Lemming Tracks: Global Warming Solution: Air Conditioned Parking Lots

Now that global warming has replaced the coming ice age as a looming disaster, humanity awaits the doom and gloom of flooded cities, submerged yacht harbors, and offshore ocean front property.

But fear not! After intense study the Lemming found a solution!

Enclosed, air conditioned parking lots and airports!!

The cost will be enormous, and humans will have to give up air travel - airplanes couldn't land at the roofed-over airports - but perhaps it would be worthwhile. Or maybe not.

Here's what goaded the Lemming into this rant:

"Distorted data? Feds close 600 weather stations amid criticism they're situated to report warming"
Maxim Lott, FoxNews.com (August 13, 2013)

"Data from hundreds of weather stations located around the U.S. appear to show the planet is getting warmer, but some critics say it's the government's books that are getting cooked -- thanks to temperature readings from sweltering parking lots, airports and other locations that distort the true state of the climate.

"Indeed, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has closed some 600 out of nearly 9,000 weather stations over the past two years that it has deemed problematic or unnecessary, after a long campaign by one critic highlighting the problem of using unreliable data. The agency says the closures will help improve gathering of weather data, but critics like meterologist [!] and blogger Anthony Watts say it is too little, too late.

" 'The question remains as to why they continue to use a polluted mix of well-sited and poorly-sited stations,' Watts told FoxNews.com...."

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) probably set up weather recording stations on or near parking lots and airports for practical reasons. It'd be easier to get at a weather station that's near a parking lot, than one that's not conveniently close to paved roads. Besides, it's a good idea for pilots to know what the weather's like at airports.

Making assumptions about world climate based on data from notoriously sun-baked spots? That might not be the best idea.

'Trust Us'

"...Watts has for years searched for weather stations that have flaws. And he points to a still-open station at Yosemite park as an example of one with 'heat sinks' - objects that store heat, and then release it at night. Heat sinks can cause stations located in or near them to give off useless data -- generally in the form of inflated temperatures not representative of the broader area.

" 'The heat sinks are a road, a building, and stacked metal pipe and beams surrounding the station,' he said.
"After the heat sinks were added at Yosemite, temperature readings show a curious trend: minimum nighttime temperatures increased more than daytime temperatures. Watts says that's because the concrete structures store heat that is released at night, and that such a trend backs up the idea that the 'heat sinks' are having an effect.

"But the government agency that compiles the temperature data says that such concerns are unfounded because of statistical methods used to adjust the data...."

Maybe those "statistical methods used to adjust the data" really are valid. On the other hand, the Lemming has joked about the expert who knows he's right: because it says so in the book he wrote.

Getting a Grip About Climate Change

Some humans know this, but the Lemming will rant anyway: CHANGE HAPPENS!

Water flows. Plants grow: and climate changes. Humans started finding out just how much stuff changes a few hundred years back, and some still don't want to believe it. The Lemming prefers living in the real world, and that's another topic. Topics:

• "Taking Life a Thousand Years at a Time"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (June 10, 2012)
• " 'In a State of Journeying' "
  A Catholic Citizen in America (January 18, 2012)
• "Climate Changes: So What Else is New?"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (May 16, 2011)

Some changes are progressive, some run in cycles: like the sun's 22-year sunspot cycle. The sun's magnetic field is decreasing just now, and will go out completely in a few months. Interestingly, the Lemming hasn't read about anybody blaming Big Beach or the other political party.

"Big Beach" is the Lemming's invention, by the way: it's an imaginary cabal or resort owners who force folks into taking vacations.

Back to climate change, the Lemming would be concerned if scientists discovered that for several years the world's weather hadn't been changing at all. That would be weird.

Earth's climate has been changing for billions of years. The Lemming thinks it will continue to do so, no matter where humans put weather stations.

Related posts:

• "Lemming Tracks: 'My Mind's Made Up, Don't Confuse Me With the Facts;' and Climate Change"
  (April 5, 2011)
• "Lemming Tracks: Blasphemy! Or, 'We're All Gonna Die' Predictions That Fizzled "
  (December 30, 2010)
• "Lemming Tracks: Climate Change is the New Global Warming?"
  (December 6, 2010)
• "Lemming Tracks: Ice Age, Global Warming, Climate Change, and Living Scared"
  (November 19, 2010)
• "Global Warming and Lost Documentation: 'Please Pay No Attention' "
  (December 8, 2009)

Lemming Tracks: 'My Mind's Made Up, Don't Confuse Me With the Facts;' and Climate Change

EXPERTS ALL AGREE:

HUMANS MAKE CLIMATE CHANGE! 

EARTH IN IMMINENT DANGER!!*

*Experts in the carefully-selected "21 Club," that is.

That's a select group of hand-picked experts - who were selected because they are convinced that human beings are killing Earth. Or say they are, anyway.

It reminds the Lemming of the 'good old days' at college, when dissenting opinions were called 'racist,' 'homophobic,' 'hate speech' - or the ever-popular 'intolerant.'

That wasn't, in the Lemming's opinion, much better than the older 'good old days' when dissenting opinions were labeled 'communist,' 'pinko,' or 'un-American.'

Dissenters Need Not Apply

Here's what got the Lemming started:

"Google is diving headfirst into the climate-change debate with a '21 Club' of hand-picked experts that the search engine giant hopes will drive the conversation -- and guide investments -- in climate change.

"But it's a discussion that even the club's members say is meant to be one-sided.

" 'If Google included people who challenged that debate, they would be wrong to do so,' said Matthew Nisbet, an associate professor for the School of Communication at American University and one of the 21 Google Science Communication Fellows.

" 'As to whether climate change is happening, humans are a cause and it is a problem -- there is no scientific debate over that,' Nisbet told FoxNews.com.

"A review of the 21 Club confirms Nisbet's comment. The group includes meteorologists, communication specialists, and even weather forecasters, as well as few scientists who research climate change for a living. None argue that the planet isn't in imminent danger...."
(FoxNews.com)

Let's not be too hard on the 21 Club, though. There's a recession going on, and funding for silly science may be getting scarce:

"...So what's Google up to, anyway?

