PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet CLIMATE SCARES & CLIMATE CHANGE, 17 January 2002
------------------------------------------------------
BLOWING HOT AND COLD: ARE WE HEADING FOR A NEW ICE AGE SCARE?
"Everyone's heard the dire warnings about global warming. El
Nino's
said to be making a comeback, and the Pineapple Express has
lashed B.C.
with heavy rains. Think weather watching is scary? Well, here's
some
really bad news. Climatologists say we're overdue for another ice
age. The
Earth, they say, has basked in an unusually long and warm period
whose time
may be uncomfortably nearing its end."
--Steve Berry, The Province, 14 January 2002
"Within a decade, polar scientists hope to develop a model
that
combines natural climatic cycles with anthropologic -- man-made
--
climatic influences. During this century, they say, we will see
either the
beginnings of a new ice age or the onset of human-influenced
global
warming."
--Joseph Frey, National Post, 14 January 2002
"It is very likely [90-99% probability] that nearly all land
areas
will warm more rapidly than the global average, particularly
those at high
latitudes in the cold season."
--2001 UN IPCC Report
"Antarctica overall has cooled measurably during the last 35
years
-- despite a global average increase in air temperature of 0.06
degrees
Celsius during the 20th century. The findings are puzzling
because many
climate models indicate that the Polar regions should serve as
bellwethers
for any global warming trend, responding first and most rapidly
to an
increase in temperatures. [Peter Doran] added that documentation
of the
continental cooling presents a challenge to climate modelers.
"Although
some do predict areas of cooling, widespread cooling is a bit of
a
conundrum that the models need to start to account for," he
said."
--National Science Foundation, 13 January 2002
"It hasn't been a popular paper politically, let's put it
that way."
--Peter Doran, University of Illinois
(1) PONDERING A CLIMATE CONUNDRUM IN ANTARCTICA
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
(2) ANTARCTICA BUCKS GLOBAL WARMING
Nation Post Online, 14 January 2002
(3) SHOCK, HORROR: ANTARCTICA IS FEEZING COLD
Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, Tech Central
Station, 15 January 2002
(4) GREENHOUSE EMISSIONS GROWTH SLOWED OVER PAST DECADE
NASA NEWS, NASANews@hq.nasa.gov
(5) EARTH'S LITTLE ICE AGE
National Post Online, 14 January 2002
(6) NEW ICE AGE? CLIMATOLOGISTS SAY WE'RE DUE, DESPITE GLOBAL
WARMING
The Vancouver Province, 13 January 2002
(7) 2001 WAS HOT, AND SO IS THE DEBATE
Philadelphia Inquirer, 14 January 2002
(8) RANDOM "NOISE" COULD HAVE TRIGGERED A CLIMATIC
ROLLER COASTER
PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE <physnews@aip.org>
(9) EVOLUTION FAST FORWARD: FINCHES ADAPT TO CHANGING CLIMATES
... AND SO
CAN HUMANS
National Geographic Today, 10 January 2002
(10) SIBERIAN ROLE IN CLIMATE CHANGE?
Steve Drury <s.a.drury@open.ac.uk>
(11) PREVENTING THE NEXT ICE AGE
Jens Kieffer-Olsen <dstdba@post4.tele.dk>
(12) AND FINALLY: THE LOMBORG FLAP IN "SCIENTIFIC
AMERICAN"
David Wojick, Electricity Daily, 14
January 2002
===============
(1) PONDERING A CLIMATE CONUNDRUM IN ANTARCTICA
>From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
National Science Foundation
Washington, D.C.
Media contacts:
Peter West, (703) 292-8070, pwest@nsf.gov
Paul Francuch, (312) 996-3457, francuch@uic.edu
Embargoed until 2:00 P.M. EST, January 13, 2002
NSF PR 02-03
Pondering a Climate Conundrum in Antarctica
Unique, distinct cooling trend discovered on Earth's southernmost
continent
Antarctica overall has cooled measurably during the last 35 years
-- despite
a global average increase in air temperature of 0.06 degrees
Celsius during
the 20th century -- making it unique among the Earth's
continental
landmasses, according to a paper published today in the
online version of Nature
[ http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nature710_fs.html
].
Researchers with the National Science Foundation (NSF) Long-term
Ecological
Research (LTER) site in Antarctica's Dry Valleys -- a perpetually
snow-free,
mountainous area adjacent to McMurdo Sound -- argue in the paper
that
long-term data from weather stations across the continent,
coupled with a
separate set of measurements from the Dry Valleys, confirm each
other and
corroborate the continental cooling trend.
"Our 14-year continuous weather station record from the
shore of Lake Hoare
reveals that seasonally averaged surface air temperature has
decreased by
0.7 degrees Celsius per decade," they write. "The
temperature decrease is
most pronounced in summer and autumn. Continental cooling,
especially the
seasonality of cooling, poses challenges to models of climate and
ecosystem
change."
The findings are puzzling because many climate models indicate
that the
Polar regions should serve as bellwethers for any global warming
trend,
responding first and most rapidly to an increase in temperatures.
An ice
sheet many kilometers thick in places perpetually covers almost
all of
Antarctica.
Temperature anomalies also exist in Greenland, the largest ice
sheet in the
Northern Hemisphere, with cooling in the interior concurrent with
warming at
the coast.
Peter Doran, of the University of Illinois at Chicago, the lead
author of
the paper, and his co-authors, acknowledge that other studies
conducted in
Antarctica have deduced a warming trend elsewhere in the
continent. But they
note that the data indicate that the warming occurred between
1958 and 1978.
They also note that the previous claims that Antarctic is warming
may have
been skewed because the measurements were taken largely on the
Antarctic
Peninsula, which extends northwards toward South America. The
Peninsula
itself is warming dramatically, the authors note, and there are
many more
weather stations on the Peninsula than elsewhere on the
continent.
Averaging the temperature readings from the more numerous
stations on the
Peninsula has led to the misleading conclusion that there is a
net warming
continent-wide. "Our approach shows that if you remove the
Peninsula from
the dataset, and look at the spatial trend. The majority of the
continent is
cooling," said Doran.
He added that documentation of the continental cooling presents a
challenge
to climate modelers. "Although some do predict areas of
cooling, widespread
cooling is a bit of a conundrum that the models need to start to
account
for," he said.
The Dry Valleys are the largest ice-free area in Antarctica, a
desert region
that encompasses perennially ice-covered lakes, ephemeral
streams, arid
soils, exposed bedrock and alpine glaciers. All life there is
microscopic.
The team argues that the cooling trend could adversely affect the
unique
ecosystems in the region, which live in a niche where a delicate
balance
between freezing and warmer temperatures allows them to survive
and where
liquid water is only available during the very brief summer. They
argue that
a net cooling of the continent could drastically upset that
balance.
