Blogito, Ergo Sum - Global Warming

Global warming is an incontrovertible fact and I can scientifically prove it, as can almost any earth scientist worth his salt. Don’t worry about measuring melting Antarctic sheets, or retreating glaciers or the snow melting on Kilamanjaro…there used to be an ice sheet in the Ohio Valley that was miles thick, the Great Lakes are water-filled depressions in the planet’s skin caused by the immense weight of the glaciers which used to be there, now all of them melted and gone.

The problem for Algore and his Ilk is that this current spell of warming began 20,000 years or so ago, long before man appeared. As I wrote earlier about something Peggy Noonan said:

“During the past week's heat wave--it hit 100 degrees in New York City Monday--I got thinking, again, of how sad and frustrating it is that the world's greatest scientists cannot gather, discuss the question of global warming, pore over all the data from every angle, study meteorological patterns and temperature histories, and come to a believable conclusion on these questions: Is global warming real or not? If it is real, is it necessarily dangerous? What exactly are the dangers? Is global warming as dangerous as, say, global cooling would be? Are we better off with an Earth that is getting hotter or, what with the modern realities of heating homes and offices, and the world energy crisis, and the need to conserve, does global heating have, in fact, some potential side benefits, and can those benefits be broadened and deepened? Also, if global warning is real, what must--must--the inhabitants of the Earth do to meet its challenges? And then what should they do to meet them?

You would think the world's greatest scientists could do this, in good faith and with complete honesty and a rigorous desire to discover the truth. And yet they can't. Because science too, like other great institutions, is poisoned by politics. Scientists have ideologies. They are politicized. “

But is that really true? Are they ALL politicized? Of course not, so what is the real reason why the “world’s greatest scientists” cannot all agree? In the first place, who are they, exactly? Mero and I have done a lot of scientific work in our lifetimes, even discovered a little oil, he’s a geologist and I’m a geophysicist, do we qualify to have an opinion? What makes a person one of the “greatest” scientists? Who ranks you, your peers or the New York Times?

The problem for the current crop of scientists is that they have become data hounds, they can’t draw an accurate conclusion without enough data, and man simply has not been alive on the planet long enough, let alone have instruments developed for the task, to have recorded enough data. The thermometer is only a few hundred years old, remember, and we’re talking about events stretching back 20,000 years.

Once again, it’s not rocket science, although that seems to be what they are trying to make it.

It’s called the science of geology, and all that is required is an observant guy with a rock hammer. The data are there, written in the rock pages.

Well, and maybe a map and a few books. That’s all that Al Wegner (a much smarter man than Al Gore) needed to discover continental drift in the early 1900s, after all, even if it did require subsequent generations of geophysical scientists (jus’ lak me) to invent the necessary instruments in order to ‘prove’ him right.

Wegner was one of the world’s “greatest” scientists…but nobody knew that at the time, those ‘peers’ of his laughed him and his silly idea right out of business. In fact, they humiliated him. Kindly do not tell me about any conclusion reached by the world’s greatest scientists.

Here’s what geology teaches us. The rocks record numerous instances of glaciations on various parts of the shifting planetary surface. In between every glacial period, though, what happens? Why, global warming, of course.

Was man responsible? You mean the hairy little ape that didn’t even enjoy Evolutionary Promotion until well into this latest period of global warming…the one that has been going on now for what, Mero, nineteen thousand (19,000) years?

When was the thermometer invented? Galileo Galilei made one in 1593, when he wasn’t busy fighting the Pope. Of course, all poor GG could record was “hot, hotter, hottest; cold, colder, coldest” because it wasn’t until 1714 that Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the mercury bulb thermometer (an invention still ubiquitous today!) and told him about °F. Uh…that would be less than three hundred (300) years ago, although I doubt the new thermometer was in widespread use in every village, Middlesex and farm immediately afterwards.

(I can’t resist this aside: why the term Middlesex? Is that where gays lived in those days?)

Of course man was not responsible for the phenomenon known as global warming, the periods between “ice ages” as Great Scientist Algore might term them…man wasn’t even here yet.

Is man affecting the current warming period, perhaps speeding it up? Maybe. Maybe not. Not enough data to tell one way or another…which is why scientists have come to differing conclusions, sometimes perfectly honestly and also absent the taint of politics.

You know what I think? Future generations will respect me as being one of the “greatest” scientists for this, I realize, although I’ll have to content myself with merely knowing that much. Fame is fleeting, anyhow, they say. Okay, here’s what I think:

There is so much conflict and uncertainty about what the data are trying to tell us, one set seeming to say the globe may still be warming (STILL BE, please note!), another seeming to say cooling, some seeming to say both at once, like Newsweek magazine or John Kerry…

I’m going to take the Alfred Wegner point of view, sometimes known as KISS (keep it simple, stupid): conflicting data like these ordinarily measure what, exactly?

I told you my (perhaps boring) story about getting up early one morning and watching the tide change on a river in Scotland (Mero, the mere geologist, was still sleeping while the ever-alert geophysicist studied). I knew, roughly, the time it was going to change, so I watched the river with great interest, hoping to see it happen.

