Zach LarkinsKYOTO X (cont'd)
"A great melt is on in Antarctica. Its northern peninsula -- a jut of land extending to about 1,200 kilometres from Chile -- has seen a drastic increase in temperature, a thinning of ice sheets and, most alarmingly, a collapse of ice shelves. The Larsen A ice shelf, 1,600 square kilometres in size, fell off in 1995. The Wilkins ice shelf, 1,100 square kilometres, fell off in 1998 and the Larsen B, 13,500 square kilometres, dropped off in 2002. Meanwhile, the northern Antarctic Peninsula's temperatures have soared by six degrees celsius in the last 50 years. Antarctica represents the greatest threat to the globe from global warming, bar none. If Antarctica's ice melts, the world's oceans will rise, flooding low-lying lands where much of the world's population lives. Not only would their mass migration spawn hardships for the individual families retreating from the rising waters, the world would also be losing fertile deltas that feed tens of millions of people. This chilling scenario understandably sends shudders through concerned citizens around the world, and steels the resolve of those determined to stop the cataclysm of global warming." So writes Lawrence Solomon in his continuing series on global warming and its Deniers.
As he goes on to explain, the above scenario is hokum. At the South Pole, temperatures have actually fallen since 1957. Neither is Antarctica's advance or retreat a new question raised by the spectre of global warming. This is one of the oldest scientific questions of all about the Antarctic ice sheet.
Dr. Duncan Wingham is Professor of Climate Physics at University College London and Director of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling. Wingham has been pursuing this polar puzzle for much of his professional life and, except for an accident in space, he might have had an answer by now. Wingham is Principal Scientist of the European Space Agency's CryoSat Satellite Mission, a $130-million project designed to map changes in the depth of ice using ultra- precise instrumentation. Sadly for Dr. Wingham, and for science as a whole, CryoSat fell into the Arctic Ocean after its launch in October, 2005, when a rocket launcher failed. He will now need to wait until 2009 before CryoSat-2, CryoSat's even more precise successor, can launch and begin relaying the data that should conclusively determine whether Antarctica's ice sheets are thinning or not.
Wingham has been collecting satellite data for years, and arrived at some startling conclusions. Early last year at a European Union Space Conference in Brussels, Wingham revealed that data from a European Space Agency satellite showed Antarctic thinning was no more common than thickening, and concluded that the spectacular collapse of the ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula was much more likely to have followed natural current fluctuations than global warming. But this is not what Gore or Suzuki want you to believe. They would dismiss Wingham and his findings out of hand because it doesn't fit in with their agenda.
Wingham and three colleagues, last summer, published an article in the journal of the Royal Society that casts further doubt on the notion that global warming is adversely affecting Antarctica. By studying satellite data from 1992 to 2003 they discovered that the Antarctic ice sheet is growing at the rate of 5 millimetres per year (plus or minus 1 mm per year). That makes Antarctica a sink, not a source, of ocean water. This would seem to explain why ocean levels are not rising at the rate predicted by the global warming crowd. In fact, according to Wingham and company's best estimates, Antarctica will "lower global sea levels by 0.08 mm" per year. If these findings are validated in future by CryoSat-2 and other developments that are able to assess the 28% of Antarctica not yet surveyed, the low-lying areas of the world will have weathered the worst of the global warming predictions.
This causes all sorts of problems for Suzuki. Last Thursday, he stormed out of a Toronto AM 640 radio interview with host John Oakley because Oakley dared to suggest that global warming might not be the "totally settled issue" Suzuki insisted it was. Many accredited scientists, some full professors from top universities, including Nobel prize winners and a former president of the National Academy of Sciences, would argue that "global warning is at best unproven and at worst pure fantasy," according to novelist and independent scientific researcher Michael Crichton. Before dismissing Crichton as just a novelist, consider that his scientific research on environmental issues is so impressive he was invited to address the U.S. Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works. His most frenzied critics (the Los Angeles Times called his book ‘State of Fear' "the first neocon novel") could not and did not repudiate his peer reviewed, impeccably sourced data. Among the hundreds of books, journal articles and scientific reports in his bibliography, (no mention of Suzuki, strangely), Crichton lists every publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since its formation. He has read them all, and in the end humbly "guesses" (the most one can do) that we are experiencing mild warming, possibly more beneficial than harmful. Crichton would doubtless see Suzuki's gesture as a result of confusion of his role as environmental advocate with that of chief of
MoralsPolice. Suzuki's very public censure of Oakley for his perceived blasphemy is nonsense because it smacks of the totalitarian impulse to silence and humiliate the dissenter. Suzuki keeps high- profile company in his tendency to suppress environmental infidels. Al Gore called skeptics "global warming deniers," evoking a fallacious comparison with Holocaust denial. Suzuki's objective, apparently, is to shame the one who questions his wisdom. He would have better served his cause if he had addressed skeptics' actual concerns, some of which are: - Why was climatologist James Hansen, the father of global warming, off by 200% in his prediction that temperatures would increase by 0.35 degrees Celsius by 2008 (the actual increase has been 0.11 degrees); and why did he say in 2001 that "the longterm prediction of future climate states is not possible"? - Of the world's 160,000 glaciers, some are shrinking. But many, in Iceland, for example, have "surged" in the last few years, while most of Antarctica is getting colder. If warming is "global," why? - Why haven't sea levels risen to the extent predicted? Why have the waters off the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean not only experienced no rise over several centuries, but an actual fall in the last 20 years? - Where is the predicted "extreme weather?" There has been no global increase, and in many cases a decrease, of extreme weather patterns. The Sahara Desert is shrinking, purportedly due to the greening effects caused by man- made global warming, but isn't the greening of the desert a good thing? People in Bangladesh, the Maldives, and elsewhere, will have found that, if anything, they can look forward to a future with more nutrient-rich seacoast, not less. And isn't that also a good thing? Pretty basic questions, and of course there are more. However neither Suzuki nor Gore have any answers. The best Suzuki can do is walk off the set of a radio show interview when the host hauls him up short. Tantrums by self anointed prophets do not help the situation. Whatever the eventual outcome on the global warming front, we should all use a little non-partisanship, maturity and attitudinal cooling on the behavioural front. Suzuki and Gore don't like to be questioned. But it's the least we can do to stop this Kyoto Accord from proceeding. As PM Harper wrote sometime ago, "Kyoto is nothing more than a giant, money sucking scheme."
