Global Warming

Let’s start off with a typical article from an online newspaper. I wrote the first page yesterday, and had no idea what would be in the news today – except that there would be at least one article about Global Warming.

The United Kingdom newspaper Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/) has an article "Coral reefs 'reduced to rubble' by 2100" By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

Here’s the link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/12/13/eacoral113.xml

The article is typical of the scare being published every day by sources who should know better.

I am always on guard when a news source tells me that "an international team warns …" because I suspect that someone is looking for a grant. A true scientific team would have a published identity, and be prepared for peer review. This doesn’t mean that the study being quoted is invalid; just that I’m suspicious when a news source decides not to let me check the original documents. What are they trying to hide?

I am also on guard when I read "The livelihoods and welfare of 100 million people living along the coasts of tropical developing countries will be among the first casualties …" because I recognize a greater danger and that is the doubling of the world’s human population every thirty years or so. Thirty years from now, those billions of people fighting for survival today will be joined by another billion fighting for fresh drinking water in the same area. Billions, literally, stand to die, and that will occur regardless of the state of coral reefs.

"The warmer and more acidic oceans caused by the rise of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels threaten to destroy coral reef ecosystems, …". Here we have the usual mish-mash of facts, glued together to appear as a valid argument.

Try this: The world’s oceans are a vast reservoir of carbon, happily absorbing excess carbon dioxide and laying it down in carbonates that sink to the sea floor.

Try this: Compare the volumes of carbon dioxide spewed out by humans with that spewed out by volcanoes.

Try this: Evolution of all forms of life steers towards adaptation.

I agree that too sudden a shift in environment (a river drying up) can wipe out a species, but gradual change is accomplished very well indeed by nature. If you want a non-evolutionary example, check out the rings of coral reefs that surround the slowly sinking oceanic volcanic islands.

"Millions of Britons travel to countries that have coral reefs. I think they would be sad if they disappeared, …" I’d laugh if it weren’t so un-funny. Millions of (insert your favorite nation here) are flying by jumbo jet to lament the impact of carbon dioxide on the environment. That’s the equivalent of everyone rushing out to pick armfuls of rare flowers "before they are all gone".

"The concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is 380 parts per million (ppm), which is 80ppm higher than where it has been for the past 740,000 years, if not 20 million years."

Do the math.

300 to 380 is an increase of about 20%. Spread over 740,000 years it is a rate of about 0.000028%. I think that entire continental plates are migrating faster than that, and species are adapting to that rate of change quite well, thank you very much.

"Much of the protein consumed by poor coastal communities is supplied in one way or another by coral reefs." You can’t have it both ways. If coral reefs are the source of protein for coastal populations, and if coastal (and all other) populations are doubling every thirty years, maintaining the coral reefs as they are now isn’t going to be of much help at all, in thirty years time.

Please don’t think that I don’t care about the planet, I do. You can read more at my Second Use For Everything pages.

I do care strongly about logic, thought, and intelligent solutions to problems.

Scare and fear is rarely a good solution.

Irrational fear is never a good solution.

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