Global Warming (aka "Climate Change") has filled our empty lives with lurid tales of clear and present dangers. Funnily, almost every dire prediction is turning out to be false or inaccurate. Here's a beauty. Remember the breathless pronouncements that polar bears were likely to become extinct because the Arctic polar cap was melting. Yup, one more evidence of the destruction that man was wreaking upon the tottering, vulnerable planet.
Well, it is more likely that mankind is the species about to become extinct, as the bears take over. Maybe it will be the legend of Beowulf all over again. Maybe we had better send out a call for a thirteenth warrior! Where is Antonio Banderas when you need him? The western Hudson Bay (Ontario, Canada) has just completed its annual polar bear survey. Yes, these bears are so much in control that they have engineered an annual tax-payer funded census all of their own. We have to wait every five years to get one. Tom Nelson reports.
Manitoba Conservation does an annual aerial survey from the Churchill area to the Manitoba/Ontario border, roughly the inland range of the polar bears of western Hudson Bay. In late July (the 22nd I believe), they flew the range and counted around 34 bears. Most were still out on the bay feasting on seals. In fact, there were still two little bits of ice floe in southwestern Hudson Bay on August 22nd...! This means that many of the bears stayed out on the ice until mid-August, almost a month later than usual (or at least, earlier than usual for the last decade, but simply similar to the 'glory days' of the early eighties).So, rumours of the demise of polar bears have been greatly exaggerated it seems--along with a whole lot else.
So, almost all of the bears visiting Churchill are in really good shape (around ten to twelve in buggyland right now). This seems to have translated through the larger population with 266 polar bears being counted on the fall aerial survey in September. This is the largest number of bears recorded in the history of this survey. Isn't that crazy?!? Life is good for the bears!
Of course, this also leads to the cut in quota for Nunavut's Inuit. Arviat, an economically challenged traditional Inuit town just north of Churchill (and when I say just north, I mean 250 miles) has had their quota wiped out. From 23 polar bears harvested last year, political pressure (not research) has led the government of Nunavut to cut it to three bears. All three bear 'tags' have now been used in self-defence kills (partially because we relocate bears north from Churchill... but that's another story). So, no commercial hunt, no income, no community pride for Arviat... hmmm...
While we are doing out weekly global warming post, let's pause, once again, to consider the use and abuse of language. George Orwell taught us in Nineteen Eighty-Four that totalitarians,propagandists, and those who want to rule the world pay a great deal of attention to language--but not in the way that one might expect. The ploy is to take otherwise anodyne phrases and fill them with new meaning and content, thereby making the horrible and unbelievable more acceptable. Thus, Orwell coined the term "newspeak". For example, according to newspeak , oppressive government became "Big Brother" in an attempt to make it nicer and easier to accept.
Up until about 2002, the Anthropogenic Global Warming prophets and doomsayers routinely used the phrase "global warming" to denote the impending apocalypse. But that phrase was too specific and begged lots of questions. It was decided to replace it with the more vague and less confrontational "climate change". This is a classic newspeak manoeuvre. "Climate change" is less confrontational and argumentative than global warming--and therefore is easier to discuss, propagate, and promote. Besides who can argue against climate change: the climate is changing all the time: all historical statistics and measures confirm this.
Whenever protagonists of any kind prefer less precise, more general terms to encase their arguments they are involved in intellectual legerdemain--aka, a coverup. the more precise the language, the more focus and narrowed the argument, and the more vulnerable to refutation and disproof.
We have resolved never to use the newspeak phrase "climate change", unless to mock and expose. We are also resolved to call all opponents on its use whenever "climate change" is deployed. "Oh, by 'climate change' you mean global cooling. No. Why not? Your failure to use careful and precise language shows that your thought processes are careless, imprecise and fuzzy. Unless you sharpen up your act considerably, you don't deserve the courtesy of a moment's serious consideration."