"We present data from the Dry Valleys representing the first
evidence of
rapid terrestrial ecosystem response to climate cooling in
Antarctica,
including decreased lake primary productivity and declining soil
invertebrates," they write.
Their data, they argue, are "the first to highlight the
cascade of
ecological consequences that result from the recent summer
cooling."
-NSF-
Editors: For available photography and b-roll, call Dena Headlee,
(703)
292-8070/dheadlee@nsf.gov
For more information about the Dry Valleys LTER, see:
http://huey.colorado.edu/LTER/
For more information about NSF's network of LTER sites, see:
http://lternet.edu/
NSF is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental
research and
education across all fields of science and engineering, with an
annual
budget of about $4.8 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states,
through grants
to about 1,800 universities and institutions nationwide. Each
year, NSF
receives about 30,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes
about
10,000 new funding awards. NSF also awards over $200 million in
professional
and service contracts yearly.
IMAGE CAPTIONS:
[Image 1: http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/02/images/glacier_hi.jpg
(1MB)]
Sunlight plays off the Canada Glacier in the Wrigth Valley, one
of the
McMurdo Dry Valleys. Photo credit: Peter Doran/National Science
Foundation
[Image 2: http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/02/images/valleys_hi.jpg
(860KB)]
The U.S. Antarctic Program field camp at Lake Hoare in the
McMurdo Dry
Valleys, with the Canada Glacier in the background. Photo credit:
Peter
West/National Science Foundation
=================
(2) ANTARCTICA BUCKS GLOBAL WARMING
>From Nation Post Online, 14 January 2002
http://www.nationalpost.com/tech/story.html?f=/stories/20020114/1124150.html
'A bit of a conundrum': Study says continent is world's only one
to grow
cooler
Margaret Munro
National Post
Contrary to the popular notion that the Antarctic is warming
because of
climate change, researchers have discovered the icy continent has
grown
markedly colder in the last 35 years.
The cooling makes it unique among Earth's continents, the rest of
which are
warming up, say U.S. scientists who report their findings in a
paper
published by the journal Nature yesterday.
The findings are sure to stir up debate as scientists try to
explain how a
cooling Antarctica fits into the global warming picture.
Nature decided to feed the debate by rushing the findings into
print in its
new online edition yesterday. But there has been
"resistance" to the
findings in some quarters, says Professor Peter Doran, a
hydrometeorologist
at the University of Illinois and lead author of the report.
He would not elaborate, saying only: "It hasn't been a
popular paper
politically, let's put it that way." His 12 co-authors
include scientists
from NASA and several U.S universities working in Antarctica.
The team's findings run counter to the idea that Antarctica is
warming and
its giant ice sheets could disintegrate, raising global sea
levels by
metres, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
The new data show that is not going to happen any time soon. The
"vast
majority of the continent has been undergoing a cooling,"
says Mr. Doran,
who says the new findings are "a bit of a conundrum."
But he warns against jumping to the conclusion that global
warming is not a
problem. He says it is a real phenomenon and other continents are
warming.
Some areas, such as the Arctic, markedly so. "That evidence
is very
convincing," Mr. Doran says.
But Antarctica, for unknown reasons, is bucking the trend.
"It's not doing what people expected it to do," says
Mr. Doran, who is
hoping climate modellers and their supercomputers will be able to
explain
why.
He and his colleagues suspect the cooling may be related to
climactic
changes that have decreased wind speeds and cloud cover over the
continent.
Mr. Doran, who grew up in Ontario and moved to the United States
to pursue
polar research when funding for such work dried up in Canada, has
been to
Antarctica eight times.
As part of an international effort to take the pulse of the
planet, he and
his colleagues have operated an automated weather station in one
of
Antarctica's valleys continuously since 1986, supplementing it
with a
network of 10 other stations that have gathered data for shorter
periods.
"Our 14-year continuous weather station record from the
shore of Lake Hoare
reveals that seasonally averaged surface air temperature has
decreased by
0.7 degrees Celsius per decade," they report, noting that
the temperature
decrease is most pronounced in summer and autumn.
Previous claims that Antarctica is warming may have been skewed
by
measurements taken on the Antarctic Peninsula, which extends
northward
toward South America. The peninsula itself is warming
dramatically, the
scientists note, and there are many more weather stations on the
peninsula
than elsewhere on the continent.
"Our approach shows that if you remove the peninsula from
the data set, and
look at the spatial trend, the majority of the continent is
cooling," Mr.
Doran says.
Temperatures are not the only thing dropping. The scientists say
microscopic
life has been hit by the cooling. There has been a 9% to 10% drop
in the
number of nematodes and other microscopic life in the soil and
waters during
the brief Antarctic summers. This findings highlights what the
scientists
call "the cascade of ecological consequences that result
from the recent
summer cooling."
Climatologist Andrew Weaver, who heads the climate modeling group
at the
University of Victoria, says the findings are interesting and
will have to
be incorporated into global climate models, which are constantly
being
updated.
Like Mr. Doran, he says the findings are not about to make the
reality of
global warming go away. "Science does not change weekly like
a pendulum
every time a Nature paper comes out," Mr. Weaver says.
Global warming is "a huge problem," Mr. Weaver says.
"Even if tomorrow we
eliminate fossil fuels and greenhouse gases, we've got warming in
store [in
the atmosphere] for a 100 years."
Antarctica is the one of the "last places" most
scientists expect to see
warming, he says. Unlike the Arctic, which is almost a
land-locked ocean,
Antarctica is largely covered by glaciers and surrounded by
ocean, which has
a cooling effect.
He notes that in the Arctic there is already clear evidence that
sea ice is
thinning, permafrost is melting and the ecosystem is changing as
the climate
warms.
"This is non-trivial," says Mr. Weaver, noting that
climate models predict a
rise in global temperatures of two degrees by 2100. "The
last time that
happened hippos were roaming northern Europe."
Copyright © 2002 National Post Online
===========
(3) SHOCK, HORROR: ANTARCTICA IS FEEZING COLD
By Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, Tech Central Station, 15
January 2002
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/envirowrapper.jsp?PID=1051-450&CID=1051-011502A
Baby penguins are starving, and climate change is to blame. But
not in the
way you might think.
Antarctic icebergs called B-15A and C-16 are about 54 miles and
34 miles
long, respectively. They calved from the Ross Ice Shelf in March
2000, and
have drifted northeast. The mammoth icebergs, along with
increased sea ice,
now block open water in McMurdo Sound. The Adelie and Emperor
penguins,
which usually swim beyond the open sound for food for their
chicks, are
stuck walking across the ice dam. Without ready access to food,
the chicks
die. Several of the smaller colonies, according to a National
Science
Foundation researcher, will be obliterated.
