I Blame it all on the Humans

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The Globe And Mail is running another scare campaign, presumably emulating the Toronto Star.

In Current Arctic heat wave … The Globe reports that "The Canadian Arctic is experiencing a heat wave that has seldom been matched in the past 200,000 years". Leaving aside that we've only had scientists for the past 300 years (so pedantically how COULD things have been matched during all but the last 300 of the past 200,000 years) …

The Globe reports that "But recently there have been unprecedented increases of some algae types dependent on warmer conditions that were almost never found during the pre-industrial era".

But of course!

Rare events rarely happen. Rare events hardly ever happen. "Almost never found" means that they were rare.

Of course we will have rare events during 200,000 years. Bound to be so. Like the BBC cricket commentary "Well, Alex, I do believe that that's only the second time that a red-haired batsman from the Yorkshire second league, playing in only his third test match at Edgarbaston, has come on at seventh place after tea and been caught at slips of the fifth ball of an over!".

But you just can't have " … unprecedented increases … that were almost never found …". That they are found means that they are not unprecedented.

“Our findings show that the last several decades have been the most ecologically unique in 200,000 years, …”

But of course!

Every decade sees new species arrive, old species die out, red-haired batsmen score runs. Every decade over the past 200,000 years has probably been unique.

Part of our uniqueness the past 200 years has been soot and man-made chemicals. Also the dodo disappearing, the Tasmanian Tiger being wiped out, and a score or more of other documented changes. And there lies the difference; today we document that things have been happening, making the mistake that just because hominids of 200,000 years ago hadn't invented writing, nothing significant happened.

"… the only times that summer temperatures were similar to current readings were just after the last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago, and also during an exceptionally warm period before the last glaciation."

Well, yes. I'd expect perturbation around instances of perturbation.

When things are on the move, things are on the move. Whatever it is that brings on glacial periods – or rids us of them – is some sort of hiccough in The Grand Scheme Of Things. There's no reason to suppose that we aren't experiencing a hiccough right now.

The fault in the logic is to equate this year's hiccough with SUVs and expensive coffees.

Perturbations in climate have been going on for a long time, as scientists will tell you.

I agree.

I disagree that just because we are here during the current perturbation we are necessarily the CAUSE of the perturbation.

And yes, I'm still against the throw-away society, a firm believer in Reduce rather than ReUse, and ReUse rather then ReCycle.

I'm just not sure that a plastic bag is responsible for perturbations in the climate.

Please see also Global Warming and Global Warming 2 .

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