Another fly in the ointment: Global Drought
The economy is in free fall, we are involved in two endless wars, people are rioting. Could it get worse? Yes, that’s what I have been saying since last July. Pay attention people! I got the map above from this fine site. And as far as I can tell, it’s pretty darn accurate. (click on the image for the full size view.) What does it mean? It means that we are going into 2009 with a substantial percentage of the world’s agricultural regions experiencing drought, in some cases severe and historically unprecedented drought. Rivers and lakes are drying up in Australia for example, it has been suffering severe drought since 2004. The author claims that not only locally, but in a global sense the current drought conditions are historically unprecedented. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but I wouldn’t argue with him. I checked he’s not making this up. And whether historically unprecedented or not, it’s definitely a period of unusually widespread drought.
So, what does this mean? There are a number of unpleasant aspects to this situation. The first thing is that food prices should continue to rise through the year. In the west this will be annoying, though most of us in the west don’t spend a huge percentage of our income on food, so it won’t be debilitating. Poor people, and other people in the world who spend a larger percentage of their income on food are going to be hurt very badly by this. And if food shortages get bad enough, people will starve. Again though, it’s the third world poor who will starve preferentially. This is because much of the food exports from the third world are their governments main source of hard income, so for the most part they will keep selling food to the west while their own people starve. Our dollar menus in the USA may become five dollar menus, but at least we won’t be starving. Granted some of us will feel bad about eating food that was effectively stolen from the third world, but since that’s been true all our lives, I suppose it won’t bother too many.
We’re not completely off the hook in the west though, this is problem will also compound the world’s economic problems. Agriculture related businesses like farms and food processors are already hurting, the USA’s largest chicken processor folded in December. Any business in these drought struck regions that depends on water will have trouble. At the very least the price of water is going to be going up, and that’s going to come out of everyone’s pockets. And in fact shortages of water are already limiting growth and development in some parts of the world, including the USA. The point here is that these droughts are going to affect all of our wallets in a number of indirect ways, it won’t just be the price of food that goes up because of this.
Lastly, this is not going to help the world politically. Everyone knows what a food riot is, widespread food riots are a definite possibility this year. And oddly enough, this likely will translate into further political instability and unrest. Which, as the discerning reader has already realized, is going to also have negative economic impacts. I suppose the makers of police riot gear may experience boom times (I expect royalties if anyone makes a killing on the stock market because of that tip) but everyone else is going to again suffer in the pocketbook if there is wide spread food shortage related instability.
I should also point out, this global drought is not terribly surprising. Even ignoring global climate change, the world experienced unusually good weather for much of the last half of the twentieth century. So it’s not terribly surprising that we are experiencing some bad times, sooner or later one draws a bad hand in any poker game. And as far as science is concerned, not only was this a statistical inevitability, it’s more than likely part and parcel of global climate change. (They aren’t calling it global warming anymore because they got tired of explaining that climate and weather are two different things, and that global warming didn’t mean the world was going to warm up everywhere.) No, global climate change means just that, as the worlds average temperature increases, the world’s weather systems will change and destabilize, resulting in more extremes. Some might have noticed that while some parts of the world are experiencing drought, other parts of the world are experiencing record rainfall and flooding. And too much water is almost as bad as too little water in terms of agriculture, so again, the problem is worse than it appears.
The worst case scenario is that this could get really really bad. We are already heading into the most problematic summer since the thirties in terms of widespread risk of economic calamity, instability, and even war. It would not be surprising if millions starved to death, in fact that may be the best case scenario. The world has very limited food reserves, and if these drought conditions do cripple agricultural output as much as they might … tens of millions or hundreds of millions could starve. Half the human race starved in the 535-536AD global crop failure, while we may be more advanced now, there are a lot more mouths to feed. And there is no technological substitute for food, it’s not like we can quickly convert the world’s mind numbing arsenal of weaponry into food.
Well, not directly at least. Would people and nations use their weapons to steal food? As a formerly famous politician once said “You betcha.”
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is not being used for profit and is central to illustrating the post. I think Eric de Carbonnal may have even prepared the graphic himself, I highly recommend his site and will be linking to it regularly. Credit and copyright: Market Skeptics/Eric de Carbonnal. A fly in the ointment is of Biblical origin: “Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour.” — Ecclesiastes 10:1)
Senator Inhofe’s report, the last word in the global warming debate?
