PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet TERRA 16/2003 - 7 April 2003
----------------------------------
"Claims that man-made pollution is causing
"unprecedented" global warming have been
seriously undermined by new research which shows that the
Earth was warmer during the
Middle Ages. From the outset of the global warming debate
in the late 1980s,
environmentalists have said that temperatures are rising
higher and faster than ever
before, leading some scientists to conclude that
greenhouse gases from cars and power
stations are causing these "record-breaking"
global temperatures. Such claims have now
been sharply contradicted by the most comprehensive study yet of
global temperature
over the past 1,000 years. A review of more than 240 scientific
studies has shown
that today's temperatures are neither the warmest over the past
millennium, nor are
they producing the most extreme weather - in stark contrast to
the claims of the
environmentalists."
--Robert Matthews, The Sunday Telegraph, 6 April 2003
(1) MIDDLE AGES WERE WARMER THAN TODAY, SAY SCIENTISTS
The Sunday Telegraph, 6 April 2003
(2) DRILLING TO CAST LIGHT ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Nature, 4 April 2003
(3) A SPRING STORM BRINGS BACK WINTER
Associated Press, 5 April 2003
(4) WINTER STORMS ICE MIDWEST, NORTHEAST
Disaster News, 5 April 2003
(5) EUROPEAN PESSIMISM, FREE ENTERPRISE AND CREATIVE OPTIMISM
Michael Martin-Smith <lagrangia@lagrangia.karoo.co.uk>
(6) RESTORATION OF MESOPOTAMIAN MARSHLANDS, CAN-DO NOW?
Hermann Burchard <burchar@math.okstate.edu>
(7) AND FINALLY: ROLE REVERSAL: PROFESSORS PROTEST AS STUDENTS
DEBATE
The New York Times, 4 April 2003
========
(1) MIDDLE AGES WERE WARMER THAN TODAY, SAY SCIENTISTS
>From The Sunday Telegraph, 6 April 2003
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F04%2F06%2Fnclim06.xml
By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent
Claims that man-made pollution is causing
"unprecedented" global warming have been seriously
undermined by new research which shows that the Earth was warmer
during the Middle Ages.
>From the outset of the global warming debate in the late
1980s, environmentalists have said that temperatures are rising
higher and faster than ever before, leading some scientists to
conclude that greenhouse gases from cars and power stations are
causing these "record-breaking" global temperatures.
Last year, scientists working for the UK Climate Impacts
Programme said that global temperatures were "the hottest
since records began" and added: "We are pretty sure
that climate change due to human activity is here and it's
accelerating."
This announcement followed research published in 1998, when
scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of
East Anglia declared that the 1990s had been hotter than any
other period for 1,000 years.
Such claims have now been sharply contradicted by the most
comprehensive study yet of global temperature over the past 1,000
years. A review of more than 240 scientific studies has shown
that today's temperatures are neither the warmest over the past
millennium, nor are they producing the most extreme weather - in
stark contrast to the claims of the environmentalists.
The review, carried out by a team from Harvard University,
examined the findings of studies of so-called "temperature
proxies" such as tree rings, ice cores and historical
accounts which allow scientists to estimate temperatures
prevailing at sites around the world.
The findings prove that the world experienced a Medieval Warm
Period between the ninth and 14th centuries with global
temperatures significantly higher even than today.
They also confirm claims that a Little Ice Age set in around
1300, during which the world cooled dramatically. Since 1900, the
world has begun to warm up again - but has still to reach the
balmy temperatures of the Middle Ages.
The timing of the end of the Little Ice Age is especially
significant, as it implies that the records used by climate
scientists date from a time when the Earth was relatively cold,
thereby exaggerating the significance of today's temperature
rise.
According to the researchers, the evidence confirms suspicions
that today's "unprecedented" temperatures are simply
the result of examining temperature change over too short a
period of time.
The study, about to be published in the journal Energy and
Environment, has been welcomed by sceptics of global warming, who
say it puts the claims of environmentalists in proper context.
