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 "

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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)

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More:

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

Lemming Tracks: My Take on 'The Future'

The Lemming ran into another one of those 'what the future may be like' articles. There's the usual stuff: and I didn't think it warranted mention.

Besides, I want to brag about what I've done.

I plan to be back in a few hours, with micro-reviews of - whatever I find that's interesting.

Now, about my stuff. Maybe you already know about this blog's link page for posts about 'the future:'

• "The Future: Just Like Today, Only Different"

I started going back through this blog's posts in October, 2009, looking for posts that were about the future, one way or another. That took me all the way back to " 'The Future Isn't What it Used To Be' " (August 22, 2007).

I've been keeping "The Future: Just Like Today, Only Different" updated since then. The two most recent additions:

• Robots (and waldos)
  • "Driverless Van: Nifty Concept; Apparently Works"
    (October 28, 2010)
• "Future" technology
  • "Yves Rossy and His Flying Backpack"
    (October 30, 2010)

The Lemming, as I've discussed before, is "apathetic" only in the sense that I don't keep up with the crisis du jure.

As I point out in that "About the Lemming" page: "Since my priorities don't even come close to the stereotype Starbucks-frequenting, Armani-wearing, New York Times reader, I must be 'apathetic.' "

Also, since I was born during the Truman administration: I've been living in "the future" for quite some time now. It wasn't quite as-advertised. No food riots, the coming ice age didn't, and we still don't have a helicopter in every garage.

Probably just as well, in the case of those personal helicopters. Can you imagine what a traffic jam would be like?

The Future: All Good? All Bad?

The Lemming isn't fashionably pessimistic: I've seen too many 'end of civilization as we know it' predictions fizzle, and know a little too much about the last few billion years of Earth's history to get all that excited about statistical blips from the weather service. More about that in "Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture," another link page.

The Lemming didn't retain the unreasonably rosy notion of Progress that was fading in my early years. But I didn't buy into the 'and we're all gonna die' attitude that followed it, either.

I mentioned my take on Progress in a post about the Gliese 581 planetary system. (October 4, 2010) And discussed it in a post in another blog: "The Pope, Science, and Technology: My Take," A Catholic Citizen in America (October 30, 2010))

Change Happens

One thing I've noticed, over the last half-century or so: Change happens.

I'm okay with that.

Lemming Tracks: Solar Double Header

The Lemming has a pair of articles again. ("Asteroid Double Header" (October 6, 2010)) This time they're about the sun, Earth, some new data, and what folks who study such things think of it.

That's the interesting part of this post.

The Lemming's also got a rant - but that's at the end, starting with "On the other hand," after the second article's excerpt.

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"Sun's Surprise: Even As It Relaxes, It May Heat Earth's Climate"
Space.com (October 6, 2010)

"As the ultimate source of all the energy on Earth, the sun has an inextricable hand in driving our planet's climate and atmosphere. But a new look at the sun's connection to Earth's climate has returned some surprising results.

"The study finds that during the most recent lull in the sun's weather cycle, the amount of energy that reached Earth increased, instead of decreasing as predicted. The planet may have experienced a slight warming effect as well, researchers said....

"...As the sun becomes less active, it typically releases less energy in the form of radiation. Previously, this was understood as a decrease in the total amount of radiation that reaches the top of the Earth's atmosphere.

"In examining solar emissions during this declining phase, however, the researchers found that a large decrease in ultraviolet radiation was roughly compensated for, by an increase in visible radiation.

" 'Visible radiation is the only kind that, in any substantial quality, gets to the Earth's surface and heats the lower atmosphere,' Haigh told SPACE.com. 'We found that as the sun's activity declined from 2004 to 2007, more of this radiation was entering into the lower atmosphere.'..."

There's more in the article - detail on what's been noticed recently, and what we're pretty sure about when it comes to the sunspot cycle on our star. Interesting stuff, for folks who find that sort of thing interesting.

The Lemming thinks that this new set of data suggests that the sun has an effect on Earth's climate.

As if that wasn't enough shocking news for one day, here's something from another source:

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"When the Sun Heats Up, Earth...Cools?"
John D. Cox, Earth News, Discovery News (October 6, 2010)

"The Earthly impact of the Sun's 11-year solar cycle has always seemed like one of the more reliable and straightforward elements in the vast array of climate variables. On the rise, solar radiation increases and so warms the planet a little -- the thinking goes -- and on the way down a subtle cooling takes place.

