Climate change
With predictions of climate change ranging from impending doom (“Earth has gone past the point of no return,” Sept. 3, page 8) to serious impacts (“Our summer of climate truth,” Aug. 1, page 9) to no impact at all (http://tinyurl.com/imh-nonsense), maybe it is time to review the science of climate change.
First, as Jeffrey Sachs points out correctly, climate is not weather, just like one swallow does not make a spring. One severe typhoon or drought is no proof of climate change, but the long-term increase over several decades of such events is, which is exactly what we observe.
Second, carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas. There are several others (water vapor, ozone, methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons) which trap heat, just like a blanket traps heat when you sleep under it. These other greenhouse gases trap significant amounts of heat, so we need to deal with them, too. For example, more hamburgers mean more cows, which emit increasing amounts of methane, and melting permafrost may also emit huge amounts of currently frozen methane, a potentially dangerous positive feedback mechanism.
Third, climate change is based on physics, not on the observation of global temperature increase. We know that most greenhouse gases are increasing and that they all trap heat, just like a blanket does, and two blankets trap more heat than one blanket. This is the physics behind climate change, while the observed temperate change (as, for example, the much maligned hockey stick graph) is just the expected response to, but not the proof for, man-made climate change.
Finally, the accumulating evidence for climate change already happening is not just evident in the observed global (and not necessarily local) atmospheric temperature increase, but a number of other related observations: increases in the frequency and intensity of heat waves, storms, floods, droughts and fires, decreasing ice and snow cover around the world, higher temperature increase toward the poles, higher ocean temperatures, rising sea-levels and changes of biological events, such as plant flowering, bird migration, disease spread and coral bleaching.
People are also often confused about the time frames: While atmospheric temperature increases happen within decades, and will, for example, soon impact food security in Asia, temperature increases of oceans, melting of continental ice sheets and the resulting rise of sea level will take centuries, but will inevitably happen if humanity does not dramatically decrease greenhouse gas emissions.
However, that is my beef with Dan Bloom’s apocalyptic conclusions: I find it unlikely that, in the face of accumulating scientific evidence and increasing disaster frequencies, people and their governments will not react, especially given that renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind or geothermal, are relatively cheap, widely and sufficiently available, and have much lower environmental impacts than fossil fuels or nuclear energy.
What does this mean for Taiwan? There is no doubt climate change will negatively impact Taiwan in the future, with more severe storms and floods the most immediate and obvious impact, while other effects such as the submersion of coastal areas would come much later (Letters, Aug. 28, page 8).
It is therefore utter stupidity and negligence not to jump onto the renewable energy train that is about to leave the station, now even supported by many conservative politicians (http://tinyurl.com/gummer-renew). Investment in research and development of renewable energy and subsidies for renewable energy and energy efficiency, possibly directly financed by an energy tax, would set up Taiwan nicely in the race for renewable energy installation all around the world.
We must reinvent our productive systems (“Social innovation needed to prevent global calamities,” Aug. 26, page 9), and Taiwan should not stand by idly.
Flora Faun
Taipei
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
In an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that Taiwan should not have to choose between aligning with Beijing or Washington, and advocated for cooperation with Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” as a form of “strategic ambiguity.” However, Cheng has either misunderstood the geopolitical reality and chosen appeasement, or is trying to fool an international audience with her doublespeak; nonetheless, it risks sending the wrong message to Taiwan’s democratic allies and partners. Cheng stressed that “Taiwan does not have to choose,” as while Beijing and Washington compete, Taiwan is strongest when
RSS