Until now, suggestions that the Middle Ages were as warm as the
21st century had been largely anecdotal and were often challenged
by believers in man-made global warming.
Dr Philip Stott, the professor emeritus of bio-geography at the
University of London, told The Telegraph: "What has been
forgotten in all the discussion about global warming is a proper
sense of history."
According to Prof Stott, the evidence also undermines doom-laden
predictions about the effect of higher global temperatures.
"During the Medieval Warm Period, the world was warmer even
than today, and history shows that it was a wonderful period of
plenty for everyone."
In contrast, said Prof Stott, severe famines and economic
collapse followed the onset of the Little Ice Age around 1300. He
said: "When the temperature started to drop, harvests failed
and England's vine industry died. It makes one wonder why there
is so much fear of warmth."
The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), the official voice of global warming research, has
conceded the possibility that today's "record-breaking"
temperatures may be at least partly caused by the Earth
recovering from a relatively cold period in recent history. While
the evidence for entirely natural changes in the Earth's
temperature continues to grow, its causes still remain
mysterious.
Dr Simon Brown, the climate extremes research manager at the
Meteorological Office at Bracknell, said that the present
consensus among scientists on the IPCC was that the Medieval Warm
Period could not be used to judge the significance of existing
warming.
Dr Brown said: "The conclusion that 20th century warming is
not unusual relies on the assertion that the Medieval Warm Period
was a global phenomenon. This is not the conclusion of
IPCC."
He added that there were also doubts about the reliability of
temperature proxies such as tree rings: "They are not able
to capture the recent warming of the last 50 years," he
said.
Copyright 2003, The Sunday Telegraph
===========
(2) DRILLING TO CAST LIGHT ON CLIMATE CHANGE
>From Nature, 4 April 2003
http://www.nature.com/nsu/030331/030331-10.html
REX DALTON
Some 30 scientists from a dozen nations are preparing to bore two
holes, each a kilometre deep and 6 centimetres wide, in the bed
of West Africa's Lake Bosumtwi. Late next year, they hope to pull
up sediments that bear witness to the region's alternating rainy
and dry seasons over the past 1 million years.
The nearly $2-millon project should harvest a pristine record of
the period when humans evolved in Africa, and increase our
understanding of how tropical areas act as the heat pump for the
world's climate system.
"Very, very few identified crater lakes have such
deposits," says team leader Christian Koeberl of the
University of Vienna in Austria.
Lake Bosumtwi formed when an asteroid up to 2 kilometres across
struck what is now Ghana. It is filled by rainfall from the
Atlantic monsoon and dried by winds from the Sahara Desert and
the Sahel to the north. Its layers of sediments, holding minerals
and tiny fossils that record this cycle, have lain undisturbed,
as no rivers run into the lake, and there are no rifts beneath.
"Because Bosumtwi is relatively small, it acts like a
precise palaeo-rain gauge of the West African monsoon, and also
recovers signals of tropical sea surface temperature and
dust," explains another team member, Christopher Scholz from
Syracuse University in New York.
Analysis of the impact point will hopefully allow researchers to
determine the chemical composition of the asteroid that created
the basin and compare it with objects now being studied in space.
The placement of the core holes is crucial. During seismic
examinations of the lake floor over the past five years,
geophysicists have identified the uplifted portion in the middle
of the basin that formed after the collision and measured the
surrounding impact rings.
One drill hole will be at the edge of the central plateau; the
other will be about half way to the edge of the outer ring. The
first will provide samples relevant to the asteroid, and the
second will capture climate data. "We are very, very
confident" about the bore locations, Koeberl told a
conference on Biological Processes Associated with Impact Events
in Cambridge, UK, this week.
>From a rig mounted on a barge, the team will drill into the
lake floor, taking samples every 3 metres. These will be stored
for years of study - different scientists probe different time
periods.
Also next year, another team plans to drill deeply at Lake Malawi
in East Africa. This basin is fed by rivers and underpinned by
the East African Rift Valley, which will make analysing its
sediments more complex.