Meanwhile, the Polar Bird, a supply ship for the Antarctic
research
stations, has been jammed in the ice floes for over a month. For
the
Christmas holidays, the people aboard departed for home by rescue
helicopter. The icebreaker Aurora Australis has chipped through
to the Polar
Bird, where they now are moored together for the twenty-mile
breakout to
open water.
Around the Antarctic Peninsula from McMurdo Sound, the British
Antarctic
Survey ship, Ernest Shackleton, has been unable to breach 200
miles of ice
to reach port in Halley Bay.
What's causing all the extensive sea-ice and iceberg conditions
in the
Antarctic? After all, global warming from the increase in the
air's carbon
dioxide content owing to human industrialization, are supposed to
melt the
ice. The 2001 report from the United Nations Intergovernmental
Panel on
Climate Change (UN IPCC) summarizes the forecasts from climate
simulations
when the concentration of carbon dioxide increases in the air.
The computer
results unanimously predict that the Antarctic should warm faster
than the
global average rate.
The alarm sounded in December when British Antarctic Survey
researchers
announced that the temperature of the Antarctic Peninsula
increased about
five times faster than the global average over the last fifty
years. Is the
Antarctic Peninsula temperature rise the harbinger of man-made
global
warming?
But the Peninsula is a tiny portion (about 4%) of Antarctica.
Now, just a
month later, University of Illinois researchers and colleagues
report in
Nature on temperature records in Antarctica covering a broader
area than the
Peninsula. The measurements show "a net cooling on the
Antarctic continent
between 1966 and 2000..." Some regions, like the McMurdo Dry
Valleys, the
largest ice-free area of the continent, have cooled by 2 degrees
C per
decade in autumn, and 1.2 degrees C per decade in summer from
1986 to 1999.
The 2001 UN report concurs: "A few areas of the globe have
not warmed in
recent decades, mainly over some parts of the Southern Hemisphere
oceans and
parts of Antarctica." (p. 5)
As the Nature researchers dryly note, "Continental Antarctic
cooling,
especially the seasonality of cooling, poses challenges to models
of climate
and ecosystem change."
How challenging are those measurements to the computer
simulations of global
warming from the added carbon dioxide content of the air from
human actions
like fossil fuel burning? Quite.
According to the 2001 UN IPCC report, "It is very likely
that: nearly all
land areas will warm more rapidly than the global average,
particularly
those at high latitudes in the cold season... (p. 585)."
(The UN report even
defines the term "very likely" as 90-99% chance that
the result is accurate,
despite the fact that no computer simulation of climate yields
validated
results, but that is another story.) The forecasts from the
computer
simulations are unanimous: they expect strong warming trends
averaged across
Antarctica in the case of human-produced global warming, stronger
trends
than for the global average warming.
How to explain, then, the warming on some sites of the Antarctic
Peninsula?
The southern ocean is a suspected major influence there.
Decade-to-decade
shifts occur in the currents of the southern Pacific Ocean and
the overlying
patterns of air circulation. Recent warming of the Peninsula owes
to the
present, sustained configuration of those air and sea currents.
By the way, the decadal patterns of the Southern Hemisphere air
and ocean
have been observed to vary naturally in the past, in periods
before the
air's carbon dioxide content rose significantly. Thus, the shifts
are not
likely pinned to man-made causes.
The cold trends have affected the Antarctic ecosystem. Both plant
productivity and the population of worms in the soil have
diminished with
the cooling trend. The growth in sea ice has shifted the
distribution of
penguin colonies, some of which are disappearing while others are
growing.
Continent-wide, though, the Antarctic is cooling, and the
penguins trapped
by vast sea ice extensions, along with other ecosystem changes,
result from
the cooling. The chilling fact is that the cooling trend across
Antarctica
over the last several decades contradicts the computer
simulations of
significant, catastrophic man-made global warming.
Copyright 2002, Tech Central Station
=============
(4) GREENHOUSE EMISSIONS GROWTH SLOWED OVER PAST DECADE
>From NASA NEWS, NASANews@hq.nasa.gov
David E. Steitz
Headquarters,
Washington
Jan. 14, 2002
(Phone: 202/358-1730)
Cynthia O'Carroll
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
(Phone: 301/614-5563)
RELEASE: 02-09
GREENHOUSE EMISSIONS GROWTH SLOWED OVER PAST DECADE
A new NASA-funded study shows that the rate of growth of
greenhouse gas
emissions has slowed since its peak in 1980, due in part to
international
cooperation that led to reduced chlorofluorocarbon use, slower
growth of methane,
and a steady rate of carbon dioxide emissions.
Researchers have shown that global warming in recent decades has
probably
been caused by carbon dioxide (CO2), and other greenhouse gases
including
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), methane, tropospheric ozone, and
black carbon
(soot) particles.
Overall, growth of emissions has slowed over the past 20 years,
with the CFC
phase-out being the most important factor, according to the
study.
"The decrease is due in large part to cooperative
international actions of
the Montreal Protocol for the phase-out of ozone depleting
gases," said Dr.
James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New
York. "But
it is also due in part to slower growth of methane and carbon
dioxide, for
reasons that aren't well understood and need more study."
The findings appeared in the December 18 issue of the Proceedings
of the
National Academy of Sciences. Hansen co-authored the paper with
Makiko Sato
of Columbia University, New York.
The warming effect of methane is about half as large as that of
CO2, and
when methane increases it also causes a rise in tropospheric
ozone levels.
Tropospheric ozone is a principal ingredient in "smog,"
which is harmful to
human health and reduces agricultural productivity. The rate of
methane
growth has slowed during the past decade, and it may be possible
to halt its
growth entirely and eventually reduce atmospheric amounts, Hansen
and Sato
suggest.
Another warming agent deserving special attention, according to
the authors,
is soot. Soot is a product of incomplete combustion. Diesel
powered trucks
and buses are primary sources of airborne soot in the United
States. Even
larger amounts of soot occur in developing countries.
The study also suggests that reduction of methane emissions and
soot could
yield a major near term success story in the battle against
global warming,
thus providing time to work on technologies to reduce future
carbon dioxide
emissions. Currently, technologies are within reach to reduce
other global
air pollutants, like methane, in ways that are cheaper and faster
than
reducing CO2.
Though reducing these climate-forcing agents is important,
scientists
caution that limiting CO2 will still be needed to slow global
warming over
the next 50 years.
