Who's Afraid of Global Warming?

American Thinker ^ | February 16, 2007 | J.R. Dunn

[neverdem]

Science works by means of prediction. Once data is collected and evaluated, and a hypothesis formed, scientific method requires that certain predictions be made to act as tests of the overall theory. If the predictions work out, we can regard the hypothesis as proven. If not, we vow to do better next time.

Take general relativity, for instance. (Full disclosure: this example is stolen in toto from Rush Limbaugh's program of February 2nd.)  Einstein's theory was dismissed as lunatic by many classical physicists on its introduction in 1905. But he proposed a series of simple and straightforward tests, among them that starlight close to the sun's rim would be seen to bend during a total eclipse. In 1919, just such an eclipse was carefully photographed by Arthur Stanley Eddington, not yet the dean of British astrophysics. The photos showed that the stars closet to the sun had shifted a small but measurable degree, and the world was never quite the same thereafter. (When later asked what he'd have done if the photos had shown anything else, Einstein said, "I'd have been sorry for the Good Lord Almighty.") 

There exists today a large and growing class of theories on subjects that are either too vast, too small, too remote, or too complex to allow adequate testing. These include such abstruse concepts as string theory, brane theory, and dark matter. So critical has the situation become in some fields that there has been talk of "the end of physics", or even the end of science as a whole - surely a premature diagnosis.

Among all the cutting-edge ideas not susceptible to testing there's one that's quite familiar  - global warming. The earth's climate, we're told, is far too large and complex (in both the mathematical and common meanings) a phenomenon to be subject to any conceivable form of testing. All the same, the dangers presented by climate change are so great that we cannot wait for actual evidence. The risk is infinite, so we have to act now, while there's still time.

But is that in fact the case? It's quite true that a planetary climatic system exceeds any test that we can design. The best we can do is model it, through computer simulations that are by their very nature incomplete (not to mention contradictory). Wouldn't it be nice if we had access to some natural example comparable to what's occurring now, so that we could analyze it and get some idea of what we're facing?

It so happens that we have exactly that. This isn't the first time warming has occurred on earth - it's a commonplace and recurring phenomenon. As we've seen previously, one such episode took place in relatively recent historic time - the Little Climatic Optimum, better known as the Medieval Warming Period. During the LCO, worldwide temperatures rose by 1 to 3 degrees centigrade for a roughly three-hundred-year period beginning in the 10^th century and ending late in the 13^th century. Records from the era are abundant and easily available.

Warming advocates have made a series of predictions concerning climatic effects over the coming century. Do they pass the LCO test?

Sea Level Rise

This is one of the most popular topics among global warming advocates, probably because it lends itself to spectacular visuals: maps of Florida "after the warming" are commonplace, while the honest and well-researched film An Inconvenient Truth features scenes of an underwater New York City. Speculations as to the height of the inundation vary from roughly a meter in the 2000 IPCC report to twenty feet from filmmaker Al Gore to double that from Australian activist Tim Flannery.

And during the LCO? Over three centuries, the highest oceanic level was eighteen inches above the previous norm. That foot-and-a-half may sound like quite a lot, but the damage it caused appears to be minimal. There are no records of massive flooding either in Europe or elsewhere. No seacoast villages were relocated that we know of. Florida was certainly not overwhelmed.

It may only be a coincidence that the IPCC's new report has halved its estimate of sea level rise to the same range as occurred during the LCO. While such a rise may cause some problems, it is not Noah's Flood, and shouldn't be treated as such.

Eroding Beaches

A related matter, one that plays very well in places like Hawaii,  involves fears that beaches worldwide will be swept away in the deluge. This appears to be based solely on the experience of Tuvalu. A small cluster of atolls in the South Pacific about 600 miles north of Fiji, Tuvalu (formerly the Ellice Islands) was widely featured in the news a few years ago due to claims that it was being "washed away" by rising sea levels. Suggestions were made that the entire population of 11,000 be settled elsewhere. Grim lessons for seacoast communities were drawn.

It developed that Tuvalu's beach erosion was caused by overbuilding. Putting too many houses on a beach upsets shoreline dynamics, literally pushing sand out to sea (the same phenomenon can be found all up and down the New Jersey shore). Tuvalu has not been evacuated and, if its web site  http:// can be trusted, has just elected a new prime minister.