I haven’t posted on global warming much recently. I didn’t want to get into endless repetition of the science on a point by point basis, other people have done it better. However, as I was wandering around on Yahoo Answers I saw someone had posted a December 2007 report from the US Senate that listed 400 prominent scientists who think anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is bogus: U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007 Check it out, could this be it, proof that I and so many other people are wrong about the human role in global warming?
I admit at first I was a little dismayed, could 400 prominent scientists be seriously disputing AGW theory? Then I started reading. First it lists all the news outlets that carried the report. What does that have to do with anything? Then it launches into a breathless explanation about how all these persecuted scientists think AGW is a hoax and that there really isn’t any consensus. I couldn’t help but notice that it made a lot of claims, but didn’t really say anything about AGW. Then…the report quotes all sorts of people whose claims the report is going to refute, who are these people? Media folks, columnists, TV personalities, and Al Gore. Um, shouldn’t this report be refuting actual scientist’s statements?
Then, the meat. The 400 “prominent scientists” listed with a select few quotes from each of them. OK, I don’t have time to refute what appear to be a tired collection of the same old long refuted arguments, so who are these guys touted as international experts on the subject? I googled a few near the top of the list…and gee, turns out that a certain obscure west coast blogger has a vastly greater web presence than world renowned experts in global warming. So either I am a far more popular and influential writer than I imagined (and all the blog statistics indicate) or there was something fishy about this list.
Now I didn’t have time to look up 400 hundred guys on google, so off to the web to see what other people thought of this report. And boy was that tiresome. Every global warming denier on the planet had reproduced the report and was making a huge deal out of it, so I had to wade through a lot of that. I did eventually find other people who had taken the time to check out these 400 “prominent scientists.” Guess what?
- 85 are on the oil/gas industry payroll.
- 49 are retired.
- 44 are television weathermen.
- 20 are economists.
- 7o have no expertise in climate science whatsoever.
Now granted on a case by case basis this wouldn’t be reason to dismiss these people’s views. I mean, some experts may be retired or what not…but going by these standards, there have to be millions of “prominent experts” in the field of climate research. This is the best 400 scientists they could come up with? This is not just sad, it’s almost silly. 400 most definitely obscure climate scientists (in only the loosest sense of the term climate scientist) dispute human caused global warming, and this proves there is no scientific consensus on the subject? No, this is the exception that proves the rule. In any event, read all about the debunking of this alleged debunking here.
So if anything, I have to thank Senator Inhofe for producing this lovely document. This is written proof beyond any doubt that the global warming debate is over, because the global warming denial side of the argument is reduced to shooting blanks. I doubt that was the good Senator’s intent, since he (predictably) is the second biggest recipient of oil money in Congress. As for his scientific acumen, the good Senator thinks that humans don’t need to worry about the environment: since God gave it to us, God will take care of any problems that arise. In other words, Inhofe’s Senate report is pure propaganda, a blatant hoax, and a hit piece meant to fool people into thinking that there is still scientific debate when there is none. A list of similar “experts” could be produced to deny evolution, continental drift, or the theory of relativity.
I rest my case.
(On the left is a photograph of Muir Glacier taken on August 13, 1941, by glaciologist William O. Field; on the right, a photograph taken from the same vantage on August 31, 2004, by geologist Bruce F. Molnia of the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Image Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center, W. O. Field, B. F. Molnia )
A new global warming peril…giant rats
A new species of giant rat was “discovered” recently in a remote corner of Indonesia. I say “discovered” since these guys are so unafraid of humans that they wandered into the scientist’s camp. So it’s more correct to say a group of scientists was discovered by giant rats. Scientists also discovered a new species of miniature possum, as well as recording the mating activities of several rare birds. I hope this wasn’t a privately funded scientific expedition, how do you explain this to your sponsor? “Yes, Lord Mallomy, we discovered a giant rat, a pygmy possum, and photographed birds f**king. We’ve named the rat after you. Can we have ten million pounds for the next expedition?” Even Indiana Jones couldn’t make that fly.
Kidding side, these are important scientific discoveries, and it shows that there are still many discoveries to be made in the odd corners of our planet. Of course, what do these giant rats have to do with global warming? Nothing really, but people are so bored with global warming that I thought I’d spice it up a bit. The ability of our society to focus seems pretty limited these days, it’s one crises to the next with little long term staying power. One of the best examples of this is overpopulation, which was a huge issue back in the day. Fortunately it has been solved and we no longer need to worry about humans breeding to the point where our whole system collapses under the strain of producing ever more food for ever more mouths.