"Part of the motivation seems to be funding new climate change research.

"Jack Gold, a research analyst, told FoxNews.com that promoting new research often ends up generating new product ideas. He said having good models for climate change can also feed into the company's own data visualization efforts.

"The company likely sees the search term 'climate change' popping up in search results, too. 'They are probably reacting to what people are interested in,' Gold said...."
(FoxNews.com)

Don't Shoot the Messenger: Demonize Him

The old adage, 'don't kill the messenger,' is a sort of admonition against hurting the person who cares enough say what you don't want to hear. These days, to the best of the Lemming's knowledge, even nitwit supervisors seldom actually kill employees who try to keep the company afloat - and that's almost another topic.

Demonizing folks who don't say what they're supposed to, though: that's another story. In the Lemming's opinion.

"Demonize?" Demonization is "to represent as diabolically evil." (Princeton's WordNet) It's not limited to one sort of beliefs - and, in the Lemming's opinion, besides being wrong, demonizing folks who don't say the 'right' things does not help others understand what's really going on.

Culturally-savvy Americans, at least, will recognize that FoxNews.com is not politically correct. They have a (distressing, to some) habit of not agreeing with the Huffington Post or The New York Times' editorial positions. They're 'obviously,' 'racist,' 'homophobic,' and 'intolerant.' Or something pretty much icky.

That sort of name-calling is, in the Lemming's opinion, an example of demonization.

So is, again in the Lemming's opinion, selling coffee mugs that say "Islam is of the devil." (A Catholic Citizen in America (April 1, 2011))

Junk is Useful: Silly Science, Not So Much

The term "junk science" has been around for a while, to describe weird assertions that get taken seriously - apparently because somebody says they're 'scientific.' More about that at junkscience.com.

The Lemming respectfully submits that the term "junk science" is unfair to junk. "Junk," "the remains of something that has been destroyed or broken up" (Princeton's WordNet again), is - as the folks who recycle know - potentially useful.

"Junk science," in the Lemming's opinion, isn't: except perhaps as raw material for comics and folks who make a career of countering the crazy claims.

The Lemming thinks that "silly science" is a preferable term, since "silly" means: "ludicrous; foolish; lacking seriousness; given to frivolity; inspiring scornful pity; dazed from or as if from repeated blows." (you guessed it: Wordnet again)

From the coming ice age and the 8 x 8 water rule, to climate change: "silly science," in the Lemming's opinion, captures the essence of 'expert' opinions that can't endure close examination or debate.

Where Have All the Trilobites Gone?

It the Lemming's opinion, it would be a trifle disconcerting if Earth's climate wasn't changing. The Lemming's opined about that before:

• "Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture"

Bottom line? Change happens.

And the Lemming doesn't think that it was supposed to stop around the early 19th century - and that all change since then was somebody's fault.

But, like the blog's name says, the Lemming is "apathetic." And that's another topic.

Related posts:

• Silly science:
  • "Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide Now! Or, Not "
    (January 3, 2011)
  • "Lemming Tracks: Blasphemy! Or, 'We're All Gonna Die' Predictions That Fizzled"
    (December 30, 2010)
  • "Lemming Tracks: Climate Change is the New Global Warming?"
    (December 6, 2010)
  • "Lemming Tracks: '8 x 8' Water Rule, Real Research; Beer and Pretzels"
    (November 27, 2010)
  • " 'My Mind's Made Up: Don't Confuse Me With the Facts' "
    (March 3, 2008)
• Information gatekeepers
  
  • "Information Technology, People, and a Changing World"
    Another War-on-Terror Blog (February 23, 2011)
  • "Blogs, Freedom of Speech, and Threats to the Status Quo"
    Another War-on-Terror Blog (July 31, 2010)
  • "Cultural Chaos, Divisiveness, and CNN"
    A Catholic Citizen in America (April 1, 2010)
  • "Assumptions About Religion, and American Rules of Etiquette"
    A Catholic Citizen in America (April 14, 2010)
  • "What is an Information Gatekeeper?"
    Another War-on-Terror Blog (August 14, 2009)

In the news:

• "Google Wades Into Global Warming Debate"
  John Brandon, FoxNews.com (April 5, 2011)

Lemming Tracks: Blasphemy! Or, 'We're All Gonna Die' Predictions That Fizzled

If you're absolutely convinced that the coming ice age, food riots, acid rain, or hordes of Elvis impersonators are gonna kill us all, the Lemming recommends that you stop reading right now.

Really. The Lemming is going to write things that are heretical, blasphemous: and not at all fashionably hysterical. Why the religious terms? The Lemming will get to that, after a list from today's news. Or op-ed.

Excerpts that follow aren't from one of America's old-school journalistic institutions. Like, say, The New York Times or Village Voice.

Still with the Lemming? Well, you've been warned.

'And We're All Gonna Die!'

The idea that the end of the world is nigh, and that our only hope is to repent of our evil/polluting ways, seems deeply rooted in American culture. Details on just what the end of the world will be have changed as the decades rolled by.

Here's a top-eight list, from today's news. Or op-ed:

"Eight Botched Environmental Forecasts"
Maxim Lott, FoxNews.com (December 30, 2010)

"A new year is around the corner, and some climate scientists and environmental activists say that means we're one step closer to a climate Armageddon. But are we really?

"Predicting the weather -- especially a decade or more in advance -- is unbelievably challenging. What's the track record of those most worried about global warming? Decades ago, what did prominent scientists think the environment would be like in 2010? FoxNews.com has compiled eight of the most egregiously mistaken predictions, and asked the predictors to reflect on what really happened.

"1. Within a few years 'children just aren't going to know what snow is.' Snowfall will be "a very rare and exciting event." Dr. David Viner, senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, interviewed by the UK Independent, March 20, 2000.