Over and over again I thought the tide had started out. No, wait…looks like it is still coming in…no, wait… But at some point the tide had definitely changed, no doubt about that, I just couldn’t spot what was happening at the precise time because, Shazam!, both appeared to be happening at the same time.

Aha, a Wegner moment! We’re at the exact moment of change right now! Here…let me make a tick on the wall with the time and date. I charge future generations with the responsibility of preserving this wall, the same way they have Shakespeare’s home…what’s that? Who was Shakespeare, really? Don’t distract me, I’m giving you Great Scientist stuff here.

Now don’t expect the glaciers to return and fill the Ohio Valley again, not overnight, anyhow, but they’re on their way. And the farmers won’t be happy to see them when they arrive, either.

If man can slow the returning glaciers down with greenhouse gasses, I say go for it. If nothing else, fretting over this problem is time better spent than making war. Probably. Perhaps. Maybe. How do we get the jihadists thinking about this? In their typical contrary fashion they would probably be on the side of the glaciers, and you probably couldn’t blame them for that.

As for the rest of the environment, man has been cleaning up his act, in general, for decades now. The question always comes down to economics, as does so much in life: what will it cost to reduce X amount of pollutants of one type or another, while not only maintaining living standards but improving them for billions of people? Kyoto was a particularly egregious example: even its honest adherents admitted it would cost a fortune and accomplish very little, the whole fight over Kyoto is not about the environment but about politics.

In politics, everything bad is always the fault of the party in power at the time. Always. Previous positions to not count.

Except, thanks to the internet, we can now access all of the statements previously made by the people not currently in power but who were at that time.

In general, in the US the environment is cleaning up. I was born in Los Angeles and have returned there every so often during my life. I know what it was like before the worst of the smog, I remember what it was like during the worst of the smog. Things are obviously getting better. Not fast enough to suit you? Uh, huh…your party must not currently be in power.

As for global warming: yes, it definitely HAS been happening. Big time. Most of the world’s inhabitants have been pretty happy about it, so far.

Here we have previously been told by some people that the danger is so certain that people should not even be ALLOWED to question it! Now this poor honest guy hasn't gotten the PC story-line and admits the risks are not certainties.

(The) price on carbon dioxide emissions, most economists agree, would be the most efficient way to combat global warming. And the price, they say, should start small to give industries time to adapt, then ratchet up over the years to encourage long-term investments in energy saving, carbon cleanup and new technology.

The two methods of pricing carbon are to charge a tax on each ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the air, or to place a cap on total emissions and then let polluters trade permits to emit a ton of carbon dioxide.

Economists like William D. Nordhaus of Yale and Mr. Cooper of Harvard advocate a tax as the clearest price signal to the energy marketplace, and less susceptible to political tampering and market manipulation than a cap-and-trade system. It could also be used to raise revenue to offset other taxes.

In a recent paper, Mr. Cooper suggested an initial tax around $14 a ton of carbon dioxide emitted, which he calculated would translate roughly into a 100 percent tax on coal and add 12 cents to each gallon of gasoline. Such a tax would raise as much as $80 billion a year in the United States.

Of all the stupid ideas, the cap-and-trade system is the dumbest by far. It says, essentially that if your company and my company are both allowed 100 billion glugs of carbon a year, and I'm putting out 150 but you are putting out only 50, I can buy your surplus capacity from you. Or trade you something for it that you want...let's make a deal. Have your politician or lawyer (or both) call mine, set something up. True, the total emissions will still be 200 billion glugs, there'll be no effect on global warming, but at least now it will be legal.

As for the rest, the tax policy salvation solution, what are we assuming here? A new world government? Or that only U.S. emissions are the issue in the global warming argument?

Maybe the U.N. will, with Kofi leaving, suddenly become relevant? A group that cannot get Iran to give up atomic bombs will suddenly be able to convince China and India to pay them taxes in order to reduce global warming?

So far the evidence that global warming has caused fiercer hurricanes is...well, isn't. People, especially journalists, tend to measure hurricanes by the amount of financial and physical damage they do to human habitation. Thus the hurricane that hit New Orleans was considered horrific, and much of the ensuing hot air afterwards has been blown criticizing the Bush administration for how slowly it acted in protecting the residents of several states who had elected governors to protect them. But Katrina wasn't the world's fiercest hurricane in terms of strength...global warming did not make it into a monster storm.

As for coastal floods, people who live along the coast take a calculated risk, deliberately so. The recent tsunami in Asia killed what, some 180,000 people...compare that with the loss of life from Katrina.

My geologist friend, Mero, might tell people living along the eastern seaboard that they are, taking the group as a whole, far more likely to perish from a tsunami created by an already-recognized geologic risk out in the Atlantic...and global warming isn't going to stop that from happening, when it does.

And as for the loss of farm output in poor tropical countries...please, get a grip. The reason things grow like hell here in the tropics is not because of the high heat, otherwise the Sahara Desert would be paradise, but because of the longer growing season in places of abundant rainfall. And opening up Canada and Siberia to extended farming, if global warming did that, would probably offset any such speculative losses, anyhow.