Insert rolled eyes here. Of course we do, the overpopulation problem is as bad as it ever was, and humans are pushing into the last corners of the world modifying the environment in a reckless way and destroying the local wild life. The great apes are well on track to being extinct in the wild in a generation for example, due to human activities encroaching on their remaining forest refuges. In a very real sense, unless we solve the overpopulation problem, any and all solutions to other problems are merely stopgap measures.
Moving right along, this is a global warming post, even if I am wandering a bit. The news on the global warming front has continued to be grim, and has continued to exceed our worst case models. The latest example of this is sea level rise, which appears to be worse than predicted. The seas may rise five feet or more this century, and that’s assuming no catastrophic ice sheet collapse and melting in Greenland or Antarctica.
The interesting this about this failure to predict is that it is similar to many recent examples where the trends are running ahead of our worst case scenarios. In many areas of global warming, as things heat up, changes are occurring in the environment that are accelerating the process. Some were simple to predict and easy to model, like less sea ice means less sunlight reflected back into space by ice. Others are far more subtle and hard to understand, like how melting ice is sinking through cracks and speeding up glaciers as they head to the sea. Many people, like me, were predicting long ago that we needed to take this problem far more seriously because if positive feedback kicked in, the problem could get much worse very fast. And sadly, the past few years we are seeing things like global temperatures and melting Arctic ice exceeding all expectations because of unanticipated positive feedback.
This is not good. Fortunately the governments of the world, especially the US, are starting to sit up and take the problem more seriously. In the latest UN Global Warming conference, the USA reversed itself and agreed to a compromise. Yes, the USA agreed to intensely study the issue for two more years, but insisted that the developing countries of the world must also make sacrifices. Uh huh. Let’s see if I have this right, the hyper rich insist that the hyper poor pay their “fair share” to fix a problem caused by the hyper rich. Yeah, that’s fair.
The ridiculous thing about the “debate” is that the amount of money it would take to dramatically reduce global warming gases is minor in the greater scheme of things. And it’s not like the money is going anywhere, it will still be circulating in the economy. So what’s the problem? The problem is that a few powerful industries like the energy industry and the dam building industry would have to retool, and it would cut their profits for a few years. This would mean that a tiny number of people who are already rich beyond the comprehension of normal folks would have a few less zeros in their bank accounts. And since these people own the media and have enormous influence in government, nothing will get done until the last possible second.
The problem isn’t global warming, it’s greed. Some things never change.
(The above image of Mallomys Giant Rat is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, it is being used for educational purposes, and it is central to illustrating the post. Credit: BBC/Conservation International. Isn’t he cute? I’m thinking “glove liners.”)
“Save me Mr. Wizard!” Global warming, it just keeps getting worse and worse…
Until this summer it was possible to make a reasonable case that alarmism was a hallmark of global warming theory. The terrible predictions about extremes had not and would not come to pass, that the changes occurring were part of a natural cycle, and that humans had adapted just fine to changes that occurred during the previous 100 years, I mean the sea level rose a foot or so in the twentieth century and the world didn’t end. And when it came right down to it, there were very many things about how the world’s climate works that we don’t know, and that making alarmist predictions is very irresponsible. All good points, and ones that many global warming proponents often failed to address adequately, thus further polarizing an already polarized debate.
Until this summer. While the debate continued, what happened in the Arctic this summer pretty much destroyed the idea that we were seeing a slow gradual warming of the globe from natural variation. The melting that occurred in the Arctic this summer was far worse than anyone predicted. Even the most fervent proponents of global warming didn’t think the Arctic would melt so soon and so thoroughly. And we are talking thoroughly melted, not only did the area covered by ice shrink to an unprecedented low, the amount of old thick ice has dropped to negligible levels. This means that what remains will be very vulnerable to melting next year, some are now predicting ice free Arctic summers by as early as 2013. Um, a year ago scientists thought this would take many decades, if not centuries. This is not alarmist, this is alarming.
What does it mean? A year ago I said it might make sense to wait and see what another 5-10 years brings. Now I think we can shave that down to a year. Global warming is real, no one denies that. And the Earth has warmed before, again, no one disagrees. The problem is that the scope and speed of the warming in the past few decades do not appear to have happened any time in the last few hundred thousand years. And in the last couple years, it is spiking even faster and higher than anyone dared predict.