Finally, here is a classic of the "clear and present danger" genre from Time Magazine. It is entitled "What the Public Doesn't Get About Climate Change." By Bryan Walsh
As I report on climate change, I come across a lot of scary facts, like the possibility that thawing permafrost in Siberia could release gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or the risk that Greenland could pass a tipping point and begin to melt rapidly. (Absolutely classic: there are lots of "scary facts" out there, but they are all speculations, and therefore not facts at all. The language betrays Mr Walsh: he is forced into the subjunctive. Siberia "could" release carbon dioxide. Greenland "could" pass a tipping point. And the moon "could" be made of green cheese.)
But one of the most frightening studies I've read recently had nothing to do with icebergs or mega-droughts. In a paper that came out Oct. 23 in Science, John Sterman — a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Sloan School of Management — wrote about asking 212 MIT grad students to give a rough idea of how much governments need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by to eventually stop the increase in the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere. These students had training in science, technology, mathematics and economics at one of the best schools in the world — they are probably a lot smarter than you or me. Yet 84% of Sterman's subjects got the question wrong, greatly underestimating the degree to which greenhouse gas emissions need to fall. When the MIT kids can't figure out climate change, what are the odds that the broader public will? (You mean to say that these MIT graduates aren't on board with the extreme alarmist speculations of a few. Maybe they are brighter thatn Mr Walsh thinks.)
The shocking study reflects the tremendous gap that exists regarding global warming. On the one hand are the scientists, who with few exceptions think climate change is very serious and needs to be dealt with immediately and ambitiously. (Note the phrase "the scientists" referring to an homogenous group of people, all knowledgeable, all specialists, all agreeing--with few exceptions. Sorry, mate, that is just a flat out lie.) On the other side is the public, which increasingly believes that climate change is real and worries about it, but which rarely ranks it as a high priority. A 2007 survey by the U.N. Development Programme found that 54% of Americans advocate taking a "wait and see" approach to climate-change action — holding off on the deep and rapid cuts in global warming that would immediately impact their lives. (And it's not just SUV-driving Americans who take this position — similar majorities were found in Russia, China and India.) (Clearly the public is much smarter than we give them credence. What this cognitive dissonance shows is that the public simply does not believe the propagandists. They have seen through the increasingly malodorous bovine scatology of global warming.) As a result, we have our current dilemma: a steady drumbeat of scientific evidence of global warming's severity and comparatively little in the way of meaningful political action. "This gap exists," says Sterman. "The real question is why." (What has been put out there is neither scientific nor remotely resembling what any reasonable man would consider to be evidence. It is a bunch of projections into the future based upon extrapolations of current trends--all in the name of climate change. If the climate changes, as you constantly assert that it does, dear Mr Walsh, extrapolations into the future are worth, well, absolutely nothing.)
That's where Sterman's research comes in. "There is a profound and fundamental misconception about climate," he says. The problem is that most of us don't really understand how carbon accumulates in the atmosphere. Increasing global temperatures are driven by the increase in the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere. Before the industrial age, the concentration was about 280 parts per million (p.p.m.) of carbon in the atmosphere. After a few centuries of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels, we've raised that concentration to 387 p.p.m., and it continues to rise by about 2 p.p.m. every year. Many scientists believe that we need to at least stabilize carbon concentrations at 450 p.p.m. to ensure that global temperatures don't increase more than about 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level. To do that, we need to reduce global carbon emissions (which hit about 10 billion tons last year) until they are equal to or less than the amount of carbon sequestered by the oceans and plant life (which removed about 4.8 billion tons of carbon last year). It's just like water in a bathtub — unless more water is draining out than flowing in from the tap, eventually the bathtub will overflow.