"Ten years later, in December 2009, London was hit by the heaviest snowfall seen in 20 years. And just last week, a snowstorm forced Heathrow airport to shut down, stranding thousands of Christmas travelers.

"A spokesman for the government-funded British Council, where Viner now works as the lead climate change expert, told FoxNews.com that climate science had improved since the prediction was made.

" 'Over the past decade, climate science has moved on considerably and there is now more understanding about the impact climate change will have on weather patterns in the coming years,' British Council spokesman Mark Herbert said. '"However, Dr Viner believes that his general predictions are still relevant.'..."

The Lemming suspects that we won't be hearing quite so much about "global warming:" at least, not for a while. "Climate change" appears to be what's going to destroy civilization, and all that. The Lemming will get back to the idea of change in a bit.

More, from the article:

"...2. '[By] 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots…[By 1996] The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers.' Michael Oppenheimer, published in 'Dead Heat,' St. Martin's Press, 1990...."

"...3. 'Arctic specialist Bernt Balchen says a general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000.' Christian Science Monitor, June 8, 1972...."

"...4. 'Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide two degrees by 2010.' Associated Press, May 15, 1989...."

"...5. 'By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half.' Life magazine, January 1970...."

"...6. 'If present trends continue, the world will be ... eleven degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.' Kenneth E.F. Watt, in 'Earth Day,' 1970...."

There's a good explanation for why this doomsday prediction was a tad inaccurate:

"...'Present trends didn't continue,' Ehrlich said of Watt's prediction. 'There was considerable debate in the climatological community in the '60s about whether there would be cooling or warming … Discoveries in the '70s and '80s showed that the warming was going to be the overwhelming force.'..."
(FoxNews.com)

There: now we can feel properly terrified of an "overwhelming force" that's gonna kill us all - and probably the fur seals and spotted owls, too.

Armageddon tired of all this? Sort of, but there are still two to go:

"...7. 'By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people ... If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.' Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971...."

"...8. "In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish." Ehrlich, speech during Earth Day, 1970..."

Change Happens

It would be a little disturbing, from the Lemming's point of view, if things didn't change at all as decades passed.

Like the fellow said: "Nothing endures but change." (Heraclitus, 540 BC - 480 BC) And, as I opined in another blog, "So why are conservationists trying to keep everything just like it was?"

Repent! The End is At Hand?!

The Lemming also notes the zeal with which staunch defenders of the environment have preached of coming doom, guilt, and a need for repentance. The words are different, but the 'tune' seems to be pretty much the same as those Christian groups which have been insisting that Armageddon is upon us.

One set of 'true believers' is generally (although not exclusively) secular; the other is stridently religious.

The Lemming's not in either camp. Not that I'm "apathetic," except in a peculiar cultural context. The Lemming's written about that before.

There was a time when the Lemming saw lovely piles of suds floating down the Mississippi River: That was in the mid-seventies. Suds in the river, a canal that caught fire (briefly), and clueless waste management policies encouraged the Lemming to be rather concerned.

That was then.

Problems? Yes - Panic? No

Folks learned that it's a bad idea to dump raw sewage in their drinking water, developed social and political controls over what we drink and breathe, and got lyrics like "If the hoods don't get you, the monoxide will." Decades later, the Lemming remembers snatches of that song: Pollution, Tom Lehrer (1965), lyrics at The Mad Music Archive)

This is now. We've still got problems: including what to do with landfills, and how to dispose of old CRT monitors.

But 'it's the end of the world?'

The boy who cried wolf (AKA The Shepherd's Boy and the Wolf) found out that after a while, folks stop listening. Or, rather, did: back in Aesop's day.

Today, the Lemming supposes it helps that it isn't always the same dire threat. That, and in our case the 'shepherd's boy' apparently really believes that there is a wolf out there.

The (alleged) coming end of the world and getting a grip, from the Lemming's point of view:

• "Earth Day, 2010; Change; Opposable Thumbs and ResponsibilityApril 22, 2010"
  Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (April 22, 2010)
• "Lemming Tracks: Observations by an Opportunistic Omnivore"
  (April 20, 2010)
• "Global Warming, End Times - 'We're All Gonna Die' Over the Last 45 Years Or So"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (October 3, 2009)
• "Food, Agriculture, Technology, and City Folks"
  Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (October 2, 2009)
• "Emotions, the Frontal Cortex, The War on Terror, Anarchists, and the Illuminati"
  Another War-on-Terror Blog (December 23, 2008)
  Particularly
  • Emotion Trumping Reason: Not Limited to the War on Terror

Climate, change, life, and the Lemming:

• "Climate Change is the New Global Warming?"
  (December 6, 2010)
• "Lemming Tracks: Ice Age, Global Warming, Climate Change, and Living Scared"
  (November 19, 2010)
• "Earth Day, 2010 - or - We Won: Deal With It"
  (April 22, 2010)
• "Earthquakes, Nuclear Winter, the End of the World, and All That"
  (February 28, 2010)
• "Frail, Delicate Little Mother Nature?!"
  (December 20, 2009)
• "The Unchanging Sun and Earth's Climate"
  (August 28, 2009)

More:

• "Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture "

Lemming Tracks: Climate Change is the New Global Warming?

Fashions change: the weirdness that occasionally shows up in Robert Basler's Oddly Enough blog; and the sort of thing that college students must take very seriously, if they expect to pass the course.

The Lemming remembers when we were gonna die in the food riots, face a life expectancy of 42, and it was all futile anyway, because glaciers would soon grind away the pathetic remains of civilization. An ice age was coming, you see. (November 19, 2010, April 20, 2010)

Experts said so.

Now, of course, experts have been telling us that nature's delicate balance¹ is threatened by of global warming.

That fashion may be changing, in the Lemming's opinion. Keep an eye out for the new bogey man: climate change.

This new, improved dire threat showed up - again - in today's news. Or, rather, "analysis."

"Climate Change Challenges Circadian Clocks"
Tim Wall, Analysis, Animal News, Discovery News (December 6, 2010)

"In life's race against time, plants and animals may have to reset their circadian clocks to keep up with climate change. Organisms that rely on several cues besides daylight to regulate their behavior will have the advantage. For mammals in the wild, unfortunately, daylight appears to be a stronger regulator than previously thought.