When one is witnessing an event that is unprecedented, saying that “it’s natural variation and it will likely change soon” is basically wishful thinking. When you’ve tossed a coin and it’s come up heads a hundred times doesn’t mean the odds are good that it will be tails on the next toss…it means you need to look at the coin and figure out why it keeps coming up heads. And with this summer’s Arctic ice melt we’re at about a hundred heads in a row, if global warming keeps accelerating at the rate it’s been accelerating the past few years, we’re screwed. Humans can adapt to slow change, fast change is a whole other problem.
I’m not even sure what can be done at this point. Way too many things have gone on way too long without check, the energy lobby and the dam building lobby and the cattle lobby and the military lobby and all the other corporate lobbies are too powerful and too entrenched to change their ways quickly. I suspect that by the time most of the world’s governments are on board, it will be too late to avert catastrophic climate change and sea level rise. Could I be wrong? Ask me in another year after we see what happens in the Arctic and Greenland…
Tomorrow, ten things that could kill us all! It will be fun! Trust me!
(The above image of Krakatoa erupting in 1883 is public domain under US copyright law. I used it to illustrate the post because an enormous volcanic eruption would cool the Earth and buy us years or decades to deal with global warming. Great, we need a mega disaster to save us from our own folly, who’s running this trolley anyhow?)
The Northwest Passage opens, our world transformed before our eyes
Well, for the first time that we know of, and definitely the first time since 1978, the Northwest Passage is ice free. Basically a sea route around Northern Canada from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific Ocean, the Northwest Passage was sought by navigators and explorers for centuries as it would dramatically reduce the sailing distance between Europe and Asia. By the mid nineteenth century a lot of dead explorers had pretty much proved that there was no reliable ice free passage. And that was the end of that neat idea.
Until now. While the passage is not exactly ready to rock and roll just yet, at the rate at which the ice in the Arctic is melting, it could be just a few years. Yes, China will be able to ship it’s crap to Europe even cheaper, and drive even more local business’s into the ground. The next time you’re looking at tourist kitsch in Rome or Paris, note how much of it is “made in China” now. China is becoming the world’s Walmart…and it’s not a good thing.
However, I digress. What does this historic occurrence mean? For one thing it’s another indication that global warming is speeding up faster than the most pessimistic models predicted. Yes, the global warming scientists are wrong, it’s happening much faster than they said it would! I can imagine the global warming skeptics saying “Nyaa,Nyaa, Nyaa, we were right all along, we’re all going to die sooner! In your face science!” Sigh, I hope not, but these days when the media delights in encouraging the partisan aspect of just about everything, who knows.
Speaking of partisan, the melting of the Arctic Ice is ushering in a “black gold rush” as Arctic nations dust off old territorial claims and repackage them for modern times. The Russians have even gone so far as to place a Russian flag on the seabed at the North pole, to bolster their claim that a huge underwater mountain range, the Lomonosov Ridge is an extension of Russia’s continental shelf. Their claim is regarded as optimistic at best, but with possibly as much as a quarter of the world’s oil reserves being in the Arctic, the various nations that border on the Arctic are certainly going to try and claim as much as they can. That would be Russia, Canada, Norway, Denmark (through Greenland,) and the USA.
On the one hand it would be ironic if the melting of the Arctic allowed us to rush in and pump and burn more oil and make the global warming problem even worse. It’s like setting fire to your curtains to warm your home. No wonder the aliens haven’t contacted us yet, they’re quietly circling above us saying “What are those people doing?” Moving right along, I guess even without global warming, all this mineral and oil exploration (presuming we don’t get into war over it) can’t be good for the environment in one of the world’s remaining almost pristine regions.
On the other hand the Arctic environment is basically melting and transforming so much that there is zero chance of preserving its wildlife in it’s native state. We can’t exactly build an artificial trans oceanic ice pack. The Polar Bears, seals, walrus and Narwals and such are in deep trouble no matter what we do now in their environment. The Inuit and other Arctic dwelling folks are going to have to get used to hornets and cockroaches I guess. I know some may pillory me for seeming indifference to this aspect of global warming, it’s a matter of choosing one’s battles wisely. It’s still remotely possible that the rapid melting we are seeing in the Arctic is some sort of local phenomena, so I don’t want to split hares over it.