"Now, a new piece of research argues that's not necessarily so. Looking inside at the individual wavelengths of solar radiance as measured by a satellite-borne device called the Spectral Irradiance Monitor, scientists report that in their study of these measurements during the declining phase of the solar cycle between 2004 and 2007, the opposite pattern emerges...."

Seriously? This is a relatively short, fairly non-technical writeup about some new data and analysis - and includes this statement:

" 'We cannot jump to any conclusions based on what we have found during this comparatively short period and we need to carry out further studies to explore the Sun's activity, and the patterns that we have uncovered, on longer timescales. However, if further studies find the same pattern over a longer period of time, this could suggest that we may have overestimated the Sun's role in warming the planet, rather than underestimating it.' "
(Physicist Joanna Haigh of Imperial College, via Discovery News)

The Lemming takes that statement with a grain of salt. The caution is commendable - assuming that it stems from an unwillingness to start reasoning ahead of the data.

On the other hand, the idea that something other than Big Oil and capitalists is behind global warming is - well, not exactly welcome in much of academia. Physicists and other academic professionals have their careers to consider, as well as facts. (Another War-on-Terror Blog (April 29, 2008))

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Science, Change, Assumptions, and the Lemming

The Lemming isn't on the same page as folks who take Bishop Ussher seriously. He's the chap who decided that the world was created over a particular six-day period in 4004 BC. He used references to the Bible: which proves, for some folks, that he's right. And that nothing much has changed since then. At all. Except for some details of human society - that'd be hard to ignore.

The Lemming also isn't on the same page as folks who think that the universe popped into existence billions and billions of years ago and went through ages and ages of cataclysmic evolutionary change. Until somewhere in the 19th century, after which all change was somebody's fault.

Actually, the Lemming is okay with that second paragraph - until the last sentence. I've discussed this in another blog. (A Catholic Citizen in America (September 23, 2010))

(If you think the Lemming is trying to spark interest in his other blogs, with these links - you're probably right.)

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Change Happens

Earth may be warming at the moment. That's likely enough: We're coming out of (or still in) the most recent of Earth's periods of continental glaciation. (July 30, 2010)

Or, maybe Earth is cooling - that's what available data showed about a half-century back. We got some dandy 'scare' articles and several pretty-good science fiction stories out of that set of data.

I've noticed that, these days, the coming ice age is discussed about as much as that famous butterfly expert's apocalyptic visions of impending doom. (April 20, 2010)

I think that what both folks who take Bishop Ussher seriously, and those who are convinced that we're doomed by whatever crisis is now and wow, have in common is a very human reaction to change. Most of us, I think, got used to the world as it was when we were young(er).

For example, I got used to seeing a particular lake, here in central Minnesota. I've been watching it change into a meadow with a few ponds. I miss that lake: during the seventies its reflective surface was a treat for the eyes as I made regular trips on Interstate 94. Another few decades, and it'll be all meadow.

I don't think it's anybody's fault, though. That's what happens to these bodies of water, left over from the last glaciation in this part of the world. Another few centuries or millennia - and all of Minnesota's lakes will be gone.

Like I said, change happens.

Looking at what we've discovered about what's happened in the last few billion years - and assuming that the nature of reality didn't change about a hundred and fifty years back - isn't a popular idea in some quarters.

Earth is Changing

One of the few things the Lemming is fairly certain of is that, a thousand years from now, things won't be just like they are now.

Does that mean that I care not for the environment and cute fuzzy animals? Certainly not. I like cute fuzzy animals. And I think it's stupid to act as though we don't need to be careful about what we do with waste products.

But I also think it's a trifle daft to act as if all of delicate, frail little Mother Nature is doomed, dooooomed, unless we whack the human population down to some arbitrary number, outlaw SUVs, go vegetarian, or whatever the current 'gotta do' thing is. (December 20, 2009)

Don't worry - the next post will be lighter.

