« Sunday essentials ... | Main | A lack of trained inspectors? »
August 09, 2004
Global warming?
Being a follower of matters scientific (I have been known to read New Scientist, Amercian Science, and a range of other magazines of that ilk), I have long wondered at the specious arguments from Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and other pseudo-scientific bodies (whose footsoldiers all seem to be dropouts from school or university) who argue on the basis of some very dubious science that man is entirely responsible for the current rate of climatic change. Apart from anything else all their climate models use data from weather measuring stations located in the densely populated Northern Hemisphere and ignore a range of things including anything happening more than a mile above the ground. The other problem with their arguments is that the model does not actually reflect what is happening in the Soiuthern Hemisphere even when fed the data from that neck of the woods.
The other thing which seems to have escaped our Green Lobby is that there is a huge amount of data showing that the sun is actually heating up! Now that is significant, but it's inconvenient because it rather knocks the legs out from under any argument for a return to a pre-industrial Utopia!
The effect of deforestation and of the loss of the nice fluffy and very white clouds that used to blanket the Northern Hemisphere - due almost entirely to high Sulphur Dioxide content - and which reflected a great deal of the sun's increased heat away, has probably helped to make the change much more noticable. That is not to say that acid rain is to be preferred, but it is one of the many things our Green friends overlook in their annual pursuit of the destruction of the means for global trade, sustained civilisation, and the means for actually trying to find workable solutions to the world's primary problem - which is overpopulation! Short of a lot of genocidal activity, we are stuck with that one, unless we can find a way to restrict further expansion and/or find a means to support the population as it increases towards "standing room only".
As reported recently, the warming of the climate in the Northern Hemisphere is already encouraging the arrival of jelly fish and some species of shark and fish which more usually occur in tropical climes. An interesting take on that can be read at Dodgeblogium under the heading of "Man of Cthulhu?". It underscores the fact that we live on a volatile planet in a dynamic universe which is changing and evolving all on its own. To think that something is miniscule as ourselves can have much more effect on our planet than to give it a temporary rash is evidence of an arrogance way beyond our fragile reality. Off this planet it is an extremely hostile universe, and short of finding another like it, we have little chance of surviving the next 10,000 years as the climate gradually heats up under the influence of the sun.
So why is this information not making the headlines? Well, partly because those arch polluters the Russians were the main suppliers of the data - and partly because, I suspect, it would blow away all the lovely research funds that flow towards those shouting "Global warming" and raising scare stories every year when the finances for research are being discussed. Face it, folks, if the sun heats up, the very narrow zone of tenability which this planet happens to occupy at present is about to start to shift outwards towards Mars. I doubt whether that planet could be brought back to life, even if it did find itself once more in the "tenable zone". For one thing, it is now all but stripped of atmosphere, and unless there is some very clever mechanism for having drained the oceans into subteranean ice caverns, there will be little usuable water. No water = no life.
Well, some may argue that we have 10,000 years to find a solution, but somehow, unless we start now to invest in some bigtime space exploration and space travel programmes, we are basically on a hiding to nothing. More sunblock won't help, and neither will any of the "organic" and "green" farming programmes. The evidence is there, the technology can be developed. What we need to do now is stop wasting time with trying to put the clocks back and move forward to find an option which will save the human race and as much of our planets life as is possible.
Sound strange coming from someone with a religious bent? Well, I happen to think that this may just possibly be one of the reasons God gave us the brains and the ability to do it in the first place!
Posted by The Gray Monk at August 9, 2004 01:11 PM
Comments
When I was in college I worked for the University for a while archiving weather data on the computer systems there. We archived the data from every single US satellite in orbit, as well as from a whole range of ground based sensors (temperature, humidity, lightning, you name it). All told we got about 80MB a day of raw weather data. The job was pretty boring, so some days I would just take some time and sift through the data we got and take a look at it.
After seeing what the actual raw, unprocessed data looks like I scoff at the general global warming crowd. Why? It's not that the data doesn't support their hypothesis. The data simply isn't there. The best data we've got covers maybe 25% of the Earth, and that's only for the last 20-30 years (since the satellites went up). Before that we've got crap.
Most of the data that we do have centers around urban areas. But there's a major scientific problem with using this data as our basis: all urban areas heat up, and have gotten warmer in recent decades. This has nothing to do with global warming. It's a variety of factors, actually, but the most prominent is the fact that we pave everything with black asphalt.
You want to tell me the average temperature of the Earth is going up? Show me some data that actually covers the entire planet for a few years and I'll start to listen.
Don't take this the wrong way - I'm not going to sit here and argue that global warming isn't happening. I'm going to tell you that we don't know if it's happening, and anybody who tells you different (on either side of the debate) is pushing an agenda at you.
Posted by: Russell Newquist at August 9, 2004 08:47 PM
Thanks Russell - you have confirmed everything I have read on this in the creditable journals and reports. There are a lot of theories, but no proofs.
Posted by: The Gray Monk at August 10, 2004 09:39 AM