Sigh. And yes, I did promise a list of “ten good things.” It’s been hard, I’m up to six now, and even that was scraping a few barrels. It’s easy to find little stuff where a pet snake rescues a litter of puppies from a chemical spill and such, but good news that is truly global is harder to come by. Suggestions are welcome.
(The above image was produced by the ESA and I suspect it’s public domain, but in any case I am claiming it as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, it is central to illustrating the post, and it is an historically important image. Credit: ESA/BBC)
Dark Days II
Well, I had strange and disturbing dreams last night. And just in general I have been down lately, it’s even seeped into my blogging and paralysed my ability to write. So what the hell, let’s just get it all out in the light and see if maybe we can shrivel up some of these monsters. Here is my current list of the ten things that are depressing me most. No effort is going to be made to be light hearted here, this is just plain blech. Maybe this will get it out of my system and tomorrow I can blog about ten uplifting things. Without further ado:
TEN DEPRESSING THINGS
1. Politics. Dear God, has there ever been such a worthless pack of presidential candidates? More money is being spent on this election than ever before, and all it’s resulted in is an endless series of boring debates where the candidates try to think of novel ways to wrap themselves in flags and bibles. If Obama is sincere, I give him higher marks, but I don’t think he is. I like Ron Paul, but he is being studiously ignored by the media because saying “The emperor has no clothes” simply isn’t the message the powers that be want us to hear.
2. Iraq. This mess is on track to cost us two trillion dollars, 70% of the American public want us out, and there’s no end in sight. We goddamn elected an anti-war congress, and they simply caved in to the war party. When will we be leaving Iraq? Damned if I know, but I stick to what I said when we first invaded: It’s not a question of will the US be leaving Iraq, it’s just a question of how soon and how ignominiously. And four plus years in I would add that the longer we put it off, the more ignominious it’s going to be.
3. GWOT/Militarism. OK, we had the most expensive military that money could buy, and a handful of guys with box cutters flew under our radar and nailed us. Did we punish the people who were manning the ramparts? No. Did we re-examine the cult of militarism that has infected the USA since at least World War Two? No. We gave even more money to the people who failed to protect us against 9/11 in the first place…and redoubled our efforts to meddle in the foreign lands where our meddling spawned Al-Qaeda in the first place. If bombing people and invading countries and ever more expensive militaries could bring peace and safety…Israel would be living in a sea of peace and plenty. Which brings us too…
4. Palestine. Someday Israel has to decide what to do with the territories they occupied in 1967. That’s more than 50 years ago. They need to either annex them and let the people there be citizens of Israel…or allow them to form a state of their own. Instead, for 50 years Israel has kept millions of people in stateless limbo and pretended that they didn’t create this problem. Until Israel makes up it’s mind, nothing will change and the seeds of Islamic extremism will not only find fertile ground in the occupied territories, they will continue to spread. And no, it’s not all Israel’s fault, but they are the ones with all the power and weapons and they are the ones who occupied the West Bank and Gaza in the first place.
5. Russia. Has anyone noticed that Russia is now run by organized crime? People worry about the possibility of a few mullahs getting a crude 50s era nuclear bomb…while the world’s largest nuclear arsenal and the means to deliver it globally is in the hands of a man who makes Tony Soprano look like a Boy Scout. No wonder the Russians are fleeing their country in droves. Their solution: have a baby, get a car. Sheesh.
6. Extinctions. Nothing but bad news here, at great expense we “saved” a few keynote species and cleaned up some of the world’s most visible pollution…while the habitat destruction and overpopulation continued unheralded in the background. The first cetacean (whale/dolphin) ever just went extinct, the gorilla is in trouble, the Polar Bear is in big trouble…and just in general a world without large animals outside of zoos is not so slowly emerging. This is what we were warned about in the sixties and seventies. Sigh.
7. Climate Change. Arctic sea ice is disappearing at a rate no one predicted, and just in general the world appears to be warming up faster than our worst models predicted. The result? The rich are scrambling to control the rapidly melting arctic and get to the oil there. Which we will burn and make the problem even worse.
8. The Economy. Way too many level headed people are concerned about the state of America’s economy, and by extension the world’s economy. Yes, there does appear to be a limit to how many times each dollar can be loaned out. The fallacy of basing economic growth on “printing” ever more dollars and loaning money to ever more unqualified people has always been known, and now the chickens look like they will be coming home to roost soon. The rich are however getting considerably richer all the time.