Comparing both core sets should deepen our understanding of the
interplay of climate conditions at similar times on opposite
sides of Africa. "There is a growing interest in the climate
records of such tropical areas," says lake geologist Steven
Colman of the U.S. Geological Survey in Woods Hole,
Massachusetts.
Rex Dalton is the West Coast Correspondent of the journal Nature
References
Dean, W. et al. Progress in Global Lake Drilling Holds Potential
for Global Change Research. Eos, 83, 90 - 91, (2003).
Cohen, A. et al. The International Decade of East African Lakes
(IDEAL) Drilling Initiative for the African Great Lakes. Journal
of Paleolimnology, 24, 231 - 235, (2000).
© Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003
==========
(3) A SPRING STORM BRINGS BACK WINTER
>From the Associated Press, 5 April 2003
http://www.weather.com/newscenter/topstories/030404northeastwinter.html
ALBANY, N.Y. and CONCORD, N.H. (AP) Two weeks into spring, a
wintry mix closed schools from Niagara Falls to Albany Friday,
with freezing rain causing power outages along Lake Ontario while
parts of the Adirondacks received nearly a foot of snow. Winter
also returned to New Hampshire on Friday, closing schools,
fouling the morning commute and postponing any plans to get a
head start on weekend gardening....
Conditions were expected to get worse later Friday, with the
National Weather Service predicting sleet mixing with as much as
16 inches of snow by Saturday morning for parts of northeastern
New York.
===========
(4) WINTER STORMS ICE MIDWEST, NORTHEAST
>From Disaster News, 5 April 2003
http://www.disasternews.net/news/news.php?articleid=1803
MT. MORRIS, Mich. (April 5, 2003) -
Hundreds of thousands of people in Michigan and New York were
without electricity Friday after freezing rains downed power
lines and trees, snarled traffic and forced businesses and
schools to close.
The storm - coming in the second week of spring - was still being
felt this weekend in several areas with freezing rain and snow
expected to continue Saturday in some regions.
Forecasters said northeastern New York could get up to 16 inches
of snow.
In Michigan, the American Red Cross opened several shelters for
people who were affected by the power outages. In some areas,
power was not expected to be restored until Monday.
Genesee and Saginaw counties were among the hardest hit areas in
Michigan, according to a spokesman for Consumers Energy Co.
"This is perhaps the most devastating ice accumulation we've
had in Genesee County in many years," he said.
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(5) EUROPEAN PESSIMISM, FREE ENTERPRISE AND CREATIVE OPTIMISM
>From Michael Martin-Smith <lagrangia@lagrangia.karoo.co.uk>
Matt Ridley (CCNet, 4 April 2003) points to a general European
pessimism about genetic technology and nanotechnology in contrast
with the American perspective. We hear a great deal about the
evils of genetically modified crops but next to nothing of the
creative potential of genetic engineering.
It was not always thus. Olaf Stapledon's "First and Last
Men" considered the plastic and mutable nature of Humanity
over the longest term as a joyously creative symphony to be
appreciated dispassionately - even aesthetically - rather than to
be feared. Its austere preoccupation with the broadest and
largest vistas of Space and Time has a nobility which our
ephemeral and timorous soundbite culture has lost - probably to
its detriment.
Attempts to improve our environment - or provide positive
alternatives - are deemed almost a priori to be impossible.
Indeed, the failure of the Biosphere 2 project to
reproduce, in a few months, the 4 billion years' diversity of an
Earth environment at the first attempt was taken by many to show
that the idea of building new self sustainable off planet
ecosystems had now been "forever" discredited.
Current work at the Space Studies Institute, Princeton, New
Jersey, (www.ssi.org) is
looking, as a privately funded venture, at longterm sustainable
closed loop ecosystems from quite another angle; rather than
asking, as did the Biospherians,"How do we replicate the
diversity of
Mother Earth?" SSI is asking instead "How could
we support a human culture in a sustainable closed loop ecosystem
using solar energy and "vitamin" raw materials supplied
from extraterrestrial locations?"
