[LINK] the weather makers

[Kim Holburn]

On 2007/Apr/08, at 4:30 AM, Stewart Fist wrote:

> Kim writes
>>
>> I've just been reading Tim Flannery's book "The Weather Makers" and
>> my reaction at the moment is "oh shit".  Especially when he talks
>> about committed CO2 levels.
>>
>> Actually it took me about 3 months to get past the first 2 chapters
>> for some reason but the pace of my reading picked up after that, sort
>> of like a positive feedback loop.
>>
>> The horrifying thing is how far along we are in actual measured
>> climate change.  There is some detail about the research basis for
>> climate change.
>
> Since I believe strongly in the Precautionary Principle, and since I
> recognise that the consensus among climate scientists is that we  
> are in the
> midst of accelerating global warming changes due to human action,  
> then I
> totally  support they current political moves to reduce emissions etc.
>
> We need good publicists like Flannery to wake the population and the
> politicians up to 'possibilities'.
>
> But that doesn't mean I have to accept many of the claims being  
> made by
> climate scientists.  I think that climate scientists, like  
> environmental
> activists in general, have realised that you need to scare-monger  
> and shout
> much, much louder than your competitors in this information-overloaded
> society, to get anyone (especially politicians) to hear and  
> consider your
> case.

I don't know Stewart.  I might have thought that before reading this  
book.  It is an overview of all the real scientific data and other  
things that all indicate global warming is already faster than it has  
ever been for millions of years.  Tens of thousands of data sets from  
mny branches of science.  I have a question for you: what would it  
take for you to believe that global warming is actually happening?

> I have a number of doubts:
>
> 1. First of all, my knowledge of history and pre-history tells me  
> that the
> world has been through colder and warmer periods than today over  
> the last
> couple of thousand years, and these have not been man-made, or  
> irreversable.

Over millions of years.

> Al Gore made light of the Viking period in his film and proved his  
> case with
> a limited selection of measurements.  But it is generally accepted  
> that from
> 400 to 1000 AD the temperature of North Europe and the Americas was  
> 2-4
> degrees warmer than today.

I vaguely remember Flannery talking about this in his book but I  
can't find mention of it at the moment but the fact is that during  
warming and cooling there are many instabilities and places that  
change quite differently to everywhere else.

> Also, clearly this was a time of massive population increase (but  
> not mass
> starvation) in Scandanavia, and a time when grapes were growing in
> Newfoundland (Vinland) and there was farming over large sections of
> Greenland.
>
> Rather than this warming resulting in more storms and inhospitable  
> weather,
> 400-1000AD appears to have been the ideal time for sailing around the
> Atlantic and the Pacific.
>
> Right in the middle of this period, there was a 20 year El-Nino  
> (ours has
> been 5 years) which devastated the Mochica-Chimu populations of  
> coastal Peru
> (resulting in the rise of the Inca) and revolutionary changes to the
> Teotihuacan culture of Central Mexico (then, the world's largest city)
> resulting in the Mayan culture dominating the area.
>
>  The pre-Polynesians in the Melanesia also undertook their first  
> major ocean
> crossings about this same time, and the explosion of the  
> Polynesians from
> the central Pacific to Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand  
> happened soon
> after (c 800 to 100 AD).  These were exploratory and settlement  
> voyages, not
> accidental voyages (they carried pigs and dogs,etc.)  They were also
> obviously driven by population explosions (ie good of variable  
> times, not
> necessarily bad)
>
> Until some of these climate scientists tell me how this all  
> happened, and
> why the weather then changed rapidly around the 12th Century (and  
> later 14th
> ) to a Little Ice Age in Europe where the Thames froze over  
> virtually every
> year, then I'm going to remain sceptical that the 'experts' know as  
> much as
> they claim to know about forward weather predictions.
>
> If they don't have hindsight, how can they have foresight?
>
> 2. Sea level changes.  I've heard very good climate scientist and
> oceanographers  explain to me why global warming will result in a  
> drop in
> sea levels due to increased precipitation (via the extra humidity)  
> of snow
> over the Antarctic continent.
>
> If the temperature doesn't get above freezing, then snow doesn't  
> melt, and
> hotter climates are generally wetter.

As the climate changes in radically fast ways all sorts of things  
happen.  Some places get hotter and dryer and some get wetter.  I was  
reading the other day that the creation of the himalayas caused huge  
climate changes in Africa, mainly drying.

New measurements of the sea levels indicate that in the last decade  
of the twentieth century the sea level rise has doubled to 3  
millimeters per year compared with the previous 150 years which given  
the size of the sea is a massive rise.  Most of that is thermal  
expansion of the water, not ice melt.

> And we have no idea whether the floating ice-shelf breaking away  
> from the
> continent of Antarctica is a normal event, or abnormal -- in  
> century-long
> terms, anyway.

Well yes we do.  A lot of work has been done drilling ice cores to  
find out things like this.  In terms of millions of years.