9. Walmart. OK, not Walmart specifically, but the wave of box stores and grocery chains that destroyed America’s small town main streets and created the fattest population on the planet is rapidly engulfing the developing world. Yes, we have a world wide obesity epidemic under way as people abandon their locally produced healthy diets and buy their food at the new fangled supermarkets. Except of course things like soda pop are not really food, so they are trading in their health and well being in order to put out of business their local small businesses. The dark side of capitalism.
10. Everything else. Ahmadinejad, Afghanistan, the Taliban, ebola, earthquakes, “reality” television, Syria, pollution, overpopulation, the End Times, oil prices, science under attack, hurricanes, colonialism, Hugo Chavez, Al-Qaeda, collapsing infrastructure, missing children, corruption, failing schools, debt, and Britney Spears.
OK, I feel much better now, have a nice day everyone. :)
(The above image of Congress at work is believed to be public domain under US copyright law. It was obtained from the Lycos Image Library. Credit: Charles Knight)
Greek Fires and Global Warming
I finally came across some background behind the current terrible rash of fires in Greece. They have had a tinder dry summer, and the last two weeks there have been high winds. So there’s no mystery how this happened, and there’s no coincidence to explain. Speculation about terrorism is premature, but I’m sure politics in Greece is more or less the same as in the rest of the west, so it’s not surprising. The opposition for its part is blaming the government. With an election in Greece a few weeks away, this could get interesting. I will follow how this ongoing story develops, and of course I can only hope they get the fires under control soon.
Smoke from fires has a short term global cooling effect, though not as much as a nice volcanic irruption I would guess. On the other hand fires produce a lot of CO2, which will remain the atmosphere a lot longer than the particulates from the fires. Basically fires are not a good thing when it comes to global warming, though I suspect these fires are dwarfed by the fires still being set with monotonous regularity in the tropics to clear land.
On the topic of fires though, it’s been pointed put that uncontrolled coal mine fires, particularly in China, are an enormous CO2 contributor. India has problems too, but they are a distant second. This immediately suggests that controlling these fires might a good idea, it’s not really all that expensive and it’s off the shelf technology. This news will lead to more China bashing I suppose, but to some extent it’s deserved. When it comes to global warming, no one is innocent. (Well, maybe a few select bloggers, hehe.) At least putting out these fires is a simple way to fight global warming that’s hard to find fault with.
On the subject of extreme weather events, I came across this article: This is the Face of Global Warming. While scientifically this summers rash of floods can’t be linked to global warming, the author makes the point that is the sort of thing that can be expected if global warming continues to progress. Food for thought, and not happy thought either. I certainly hope this sort of extreme weather doesn’t get any more common.
An artist’s plan to mark the projected sea level if Greenland melts in the City of Santa Barbara has been shelved. People felt that it might lower the property values of people living on “the wrong side of the line.” Good point actually, if you want to know if your house will be submerged if Greenland melts just check out this site, no need to upset your neighbours. As far as Greenland goes, scientists sent this summer installing more sophisticated sensors there so we can get better data on just what the Greenland Ice Cap is doing. Stay tuned.
In bad global warming news, the European bloodsucking leech is apparently in big trouble due to its habitat drying up. Most land going leeches live in tropical forests, this is one of the few that lives in temperate regions. It’s just a tiny little thing that mostly feeds on amphibians. Hot dry summers have reduced the amount of moist leaf litter it needed to live in, and scientists have only been able to find one in recent years. They have been feeding it earthworms to keep it alive while they studied it. How they tracked and studied a tiny little leech in the wild for four years is a mystery to me, really dedicated scientists spent a lot of time crawling around the forest floor I guess.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is not being used for profit and is central to illustrating the post. Credit: BBC/Konstantinos Topalidis)
Global Warming is the same as Y2K?
Well, there’s been a lot of global warming news lately. Has been for awhile actually, scientists have continued to document it seven ways from Sunday. However, there has been a recent development that has the “global warming is a hoax” people very excited. Apparently it has been discovered that there is a problem with temperature records in the USA, and that the average USA temperatures on th last six years have been revised downwards slightly.
What does this mean? Well, apparently if you are a global warming denier it’s a wonderful opportunity to belittle scientists and people who think that anthropogenic climate change is a problem. I’m not even going to link to any of the sites breaking this basically non-news because they are so filled with insults and name calling and high fives. Why people think they have any logical and scientific credibility when they ridicule and insult people who disagree with them is a mystery to me.