What does the LCO tell us about beach erosion? For that we can turn to the Furdustrand, literally, "wonder strand", so named by the Vikings who were the first Europeans to come across it about A.D. 1000. The Furdustrand, a white-sand beach close to forty miles long and in places 200 feet wide,  is in truth spectacular, and would be a lot more widely known if it was anywhere on earth more accessible than northern Labrador.

The point is that Furdustrand today looks exactly the way it did when the Vikings first grounded their ships on its sands. The rising sea levels of the LCO, the retreating levels of the Little Ice Age, and the return to higher levels since 1850 appear not to have harmed it one iota.  Fears of disappearing beaches can be dismissed.

Coral Reefs

The idea that coral reefs will be wiped out by global warming is an oddity, thriving as coral does in the warm waters of the tropics. The best known is the Great Barrier Reef off Australia's tropical northeastern coast, and of course, the entire South Pacific is dotted with atolls that began their careers as exactly such reefs. (Tuvalu itself is comprised of several coral atolls.) You will look long and hard for any such islands in the cold waters of the Arctic or the Southern Ocean.

For some years, large stretches of coral in the world's oceans have suffered "bleaching" as the living coral dies and leaves only the basic skeletal structure. The contention that warming is to blame appears to arise solely because it's happening at the same moment: the earth is warming, coral is dying, therefore, warming is killing the coral.

But the same coral reefs existed during the LCO, and appear not to have been affected by the large-scale warming that occurred at the time. There are no beds of dead ancient coral visible, no legends of mass die-offs by Melanesians or other native peoples (dying coral would have deprived fish of a safe environment, leading to a drop in the food supply). We have to conclude that no such thing happened.

And in fact, recent research has clearly demonstrated that sewage runoff   is the actual culprit, poisoning reefs off both Australia and the United States. Runoff of fertilizer, pesticides, and other chemicals may also have an adverse effect.

It comes as no surprise to note that many environmentalists are attacking sewage dumping while still playing the warming angle.

Animal Extinction

Mass extinction is another favorite of warming advocates, with figures of up to "one-quarter" to "one-half" of all species disappearing, though there's no concrete evidence of a single species actually being threatened by warmer temperatures. As with much warming rhetoric, this seems to be sheer speculation, based on the premise that certain "niche" organisms will die out as their marginal environments are changed.

The problem with this thesis is that no species appears to have vanished as a result of the LCO. While it's certainly possible that a marginal species limited to a single locale might have suffered, the simple assumption cannot be made. Certainly no massive die-off as predicted by the more hysterical Greens and their media allies ever took place. Warming and cooling has occurred continually throughout the geological history of the planet earth. It's safe to assume that most organisms have developed means of dealing with them.

Increasing Storms

Severe storms are mentioned for pro forma reasons as much as anything. We're all aware (much as the media has chosen to neglect the fact) that last fall's hurricane season, predicted to be second only to the Day of Wrath in violence, was a complete washout, with not a single serious hurricane troubling American shores. This was a grave disappointment to Greens after 2005's wild roller coaster ride.

The run amok storm thesis is a result of junior high science: the atmosphere is a heat engine, so if you add more heat, there will be more activity, with storms growing in frequency, duration, and violence with no perceptible upper limit. (At least two disaster novels have already been written using this premise, both of them truly lousy, so don't even think about it.) In truth, most warming occurs at higher latitudes, effectively erasing differences in atmospheric temperature and meliorating weather.

This is clearly seen in the LCO, a period of generally calm and predictable weather, with lengthy summers, gentle winters, and fierce storms relatively rare and all the more striking for that. This calm literally lasted for centuries, enabling the Vikings to carry out their explorations in open boats at very high latitudes, areas afflicted with horrible weather even to this day. Numerous violent storms reappeared when the climate cooled in the late 13^th century, with terrifying results. Consider the fate of Winchelsea, an English port swallowed by the waves of the Channel during a days-long rainstorm in 1297. Even worse were crop failures caused by dismal weather all across Europe that resulted in repeated general famines. Clearly it's cooling that leads to foul weather. Which may prompt us to wonder exactly what's behind the past few weeks' spate of killer blizzards.

Melting Ice Sheets

The melting of the world's major ice sheets - those of Greenland and Antarctica - is nearly pure fantasy. It would take a millennium of continuous hot weather to make a dent in either. Certainly the LCO, which lasted a little over three centuries, failed to leave much of a mark.