Sort-of-related posts:

• "Lemming Tracks: Observations by an Opportunistic Omnivore"
  (April 20, 2010)
• "'Snowball Earth,' Evolution, and Really Old Rocks"
  (March 16, 2010)
• "Global Warming: on Pluto. And Mars"
  (December 14, 2009)
• "The Unchanging Sun and Earth's Climate"
  (August 28, 2009)

More:

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

East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit: Science Okay; Reporting, Not So Much

"Climate scientists at East Anglia University cleared by inquiry"
Times Online (London) (April 14, 2010)

" Climate scientists at the centre of the row over stolen e-mails acted with integrity and made no attempt to manipulate their research on global temperatures, an external inquiry has found.

"Their research was, however, misrepresented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which failed to reflect uncertainties the scientists had reported concerning the raw temperature data.

"An inquiry panel of leading scientists, nominated by the Royal Society, said that the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit may not have used the best methods for analysing temperature records.

"The unit had also failed to store all its data and keep full records of exactly what it had done, preventing other scientists from checking all its findings.

"But after interviewing the unit's scientists and studying 11 of their reports, the panel concluded: 'We found them to be objective and dispassionate in their view of the data and their results, and there was no hint of tailoring results to a particular agenda...'...."

I'm inclined to take the Times Online article at face value. It's not that I have blind faith in scientists, and think that they are a breed apart which simply cannot be wrong.

Particularly in a post-Watergate world, I really didn't want to believe that a bunch of scientists could have, cold-sober, cooked up ersatz climate data and then shredded the evidence. If nothing else, I'd think that if they were lying - they'd be sharp enough to fake the records.

Data getting lost or destroyed in a move? Yeah: that I can see happening. Accidentally.

I'm not surprised that their research was "misrepresented" by a others. Like so much else that serious researchers deal with, the temperature data included uncertainties.

I can see the panel's point of view, sort of. When you've got a particular result that you just simply know has got to be true because you know it is - it'd be awfully easy to forget about bothersome uncertainties.

Have I No Heart? Am I Not Appalled At the Impending End of the World?

That four-chambered pump in my chest is still operating within normal parameters. And, addressing the metaphor, yes: I care. I think it's a good idea to have rules for how waste is handled. I even think that building codes are, on the whole, a good idea. (As Haiti found out, the hard way.)

But I'm not upset that it's impossible to get fresh trilobite these days.

I have no doubt that the climate is changing. When I was growing up, some folks were convinced - based on a trend or two - that another ice age was coming.

They could be right about that: The last I heard, the jury is still out on whether we're still in the most recent of Earth's major periods of continental glaciation, or just coming out of it. A few thousand years from now, with more data and (I hope) better analytical methods, we'll be in a better position to opine.

For the last several years, we've been told that global warming will doom us.

Let's put it this way: I live in Minnesota. Even in August, it's hard to work up a serious fear of longer summers.

And yes, I know: terrible, awful things could happen.

Or, not.

Related posts:

• "Earth Didn't Freeze Over - Why?"
  (April 1, 2010)
• "Dinosaurs, Runaway Volcanism, Change, and Evolution"
  (March 24, 2010)
• "Earthquakes, Nuclear Winter, the End of the World, and All That"
  (February 28, 2010)
  • "Nuclear winter" was what would happen after WWIII
• "Global Warming: on Pluto. And Mars"
  (December 14, 2009)
• "Global Warming and Lost Documentation - Or, Change Happens: Deal With It"
  (December 1, 2009)
• "- - - 'And We're All Gonna Die!' "
  Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (June 30, 2009)

More:

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

Global Warming: on Pluto. And Mars

"Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth and Other Worlds"
LiveScience (March 12, 2007 )

"Earth is heating up lately, but so are Mars, Pluto and other worlds in our solar system, leading some scientists to speculate that a change in the sun’s activity is the common thread linking all these baking events.

"Others argue that such claims are misleading and create the false impression that rapid global warming, as Earth is experiencing, is a natural phenomenon.

"While evidence suggests fluctuations in solar activity can affect climate on Earth, and that it has done so in the past, the majority¹ of climate scientists and astrophysicists agree that the sun is not to blame for the current and historically sudden uptick in global temperatures on Earth, which seems to be mostly a mess created by our own species...."

Okay: 'Everybody knows' that factories and strip mines and strip malls and western greed and stuff like that cause global warming which is gonna kill us all.