Note the emphasis on Human culture - this does not require
corals, jungles or pampas, although all these and more may well
come in later generations!
These are two very different questions. Work already in progress
suggests that the latter is by no means an impossible task, and
that the use of microbiology with or without various genetic
manipulations and various forms of nanotechnology can be
creatively combined to enable feasible ET derived space
settlements within a couple of generations.
We leave the question of affordable and reliable space
transportation to others, in the hope that the spirit of free
enterprise and creative Humanistic optimism will prevail.
Two generations ago, the advent of microbial genetics and
nanotechnology would have been viewed with hope as the keys to a
re modelled Cosmos- now they are viewed in fear as the harbingers
of commercialised doom. Like the Roman Emperor Domitian who hid
behind a curtain in fear of assassinaion only to be slain in his
bath, are we to be snuffed out by a contemptuous Mother
Nature, surrounded by the unused agents of our deliverance?
Readers of CCNet will by now, for the most part, realise that if
Humanity is to prevail in a capricious Universe we have little
option! To those who actually do not wish "Humanity to
prevail" I can only say "Against such fools even the
Gods struggle in vain!" Perhaps they should join another
species?
Michael Martin-Smith
==========
(6) RESTORATION OF MESOPOTAMIAN MARSHLANDS, CAN-DO NOW?
>From Hermann Burchard <burchar@math.okstate.edu>
Dear Benny,
a sense of urgency emmanated from CCNet postings Tuesday on the
MESOPOTAMIAN MARSHLANDS CRISIS (The Economist, UPI Science News,
Iraq Foundation, Human Rights Watch), drawing needed attention to
the seriousness of the situation.
Is there any way that Coalition Engineering battalions could take
immediate steps to reverse the damming projects, and start to
release more water downstream? This might also help with the
water shortage in Southern Iraq the urgency of which has been
widely reported in the media. Today CNN has online videos showing
the miserable situation with some water plants not having
produced potable water for a decade or more.
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/
Regards,
Hermann Burchard
========
(7) AND FINALLY: ROLE REVERSAL: PROFESSORS PROTEST AS STUDENTS
DEBATE
>From The New York Times, 4 April 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/05/international/worldspecial/05CAMP.html
By KATE ZERNIKE
AMHERST, Mass., April 4 - It is not easy being an old lefty on
campus in this war. At the University of Wisconsin at Madison,
awash in antiwar protests in the Vietnam era, a columnist for a
student newspaper took a professor to task for canceling classes
to protest the war in Iraq, saying the university should
reprimand her and refund tuition for the missed periods.
Irvine Valley College in Southern California sent faculty members
a memo that warned them not to discuss the war unless it was
specifically related to the course material. When professors
cried censorship, the administration explained that the request
had come from students.
Here at Amherst College, many students were vocally annoyed this
semester when 40 professors paraded into the dining hall with
antiwar signs. One student confronted a protesting professor and
shoved him.
Some students here accuse professors of behaving inappropriately,
of not knowing their place.
"It seems the professors are more vehement than the
students," Jack Morgan, a sophomore, said. "There comes
a point when you wonder are you fostering a discussion or are you
promoting an opinion you want students to embrace or even
parrot?"
Across the country, the war is disclosing role reversals, between
professors shaped by Vietnam protests and a more conservative
student body traumatized by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Prowar
groups have sprung up at Brandeis and Yale and on other campuses.
One group at Columbia, where last week an antiwar professor
rhetorically called for "a million Mogadishus," is
campaigning for the return of R.O.T.C. to Morningside Heights.
Even in antiwar bastions like Cambridge, Berkeley and Madison,
the protests have been more town than gown. At Berkeley, where
Vietnam protesters shouted, "Shut it down!" under
clouds of tear gas, Sproul Plaza these days features mostly solo
operators who hand out black armbands. The shutdown was in San
Francisco, and the crowd was grayer.
All this dismays many professors....
FULL ARTICLE AT http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/05/international/worldspecial/05CAMP.html
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