What's really causing global warming, since all of this has happened repeatedly long before man ever showed up to start building fires? Who ever reads the front part of an Atlas, anyhow? Try this from the Reader's Digest Atlas from 1990, in case you missed it:

Secret Rhythms of Heat and Ice

The planet has throbbed hot and cold, according to a pattern. We live at the end of an interglacial--a warm spell lasting about 10,000 years. It is sandwiched between recurring ice ages, each lasting about 100,000 year. If the pattern continues, the next big freeze might begin within a few hundred years.

Rhythms of sunshine--in the form of three long-term oscillations--affect the way in which the sun's rays strike the earth. Cycles in the earth's spin, tilt, and orbit--of 22,000 years, 41,000 years, and 100,000 years, respectively--are known after Milutin Milankovich, the Yugoslavian scientist who proposed their climatic effect in the 1920s.

Together these cycles influence the way in which heat is distributed around the glob at different times of the year, disturbing the nature of our seasons. When a summer is cool and new ice fails to melt, the icecap grows. Since snow and ice are brilliant mirrors which reflect much of the sun's radiation back into space, the earth grows colder still. The next summer is likely to be even colder, as the earth plunges into a new ice age.

The first of the Milankovich cycles is government by the irregularities in the shape of the earth. It is not a perfect sphere because it bulges at the equator. The gravitational pull of the sun and moon tug on this bulge and causes the earth to wobble as it spins about its axis. Over a period of 22,000 years, the earth's axis gyrates in space so that the seasons occur at different points of the earth's elliptical orbit. When the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, causing summer, the earth is at the furthest part of its orbit. Some 11,000 years ago, however, summer in the northern hemisphere occurred when the earth was closest to the sun.

The second cycle operates over a 41,000-year period. The degree of tilt in the earth's axis varies between 21.8 degrees and 24.4 degrees. Today's tilt of 23.4 degrees is gradually decreasing, with the result that the difference between the seasons will become less marked. Summers will become cooler.

Finally, over a 100,000-year period, the earth's orbit changes from an ellipse, along which the sun is further from the earth during certain months than in others, to a near-perfect circle, when the earth is the same distance from the sun throughout the year. If the earth's orbit is very elliptical, and summer in the northern hemisphere occurs at the farthest point, the winter snow will not melt.

Man is caught between two opposing trends. There is a long-term drift toward glaciation, but the planet is also heating up, as carbon-dioxide accumulates in the air.

Cycles are interesting things. Different things will happen when the three cycles all reinforce one another, as these three pretty much would every 900,000 years or so, whereas at various other times they might be in opposition or working at odds with one another...it would be interesting to see a superimposed plot.

Now, there are other complicating factors, of course, such as the fact that it makes a difference when the polar regions are occupied by continents or open oceans and thermal conductivity is thus hugely different in those situations, and we know now that the continents and oceans actually move about on the surface of the planet, something we really learned how to verify only since we developed the capability of put into space orbit instruments capable of measuring such things.

We now know that the oceans used to be different sizes than they are today, changing the flow of currents and tides, which in turn affect the circulation of the atmosphere, the two greatest factors in the transfer of thermal energy from one part of the planet to another.

We know that the mid-Atlantic ridge, where the sea-floor is spreading apart the entire hemisphere, brings molten magma and gasses of all sorts, including carbon dioxide, to the surface even as we speak.

We know that vast regions of the earth have been subject, as plainly written for all to see in the geologic record, to extended periods of volcanic activity quite a bit more severe than the conditions we see today.

Most of all, we know that all of these things, these cycles of warming and cooling, have occurred repeatedly in the past, all without benefit of influence by man.

So, well, the question becomes simpler in one way and more complicated in another: does man really produce enough effect upon these dominant natural earthly processes to markedly affect them?

And nobody knows. Right now man is suspected of having a big influence upon the rate at which carbon dioxide is being created an added to the atmosphere. This may be so, but since the previous periods of global warming have occurred without man's help, is carbon dioxide really the greenhouse gas having the most effect? Ah, there's another thing we don't know for sure, although there are some hints that perhaps it is not.

The fact that the current global warming mania, like most human excesses, is being crowd-driven rather than science-driven. Scientists are people, to begin with, and as such they are also susceptible to being influenced by the mania of crowds, at least to some degree, so you are going to get some scientists who will get carried away by politicians eager to manipulate them for their own purposes.

That's really what you see happening today. Every politician worth his salt... No, pardon me, that's an archaic and improper expression to use here. Every politician capable of making his influence felt and who has decided that global warming is a problem, not a benefit, has a plan in mind to fix it.

And every one of them includes a massive wealth-transfer, typically by taxation (or fines, which are really only taxation, as von Clausewitz might say, by other means).

And every time there is a massive wealth-transfer caused by politicians, a certain percentage of it sticks to their fingers. The bigger the transfer, the more that sticks.

Someone recently claimed that the United Nations' "Oil For Food" program was the biggest scam ever perpetuated. It might be that the "War On Drugs" and the "War On Poverty" are even larger, who knows.