Me? I remember when the coming ice age was gonna kill us all. And everything caused cancer. Also, that the second coming was due in about three to five years. After a while, it gets really hard to work up enthusiasm for these predictions of doom.

They make great stories, though.

Related posts:

• "September 26, 2009
  Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture"
  (last updated December 14, 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)
• "Global Warming, End Times - 'We're All Gonna Die' Over the Last 45 Years Or So"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (October 3, 2009)
• "The Ice is Falling! Runaway Melt Mode! And You Should See What's Happening to Minnesota Trees!"
  (September 23, 2009)
• "American Academic Institutions: Impartial, Neutral, Nonpartisan, Dispassionate"
  Another War-on-Terror Blog (April 29, 2008)
• " 'My Mind's Made Up: Don't Confuse Me With the Facts' "
  (March 3, 2008)
• "Statistics for the Non-Statistician"
  (August 26, 2007)

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¹ The majority, that is, of scientists who believe in global warming as a symptom of big bad humanity's ongoing rape of Mother Earth: and/or who are employed and want to stay that way. (April 29, 2008, in another blog: I am extremely glad to be out of the academic racket.)

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.

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"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:

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"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?

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"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

The Ice is Falling! Runaway Melt Mode! And You Should See What's Happening to Minnesota Trees!

"Greenland, Antarctic Ice 'in Runaway Melt Mode' "
The Associated Press, via FOXNews (Wednesday, September 23, 2009)

"New satellite information shows that ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica continue to shrink faster than scientists thought and in some places are already in runaway melt mode.

"British scientists for the first time calculated changes in the height of the vulnerable but massive ice sheets and found them especially worse at their edges. That is where warmer water eats away from below. In some parts of Antarctica, ice sheets have been losing 30 feet a year in thickness since 2003, according to a paper published online Thursday in the journal Nature...."

Well, that's interesting.

I'm not sure whether the Nature journal article will be published tomorrow, and this is a pre-publication piece; or if it was published six days ago.

Either way, like I said, it's interesting.

I'm not going to start crying out, 'the ice is falling, the ice is falling,' though.

It's not that I doubt the data. It's consistent with a post from April 18, 2009 about conditions in Antarctica. Ice is breaking off the 'western' part of Antarctica, like it does every 10 to 50 years - and getting thicker elsewhere.

This AP article is a pretty good read, though - and shows what sort of data we can collect these days. As for the conclusions: there's a old adage in academic circles, "publish or perish."

Academics, Show Biz, Shakespeare, and The Matrix

A professor's career depends, in large part, on how many papers he or she can publish, and how well they're received. In that respect, it's sort of like show business: you're only as good as your last review.

In one of my fields, English, I think that 'publish or perish' pressure was part of the force behind papers and articles showing how Shakespeare didn't really write Shakespeare. The underlying truth is that William Shakespeare's plays were commercial productions.

William had a financial interest in the Globe theater, and didn't mind writing material for the actors. This was before international copyright laws, so the Bard of Avon did his research, found plays written in other countries, took their characters and general outlines, and came up with commercial hack-work like Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.

Some of Shakespeare's plays are, demonstrably, re-writes of earlier works: which would have remained in richly-deserved anonymity if Shakespeare hadn't applied his considerable linguistic and dramatic talents to reviving them.

Some of those 'Shakespeare Didn't Write Shakespeare' pieces used the sort of logic that would let you say that "The Matrix" is just a remake of Kronos. (Well? They're both about robots, aren't they?! Sort of?)

Change Happens - Deal With It

There's a reason that you won't find too many recipes calling for fresh trilobite.

That's because none of the 20,000 or species of trilobites are around - and haven't been for around 248,000,000 years. I'm no expert - but I don't think that SUVs had anything to do with the Permian extinction.

The point is that change happens.

Runaway Defoliation and the Hummingbird Feeder

Right now, runaway defoliation is devastating central Minnesota's ecosystem even as I write. Although some trees are still green, even they show signs of wilting; many trees are no longer green, and leaves are falling uncontrollably from their branches; and some trees are completely bare!

If this alarming trend continues, soon there will not be a single leaf on any tree!

Sound silly? I hope so. Here in the northern tier of states, we go through this sort of thing every 365 days or so, starting sometime around the autumnal equinox. Some areas have a tourist trade centered around folks coming to see the fall colors.