It's possible that warming may actually add to the thickness of the continental ice sheets by increasing evaporation, which then falls as snow. This seems to be happening to both ice sheets. Is this part of a planetary homeostatic system that keeps things in rough balance? We simply don't know. Perhaps James Lovelock can ask Gaia about it.

(For what it's worth, Iceland has seen a lot more pack ice this winter in its western fjords - those opposite Greenland - than for many years previously.)           

Disease

Warming is predicted to bring about a vast increase in disease, particularly tropical diseases taking advantage of newly-opened ecological niches - yaws in the Midwest, hookworm in Nova Scotia, altogether an ugly picture. (Some claims have been made that this has already occurred. A sometimes deadly tropical fungus has apparently transplanted itself to Vancouver Island, with global warming to blame. It's difficult to see what the mechanism for this could have been, unless the fungus is capable of reading the IPCC report. Certainly there's no reason to believe that Western Canada has suddenly turned tropical. It is, like nearby Washington state, one of the wettest areas in North America, making it homey for any number of fungal diseases, which could have easily hitched a ride on any ship or aircraft heading north.)

What's the testimony of the LCO? While by no means disease-free, the medieval warming period was as close to it as any era before the pre-modern world can show. The black plague, the chief dread of the period, completely retreated from Europe to its original home in central Asia (evidently, rodents in the Caucasus have adapted to the plague bacillus and serve as a steady, living reservoir). There are no outbreaks of plague on record during the LCO and few of other diseases. This was the direct result of a combination of gentle weather and good harvests - well-fed people tend to have robust immune systems.

It could be argued that the modern era is different, with cheap jet travel allowing easy and quick transmission of disease, as we saw with the SARS outbreak in 2003, which leapt from China to Toronto in a matter of days.

But in truth, movement during the LCO was considerably freer than in many later eras (the late 13^th century was Marco Polo's epoch). Along with the Vikings, there are the Mongols, who burst into Europe just before the era drew to a close. A curious fact about these episodes is that they were not followed by massive exchanges of diseases, which normally occurs when cultural bubbles are broken after long periods of isolation. (Consider the varied and deadly plagues that killed much of the native population of Mexico after the Spanish invasion.) Whether this is due to the influence of the LCO is impossible to surmise, but it's a telling sign.

Destruction of the Economy

It's difficult to discern the exact nature of the purported relationship between warming and economic performance, and Green rhetoric offers little assistance. I would guess that the specter of a crashed economy is simply added on as a matter of course, as a kind of Fifth Horseman armed with pink slips and foreclosure notices rather than scythes or swords. Certainly there's nothing inherent in any warming scenario that would lead to the economy going south. It must be all those plagues and storms.

It's not easy to compare a modern economy with that of the feudal epoch, except to say that the LCO appears to have encompassed an era of general good fortune. A peasant culture requires little more than plentiful food and roofs that don't leak, and the LCO had both.

That ended when the cooling came, at the close of the 13^th century. The encroaching cold was accompanied by the medieval depression, which lasted for over two centuries. (Consider the 1930s in light of that.) The trigger was declining harvests and the plagues that followed. All of which suggests that we should hope for warmer weather, if anything. Bulls are associated with hotter climates, while bears don't mind the cold.

Comparisons to the LCO are certainly not kind to the global warming thesis. In an earlier day, we'd have patted the advocates on the shoulder, handed them a calculator, and told them to start over. But these, of course, are not ordinary times.

A close study of the LCO would prove valuable, not only as regards warming but as an example of human beings living in an environment subtly but definitely different from the one we're used to. But don't expect it anytime soon. The debate, we're told, is over, and the cost of understanding has gotten very high.

J.R. Dunn is a frequent contributor to American Thinker.

[edsheppa]

I'm sorry, I didn't understand your post. That second sentence doesn't seem to hang together. Could you expand please? And were you tending to agree with me or Dunn?

[AFPhys]

LOL...

"I didn't bother to read further" ... [if i had, i would risk being educated]

[LeGrande]

An example of a theory whose predictions were accurate but which we now know to be false is Newton's theory of gravity. In a similar vein, the hypothesis, accepted for over 2000 years, that space is flat and which was consistent with all observation until the 20th century is also now known false.

I wouldn't use the term 'false', how about incomplete? At non relativistic speeds Newtons equations are extremely accurate, but I am quibbling :( I know your scientific understanding may exceed mine.