Hansen emphasizes that CO2 emissions are the single largest
climate forcing,
and warns that they need to be slowed soon and eventually
curtailed more
strongly to stabilize atmospheric conditions and stop global
warming. Over
the next few decades, Hansen said, it is important to limit
emissions of
forcing agents other than CO2, to buy time until CO2 emissions
can be better
managed.
If fossil fuel use continues at today's rates for the next 50
years, and if
growth of methane and air pollution is halted, the warming in 50
years will
be about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit (0.7 Celsius). That amount of
warming is
significant, according to Hansen, but it is less than half the
warming in
the "business-as-usual scenarios that yield the specter of
imminent
disaster."
The climate warming projected in the Institute scenario is about
half as
large as in the typical scenario from the report of
Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC). This is because the IPCC considers a
large range
of forcings and models. The warming in the GISS model is similar
to the
lowest of the IPCC results, despite the fact that the GISS model
has a
relatively high sensitivity to forcings.
Additional information is available on the Internet at:
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020103greenhouse.html
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/gpol/papers/2001/2001_HansenSato.pdf
===========
(5) EARTH'S LITTLE ICE AGE
>From National Post Online, 14 January 2002
http://www.nationalpost.com/tech/story.html?f=/stories/20020114/1123027.html
A study of glacial ice cores in the Antarctic is showing
significant new
data in the field of global climate change
Joseph Frey
National Post
SCOTT BASE, Antarctica - Disembarking from a C-141 Starlifter on
to the
frozen Ross Sea, Antarctica, latitude 77 degrees south, is a
surreal
experience. On landing only minutes before, the sky was blue and
unclouded.
Suddenly it is overcast, and snow is blowing horizontally.
For some reason, we first-time visitors have assumed the C-141
would be the
only plane for miles. To our amazement, a small international
airport,
complete with passenger terminals, a control tower and repair
sheds, bustles
with activity before us. Six Hercules ski-mounted cargo planes
are parked
beside the runway -- or iceway, as the airport is built on seven
metres of
sea ice -- as well as a C-130 from the Royal New Zealand Air
Force. In the
distance, a half-dozen Twin Otters from an Edmonton charter
company sit
idle.
We have come to the end of the Earth to seek out some of the
world's
foremost scientists of polar climate research. By 2010,
researchers from
more than a dozen countries will have completed two decades of
large-scale
climate research in the Antarctic. What they hope to uncover is
nothing less
than the climatic workings of Earth.
Arriving with us on the C-141 from Christchurch, N.Z., is Paul
Mayewski, a
transverse expedition scientist who is spearheading Antarctic
climate
research. Mayewski is head of a team that is gathering ice cores
from across
the continent.
By studying the Antarctic ice, some of it thousands of years old,
the
scientists hope to glean insight into the history of the Earth's
climate.
They also want to come up with a way to accurately differentiate
between
natural climate cycles and climate changes due to human
influences on the
environment.
Ultimately, they believe they can develop a tool for predicting
climatic
trends that will answer our current quandary: Is Earth warming or
are we
heading into another ice age?
The key to it all, many scientists believe, is Antarctica. As
Mayewski puts
it: "If we don't understand the Antarctic, it's impossible
to fully
understand Earth's overall climate."
Driving over the sea ice in a pickup truck toward Ross Island,
the snow
squall starts to lift, just as suddenly as it descended. Abrupt
shifts in
weather are a fact of life here. The temperature today is -15C;
thank God
it's summer. Throughout our nine-day stay the temperature will
range from
-7C to -15C, except for the night we sleep outside in makeshift
snow huts
during a survival training course, when it drops to a
bone-piercing -35C.
Back at the airport, we were hustled into two groups. The larger
is heading
to McMurdo Station. "MacTown" is an American base, run
by the U.S. National
Science Foundation (NSF), that boasts the largest laboratories in
the
Southern Hemisphere and can house as many as 1,200 people.
Our group is travelling to Antarctica New Zealand's Scott Base,
two
kilometres away from MacTown, and home to 70 Kiwis, as New
Zealanders often
call themselves.
As the sky clears, the majestic Transantarctic Mountains appear
in the
distance. Our driver asks us to guess how far away they are.
About 15 or 20
kilometres, we reply, and are dumbfounded to discover the range
is a full 70
kilometres away. The Antarctic's atmosphere is so unspoiled that
from time
to time you can see the Earth's curvature.
Nearing Ross Island, we pass a hut where we will go ice fishing
with marine
biologists a week from now. While fishing, a huge Weddell seal,
maybe two
metres long, pops its head through a hole in the ice. Starved of
oxygen, it
inhales so hard it sounds painful. The seal breathes heavily for
a while,
oblivious to us, before swimming off. On other excursions we are
entertained
alternately by haughty emperor penguins or their cousins, the
much smaller,
clown-like Adélies.
Mayewski is based at McMurdo Station. He has led more than 30
scientific
expeditions to the continent in his 34 years working in the
Antarctic, and
even has a mountain peak named after him. Mayewski, a Scottish
native,
chairs the 15-nation International Trans-Antarctic Scientific
Expedition
(ITASE) that is collecting ice cores. He is also co-director of
the
Institute for Quaternary and Climate Studies at the University of
Maine.
During the early 1990s, he led the NSF's Greenland Ice Sheet
Project Two
(GISP2), which involved 25 universities and led to the
development of new
techniques for extracting information from glacial ice cores.
The GISP2 team drilled down 3.2 kilometres into the Greenland ice
sheet and
was able to recover ice cores dating back 100,000 years. Ice
sheets record
climatic and atmospheric changes over eons, and scientists can
read their
layers in much the same way they can read tree rings.
Both GISP2 and ITASE have provided significant new data for the
field of
paleoclimatology -- the history of Earth's climate -- and for
understanding
climate stability and weather patterns, which Mayewski outlines
in a book,
Ice Chronicles: The Quest to Understand Global Climate Change, to
be
released next month.
"ITASE will try to understand a minimum of 200 years of
climate change in
Antarctica, as well as changes in the chemistry of its
atmosphere, largely
by collecting ice cores every 100 kilometres across a series of
co-ordinated
traverse routes," explains the soft-spoken scientist.
Antarctic research has been intermittent until now, and there are
only five
or six instrumental records going back 50 years. "The
scientific community
doesn't have much in terms of data for the Antarctic," he
says.
What Mayewski's research clearly shows is that temperature shifts
of 10C to
20C can occur in as little as 20 years and last for hundreds of
years, along
with corresponding changes in precipitation and atmospheric
circulation.
Closer to home, this means that within a generation southern
Canada could go
from having a four-month winter to one lasting 11 or 12 months.
For around 600 years, the Earth has been in a Little Ice Age
(LIA). The LIA
"is the most recent of a series [of changes], called Rapid
Climate Change
Events, that repeat about every 1,500 years," Mayewski says.