The annual change of seasons happens so fast, and is so (comparatively) regular, that people can hardly help but be aware of it. We've become aware of an 11-year cycle in our sun's energy output; and there are tantalizing indications of long climate cycles, taking thousands to millions of years to run their course.

About the runaway defoliation that's denuding Minnesota's trees - and halting their contribution of oxygen to Earth's atmosphere - I'm not all that worried. I've been through this cycle dozens of times.

And, I'm quite certain that I didn't set off this cataclysmic ecological change by putting extra nectar in the hummingbird feeder, at the beginning of this month.

Related posts:

• "Bringing Back the Dinosaurs: Not a Crazy Idea Any More"
  (June 29, 2009)
• "Antarctic Ice Cap Didn't Get the Memo"
  (April 18, 2009)
• "Peta Protests on World of Warcraft - I am Not Making This Up"
  (April 17, 2009)
• "Ancient Antarctic Ecosystem: Isolated for Millions of Years"
  (April 16, 2009)
• "Big Changes on a Big Planet: Red Spot on Jupiter Has Company"
  (May 27, 2008)
• "Sunspots? What Sunspots?"
  (April 25, 2008)
• "'My Mind's Made Up: Don't Confuse Me With the Facts' "
  (March 3, 2008)
• "No Hope of Nobel Prize for This Lot: U.S. Senators and Global Warming"
  (December 25, 2007)
• "Stop Global Warming: Upgrade Trees?"
  (November 6, 2007)
• " 'Journey of Mankind:' 160,000 Years of Ups and Downs"
  (November 1, 2007)
• "Climate Data, Global Warming, and a Y2K Bug"
  (August 15, 2007)

Background:

• A Guide to the Orders of Trilobites
• Western Trilobite Association
• The Paleontological Society
• "about Trilobites"
  Fossil Mall
• "Permian"
  Timeline
• An overview of the last 4,500,000,000 or so years
  • "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)

---

More about change and getting a grip, at:

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

Red River Valley of the North Flood, 2009: April 20

News as I ran across it this evening:

---

"Spy plane shows worth as flood-fighting tool"
The Southern Ledger (April 14, 2009)


(from Southern Ledger, used w/o permission)

"As the swollen Red River threatened Fargo this spring, thousands of eyes were trained on the city's miles of sandbag walls. But just in case the townspeople missed something, the eye in the sky was watching, too.

"A Predator drone of the sort used by the American military to launch missile strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan was sent up three times in recent weeks to give officials a bird's-eye view of the floodwaters, marking the first time one of the unmanned, remote-controlled planes has been used for flood-fighting in the U.S.

"Equipped with radar and infrared cameras that can see in the dark and peer through clouds, the aircraft provided remarkably detailed, real-time video images of ice floes, flood patterns and any trouble spots along the levees...."

I remember when lines like "sensors indicate three life forms" were, literally, the stuff of Star Trek.

Last month, I'm pretty sure the pilot flying a drone from a base in Grand Forks didn't say "life forms" or "sensors" - but that's what was being done. The Predator's radar and infrared 'sensors' were a valuable tool during the flood.

There's been a heavy military presence on the American side of the border during this flood: many of the soldiers were National Guardsmen either building dikes to save their own neighborhoods; or defending someone else's home while theirs either stayed dry - or not.

---

Caution! This link, quote, and micro-review are not politically correct.
Repeating data or opinions expressed here in an academic setting may be harmful to your academic career.
"Obama flunks Global Warming 101 on Fargo"
Canada Free Press (April 20, 2009)

" 'When the freedom they wished for most was the freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and never was free again.' Edith Hamilton.

"President Obama used recent flooding in Fargo, North Dakota to push his misguided belief in global warming. His comment, 'If you look at the flooding that's going on right now in North Dakota and you say to yourself, "If you see an increase of two degrees, what does that do, in terms of the situation there?" ' is speculative and completely wrong.

"A two-degree warmer North Dakota would mean less snowfall, therefore less flooding. Spring flooding along the Red River of the north is due to snow melt and the geography of the region. This year the cold winter caused heavy snow in the south basin and all across the northern continental US. Obama's comments do what the focus on global warming does; diverts us from real issues. In this case it is flooding and people living in naturally high-risk areas...."