"Day length regulates many behaviors such as breeding and migration. This enables animals' circadian rhythms to match up with the long-term patterns of the earth's ecosystems. Evolutionarily this helped species to survive through erratic weather patterns, as they would avoid deadly mistakes like migrating north during a warm spell in January, only to find no food and die when the weather turns cold again.

"With global climate change rapidly impacting seasonal plant growth, however, now the evolutionary benefits of relying on day-length cycles may backfire...."

The Lemming thinks that "climate change" is a safer bet than either the coming ice age or global warming. "Safer bet?" It's about as close to a sure thing as we ever see. One thing that's remained constant over the last several billion years on this planet is - change.

The Lemming's said this before: it's odd, how America's dominant culture revels in the idea that vast, sweeping changes have altered the very fabric of life over millions and millions of years.

The notion that change happened, on a large scale, is accepted. And, until about a hundred and fifty years or so back, change was natural. Then, starting somewhere in about the 18th century, change was somebody's fault.

The "climate change" that analysis warns of? The Lemming thinks it's probably happening. It would be a disturbing alteration in nature, if Earth's climate wasn't changing.

Sort-of-related posts:

• "Lemming Tracks: "8 x 8" Water Rule, Real Research; Beer and Pretzels "
  (November 27, 2010)
• "Lemming Tracks: Ice Age, Global Warming, Climate Change, and Living Scared"
  (November 19, 2010)
• "Tofu Turkeys, Genetically Altered Foods, and the Evil Eye"
  (November 14, 2009)
• "Junk Science: Not Everyone in a Lab Coat Is Right"
  (May 18, 2009)
• "Not-So-Silly Science: Women Who Look Like Women are Healthier"
  (January 7, 2009)

More:

• "Lemming Tracks: STOP THE WASTE!!! RECYCLE EARTH'S PRECIOUS LINT!!!!"
  (April 20, 2010)
• "Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture "

---

¹ The Lemming thinks that pandas are cute, and thinks that it's a good idea to not dump raw sewage in one's drinking water. But - nature's 'delicate' balance? I've written about that before:

• "Frail, Delicate Little Mother Nature?!"
  (December 20, 2009)

Lemming Tracks: Ice Age, Global Warming, Climate Change, and Living Scared

The Lemming was born during the Truman administration. That's what it says on my birth certificate, and that's the story I'm sticking with.

I remember when civilization was going to be scraped off the face of the earth by the coming ice age. That was before most of us were going to die in the food riots and ecological disasters popularized by a butterfly expert. (April 20, 2010)

More recently, it's been acid rain and global warming that's gonna kill us all.

An informal spot-check in America's media suggests that global warming's on the way out as the Big Bad. What we're all supposed to be scared silly about now is "climate change."

Oddly enough, I think the doomsayers are right. Sort of.

The Lemming Predicts: Change

This prediction is about as close to a 100 percent sure thing as it gets: A hundred years from now, things will be different. The Lemming will go even further out on this limb: A thousand years from now, things will be different.

How can the Lemming be so confident?

For the last several billion years, change has happened. There's no reason to think that the situation has - well, changed.

Like the fellow said:

"Nothing endures but change."
(Heraclitus, 540 BC - 480 BC) (Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (October 29, 2009))

Falcons of the Ohio Mountains

People make things. Paleontologists recently unearthed a kitchen that someone used 1,600,000 years or so back. Homo sapiens sapiens wouldn't show up for quite a while - and the kitchen didn't have a refrigerator, but it was an area set up for food preparation.

Like the Lemming said, people make things - and have for quite a long time.

More recently, we've been making buildings. Quite a lot of them. That's - change. Buildings and clusters of buildings have been popping up across the North American continent. As a sort of side-effect, peregrine falcons are now building their nests on the sides of cliff faces - in places that didn't have cliff faces a century or so back. ("Ohio's Falcon Nesting Sites," Ohio Department of Natural Resources)

So far, the Lemming hasn't run into any anguished articles about the dreadful spread of peregrine falcons. Partly, I suspect, because quite a few people like birds.

Change, Dinosaurs, and Somebody's Fault

The Lemming's mentioned this before: America's dominant culture is convinced that vast, impersonal, mindless forces have wrought great changes on the face of the earth for billions and billions of years.

Mountains rose and fell; species appeared, changed, and went extinct; steamy jungles made way for continental glaciers which in their turn melted to form new landscapes.

Change happened: lots and lots of change. And it was part of the fascinating panoply of natural phenomena which Science revealed.

Then, starting maybe a couple centuries ago, change still happened - but it was somebody's fault.

Quite often, change was the fault of the authoritarian, male-dominated, white European culture that was to blame for just about everything else. Officially. And that's another topic. Almost.

The History Channel (which covers a lot more than what's "history," strictly speaking) had a fascinating show on this morning: First Apocalypse. It's about "how we can learn from the dinosaur's fall from grace and how much our own fate may be intertwined with theirs. Are we doomed to follow in the dinosaurs footsteps or can we face down extinction?

"Perhaps this fear is why we are so fascinated by the demise of a species that lived millions of years ago. If something so large that ruled the earth for so long can be wiped out in a matter of centuries, what does that say about our ultimate survival?

"The world we live in may already be in the throws of its own mass extinction... a new apocalypse."

Sounds like the same yadda-yadda about how we're all gonna die of [insert current intellectual fashion]. Some of it is. One can't be taken seriously, these days, unless one says that we're doomed - DOOOOOMED, I TELL YOU!!!!!!

Reminds me of the 'end times' chaps and their perennial apocalypse predictions - that that's almost another topic, too.

Back to First Apocalypse. What was running on History Channel this morning (which may be the same as the video they're selling) included the usual 'big rock killed the dinosaurs' thing. But it did a pretty good job of discussing the reasons for looking beyond that Yucatan impact for explanations.