"If we looked at any analog of this kind of event, the LIA
should probably
not end for another 200 to 500 years. But clearly we are no
longer in a LIA
in terms of temperatures. Glaciers are melting, without a doubt,
but our
records of sea-level pressures are indicating that we have not
come out of
this Little Ice Age."
So, time-wise, the Earth is an ice age, even though temperatures
are rising.
But Mayewski suggests that, temperature-wise, the LIA has been
superceded by
human production of greenhouse gases.
"If that is correct," he says, "it means that
greenhouse gases may in fact
be as strong as people thought, but it's the natural climate that
is holding
them back from showing their full effect. And it means that some
of the
models that suggest the effect should have been greater might be
true, but
they didn't work out that way because nobody took natural climate
into
account."
According to Mayewski, there are several natural events that can
cause
long-term changes to climate. These include changes in the
relationship
between the Earth and sun, changes in the radiation output of the
sun,
changes in ocean circulation and changes in the way ice sheets
expand and
contract.
He believes humans also have an impact on both the physical and
chemical
workings of the climate system.
"It may not be a giant physical change, but it is a
change," he says. "But I
would contend that the more important issue is human-induced
change to the
chemistry of the atmosphere and air quality."
As for scientists' plans for predicting future trends, he says
changes in
the climate system may soon be predictable.
"Absolutely, depending on what time frame you're looking
at," he says. "I
think that in the not too distant future it may be possible to
predict what,
generally, the next 10 years will hold."
Mayewski says a person could do worse than consult The Farmers
Almanac, a
good oracle for weather because the predictions are based on
solar cycles.
For this reason, he is keenly interested in the research being
carried out
under the auspices of Antarctica New Zealand.
As our helicopter deposits us and heads out over the Ross Sea,
the five of
us stand silent and motionless, watching our link with the
outside world
vanishing over the horizon. Only a dozen or two people get to
visit this
ice-free corner of the Antarctic mainland each year. We are
standing in
Wright Valley, named after the Toronto native Charles Wright, the
only
Canadian on Scott's ill-fated 1912 expedition to the South Pole.
About 25 kilometres away is Nancy Bertler's team. Bertler, a
native of
Munich, is working on her doctoral degree at Victoria University
of
Wellington, N.Z., trying to find evidence of solar cycles in ice
cores from
the Holocene era -- our present period. Her research could
provide data that
will allow scientists to develop models for predicting general
weather
patterns decade by decade.
She and her team arrived the day before at the Victoria Lower
Glacier, to
drill for ice cores. The Victoria Lower Glacier is part of the
McMurdo Sound
Dry Valleys, which have been free of ice for at least two million
years.
Bertler plans to extract a 200-metre-long ice core from the
Victoria Lower
Glacier, recovering paleoclimatic data reaching back 8,000 to
10,000 years.
Human civilization developed during this period, but accurate
solar- cycle
records date back only to the16th century. Solar activity has
long been
known to have an effect on the Earth's climate.
Traditionally, scientists have traced solar-cycle activity by
measuring
nitrates in ice cores, a method prone to inaccuracy. But
Bertler's work is
unique: She is using the ice-free, thus dark, surfaces of the Dry
Valleys as
a solar-radiation meter. The Dry Valleys border the small
Victoria Lower
Glacier, which was written off by other researchers as
scientifically
insignificant. Bertler is convinced the Victoria Lower Glacier,
due to its
small size and proximity to both the radiation-absorbing Dry
Valleys and the
Ross sea, will record more solar-cycle activity than the nitrate
content
measured in larger ice sheets further inland.
"From our Victoria Lower Glacier ice cores, we can see
seasonal, annual and
the 11-year solar cycles," Bertler says. "This provides
an independent
measurement of solar activity separate from nitrate measurements,
and they
correspond to the known records."
Her team aims to produce long-term records of solar activity by
using these
shallow but high-resolution cores. "The sun-spot data that
we acquired over
the last three seasons can be used to extend our records back
prior to the
16th century."
If the scientists' findings prove accurate, they could help
unlock the
secrets of the Earth's climate. Within a decade, polar scientists
hope to
develop a model that combines natural climatic cycles with
anthropologic --
man-made -- climatic influences. During this century, they say,
we will see
either the beginnings of a new ice age or the onset of
human-influenced
global warming. [compared to this assuring prognosis, even
biblical doomsday
prophets had more predictive imagination, BJP].
"We have a lot more to study before we can develop a model
that will
generate general weather predictions decades into the
future," Bertler says.
If they get it right, they will have a tool to predict how much
of climate
change is natural and how much is imposed by human activity. The
information
could be used to help public policy makers decide on the correct
amount of
legislation for green house gas emissions. And if the models
predict a
significant global cooling, the advance warning could allow us to
prepare
ourselves for the long, cold winters.
Copyright © 2002 National Post Online
==============
(6) NEW ICE AGE? CLIMATOLOGISTS SAY WE'RE DUE, DESPITE GLOBAL
WARMING
>From The Vancouver Province, 13 January 2002
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/news/story.asp?id={A74341E5-C2FF-46D5-AD1B-6C016F14DAE4}
A new ice age? Climatologists say we're due, despite our global
warming
Steve Berry
The Province
Everyone's heard the dire warnings about global warming.
El Nino's said to be making a comeback, and the Pineapple Express
has lashed
B.C. with heavy rains.
Think weather watching is scary? Well, here's some really bad
news.
Climatologists say we're overdue for another ice age. The Earth,
they say,
has basked in an unusually long and warm period whose time may be
uncomfortably nearing its end.
Over the last millennia the Earth's climate has seen periods of
relatively
warm temperatures lasting for 10,000 years. But more frequently,
our home
planet has languished in 90,000-year-long ice ages.
Our current warm period, the Holocene, is 10,000 years old.
"In the last three million years the system has been going
between ice ages
and not-ice ages, and the normal condition is that we're
cold," said
professor Andrew Weaver, with the School of Earth and Ocean
Sciences at the
University of Victoria
"The abnormal condition is that we're warm and the unique
condition is that
we have been warm for 10,000 years. That is unparalleled.
"The Earth has never been in a period of stable climate for
as long as it
has been now," he said.
Weaver said warm times seem to be inherently more stable than the
cold times
-- temperatures don't take wild swings like they do during ice
ages.
Those who study such things think that the climate's relative
stability is
responsible for civilization itself.
"Some have argued that evolution as we know it could not
have happened in
other times because of the climate changes that were so
prevalent," said
Weaver.
"The only time we could have come out of caves to live in
cities was in the
last 10,000 years."
Scientists calculate that only a few degrees change can plunge
the Earth
into the deep freeze.