There's quite a bit of information - including maps - about the last major glaciation in North America in this op-ed piece, as well as some informed opinions that defy the doctrine of Global Warming.

I'm old enough to remember when an ice age was going to come in a few centuries, or maybe a few thousand years. That speculation was alarmist, but had a fairly solid factual base. The coming glaciation was seen as a continuation of the ice age we're in now. (Background: Human civilizations grew during an interglacial period. Or, maybe, at the very end of the most recent ice age.)

Now, it's global warming that we're supposed to be afraid of. If I'm careful with my health, I may live long enough to see another glaciation be the climate crisis du jure.

---

"Raw Video: Coast Guard Evacuates Flood Victims"
Associated Press, YouTube (April 19, 2009)
video 2:08
"The U.S. Coast Guard rescued people trapped by rising flood waters along the Red River in Fargo, North Dakota. (April 20) "



List of posts about this flood:

• "Red River Valley of the North Flood, 2009"

Antarctic Ice Cap Didn't Get the Memo

"Antarctic ice is growing, not melting away"
news.com.au (April 18, 2009)

• "Ice expanding in much of Antarctica"
• "Eastern coast getting colder"
• "Western section remains a concern"

"ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.

"The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent's western coast. "

If you're into being scared silly over something, there's still hope: the Wilkins ice shelf isn't all that stable, and some of the western ice sheet is melting.

Meanwhile, over on the eastern part of Antarctica (I know: it's on the pole, but that's the conventional way of dividing the real estate), it's getting colder. That's where Australia has its slice of the Antarctic pie. Which probably explains why this article showed up in an Australian news outlet.

Near the end of the article is a remarkable couple of paragraphs:

"Dr Allison said there was not any evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting. 'The only significant calvings in Antarctica have been in the west,' he said. And he cautioned that calvings of the magnitude seen recently in west Antarctica might not be unusual.

" 'Ice shelves in general have episodic carvings and there can be large icebergs breaking off - I'm talking 100km or 200km long - every 10 or 20 or 50 years.' "

Cycles in natural phenomena: who could have guessed?

Vaguely related posts:

• "Peta Protests on World of Warcraft - I am Not Making This Up"
  (April 17, 2009)
• "Ancient Antarctic Ecosystem: Isolated for Millions of Years"
  (April 16, 2009)
• "Big Changes on a Big Planet: Red Spot on Jupiter Has Company"
  (May 27, 2008)
• "Sunspots? What Sunspots?"
  (April 25, 2008)
• "'My Mind's Made Up: Don't Confuse Me With the Facts' "
  (March 3, 2008)
• "No Hope of Nobel Prize for This Lot: U.S. Senators and Global Warming"
  (December 25, 2007)
• "Stop Global Warming: Upgrade Trees?"
  (November 6, 2007)
• " 'Journey of Mankind:' 160,000 Years of Ups and Downs"
  (November 1, 2007)
• "Climate Data, Global Warming, and a Y2K Bug"
  (August 15, 2007)

Sunspots? What Sunspots?

"Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh"
The Australian (April 23, 2008)

"THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.

"What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot."

Today's hot issue is Global Warming.

A few decades back, kids got chilling warnings about the coming ice age. I was Born in 1951, and remember those textbooks and magazines that said another ice age was coming. I remember thinking, 'cool!'

Now, the hot issue is Global Warming.

Phil Chapman, the fellow who wrote that article, is a geophysicist, astronautical engineer, and astronaut, took a look at sunspot activity. He's aware of how much the sun affects us, and has some very interesting points.

Maybe it's time to rewrite the textbooks again?

'My Mind's Made Up: Don't Confuse Me With the Facts'

"Don't fight, adapt" National Post (December 12, 2007)

I try not to get too serious, here at Apathetic Lemming of the North, but once in a while something important shows up. This article is one of several that I ran across, about Global Warming.

"Everybody knows" that global warming is a terrible threat, and that we're all gonna die if something isn't done.

Turns out, everybody doesn't know that, including quite a few scientists.

This might be a good time to sit down, take a deep breath, and think.

So, there's a link, up there, and here are a few key phrases from the open letter:

• "It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages."
• "Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today's computer models cannot predict climate."
• "... no net global warming since 1998"

Hmmm. I remember reading about an Ice Age in school, and there was that cold spell, from 1250 to 1850. The Year Without a Summer wasn't the same sort of climate chage: that's what happens sometimes, after volcanic eruptions.