The documentary suggests that between the Deccan traps, miscellaneous other impacts, changing landscapes, climate change, disease and parasites: the dinosaurs were on their way out when that big rock came down.

There was a particularly interesting bit about a nematode somebody found in a cockroach - which had been frozen in amber. The Lemming is getting off-topic again.

Cockroaches, Climate Change, and Humanity

Remember the Black Death? About a third of Europe died.

More to the point: in that global, species-threatening mega-disaster - two thirds of Europe didn't die.

The Lemming isn't trying to minimize the scope of that tragedy. But folks who weren't killed by the Black Death picked up the pieces of their culture, developed new social structures - and eventually discovered the usefulness of penicillin.

And microbes that aren't killed by penicillin. Which is another topic.

The point? It's like the one fellow in that documentary implied: Humans are about as hard to get rid of as cockroaches.

Finally, another one of the chaps interviewed (Physics of the Impossible's author, Michio Kaku) discussed the next ice age - which he said was coming in about 10,000 years.

He could be right about that - if we're in an interglacial period, that's when the next episode of continental glaciation is due. Give or take a few millennia.

But the last I checked, the jury's still out on whether or not we're at the end of the most recent set of ice ages - or in one of the more-or-less temporary thaws.

The Lemming's guess is that we'll know for sure - in about 10,000 years. And that folks will be around to argue about it then. And that cockroaches will still be nibbling their way through time.

Related posts:

• "Lemming Tracks: My Take on 'The Future' "
  (November 8, 2010)
• "Dinosaurs, Three Major Asteroid Impacts, and Massive Volcanic Eruptions"
  (August 29, 2010)
• "Lemming Tracks: Observations by an Opportunistic Omnivore"
  (April 20, 2010)
• "Remember When We were Doomed by the Coming Ice Age?"
  (February 17, 2010)
• "Frail, Delicate Little Mother Nature?!"
  (December 20, 2009)
• "That Was Close! Human Race Down to 2,000 Population"
  (April 25, 2008)
• "Sunspots? What Sunspots?"
  (April 25, 2008)
• "And Now, for Something Completely Different: The Medieval Climatic Optimum, The Little Ice Age, and Other Changes"
  (April 20, 2008)

---

More:

• "Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture"

Global Warming and Lost Documentation: 'Please Pay No Attention'

"Climate chief dismisses e-mail outrage"
CNN (December 8, 2009)

"One of the world's leading authorities on climate change has dismissed the contents of controversial e-mails leaked from the University of East Anglia as nothing more than friends and colleagues 'letting off steam.'

" 'Well, I can tell you, privately when I talk to my friends, I use language much worse than that. This was purely private communications between friends, between, colleagues, they were letting off steam. I think we should see it as nothing more than that,' Rajendra Pachauri, the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) told CNN...."

The problem isn't (just) the emails. It's the data that 'just happened' to get destroyed when people who weren't true believers wanted to take a look.

Oh, well, the message is clear enough: global warming is real, it's humanity's fault, and that's what we're all supposed to believe. The lost documentation? That's a non-event that never happened. Officially.

Related post:

• "Global Warming and Lost Documentation - Or, Change Happens: Deal With It"
  (December 1, 2009)

Global Warming and Lost Documentation - Or, Change Happens: Deal With It

"Nothing endures but change."
(Heraclitus, 540 BC - 480 BC)

Global warming is as big now as the communist menace was, in the "good old days" when I was growing up.

The ominous, imminent threat of global warming isn't pushed by the same sort that had the House Committee on Un-American Activities looking for commies in Hollywood. But I see the same sort of sincere, intense, irrational fear at work.

I'd better admit to a bias, before writing anything more in this post.

I accept the idea that things change.

I don't expect to live in a world where crocodiles gallop along verdant rivers of the Sahara.

I'm not at all surprised when cookbooks have no recipes calling for fresh trilobite.

I've watched a lake, here in central Minnesota, turn into a few ponds surrounded by marsh. And, although I haven't gotten close enough to check, I think some of the marsh is in turn becoming meadows.

Change happens.

---

"Climategate: Follow the Money"
OPINION: GLOBAL VIEW, The Wall Street Journal (December 1, 2009)
"Climate change researchers must believe in the reality of global warming just as a priest must believe in the existence of God."

"Last year, ExxonMobil donated $7 million to a grab-bag of public policy institutes, including the Aspen Institute, the Asia Society and Transparency International. It also gave a combined $125,000 to the Heritage Institute and the National Center for Policy Analysis, two conservative think tanks that have offered dissenting views on what until recently was called—without irony—the climate change 'consensus.'

"To read some of the press accounts of these gifts—amounting to about 0.00027% of Exxon's 2008 profits of $45 billion—you might think you'd hit upon the scandal of the age. But thanks to what now goes by the name of climategate, it turns out the real scandal lies elsewhere.

"Climategate, as readers of these pages know, concerns some of the world's leading climate scientists working in tandem to block freedom of information requests, blackball dissenting scientists, manipulate the peer-review process, and obscure, destroy or massage inconvenient temperature data—facts that were laid bare by last week's disclosure of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, or CRU.

"But the deeper question is why the scientists behaved this way to begin with, especially since the science behind man-made global warming is said to be firmly settled...."

Yes, that blogger has a bias, one which may be close to mine. Like me, he seems to prefer to form opinions on the basis of facts. Preferably, facts which aren't on documents that get lost as soon as someone wants to take a look.

Which leads into this news item:

---

"CRU data loss account in dispute"
Examiner, Minneapolis (December 1, 2009)

"The accounts of the accidental or willful loss of weather-station data by the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU) came into fresh dispute yesterday, after The Sunday Times (London) published their article saying that most of the data that form the basis of their climate-change models had been lost or discarded during a move to new quarters.

"Times Environment Editor Jonathan Leake published his report on Sunday (November 29), and cited past statements on the CRU's own website to support his report...."

True enough, it's (barely) possible that an organization could, while moving from one location to another, lose the documentation that's the foundation for one of their claims.

