other smaller but equally unreliable countries have become dominant because of natural gas. Gas is the feedstock for most nitrogen fertiliser production, so for gas-rich nations, turning that gas in to fertiliser is one way to diversify, but more importantly fertiliser can be shipped around the world more easily then gas.
So, Russia has become a major producer, but so have some of the ex-Soviet nations who have built production facilities near ports at the end of a Russian gas pipeline. European manufacturers using North Sea gas have found it hard to compete and have been closing down production . As gas supplies from the North Sea are declining faster then expected, we will soon see a time when either the fertiliser or the gas comes from unreliable countries.
Russia is now taking a more unfriendly stance with the West and considers energy its trump card. In any future disagreement we could be deprived of our main yield driver with disastrous consequences.