"In the depths of the last ice age 21,000 years ago it was
about three to
five degrees cooler than it is today," said Weaver.
Scientists are now drilling on the Greenland icepack trying to
discover what
happened during the last interglacial period similar to our own.
They have spent the last six summers with the Greenland Ice-core
Project at
the centre of the island, eight degrees north of the Arctic
Circle, drilling
a 13-centimetre-wide hole through 3,000 metres of ice to bedrock.
A previous drilling operation suggested that the last warm trend
ended with
a cataclysmic drop in temperatures from those warmer than today's
to the
coldest temperatures of the ice age -- all within a few decades.
Then, a
century or so later, the temperatures climbed back up. They
called that ice
age Event One.
The new drilling is meant to test that finding. If Event One did
in fact
happen, it might mean that it could happen again.
But it's not a simple prediction.
"The fundamental problem is that people do not know with
sufficient detail
what the ultimate trigger of an ice age is," said Weaver.
"We should basically have been in one already. There's
something going on.
We don't understand it enough to come to any conclusion to say
that we
should expect one in any little while."
Meanwhile, experts say global warming is not going to stave off a
new ice
age. Weaver said scientists cannot be sure what is ahead of us
even if we
somehow curb global warming.
"But if we increase greenhouse gases a problem will arise.
The Earth will be
much warmer and the climate will change on a time scale more
rapid than it
has done before."
As for exactly when the new ice age will be upon us, no one can
really say
with certainty.
"The climate has been very unstable in the past," said
Weaver. "That doesn't
mean it is going to be unstable in the future."
So is Weaver pulling out his woollies?
"If I were to live a million years I would say there will be
another ice age
in my lifetime. A thousand years, no way."
© Copyright 2002 The Province
============
(7) 2001 WAS HOT, AND SO IS THE DEBATE
>From Philadelphia Inquirer, 14 January 2002
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2002/01/14/magazine/WATCH14.htm
Weather Watch | Anthony R. Wood
It's official: The new millennium is hot.
With final December numbers weighing in last week, 2001 ranked as
the
second-warmest year on record on planet Earth, according to the
government's
National Climate Data Center.
For all those fretting over global warming and the end of snow as
we once
knew it, this is disturbing. The five warmest years since
record-keeping
began in 1880 all occurred after 1990. In the other four years -
including
the warmest, 1998 - strong El Niños, significant warming of
surface waters
in the tropical Pacific, contributed to the high temperatures.
Not this time.
"It was a little surprising to see it was that warm,"
said Jay Larimore, a
scientist at the climate center in Asheville, N.C.
The climate center's worldwide network of surface stations
measured an
increase of 0.9 degree worldwide in 2001. With a surprisingly
balmy
December, it was the sixth-warmest year ever for the United
States, and one
of the warmest in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.
Earth's annual temperatures have been above long-term averages
for 25 years
running, according to the climate center's data. In that period,
the
government estimates that the global temperature has risen at a
rate equal
to 3 degrees Fahrenheit per century.
That might seem to ice the case for human-abetted global warming
and put the
great warming debate to rest once and for all.
But the debate is nothing if not restless. And once again,
evidence
collected from outer space has challenged the climate center's
findings from
the ground.
NASA satellite observations, which calculate temperatures for the
bottom 5
miles of the atmosphere, did find some warming last year, but far
less than
the global network of surface stations. Based on the 23 years for
which data
are available, the satellite's estimated rate of warming was a
mere 1.2
degrees per century, according to NASA scientists Roy Spencer and
John
Christy.
Even given the absence of El Niño, Christy was unimpressed with
the 2001
level of warming.
"The warming has been very minor," he said. In 1980, he
pointed out, another
year without El Niño, the satellite found about twice as much
warming as it
did last year.
As he has for several years, Christy argued that the surface
network has
serious gaps over the vast oceans and deserts.
While admitting shortcomings, keepers of the surface databases
counter that
outer space is not the best place to measure temperatures on
Earth. And they
say they have been able to make allowances for data gaps.
Larimore - the surface guy - said the case for human-enhanced
global warming
isn't closed. The planet's temperature has been rising for at
least 18,000
years, since the end of the last ice age, and long before the
first
smokestacks. The measured warming in the last 120 years has
occurred
unevenly. But he's convinced the trend is real, if not scary.
"Certainly, there's long-term and short-term
variability," Larimore said,
"but over the long term the temperatures have been
rising."
Copyright 2002, Philadelphia Inquirer
==============
(8) RANDOM "NOISE" COULD HAVE TRIGGERED A CLIMATIC
ROLLER COASTER
>From PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE <physnews@aip.org>
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News Number
572 8
January 2002 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein, and
James Riordon
RANDOM "NOISE" COULD HAVE TRIGGERED A CLIMATIC ROLLER
COASTER during the
last Ice Age, research suggests. Under certain conditions, random
noise, such as electrical static,
can paradoxically increase a weak signal's detectability, and in
general
amplify the signal's influence on its
surroundings. This phenomenon, called "stochastic
resonance" (SR), has been
observed in settings as diverse as chaotic lasers and human
reflex systems
(Updates 121, 293, 509). Interestingly,
researchers originally proposed the concept of SR in 1982, to
explain how
random climate events may have helped generate a regularly
repeating
interval of approximately 100,000 years between Ice Ages.
However,
subsequent evidence did not support this idea.
Now, SR is coming back home to climate: Researchers (Andrey
Ganopolski and
Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
in Germany,
andrey@pik-potsdam.de)
have shown that stochastic resonance may have played a role in
triggering
Dansgaard-Oeschger (D/O) events, abrupt and dramatic climate
shifts during
the last great Ice Age, which lasted from about 120,000 to 10,000
years ago.
These events started with sudden warmings of at least 10 degrees
Celsius
over the north part of the Northern Atlantic, taking place over
approximately a decade and lasting for centuries. Curiously, the
D/O events most often occurred
1,500 years apart, but sometimes they "missed a beat"
and occurred after
3,000 or 4,500 years. This suggests they were caused, at least in
part, by a
weak underlying cycle, such as a periodic, but slight,
fluctuation in the
sun's intensity. Furthermore, using a sophisticated computer
model of the
world's climate, the researchers found that North Atlantic ocean
currents
during the Ice Age could flip between two different states, one
in which
warm Gulf Stream waters reached only to mid-latitudes and another
in which
warm waters penetrated much farther north. As the researchers
explain, these
climate-altering circulation patterns might have switched from
one state to
another through the influence of a weak 1,500 year cycle, whose
effects were
amplified by environmental noise, such as random changes in the
amount of
precipitation and meltwater (melted ice and snow) entering the
Nordic Seas.