Why is this non-news? Because global warming is about global warming, not warming in the USA. Most of the sites breaking this news are neglecting to mention that it is USA temperature measurements that have been revised downwards. Global temperature records are barely affected, maybe a one to two percent reduction. So this means global warming is only 98% as bad as was thought…this is important? This is proof that global warming is a hoax? Some have even gone so far as to claim this “proves” global warming is no more important than the Y2K flap. I don’t even know what to say about that, Y2K was a media flap, there was never any science involved.
In any event all this proves is that scientists are perfectly capable of adjusting their thinking and data when errors are pointed out. The data has been corrected and science moves on, the metrics about the changes global warming is wreaking world wide haven’t changed a bit. The ice caps are still melting, the arctic ice cover is still retreating, glaciers are still disappearing, and just in general global warming continues. Global warming deniers apparently can never adjust their thinking, the ones remaining appear to be like evolution deniers. Proof that they are wrong is simply ignored, any minor problems with their opponent’s arguments are hyped to the point of absurdity. They also keep trotting out the same old long ago refuted arguments. For the data that shows that this correction is trivial (like I said, 1-2%) see this site.
In global warming news, things just keep getting worse…
Tree Death Rate Doubles in CA. The rate at which trees have been dying in Sierra Nevada forests has doubled since 1983, and climate change appears to be the only explanation.
Coral Reefs disappearing more rapidly than expected. Coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific ocean have been declining faster than anyone predicted, and the effect is Ocean wide which pretty much rules out non global factors.
The oil rush is on in the Arctic. Thinning ice and warming climate have triggered an oil rush in the Arctic. Russia and Denmark are both making extraordinary territorial claims in an attempt to get control of the vast oil and gas reserves in the Arctic that until now were inaccessible due to ice cover and extreme cold. Canada is also beefing up its Arctic territorial claims. The irony of global warming making it possible to burn even more oil and make the problem even worse is interesting, nu?
Extreme weather events break records this spring. The first half of 2007 saw extreme weather events all over the globe, as well as the highest monthly global temperatures ever recorded. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN group of hundreds of experts, has noted an increasing trend for extreme weather events the past fifty years, and expects it to intensify.
And just for some final fun, here is a report which overviews the huge number of documented cases where plants and animals and whole ecosystems are changing in response to global warming. I wish the global warming deniers would explain how a hoax is persuading plants to bloom weeks earlier and animals to move into areas they have never been recorded in before. I mean, the Global Warming hoax has not only fooled most of the world’s scientists, it’s also fooled the world’s plants and animals? Wow.
(The above image of America’s second cutest animal, the Pika, is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. The Pika is retreating ever upwards in its quest to stay cool, and failing. The image is not being used for profit, is central to illustrating the post, and is properly attributed. Credit: James Page.)
Ack, another global warming post…
Two weather posts in a row! Well, I’ll be merciful, I’ll ramble some this time. I saw another headline in the news that just screamed “global warming news,” it’s becoming depressingly common. Especially since the recent ones have all been further bad news. It’s kind of like a race at this point, which is going to reach critical mass first, galloping climate change or the spreading war in the Middle East? What to me is possibly the worst part of it is that the man in the position to do the most about either situation is so unqualified for the job that he may make things worse.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regard My Bush as bad or evil man, I think in his own way he has the best of intentions. I just think he’s lived such a sheltered privileged life and is so surrounded with yes men and ideologues that he is out of touch with what is really going on. And as far as I can tell from my admittedly limited view, the climate crisis and the wars in the Middle East are both on the verge of exploding into something vastly uglier than what is going on now. Maybe either or both situation will resolve itself, or there at least will be some good news, I would sure love to eat some crow in either case.
Sadly I think the Democrats are no better. I’ve always had a lot of disdain for politicians, but it seems to have gotten worse in recent decades. There was a time in this great nation when things were accomplished on time and within budget. Now the feeding frenzy in Washington seems to know no bounds. Yet everything has limits, we are the richest nation the world has ever seen, but I fear the lilies are spreading wildly now and the pond is only so big. Let’s not even get into Peak Oil.