(Yup, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are going up. But since the globe has warmed and cooled cyclically and periodically ever since its existence, and since there have been long periods when temperatures were considerably warmer than they are now, please explain why you can be certain beyond reasonable doubt that the man-made release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is the true, immediate, and only cause of global temperatures rising in the last twenty years of the previous century. Until you are able to do this, you have not got past the first step: stop wasting our time. )
That means that carbon emissions would need to be cut drastically from current levels. Yet almost all of the subjects in Sterman's study failed to realize that, assuming instead that you could stabilize carbon concentration simply by capping carbon emissions at their current level. That's not the case — and in fact, pursuing such a plan for the future would virtually guarantee that global warming could spin out of control. (Once again, we note the confused, contradictory and meaningless language. "Pursuing such a plan would virtually guarantee that . . . global warming could spin out of control." With that sort of language one could assert anything, which is to say that one's assertions are without meaning. What Walsh has just written--presumably with a straight face--has as much sense and veracity about it as the following: "If we breathe and part our hair on the right hand side we virtually guarantee that the moon could be made of green cheese." How can any of these clowns be taken seriously?) It may seem to many like good common sense to wait until we see proof of the serious damage global warming is doing before we take action. (It sure is good common sense, particularly in the light of your meaningless assertions.) But it's not — we can't "wait and see" on global warming because the climate has a momentum all its own, (Oh, so if it has a momentum all of its own, it must be entirely fatuous to argue that mankind can change the globe's climate. ) and if we wait for decades to finally act to reduce carbon emissions, it could well be too late. (Too late for what? Since the world has gone through periods when it was much warmer than at present, and since mankind, like the polar bears, adapted and flourished during such times, precisely what will it be too late for? And then, again, although it could 'well be too late' for whatever, by the same token it could well not be too late.) Yet this simply isn't understood. (Ah, Mr Walsh we and the rest of the great unwashed understand it all too well.) Someone as smart as Bill Gates doesn't seem to get it. "Fortunately climate change, although it's a huge challenge, it's a challenge that happens over a long period of time," he said at a forum in Beijing last year. "You know, we have time to work on it." But the truth is we don't.
If élite scientists (Ah, we love the phrase "elite scientists". Your slip is showing, Mr Walsh. And it is revealing a great deal.) could simply solve climate change on their own, public misunderstanding wouldn't be such a problem. But they can't. Reducing carbon emissions sharply will require all 6.5 billion (and growing) of us (non-elite, ordinary, dumb masses) on the planet to hugely change the way we use energy and travel. We'll also need to change the way we vote, rewarding politicians willing to make the tough choices on climate. Instead of a new Manhattan Project — the metaphor often used for global warming — Sterman believes that what is needed is closer to a new civil rights movement, a large-scale campaign that dramatically changes the public's beliefs and behaviors. New groups like Al Gore's We Campaign are aiming for just such a social transformation, but "the reality is that this is even more difficult than civil rights," says Sterman. "Even that took a long time, and we don't have that kind of time with the climate." (Yup, we need a vast new ideological army to proclaim the "virtual certainty" that something "might" be true. Here's the irony, Mr Walsh: we need an ideological army all right--on that we agree, but our army must be mobilised to oppose any policy, any central government action on global warming, when everyone apparently agrees--including you--that it is virtually guaranteed that anthropogenic global warming might not be true. While that remains the case it would be highly dangerous to take any action at all.)
The good news is that you don't need a Ph.D. in climatology to understand what needs to be done. If you can grasp the bathtub analogy, you can understand how to stop global warming. The burden is on scientists to better explain in clear English the dynamics of the climate system, and how to affect it. (Sterman says that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's landmark report last year was "completely inadequate" on this score.) As for the rest of us, we should try to remember that sometimes common sense isn't a match for science. (Thankfully, common sense is a match for pseudo-science. Thankfully, the more " pseudo scientists" attempt to simplify the world's climate system into homespun analogies, the more simplistic and stupid they show themselves to be. The reality is something very different--although deeply unpalatable to the "elite" pseudo-scientists of our day. The global climate system is chaotic (in the scientific sense of that term): it is complex, multi-variate, multi-factored and therefore unpredictable. The use of computer generated models, predicting climate into the next one hundred years give the appearance of hard certainty, but only to the credulous and weak-minded--you know, to those elite scientists. )
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