While the exact source of the regular cycle remains unspecified,
a SR-based
explanation reproduces key features of the D/O events and North
Atlantic
ocean circulation during the last Ice Age. If confirmed, this
mechanism may
help to explain why the Ice Age climate was so much less stable
compared to
that of the past 10,000 years, in which human civilization was
able to
thrive. (Ganopolski and Rahmstorf, Physical Review Letters, 21
January 2002;
text available at www.aip.org/physnews/select)
============
(9) EVOLUTION FAST FORWARD: FINCHES ADAPT TO CHANGING CLIMATES
... AND SO
CAN HUMANS
>From National Geographic Today, 10 January 2002
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/01/0110_020110TVfinches.html
Bijal P. Trivedi
In Montana, it is an evolutionary advantage for the females to be
big and
the males, small. In Alabama the reverse is true. That is, if you
are a
finch.
In less than 30 years finches have undergone a remarkable
adaptation.
Montana finch populations have adapted to produce large females
and small
males. In Alabama, by contrast, finches produce large males and
small
females.
Most people think of evolution as a process that takes millions
of years,
said evolutionary biologist Alexander Badyaev of Auburn
University in
Alabama, who led the study. But here is an example of real-time
evolution in
which two populations of finches developed characteristics to
match their
new environments in just a few decades, he added.
It turns out that finches are able to influence the size of their
offspring
by controlling the sex of their eggs according to the hatching
order.
It has been well documented, particularly in the poultry
industry, that the
first laid egg tends to produce the biggest chick. In Montana the
first-born
is more often female, and thus the largest. In Alabama the
first-born tends
to be male.
"At first we thought that first-born chicks might just grow
big because they
get more food by hoarding their parents' attention," said
Geoffrey Hill, of
Auburn University in Alabama, who collaborated on the study.
But transferring first-born chicks to foreign nests where they
were the
youngest revealed that their growth rate was predetermined and
had little to
do with the amount of food they received in the nest.
"Chicks tend to grow according to the position in which they
were laid,"
said Hill. A first-laid chick tends to grow as a first-born even
when placed
in a foreign nest of older chicks.
"Something is done to the first egg as it is being laid that
ensures that
its chick will have an advantage," said Hill. Eggs are
basically nutrition
capsules, but they also contain hormones, an immunity component,
and
carotinoid pigment molecules that color the yolk yellow and are
also
important for the chick's growth and development. How birds
control the sex
of the egg is not known. But Hill intends to study how these
various
components vary according to hatching order.
"Hatching order has very strong implications for the growth
and survival of
the offspring," said Badyaev.
In Montana large females and small males are better adapted to
survive the
cold, dry winters.
If a Montana female lays a male egg first, the hatchling will
grow to be
large and have a much lower chance of survival. If the chick dies
the mother
will have wasted its resources.
"These birds don't have more kids, they just have the right
kids in the
right order," said Badyaev.
By exerting control over the sex of the eggs and their hatching
order
Montana and Alabama finches increase the number of surviving
offspring by
between 10 and 20 percent more than if the eggs were laid in a
random order,
according to the research.
The study is published in the January 11 issue of the journal
Science.
What is remarkable about this study, say scientists, is that two
different
populations of finches have acquired such different physical
characteristics
in such a short period of time-between 15 and 30 years.
Badyaev believes it is this adaptability that has enabled the
finches to
spread rapidly throughout United States.
Early in the 20th century finches were found in only in
California and the
deserts of the Southwest. The birds were brought to the eastern
United
States and sold as "Hollywood Finches" in pet stores in
New York. In 1939 a
law forbidding the sale of these birds led pet storeowners to
release the
birds in Central Park to avoid being fined.
By 1985 the New York finches had established populations in
Alabama. Finches
from Arizona gradually expanded their range, establishing
colonies in
Montana between 30 and 40 years ago.
Curiously it was the finch populations on the Galapagos Islands
that focused
Charles Darwin's studies of evolution. He noted that each of the
13 species
of finch had a characteristic beak shape that was tailored to a
specific
habitat and food source.
© 2002 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(10) SIBERIAN ROLE IN CLIMATE CHANGE?
>From Steve Drury <s.a.drury@open.ac.uk>
Climate researchers at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts have
analysed
Northern Hemisphere climate data from 1972 to 1999, in the search
for
correlations that might help improve long-term weather
forecasting. The most
striking match to emerge is that of winter climate with the
extent of autumn
snow cover in Siberia. Snow reflects back to space a far
greater proportion
of incoming solar energy than any other kind of surface, with the
exception
of salt. More snow results in less warming in the area. Although
Siberia is
at the heart of the Asian continent, and therefore pretty dry, it
has cold
winters, so that when snow falls it covers large areas and tends
to remain.
It is the focus for an enormous mid-continent high-pressure area
in winter,
appropriately named the Siberian High, which is one of three
systems that
dominate northern climate.
High-pressure areas do two things: air spills from them into
surrounding
areas; they isolate the area beneath them from warming, moist
winds blowing
from the oceans. In winter the second creates cooling so intense
that
temperatures can steadily drop to -50?C or below , further
building
pressure because of the increase in air density. Siberia
sheds cold air
westwards into Europe and over the North Pole into North America.
The MIT
study bears out the obvious prediction based on this tendency.
However, it
may also add the Siberian High to the range of large-scale
terrestrial
processes - shifts in air pressure over oceans, such as the
El-Niño of the
tropical Pacific and the North Atlantic Oscillation, and
thermohaline
controls over Atlantic surface currents - that make ice-age
climate patterns
so complex.
Cooling of northern Europe and the Canadian Shield does not have
to be very
extreme to lower the topographic elevation at which snow remains
permanently, the glaciation limit - at present that level is only
a couple
of hundred metres above the tops of Britain's highest
mountains. Should
permanent snow cover return to the highest areas around the North
Atlantic,
that would amplify the present effect of Siberian autumnal snow
and expand
the high-pressure area. That is a positive feedback driving
climate towards
increased frigidity, and larger winter highs would hold back
maritime
warming influences.
Computer modelling of the air-flow patterns over Asia shows that
the primary
influence is the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau. In
particular, they dry out
air passing over them during the South Asian Monsoon, and hinder
its
influence further into central Asia. The two huge massifs
seem to have
risen rapidly and recently, beginning about 8 million years ago,
despite the
fact that India collided with Asia about 50 million years ago.
Together with
other roughly E-W high mountain ranges in central Asia, they also
channel
Siberian cold air to spill westwards and eastwards, and over the
pole.