Congruent conflation, pot calling the kettle black, they are two different things but they are both black. Yes I know that Special and General Relativity are two separate ideas but most people would be hard pressed to explain the difference. So I would probably have to agree with you when you say, "But my point was that Dunn doesn't understand the two theories and doesn't even understand that they're different.

My take on his statement was that except for the date he cited he used the General Relativity Theory properly. He also used the word 'proved' improperly and that is why I changed the word to 'supported' in my reply :) Despite those two errors (and there are more, I am sure) I thought the article was relatively interesting and worthy of more than an instant dismissal.

[edsheppa]

if i had, i would risk being educated

I judged, based on the fundamental scientific ignorance he'd shown in the first couple of paragraphs that it was a waste of time.

So, you did not answer, what had you asked me that you didn't need to ask further?

As for the dim bulb remark, I'll gladly compare mine to your own. It took me a few weekend hours to solve this problem. Can you do as well?

[AFPhys]

Ahh... so you're willing to spend "a few weekend hours" to play a game, but you're unwilling to spend 3-5 minutes to educate yourself... great call.

[Reeses]

but what about the positive side of global warming

It's easy to spot propaganda because 100% negatives or positives are presented, whatever supports the purpose of the manipulation. If they were smarter they would give 10 to 20% to the other side to throw off this detection but they never do. For one thing they're too insecure to do that.

There are many advantages and disadvantages of any climate change. If the change is warming the net benefits for life on Earth likely fall overwhelmingly on the advantage side.

[Reeses]

why a genuine, if statistically small, risk should receive no attention as compared to a purely theoretical risk.

Because building rockets creates high paying jobs for mostly smart male American engineers, intensifying world-wide envy. That will never do. Global warming on the other hand appears to be useful to the envious to destroy American prosperity. Unfortunately for them the rocket engineers instead will be hard at work developing climate management technologies such as cloud, snow, and saltwater algae making.

[NicknamedBob]

"The energy of a such a mass rushing toward Earth in some such event is equivalent to billions or even trillions of H-bombs. It might well require the power of thousands of such engines to sufficiently deflect such a moving body."

The real problem with a mass rushing toward Earth is that it is unguided. We do not need to deflect or stop such a body; we only need to alter its course to a slight degree.

Like cancer, early detection for this problem is needed. Once an oncoming body is detected and its course calculated, it should be relatively simple to also calculate the optimum course correction which would lead it to a better location.

One might even hope it could be used to further other goals of future space activity.

Anyway, as to moving it, even the slight amount necessary, there is a procedure which can be guaranteed to work, if given sufficient resources and time in which to act.

That is the landing on the oncoming body of a mass-driver. Whether using solar power or nuclear power, the driver would steadily dismantle the object, flinging the small portions away in a direction calculated to achieve the course correction desired.

If need be, swarms of such devices could be employed.

Since we would be using the asteroid's own mass as a reaction fuel, it would be impossible to run out. The only thing we could run out of is time.

It is for this reason that many who are concerned would like to see additional resources made available to search the skies, and to prepare the simple machines that could prevent our sharing the dinosaurs' fate.

[kipita]

I'm sorry, I didn't understand your post. That second sentence doesn't seem to hang together. Could you expand please? And were you tending to agree with me or Dunn?

Science at its basic level is based on knowns and/or a model/formula to explain observations of unknowns based on knowns. With string theory (for everything) and gaia theory (for earth) and other models/formula, true scientist may have reached the limits of knowns. This seems to lead to a "politicalization" of models/formula to explain unknowns. Thus, the issue of global warming is as political as Iraq WMDs and the 70s issue of "does smoking cause cancer?".

[expatpat]

Anyone who thinks if the predictions work out, we can regard the hypothesis as proven just doesn't get it.

What are you talking about? As a research scientist, myself, I can tell you that he almost 100% gets it. To get to 100%, I would have added the phrase"...until contradictory new data is obtained."

[kipita]

Hmmm, I have the exact opposite impression. They are making 'Laws' without any evidence to back them up. Global warming being a prime example.

There are no "Laws" to explain global warming. However, Lawyers may decide if global warming exists and who is to blame. This puts humans above "Mother Nature" and/or "God".

[expatpat]

His conflation of special and general relativity is another howler

Where does he conflate the two? He talks only of General Relativity.