But likely? I don't think so. How often do you hear about a business that moves from one office to the other - and loses all its contracts and accounts-receivable books in the process?

Sure, 'it's not the same thing.'

On the one hand are stalwart scientists bravely telling us that Earth is warming up too much - based on data they just happened to lose, now that people want to take a look at the documentation.

On the other hand, let's say a company has been under investigation for swindling its stockholders: and just happens to lose its records before they're subpoenaed. How many people wouldn't think that was an odd coincidence, at best?

---

"Climate science's PR disaster"
Opinions, The Globe and Mail (undated, probably posted late November, 2009, or December 1, 2009)
" 'Climategate' brings a long-running and bitter battle into the open"

"Steve McIntyre is a mild-mannered Toronto businessman who dabbles in statistics as a hobby. But to some climate scientists, he's Public Enemy No.1. They mention him often in their e-mails and try to make sure his criticisms of their work aren't published. 'They're really showing a siege mentality,' he says.

"Mr. McIntyre is a bit player in a scandal that has swept the world of climate science like a mighty hurricane. It features leading scientists who, to the conspiratorially minded, seem to be colluding to manipulate data, withhold information, delete records and stifle dissent. 'The worst scientific scandal of our generation,' declared one opinion writer in the Telegraph. Not quite. But the so-called 'Climategate' affair – thousands of hacked e-mails made public on the eve of the Copenhagen convention – gives a pile of ammunition to those who believe global warming is a giant boondoggle.

"The damaging e-mails were hacked from the servers of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. Its temperature databases provide much of the case for global warming. Some of them appear pretty damning. One says, 'The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't.' Another refers to a 'trick' that can be used to 'hide the decline' in temperature. One from Phil Jones, the centre's director, says, 'I will be e-mailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.'..."

"PR Disaster"? Yeah, You Could Put it That Way

- - - Just like creating the Hollywood blacklist and letting Senator Joseph McCarthy establish "McCarthyism" a word meaning "unscrupulously accusing people of disloyalty (as by saying they were Communists)" was a PR disaster for commie-hunters. (definition from Princeton's WordNet)

Me? I'm a heretic, academically speaking. For one thing, I don't think that global warming is caused by big, bad, imperialistic, capitalistic plutocrats; or - ah, belching - cows; or human beings, somehow.

If the oppressor classes, flatulent bovines, or generally icky humans are to "blame" for the current state of change, then how come climates are changing on other planets in the solar system, too? (September 26, 2009)

Oh, right: we're not supposed to ask questions like that.

Related posts:

• "Ancient Galloping Crocodile"
  (November 19, 2009)
• "Global Warming, End Times - 'We're All Gonna Die' Over the Last 45 Years Or So"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (October 3, 2009)
• "Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture"
  (September 26, 2009)
• "The Ice is Falling! Runaway Melt Mode! And You Should See What's Happening to Minnesota Trees!"
  (September 23, 2009)
• "Earth Day 2009: Don't Stop Breathing to Save Earth"
  (April 22, 2009)
• "Antarctic Ice Cap Didn't Get the Memo"
  (April 18, 2009)
• "American Academic Institutions: Impartial, Neutral, Nonpartisan, Dispassionate"
  Another War-on-Terror Blog (April 29, 2008)
  Particularly the discussion of
  • two people:
    • Dr. William Gray
    • Ben
• "Sunspots? What Sunspots?"
  (April 25, 2008)
• " 'My Mind's Made Up: Don't Confuse Me With the Facts' "
  (March 3, 2008)
• "Global Warming, and We're All Gonna Die?"
  (August 27, 2007)
• "Climate Data, Global Warming, and a Y2K Bug"
  (August 15, 2007)

Background:

• "Prehistoric Time Line"
  Science and Space, National Geographic
• "Ice Age Explanation"
  Scott "Welcome to the world of Ice Age Paleoecology!" Elias, Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research Site
  • It's only fair to warn you: some of the ice age information is heretical
• "Ice Ages"
  Canadian Museum of Nature
  • Mentions four of the seven major ice ages:
    • about 2 million years ago to the present—the Quaternary Ice Age
    • 350 to 250 million years ago—the Karoo Ice Age
    • 800 to 600 million years ago—the Cryogenian (or Sturtian-Varangian) Ice Age
    • 2400 to 2100 million years ago—the Huronian Ice Age

Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture

A tick or two of the cosmic clock, posts about humanity's development, and what's happened on Earth for the last 4,500,000,000 or so years:

• "Fishface! Ancient Fish with a Jaw, Cheekbones, and Beady Little Eyes"
  (September 27, 2013)
• "Another - Thing - From the Burgess Shale"
  (July 5, 2013)
• "Another 17,000,000 Years on the Coelacanth Timeline"
  (April 16, 2012)
• "Lemming Tracks: Fire; 1,000,000 Years of Sizzling Steaks and Burned Fingers"
  (April 9, 2012)
• "That's the Size of It: Eames Video of the Universe"
  (February 27, 2012)
• "Chimps, Genes, and Reading Past the Headline"
  (October 31, 2011)
• "Nutcracker Man,' Big Teeth, and - - - Grass?!"
  (May 6, 2011)
• "Apex Chert: Microfossils, Microfractures, or Maybe Both"
  (April 23, 2011)
• "Snakes Don't Have Legs: There's an Explanation For That"
  (February 8, 2011)
• "Life is On the Clock - And Has Been for a Very Long Time"
  (January 29, 2011)
• "New Clue in Human Evolution: It's All in the Wrist"
  (January 28, 2011)
• "Neanderthal: Big Nose, Big Mystery"
  (January 15, 2011)
• "Winery in Armenia: Earliest Found So Far"
  (January 11, 2011)
• "Forgotten for 14,000,000 Years, Waiting Under the Ice"
  (January 8, 2011)
• "Autism, Childhood Vaccines, Bogus Research, and the Lemming"
  (January 6, 2011)
  Particularly
  • Change Happens: Deal With It
• "Teeth: Human, Very Old, and in an Unexpected Place"
  (December 29, 2010)
• "Ecological Disaster - a Quarter of a Billion Years Ago"
  (December 14, 2010)
• "Climate Change is the New Global Warming?"
  (December 6, 2010)
• "Mastodons, Mammoths, and Wood That's Been Chewed"
  (November 20, 2010)
• "Lemming Tracks: Ice Age, Global Warming, Climate Change, and Living Scared"
  (November 19, 2010)
• "Growing Up Neanderthal: Another New Look"
  (November 15, 2010)
• "Growing Up Neanderthal: A New Look"
  (November 8, 2010)
• "Very Old, Quite Small, Lamprey: A Big Deal for Scientists"
  (November 3, 2010)
• "Really Big Dragonflies: Oxygen's What Does It"
  (November 3, 2010)
• "Early Life, an Asteroid, Ice, and Fossils"
  (October 19, 2010)
• "Evidence of Human Compassion: 500,000 Years Ago"
  (October 13, 2010)
• "Gliese 581g, Space Aliens, and the Canals of Mars"
  (October 12, 2010)
• "Gliese 581g, Alien Angst, and the Lemming"
  (October 4, 2010)
• "Nuclear Weapons, Space Aliens, Conspiracy Theories, and Getting a Grip"
  (September 24, 2010)
• "Cambrian Explosion Evidence: Burgess Shale Fossils aren't Alone"
  (September 12, 2010)
• "Ecological Disaster - a Third of a Billion Years Ago"
  (September 30, 2010)
• "Two Thirds of a Billion Years Ago: Earth's First Animals?"
  (August 18, 2010)
• "Earliest Known Tool Use: 3,390,000 Years Ago"
  (August 12, 2010)
• "Age of the Earth, Illustrated: Almost A Century Ago"
  (August 10, 2010)
• "Himalayan Frogs Shake Up Geologists' Assumption"
  (August 9, 2010)
• "Ötzi the Iceman's DNA"
  (August 6, 2010)
• "Sea Sponge Genes: More Interesting Than You'd Think"
  (August 5, 2010)
• "Fire Ants, Stress, and Twitchy Lizards"
  (August 3, 2010)
• "Asteroid 1999 RQ36 Won't Hit Earth in 2182: Probably"
  (July 30, 2010)
• "Mississippi River, Glaciers, and a Whacking Great Earthquake"
  (July 30, 2010)
• "Four Legs, a Tail, and Tracks a Third of a Billion Years Old"
  (July 26, 2010)
• "People in Britain 800,000 Years Ago: Pollen, Mammoth Bones, and Tools"
  (July 8, 2010)
• "Putting the Bite on an Old Assumption About Human Jaws"
  (June 29, 2010)
• "Neanderthals, Teeth, Us, and an Ongoing Puzzle"
  (June 25, 2010)
• "Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes, 'Dominant' Faces and a New Mystery"
  (June 17, 2010)
• "Our Sun's Sunspot Cycle Isn't All That Predictable"
  (June 16, 2010)
• "Early Earth Didn't Freeze: Why?!"
  (June 6, 2010)
• "Asteroid Crater Under the Timor Sea: It Could Happen Again"
  (June 3, 2010
• "Homo Gautengensis: Big Teeth, Tiny Brain, Fire, Stone Tools; and a New Puzzle"
  (May 21, 2010)
• "Neanderthals and Me: New Data About Old Relatives"
  (May 7, 2010)
• "Tanning Beds, Addiction, and Pale Mutants"
  (April 21, 2010)
• "Earth Day, 2010 - or - We Won: Deal With It"
  (April 22, 2010)
• "East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit: Science Okay; Reporting, Not So Much"
  (April 16, 2010)
• "Animals That Don't Need Oxygen - It Gets Weirder"
  (April 9, 2010)
• "New Member of the Human Evolutionary Family: Or, Not"
  (March 25, 2010)
• "Utah Dinosaur Buried Alive? Bad News for Dino, Good News for Paleontologists"
  (March 24, 2010)
• "Dinosaurs, Runaway Volcanism, Change, and Evolution"
  (March 24, 2010)
• " 'Snowball Earth,' Evolution, and Really Old Rocks"
  (March 16, 2010)
• "Etched Ostrich Eggs and Being Human"
  (March 3, 2010)
• "Earthquakes, Nuclear Winter, the End of the World, and All That"
  (February 28, 2010)
• "Something Was Crawling on the Precambrian Mud"
  (February 19, 2010)
• "Exploding Star: Not, I Think, a Jor El Moment, But Interesting"
  (January 5, 2010)
• "Homo Erectus, Kitchens, and Human (Pre)History"
  (December 21, 2009)
• "Frail, Delicate Little Mother Nature?!"
  (December 20, 2009)
• "Global Warming: on Pluto. And Mars"
  (December 14, 2009)
• "Lemming Tracks: NYT 'People Of Color' Gift Guide, Racism, and Getting a Grip"
  (December 9, 2009)
• "Global Warming and Lost Documentation: 'Please Pay No Attention' "
  (December 8, 2009)
• "Global Warming and Lost Documentation - Or, Change Happens: Deal With It"
  (December 1, 2009)
• "You Mean Germans, Japanese and Kenyans aren't All Alike?!"
  (October 29, 2009)
• "Trilobites, Arthropods, Evolution, and Why Mothra Isn't Real"
  (October 17, 2009)
• "Laacher See Supervolcano Eruption: You Think You Had a Bad Day?!"
  (September 26, 2009)
• "The Unchanging Sun and Earth's Climate"
  (August 28, 2009)
• "There Weren't Many Neanderthals - Which is Why They Died Out?!"
  (July 17, 2009)
• "Early Humans: Climbing/Walking Tradeoff Pushed Back"
  (April 30, 2009)
• "Hurdia Victoria: Cambrian Supercritter of the Burgess Shale"
  (March 20, 2009)
• "Ötzi, Tattoos, Acupuncture, and Things We Don't Know"
  (March 5, 2009)
• "Silly Science: Hourglass Figure Not Good for Women"
  (December 17, 2008)
• "That Was Close! Human Race Down to 2,000 Population"
  (April 25, 2008)
• "World History Timeline"
  (March 30, 2008)
• "Neanderthals Didn't Look Like Us: and it Didn't Matter"
  (March 24, 2008)
• "Africans, Europeans, Asians, and Other Ethnic Groups: Humanity's Family History Gets Updated (Four Articles and an Abstract)"
  (February 23, 2008)
• "Agriculture as a Mistake"
  (October 29, 2007)
• "A Useful Appendix, and the 'Hygiene Hypothesis' "
  (October 23, 2007)
• " 'Journey of Mankind:' 160,000 Years of Ups and Downs"
  (November 1, 2007)
• "Language, Verbs, and How Our Brains Work"
  (October 17, 2007)