And no, nuclear power is not going to save us. I’m going to blog on that soon, nuclear power and the thinking that created it is part of the problem, it’s not going to be part of the solution. I’m in fact more and more convinced that almost everyone is out of touch with reality and likes it that way, people chose the narrative they feel comfortable with and run with that, so much easier than trying it figure it out for themselves. Especially considering that the signal to noise ratio in the media and on the Internet is getting worse all the time, all noise no signal.
OK, I think at this point I’ve annoyed liberals, conservatives, and everyone in between. So I’ll stop digressing all over the carpet and get to the point of the post, the latest global warming news. It’s pretty simple really, it turns out that ozone is a bigger part of the problem than was previously suspected. Ozone pollution has been studied extensively, but primarily for its health effects (it’s not healthy.) It was known that ozone contributes to global warming directly via radiative forcing in the atmosphere, this study shows that it also contributes significantly by preventing plants from taking up carbon dioxide.
The only silver lining to this news is that at least we are closer to understanding why in the past five years or so global warming has been running way ahead of the worst case scenarios in the climate models. I’d say it’s one more nail in the coffin of those who still deny anthropogenic climate change, but we would have to dig up the coffin to do that. Those folks might as well start work on their own Museum next to the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Could I be wrong? Note previous reference to my desire for crow pie.
Tomorrow, cats in the news! Death defying cats, death predicting cats, and all manner of other cats. And how come no one commented on my new header picture, which I think so neatly encompasses the title of the blog that it might even end up being permanent? As always though, thanks everyone for the thoughtful comments, come back soon!
(The above image was produced by a US government agency and thus is public domain under US copyright law. Credit: EPA)
A perpetual favourite: anthropogenic climate change, and why it’s a bad idea
Green – increase in precipitation
Yellow – decrease in precipitation
Grey – disagreement between observed rainfall and climate models
White – insufficient data
A new study in Nature today says humans appear to have altered global rainfall patterns in the last 75 years. There has been a suspicion for some time that human activity has altered rainfall patterns, this is the first time scientists have been able to tease out the actual change due to human forcing from the climate record. This is not terribly important in and of itself, but it does help illustrate a few things worth blogging about. And it has implications that go beyond the scope of the study.
The primary thing it illustrates is that it’s another example of humans altering global climate. I know there’s still skeptics out there who are literally stuck in 19th century thinking…that the Earth is too big for humans to effect change on. This is another nail in the coffin of that quaint idea. Not even sure how the idea got started, there’s all sorts of systems around us that are easily altered by very small changes, a trivial change in blood chemistry for example can render a person unconscious or dead. I suspect it’s more a religious idea than anything else. A lot of scientific scepticism appears to be rooted in religion, who would have guessed?
This also once again illustrates the difference between weather and climate, another point that a lot of people, especially skeptics, have trouble with. Though to be fair, the confusion here is not limited to skeptics. In other words this study has no bearing on the terrible rains going on in the UK right now. Weather is what is going on outside your window right now, climate is average weather patterns over time. It’s a minor but crucial distinction, it’s not possible at this time to link extreme weather events to human activity. And it may never be possible. More importantly, it doesn’t matter. If climate changes, we all experience the change even if the local variation is subtle.
Note also that some areas of the map above “do not agree with the models.” I suppose there are some who will use this to attempt to discredit the whole study. I hardly even know where to start on this line of reasoning. Basically if one looks for minor discrepancies or areas where scientists don’t fully understand something, one could discredit any scientific theory. No scientific theory is so complete that there aren’t fuzzy areas that are not fully understood. If one wants to discredit a scientific theory, one has to come up with an alternative theory that better fits the available evidence. It’s easy to snipe at a theory, it’s a lot harder to actually come up with and prove a better theory.
And while this study is not terribly alarming in it’s own right, the whole idea that humans are altering global climate is alarming. The historical evidence is overwhelming that climate change has caused the collapse of numerous human civilizations. Civilizations are based on their agriculture, agriculture is very sensitive to climate change. So it’s a no brainer that changing the climate is a highly risky thing to do. I’d rather not be in the first civilization to collapse because of self induced climate change. Every study like this is further evidence that we are heading down a road that will lead us to places we don’t want to go.
In other words, the global polluters need to prove that what they are doing is harmless. If we wait until there is absolute proof that what they are doing is causing climate change, it may very well be too late. We are literally gambling with our own future.
(The above illustration is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is not being used for profit and is central to illustrating the post. Credit: Nature.)