[Sherman Logan]

The neat thing is that the farther out you start the diversion the less power is required to divert the object sufficiently.

[expatpat]

How about just:
Increased water vapor = Increased clouds = Increased precipitation.

[NicknamedBob]

These same devices will be useful if we wish to bring water-ice to Mars as part of a Terraforming project.

It might increase their economic palatability to equip them with assaying equipment to analyse rocks and asteroid materials.

Then we would simply be "surveying."

[AFPhys]

You're correct in many ways. However...

1. Detection network will be VERY expensive to achieve and maintain for (say) a thousand years. How do we do it? Who pays?

2. Prediction of the course of bodies detected far enough off is almost certainly going to be subject to "chaotic" motion problems. Determination of mass/velocity/position as well as mass/velocity/position of all significant gravitational influences with precision sufficient is going to be very expensive (both time and money), and by necessity in most cases, the modelling of the path is going to result in a range of probability of striking Earth.

3. Who decides (for the next thousand years) what constitutes a threat we will respond to and which do they determine to ignore? What is the benefit or cost of correct calls?

4. Who designs and pays for the "mass drivers" or whatever other technology is used. Who decides how many of these devices to send up in the "swarm"? Surely, it will be to reduce the probability to some amount. Who determines that probability?

Got the idea? Though it may be a wonderful thought experiment, designing a way to deal with these events seems well beyond our ability right now... Of course, if you were dictator, and had a well defined and certain line of succession for the next millenium, you might be able to pull it off!

[Sherman Logan]

Any p[ractical asteroid-deflection program would greatly increase our abilities to do other things in space.

[neverdem]

What was that Tuvalu website again???

I linked it in comment# 1.

[edsheppa]

I wouldn't use the term 'false', how about incomplete?

I don't think that's an appropriate term to apply here. "Incomplete" implies that you can add on to obtain a complete theory but the difference between Newton's and Einstein's conception is not additive. Einstein gives a fundamentally different description of the phenomenon.

non relativistic speeds Newtons equations are extremely accurate

What do you mean by "extremely accurate?" That for non-relativistic speeds we can't tell it's wrong? That's not correct.

most people would be hard pressed to explain the difference.

True, but would those people try to instruct us on scientific matters? I think anyone who doesn't know the difference between two of the greatest scientific ideas of the past century should keep his mouth shut about science.

I thought the article was relatively interesting and worthy of more than an instant dismissal.

In what way specifically?

[NicknamedBob]

1. Detection network will be VERY expensive to achieve and maintain for (say) a thousand years. How do we do it? Who pays?

Who pays for the system of detecting and tracking North Atlantic icebergs? The longer it is maintained, the cheaper it will be to maintain it, as further assets come on line.

2. Prediction of the course of bodies detected far enough off is almost certainly going to be subject to "chaotic" motion problems.

True, just as air traffic control is somewhat chaotic and costly. However, automated analysis programs can highlight suspected objects, and decisions can be made at the appropriate time, depending on the threat level assessed.

3. Who decides (for the next thousand years) what constitutes a threat we will respond to and which do they determine to ignore? What is the benefit or cost of correct calls?

Essentially, what would be needed is a semi-military force, similar in function to our Coast Guard, with clear guidelines for how to assess threat levels in a timely fashion designed to provide ample time to take action.

Needless to say, the benefit of correct calls is the survival of billions of human beings.

4. Who designs and pays for the "mass drivers" or whatever other technology is used.

Whoever is far-sighted and responsible enough to realize there is a threat to be responded to. Bear in mind, while we have been discussing the avoidance of having asteroids target Earth, that is not the only possibility. It may be advisable to have a Home System Defense Network to prevent cranky and obstreperous pranksters from sending multi-megatons down as a playful greeting to an old girlfriend.

"... designing a way to deal with these events seems well beyond our ability right now..."

Nothing I have discussed has been even remotely difficult, except for a certain level of anticipated scale of activity. The mass-drivers could easily be assembled from essentially off the shelf components.

The easy way to address all your concerns is to open the space portals to economic enterprise. Then it would be a simple matter to task the investors in space activity with the burden and responsibility of policing their surroundings. There is but one obstacle to that. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prevents profit-seeking activities in space. The United States should withdraw from that treaty, and allow investors to follow their dreams.

It will be to the benefit, and possible survival, of all of us.