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January 23, 2005
Crying wolf?
Every time I hear one of the earnest young women, or slightly worried looking young men who "front" Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth on television, I am reminded of the Russian (who else) folk tale of the boy who cried wolf. He did it so often that when the wolf eventually was there, no one believed him, and the wolf, in the story, kills him. This afternoon, I stood in a queue in the Post Office and listened to an earnest middle aged woman, who, by her outfit, is a member of the "horsey" set, bang on about how she has her entire family recycling everything, planting trees, eating organic food, and how this is saving the planet from "climate change". From the glazed expression of her companion, I suspect that this is her sole topic of conversation.
Even more infuriating was having to listen to one of Greenpeace's spokespersons just after the tsunami make the totally indefensible statement that "until the US, who everyone knows is the world's biggest producer of greenhouse gases, signs up to the Kyoto Treaty, we can expect to see more of these catastrophic natural phenomena". Talk about spouting garbage! How the - to quote Captain Haddock of Tintin fame - "Blue, Blistering Barnacles" does the Kyoto Treaty prevent earthquakes? What the blazes does the tsunami have to do with climate change? The problem is that these cretins actually believe that it does have a link! To me this proves that, however well intentioned, these morons should not be allowed to comment on anything at all - especially when they spout this sort of pseudo-scientific garbage!
Even worse, I then heard, several days later, a news reader on Channel 4 not only repeat this complete pile of manure, but then try to press an American interviewee for a response! To cap it all, just a week later, on the roll out of the new Airbus, I listened to a presumably intelligent interviewer (he is one of the more senior News Readers at Channel 4) make the point that aircraft exhausts are polluting and causing damage to the upper atmosphere and then put it to his interviewee that "all those vapour trails, visible pollution, will increase if we have more aircraft!" The Interviewee squirmed uncomfortably and agreed that older aircraft did pollute. He was obviously more polite than I would have been and didn't point out that vapour trails are just that - water vapour which the turbulence causes to condense briefly in wake of the aircraft.
The trouble is that the climate is changing, but, despite the efforts of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and well-meaning ladies like the one in the Post Office, we don't have a clue as to what is really causing it or why it is happening. Even less do we know what the final outcome will be!
There are currently two vastly different theories in play. The one favoured by Greenpeace et al, is the scenario in which increasing use of carbon fuels will result in runaway heating and a planet with an atmosphere resembling that of Venus. The other, given a bit of a boost by Hollywood's dramatic, but scientifically doubtful, "Day after tomorrow" in which we enter the deep freeze once more and are plunged into another ice age. This hypothesis is based on analysis of the geological and glacial records of previous ice ages all of which were preceded by a short spell of rapid warming and then a big freeze. Either spells pretty much a disasterous future, and being a cynic, I suspect that much of the hype is to do with attracting research funding, primarily because, although we have weather data going back several hundred years in the Northern Hemisphere (or part of it anyway!) it is very difficult to analyse for patterns.
Even the modern climate models do not reflect what is happening in the upper atmosphere (above 1 mile) with any accuracy and most of the data, until recently, came from ground stations - again located in the Northern Hemisphere for the most part - and these were mostly located near large urban centres. What the models show for the Northern Hemisphere is not what is happening in the Southern half of the planet, and so there are some serious questions. Hopefully, the collection of data now available from satellites provided by those nasty polluting Americans, will give a better picture, but it will need a lot more science and a hell of a lot less of the pseudo-science so beloved of the footsoldiers of Greenpeace et al.
I wonder how many people realise that the tectonic shift in the Andaman sea was matched by an equally large shift in the Antarctic plate? It never even got a mention, yet it killed hundreds and possibly thousands of penguins! The planet hasn't shrunk, it isn't about to fall apart, this is a natural phenomenon in which one plate is shifting into the subduction zone and another is extruding! Want to know about real major impact change? In about another million or so years the Indian sub-continent will have half dissappeared under the Himalayas which will, according to some, be about half again as high as they are now. Will the planet have shrunk, no, but a big chunk of Antarctica will have relocated into the Indian Ocean.
The climate change issue is far more complex than the authors of Kyoto admitted and far more complex than it's supporters even begin to understand. For one thing, in astronomic terms, this planet is green and pleasant and habitable because it happens to occuppy a very narrow (in astronomic terms) strip of space around our sun which is just the right distance to keep the oceans liquid and the atmosphere in place. About three million miles nearer the sun and we would have no oceans and the atmosphere would not be very pleasant even if life were still able to live in a planet being fried by the additional radiant heat we would get. The same distance the other way and we have frozen ocean, frozen atmosphere and no chance of life surviving.
Interestingly, the Russians and others have been looking at this aspect for some time and come to several interesting conclusions which support the ice age theory and blow up the global warming one. Put simply, the earth ihas been subjected to far more ice-ages than "interglacial" periods (we're in one now!) and this seems to be dependent on several different things. One, sunspot activity, two, distance from the sun and three, where we are in relation to the solar equatorial plane. You can add to this volcanic outbursts that shroud us in dust, comets that collide, and one or two other equally uncontrollable (despite Hollywoods fantasising) events. Naturally none of these events is high on the Greenpeace or Friends of the eErth agenda - primarily because they can't get that lovely superior feeling you get from blaming the human race for it all.
Come to that, has anyone out there heard them condemning the use of "Dry Ice" to freeze the bodies of tsunami victims? No? Don't they realise that this is Carbon Dioxide in solid form? Don't they realise the effects - according to their mantra - of releasing so many hundreds of tons of Carbon Dioxide to chill or freeze bodies? Sorry, my cynicism showing again, but I am willing to bet that some clown from one of these organisations will, sooner or later, blame some abberant weather somewhere on its use.
Returning to the 'Global Warming/Ice Age coming scenarios', I find the evidence for the latter more compelling than the gklobal warming theory. For one thing, I am not convinced that man is solely responsible or is even in a position to accelerate it. What is certain is that we need less of the hype, more of the facts, and a lot less of the "let's all go back to living in caves" mentality, and less of the bleeding heart response to things we need to understand properly and then we can respond accordingly. Whichever way this goes we have to face the fact that we do face a crisis, it is one of our own making, and we have to find a solution. Much of the desertification is arising because of a combination of overpopulation and overuse of the land and abuse of water courses, also a by-product of overpopulation.
One thing is for sure, the Greenies had better stop spouting their pseudo-science and scare stories, and second we had better have a back-up plan. If they keep crying wolf, the world will begin to ignore them; that is hardly productive or helpful.
Anyone care to live on Titan?
Posted by The Gray Monk at January 23, 2005 10:01 AM
Comments
I always wonder what gets into those idiots who spout pseudo-science. Do they think that the enviroment is like car, push the brakes and it stops . It's more like a ship, even though you cut off the enignes you still have to stear. The engines are not the only thing acting on the boat, the sea is going to push you were ever it wants you to go.
Posted by: skipjack at January 26, 2005 07:33 AM