Besides, I live in Minnesota, where 'typical' late March weather is somewhere between -15 and 75, with beautifully clear days, blizzards, or tornadoes, and/or anything in between. I'm not too surprised to discover that weather or other natural phenomena change over time.

Seed Vault for the Ages

"Arctic seed vault opens doors for 100 million seeds" physorg.com (February 26, 2008)

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is presented as dealing with "rapidly diminishing biodiversity," but it sounds like a pretty good idea. I rather hope they've got some dutch elm seeds in there: that species is dying out, thanks to a bug-born disease.

The building isn't just a silo: the architects paid attention to aesthetics as well as practical concerns.

The physorg.com article is a fairly detailed writeup.

Depending on the species, the seeds should last thousands to tens of thousands of years.

No Hope of Nobel Prize for This Lot: U.S. Senators and Global Warming

This is what happens when scientists, senators, and a journalist or two look at global warming without a prize-winning attitude.

(Warning: Persons who are convinced that the fur seal, the northern spotted owl, and Miami beach front property are in peril because steel plants and flatulent cows release greenhouse gases should not read this post.)

For everyone else, this is a very interesting collection of links on global warming. Each article or report reflects the thoughts of those who are willing to give up hope of winning the Nobel Peace Prize, or an Oscar or two.

"U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007 Senate Report Debunks 'Consensus' "
(December 20, 2007)

In case that page goes offline again, here are some of its links:

• "New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears"
  (August 20, 2007)
• "Inhofe Reveals How Scientists & Activists Believe Global Warming has 'Co-opted' The Environmental Movement"
  (October 26, 2007)
• "EPA Chief Vows to Probe E-mail Threatening to ‘Destroy’ Career of Climate Skeptic "
  (July 26, 2007)
• "Over 100 Prominent Scientists Warn UN Against 'Futile' Climate Control Efforts"
  (December 13, 2007)
• "The Kyoto Protocol's statistical fallacies. (Environment)."
  (May 1, 2003)
• "More than 400 Scientists Dispute Gore's 'Scientific Consensus' Claim on Climate Change "
  (December 20, 2007)
• "Gore Slams Global Warming Critics"
  (June 20, 2006)
• "Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics"
  (May 15, 2007)
• "Newsweek's Climate Editorial Screed Violates Basic Standards of Journalism"
  (August 5, 2007)
  ("UPDATE: August 12, 2007 - Newsweek Editor Calls Mag's Global Warming 'Deniers' Article 'Highly Contrived' - Excerpt: A contributing editor of Newsweek, slapped down his own Magazine for what he termed a "fundamentally misleading" article about the global warming "denial machine.” Newsweek debunks itself following an Inhofe EPW Press Blog report exposing the Magazine for sloppy and embarrassing reporting.
  "See Updated EPW Blog: LINK "
  • "Newsweek Editor Calls Mag's Global Warming 'Deniers' Article 'Highly Contrived'
    Newsweek Debunks Itself Following EPW Blog Detailing Sloppy Reporting"
  
  
• "The UN Climate Change Numbers Hoax"
  (December 14, 2007)
• "IPCC Peer Review Process an Illusion, finds SPPI Analysis"
  (September 10, 2007)
• "Fed-up climate scientists demand radical action"
  (December 6, 2007)

Stop Global Warming: Upgrade Trees?

"Nature's Cruellest Joke" isn't for people with emotional attachments to global warming: but I think it's funny.

Global Warming, and We're All Gonna Die?

I don't suggest reading "Forum: Global warming as a con" if you believe in global warming. It's an op-ed piece that gives a very plausible motive for much of the ardent promotion of this 'dire threat.'

(Big oil isn't paying me, either. Neither is Big ISP, Big Television, or Big Orange.)

---

Climate Data, Global Warming, and a Y2K Bug

I thought you might want to read this. Blogger Finds Y2K Bug in NASA Climate Data

1998 isn't the warmest year on record in the United States, now that a Y2K bug has been found and corrected. The warmest year recorded in America is now 1934, with 1998 in second place and 1921 in third. "In fact," this blog says, "5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II."