Behaviour of the Siberian High almost certainly dates from the
uplift of the
Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau. Adding another controlling factor
to long-term
northern climate has an intrinsic potential in refining academic
studies of
Pleistocene climate. However, there is an immediacy to the
observations. For
snow to cause cooling by reflecting away solar heat it does not
have to be
thick; a few centimetres will suffice. The critical factor is the
area
covered by it.
Siberia is so cold in autumn and winter that it will snow there,
provided
moist air can enter. Should more get in then more snow will
cover a greater
area, to feed the positive feedback to cooling. Perversely,
the more the
climate warms globally, the more moisture evaporates from
tropical and
mid-latitude oceans to move polewards and towards continental
interior.
Growing concern about unpredictable and contrary change was amply
expressed
by a meeting of 1800 climate specialists in Amsterdam in early
July 2001.
They endorsed the distinct possibility of sudden shifts in
regional climates
that may stem from increased global warming, such as return of
vegetation to
the Sahara, aridity in the Amazon basin, and Europe's plunging
into a frigid
climate as the Gulf Stream slows because of reduced thermohaline
circulation
(Pearce, F. 2001. Violent future. New Scientist, 13 July
2001, p. 4-5).
============
(11) PREVENTING THE NEXT ICE AGE
>From Jens Kieffer-Olsen <dstdba@post4.tele.dk>
Dear Benny Peiser,
Michael Paine <mpaine@tpgi.com.au>
wrote:
Low probability of ice collapse - a one in twenty chance
of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapsing in the next 200
years, resulting in sea levels rising by several metres. Excuse
me, but for such a high consequence event, this does not seem
to be a "low probability".
Bad as it would be if sea levels rose by several metres, it
disturbs me that
there is little debate on what needs to be done to prevent
Northern Europe
and North America to be covered by several kilometers of ice,
something I
believe there is a one in one chance of happening within 10,000
years or
less?
Naturally the immediate concerns in learned circles must relate
to events
expected much earlier, but even so concerns are voiced over the
effect of
Greenland inland ice melting 1,000 years from now!
When it comes to the colonization of space proposals are made
which will
materialize only within a time horizon of thousands of years.
Examples
include visits to neighbouring stars, terraforming
Mars, etc.
Would it not be relevant in an academic environment to sketch out
and
debate, how the coming of the next ice age is to be countered?
Even if
to-day's techniques at first glance seem irrelevant for those
future
generations who will be more compelled to address the issue, I
would feel
more comfortable, if some sort of consensus existed with respect
to on one
hand how the cold spell could be prevented by methods available
to-day, and
on the other hand how we envisage future generations to get out
of the fix!
In both scenarios the lead time in particular is
interesting. Is the task
too overwhelming, if left to the last millennium of the
interglacial period?
It seems of paramount importance to establish the precise
timetable, which
will govern the return of the ice. Just like it is crucial
to map the
orbits of potentially hazardous asteroids well before action is
required to
deflect one.
--
Jens Kieffer-Olsen, M.Sc.(Elec.Eng.)
Slagelse, Denmark
==================
(12) AND FINALLY: THE LOMBORG FLAP IN "SCIENTIFIC
AMERICAN"
By David Wojick, Electricity Daily, 14 January 2002
http://www.sepp.org/NewSEPP/the_lomborg_flap.htm
A funny thing is happening to Bjorn Lomborg, author of The
Skeptical
Environmentalist. Funny, yet sad too. Lomborg's book is basically
an expose
of the statistical fallacies underlying several of the most
global of
environmental scares - global warming, overpopulation, air
pollution and
water supply, etc. Lomborg makes a convincing case that these
scares are
hugely overblown, and a good case that they are manageable.
Not surprisingly, the scaremongers are fighting back. That is the
funny
part, because it only serves to sell more Lomborg books. As the
saying goes,
they are spelling his name right. The sad part is to see who is
promoting
the scaremongers, and how. It is Scientific American, an American
institution now apparently gone nuts.
It started with Grist, a green webzine that could be expected to
lambaste
Lomborg. They did it with a panel of four well-known
scaremongers, led by
Stephen Schneider, arguably the father of the climate-change
scare.
Schneider is famous for actually stating the scaremonger's creed
publicly,
in an interview for "Discover" magazine, Oct 1989, to
wit:
"To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some
scary
scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention
of any
doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance
between
being effective, and being honest."
Of course Grist did not offer Lomborg a chance to rebut these
critics.
Journalistic integrity is not their strong suit. But hopefully
some of
Grist's green readers were enticed to buy and read the book. More
money for
Bjorn.
Now comes the January 2002 issue of Scientific American. It
features a
colorful 11-page spread, artfully decorated with wind turbines
and iceless
polar bears, containing a critique of The Skeptical
Environmentalist. Sadly,
the critics are a panel of four well-known scaremongers, led by
the same
Stephen Schneider. Apparently Schneider is making a comeback on
Bjorn's
back, as it were.
Significantly, two of the other "leading experts"
chosen by SciAm to rebut
Lomborg cite Paul Ehrlich, author of the first blockbuster
scaremonger book
- "The Population Bomb", with reverence. The energy
expert, John Holdren,
co-authored a 1977 college textbook - "Ecoscience" -
with Ehrlich. There is
not a lot of balance here.
Sadder still, SciAm did not offer Bjorn rebuttal space, not even
in a later
issue. He says he will respond on his web page - <http://www.Lomborg.org>.
Who's right is not the issue. It is a fundamental principle of
journalism
that you don't moon a guy without giving him a chance to drop his
pants too.
Shame on Scientific American.
Even worse, SciAm's editor in chief - John Rennie - piles on too.
And with
what has to be one of the stupidest headlines I have ever seen (I
have seen
a lot). Rennie's masterpiece of absurdity is "Misleading
math about the
earth - Science defends itself against The Skeptical
Environmentalist."
Never mind the "misleading math" part, that is the
standard argument against
Lomborg, that he is not telling the whole story, whatever that
is. Look at
the second part. Think about it, because it says that All of
Science is
arrayed against Lomborg. Far out!
Indeed it is far out. To be sure Lomborg is controversial. To be
sure his
statistics are selective, because he is making a specific point.
All of the
relevant statistics would not fit in my house, on microfilm,
probably not on
hard drives. But "all of science"? Bjorn missed all of
science? The
absurdity speaks for itself, but this is precisely how the
scaremongers see
themselves. All of Science? Not even close. Shame on Scientific
American.
But now comes the funny part again. Because despite SciAm's
incredible
arrogance and bias, it is an American institution. It is sold in
supermarkets and drug stores across the land. And they spelled
Bjorn's name
right. So I can imagine millions of four-eyed high school science
nerds,
like I once was, now wanting to read The Skeptical
Environmentalist. Thank
you Scientific American, thank you very much.
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