> The claim about the Barrier Reef being bleached-to-destruction  
> every year,
> is a bit hard to sustain if you also claim sea levels are rising,  
> since they
> will then be covered for longer periods (or to a deeper depth) by
> UV-absorbing sea-water.  If bleaching is increasing due to water  
> temperature
> changes then the reefs will probably change, but not disappear.
>
> A lot of scientists have a vested interest in piggy-backing on the new
> fashion in global warming certainties, in order to get next years  
> grants.

Yeah and a lot have a vested interest in debunking it so they can  
continue in the fossil fuel industry.  There are many descriptions of  
data in Flannery's book not by people studying global warming but  
biologists and ecologists studying plants and animals.

> 3. I'd also like to know how accurate these sea-level measurements  
> are, and
> what they are measuring against.   The earth is not static.  The  
> center of
> Australia rises and falls by about a hand-span each day due to  
> earth-tides.
> The coast of South Eastern Australia is rising by as much as 1  
> millimeter a
> year, according to some authorities.  Everest is rising about 45  
> mms a year,
> according to one source.
>
> Over millenia, earth all around the world bobs up and down like a  
> Mexican
> wave at a football final.
>
> At a couple of places in Sweden and Norway, there are low-and-high  
> water
> marking on rocks made in Viking times, and one of them is now 9  
> metres above
> present levels.  Yet this was a time when the weather was warmer  
> than it is
> today.
>
> Low lying islands, like many of those atoll nations in the Pacific,  
> are
> generally sitting on top of old volcanoes, and these notoriously go  
> up and
> down on an annual basis.  In fact volcanologists measure many of these
> changes in terms of centimeters, rather than millimeters.
>
> The fact that the TV shows a cocanut palm with water lapping at the  
> base as
> proof of sea-level rise, is pure fiction.  All sorts of events  
> cause beaches
> to erode.  What happens to these atolls (only, say, 4 meters above sea
> level) when a Tsunami comes through (probably once each century, at  
> the
> least).
>
> And frankly, I've been told so many later-disproved stories about  
> accuracy
> by those who fly scientific  satellites that I find it hard to  
> accept their
> claimed precision of measurements of ocean surface made from 800  
> kms up,
> with a space vehicle subject to solar-winds, gravitional and magnetic
> variations, etc. etc.  I doubt they have an average accuracy for  
> sea-levels
> of less than a couple of centimetres.
>
>
> 4. The other problem is that we are really in an Ice-Age.  For the  
> last
> million years the earth has been extremely cold by comparison to  
> what went
> before.

Flannery says that we are currently in a period that he calls the  
long summer - 8000 years of mild and very stable climate.  It is  
similar to other warm cycles in Milankovich's cycles but they usually  
cool down towards the end.  They have even named the latter part of  
this period "the Anthropocene".

> Our present millennium just happens to be in the middle of an  
> interglacial
> period, and we know that it will turn back into a much colder  
> period at some
> time in the next 1000 or 10,000 years.  We don't know when, because  
> we don't
> know how or why this all happens.
>
> So, logically, the best reason not to use up all our easy-to-get-at  
> coal
> deposits is that this source of extra carbon molecules might be  
> needed by
> future generations to keep the planet warm by exploiting the  
> greenhouse
> effect.

Yes

> So the precautionary principle applied, because of global warming,  
> also has
> the unintended consequences of reserving a very useful (perhaps even
> critical) natural resource for the future.  This is almost a  
> certainty.
>
>
> 5. Personally, I think we should be paying much more attention to  
> the way we
> have overloaded the planet with hominids.  Clearly, the world could  
> do with
> having half the number.
>
> And so if you want to cut back on global-warming effects, then free
> distribution of the pill and condoms around the world might be the  
> most
> effective way to spend the money.  Just think what a billion  
> dollars could
> do.

The simplest way to cut down the populations growth is to educate  
(and empower) women.

> The most important future-development factor that Australia itself  
> has in
> its favour is probably its low population.

Our government has a policy of population growth by massive immigration.

> 6. And the science of climate is exceptional in one other way: It  
> relies
> enormously on the use of computers (and therefore computer  
> programmers) to
> crunch the data -- and it rests almost entirely on computer models.
>
> I have little faith in either.
>
> The only way to test a computer model in terms of its ability to make
> long-term predictions is to see whether it produces the result you  
> expect.
>
> So models are designed to produce a pre-determined output -- and  
> models are
> compared with other models depending (to a large degree) on whether  
> their
> outputs match.
>
> I don't think this can really be classed as science.  I think it is
> computerised fortune-telling.

Yeah, they're intruding into every part of life those pesky  
computers.  I even wrote this email on one, in fact I rarely write  
real letters any more.

--
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
Ph: +39 06 855 4294  M: +39 3494957443
mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request

Democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny.
                           -- Lloyd Biggle, Jr. Analog, Apr 1961