Sources: Barbara Kay Suzuki vs Crichton The National Post
Lawrence Solomon The Deniers Pt 4 The Financial Post
Dr. Duncan Wingham is Professor of Climate Physics at University College London and Director of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling. Wingham has been pursuing this polar puzzle for much of his professional life and, except for an accident in space, he might have had an answer by now. Wingham is Principal Scientist of the European Space Agency's CryoSat Satellite Mission, a $130-million project designed to map changes in the depth of ice using ultra- precise instrumentation. Sadly for Dr. Wingham, and for science as a whole, CryoSat fell into the Arctic Ocean after its launch in October, 2005, when a rocket launcher failed. He will now need to wait until 2009 before CryoSat-2, CryoSat's even more precise successor, can launch and begin relaying the data that should conclusively determine whether Antarctica's ice sheets are thinning or not.
Wingham and three colleagues, last summer, published an article in the journal of the Royal Society that casts further doubt on the notion that global warming is adversely affecting Antarctica. By studying satellite data from 1992 to 2003 they discovered that the Antarctic ice sheet is growing at the rate of 5 millimetres per year (plus or minus 1 mm per year). That makes Antarctica a sink, not a source, of ocean water. This would seem to explain why ocean levels are not rising at the rate predicted by the global warming crowd. In fact, according to Wingham and company's best estimates, Antarctica will "lower global sea levels by 0.08 mm" per year. If these findings are validated in future by CryoSat-2 and other developments that are able to assess the 28% of Antarctica not yet surveyed, the low-lying areas of the world will have weathered the worst of the global warming predictions.
This causes all sorts of problems for Suzuki. Last Thursday, he stormed out of a Toronto AM 640 radio interview with host John Oakley because Oakley dared to suggest that global warming might not be the "totally settled issue" Suzuki insisted it was. Many accredited scientists, some full professors from top universities, including Nobel prize winners and a former president of the National Academy of Sciences, would argue that "global warning is at best unproven and at worst pure fantasy," according to novelist and independent scientific researcher Michael Crichton. Before dismissing Crichton as just a novelist, consider that his scientific research on environmental issues is so impressive he was invited to address the U.S. Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works. His most frenzied critics (the Los Angeles Times called his book ‘State of Fear' "the first neocon novel") could not and did not repudiate his peer reviewed, impeccably sourced data. Among the hundreds of books, journal articles and scientific reports in his bibliography, (no mention of Suzuki, strangely), Crichton lists every publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since its formation. He has read them all, and in the end humbly "guesses" (the most one can do) that we are experiencing mild warming, possibly more beneficial than harmful. Crichton would doubtless see Suzuki's gesture as a result of confusion of his role as environmental advocate with that of chief of
MoralsPolice. Suzuki's very public censure of Oakley for his perceived blasphemy is nonsense because it smacks of the totalitarian impulse to silence and humiliate the dissenter. Suzuki keeps high- profile company in his tendency to suppress environmental infidels. Al Gore called skeptics "global warming deniers," evoking a fallacious comparison with Holocaust denial. Suzuki's objective, apparently, is to shame the one who questions his wisdom. He would have better served his cause if he had addressed skeptics' actual concerns, some of which are: - Why was climatologist James Hansen, the father of global warming, off by 200% in his prediction that temperatures would increase by 0.35 degrees Celsius by 2008 (the actual increase has been 0.11 degrees); and why did he say in 2001 that "the longterm prediction of future climate states is not possible"? - Of the world's 160,000 glaciers, some are shrinking. But many, in Iceland, for example, have "surged" in the last few years, while most of Antarctica is getting colder. If warming is "global," why? - Why haven't sea levels risen to the extent predicted? Why have the waters off the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean not only experienced no rise over several centuries, but an actual fall in the last 20 years? - Where is the predicted "extreme weather?" There has been no global increase, and in many cases a decrease, of extreme weather patterns. The Sahara Desert is shrinking, purportedly due to the greening effects caused by man- made global warming, but isn't the greening of the desert a good thing? People in Bangladesh, the Maldives, and elsewhere, will have found that, if anything, they can look forward to a future with more nutrient-rich seacoast, not less. And isn't that also a good thing? Pretty basic questions, and of course there are more. However neither Suzuki nor Gore have any answers. The best Suzuki can do is walk off the set of a radio show interview when the host hauls him up short. Tantrums by self anointed prophets do not help the situation. Whatever the eventual outcome on the global warming front, we should all use a little non-partisanship, maturity and attitudinal cooling on the behavioural front. Suzuki and Gore don't like to be questioned. But it's the least we can do to stop this Kyoto Accord from proceeding. As PM Harper wrote sometime ago, "Kyoto is nothing more than a giant, money sucking scheme."
Sources: Barbara Kay Suzuki vs Crichton The National Post
Lawrence Solomon The Deniers Pt 4 The Financial Post