Earlier this week, I posted one of my favorite quotes:

About the 'laws of Nature' -

" 'Your mistake is to think that the little regularities we have observed on one planet for a few hundred years are the real unbreakable laws....' "

Grace Ironwood, Chapter 17.4, "That Hideous Strength" C. S. Lewis (1946)
(September 23, 2009)

The same day, I posted a micro-review & mini-rant about one of those standard-issue global warming articles. (September 23, 2009)

I like trees and flowers and spotted owls as much as anyone: but I know a little too much about Earth to get on the 'Earth now' bandwagon. Particularly considering the lack of unanimity among scientists who actually make their living studying climate - and the way heretics are shouted down - I suspect that global warming is as serious a threat as the runaway defoliation we're experiencing here in Minnesota.

Which I do not think was caused by my putting out extra hummingbird nectar a few weeks ago. ("The Ice is Falling! Runaway Melt Mode! And You Should See What's Happening to Minnesota Trees!" (September 23, 2009))

I don't doubt that Earth's warmed up a trifle in the last few decades. Other planets orbiting our sun have, too.¹

News Cycles, Seasonal Cycles, Change, and the Big Picture

As I wrote before, there's a reason you don't see recipes calling for fresh trilobite. Change happens.

"Americans are known to have a tough time with the concept of 'long term.' I once lived in Europe. Before leaving the United States, I was listening to an American newscast that talked about a company's future 'long term.' The news story then went on to say that, by long term, it meant the company's performance over the next five quarters - barely more than a year! Several months later, while in Europe, I was introduced to some people by my Dutch colleagues. While doing the introduction, they explained that I was in the country 'tijdelijk' - meaning temporarily. I was scheduled to stay for three years. I thought back to the American newscast and wondered how they would take that comment from my Dutch acquaintances."
("What's Your Definition of Long Term?" p. 28, "Start Your Own Home Business ... In No Time" Carol Anne Carroll, Que Publishing, Indianapolis, Indiana (2005))

I can see how people who grew up in a culture where 15 months was "long term" might have trouble thinking about changes - and cycles - that take more than a year.

American news, at least, is a 24/7/365 affair in which a story might be at the top of the news in the morning, people's reactions would highlight the afternoon news, and - if the event were enormously important - it might be mentioned the next day.

A Wikipedia article called this the 24-Hour News Cycle. Americans don't seem to have much of a problem noticing events that recur on a daily, weekly, or even annual basis.

Cycles that take more than a year - maybe not so much.

Paradoxically, in a culture where technological and social change is almost proverbially fast-paced, some American subcultures seem disturbed at the idea that life on Earth - and Earth itself - changes.

An overview of the last 4,500,000,000 or so years on Earth:

• "Hadean time: 4.5 to 3.8 billion years ago"
• "Introduction to the Archaean 3.8 to 2.5 billion years ago"
• "Introduction to the Proterozoic Era 2.5 billion to 543 million years ago"
  • "Introduction to the Vendian Period 650 to 543 Million Years Ago"
• "The Paleozoic Era 543 to 248 Million Years Ago"
  • "The Cambrian Period 543 to 490 Million Years Ago"
    • "The Tommotian Age 530 Million Years Ago"
  • "The Ordovician 490 to 443 Million Years Ago"
  • "The Silurian 443 to 417 Million Years Ago"
  • "The Devonian 417 to 354 Million Years Ago"
  • "The Carboniferous 354 to 290 Million Years Ago"
  • "The Permian 290 to 248 Million Years Ago"
• "Introduction to the Mesozoic Era 248 to 65 Million Years Ago"
  • "The Triassic Period 248 to 206 Million Years Ago"
  • "The Jurassic Period 206 to 144 Million Years Ago"
  • "The Cretaceous Period 144 to 65 Million Years Ago"
• "Introduction to the Cenozoic 65 Million Years to the Present"
  • Tertiary (65 to 1.8 mya)
    • "The Paleocene Epoch 65 to 54.8 mya"
    • "The Eocene Epoch 54.8 to 33.7 mya"
    • "The Oligocene Epoch 33.7 to 23.8 mya"
    • "The Miocene Epoch 23.8 to 5.3 mya"
    • "The Pliocene Epoch 5.3 to 1.8 mya"
  • Quaternary (1.8 mya to today)
    • "The Pleistocene 1.8 million to ~10,000 years ago"
    • "The Holocene The last ~10,000 years"
• News Time: The Last Few Days
  (Sources: University of California Museum of Paleontology and CNN)

(from "The Ice is Falling! Runaway Melt Mode! And You Should See What's Happening to Minnesota Trees!" (September 23, 2009)

---

¹ Climate Change, from Space.com

• "Jupiter's Spots Disappear Amid Major Climate Change"
  (21 April 2004)
• "Mars Emerging from Ice Age, Data Suggest"
  (08 December 2003)
• "Sun's Output Increasing in Possible Trend Fueling Global Warming"
  (20 March 2003)
• "Global Warming on Pluto Puzzles Scientists"
  (09 October 2002)

(from "Masdar City Video - Looks Cool " (September 9, 2009))