The Icecap Still Melteth

I'm still wrestling with this whole global warming thing, and the problem this bear has with the debate is twofold.

First, we're basing our judgement on changing climate using records that are only slightly more than a couple of hundred years old. That would be like trying to gauge the health of a human based on something that happens in their bodies for a nanosecond.

And second, yes, we're polluting this planet and there can be no doubt that we've had a significant and negative impact on the environment, but the total concentration of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by all of the industrial activities of humanity has resulted in increases in total atmospheric CO2 that's measured in parts per million. Maybe this is enough to tip a balance, maybe not. I don't know.

I want to take you back, though, to the "hole in the ozone layer" issue of ten or twenty years ago.

You remember... a big hole appeared over the Antarctic, and apparently it was growing at such an alarming rate that we were all going to die of skin cancer by the end of the millenium. Yes, THAT end of the millenium. (I'll bet you've still got that stockpile of candles you secretly bought because the Y2K bug was going to take out the power grid. )

So here's this hole over the ozone layer. We were told that it was caused by CFCs and other man made chemicals. We all stopped using spray cans for about a week because we were so concerned. Of course, once we found out how bloody inconvenient roll-on deodorant was, we went back to our bad habits but that was ok because by then they'd started using hydrocarbons instead of those evil CFCs, and even if this wasn't better for the environment, it was more fun because a spray can and a box of matches could now provide hours of entertainment for the whole family.

The story of the hole sounded plausible... except for one rather large detail that no-one has ever been able to explain... it was over the SOUTHERN hemisphere.

You may not know that the atmospheres of the Northern and Southern hemispheres barely mix. People in the US and Soviet militaries figured that out as a matter of priority at the height of the cold war when they were looking for some place to stash their families in a post nuclear apocalypse world. Sydney, Cape Town and Buenos Aires all looked pretty good, though the Soviets never did have much influence south of the equator. Anyway, as usual, I digress.

Atmospheres... don't mix... let me think...
Where were the CFCs? Hmmm... wait... I know I can answer that... just give me a second or two... ummm... they'd be in those places where most of the people and most of the industrial development was... places like... ummm... North America, or um... Asia or... wait... there's another one... don't help me... ummm.. ah... Europe. These are all in... ummm... [Chester reaches for an Atlas]... oh yes... there they are.

Now that line across the map is the equator, so that must mean all of those places, and hence nearly all of the CFCs, would have been in the NORTHERN hemisphere. So why was/is the hole over the Southern hemisphere?

Because NASA found it there. They sent up a satellite to measure the ozone layer and whammo... there it was... this bloody great hole exactly where no-one expected a hole to be. I wish I'd been at the press conference...
ME: Was it there before?
NASA: Well we hadn't ever measured it before.
ME: But wasn't this satellite equipped with all sorts of fancy new gizmos that had been put there just to measure the ozone?
NASA: Yes. That was the point. It was the first satellite we've put up just for measuring the ozone layer.
ME: So it could have been there before.
NASA: We've never measured it before.
ME: But it could have been there, you just hadn't measured it.
NASA: Our satellite has detected a growing hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica.
ME: Maybe I'll try another tack... how long has the hole been there?
NASA: We first saw it last year, and it's growing.
ME: But was it there the year before?
NASA: If we extrapolate the growth rate backwards, it first appeared in 1952.
ME: So you're confident that the growth of the hole has been constant.
NASA: We don't have any data. We first saw the hole last year, and this year it's grown.

They detected a hole, and made an immediate assumption that the hole wasn't there before. I know. I'm speaking herasy here, but think about it people... the bloody hole was over the WRONG hemisphere. There's still argument about the hole. It gets bigger. It gets smaller. It gets bigger again, and the longer we watch it (now that we actually can), the more we learn that we don't understand it.

Back to global warming. There is no doubt that climates change. The 16th century in Europe was described as being a "mini ice age". (Ok, it might have been the 14th... my knowledge of European Dark Age & Renaissance history is a little scratchy.)

We know sea levels rise and fall. There are entire cities and ports in parts of the Med that are metres under water. They didn't sink... the sea level rose. (Ok, maybe one or two of them sank, but mostly, the sea level rose, ok!)

The point is, the earth's climate is not some static thing we can absolutely rely on from year to year. That the last hundred years or so have been relatively stable simply underscores the point that we can only measure the last hundred years or so.

We don't really know what the weather was like the day Mark Antony started bonking Cleopatra. We don't know what the temperature was when Martin Luther nailed that proclaimation to the church door. We don't know what the weather was like when Leif Ericson first landed in Iceland, or when Ming took delivery of his first vase.

There isn't any dopler radar image or five day forecast for January 26, 1788, the day Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet sailed into Sydney. They just described it as "hot". But what is "hot"?

I'll tell you what "hot" is... hot is somewhere warmer than wherever it was that you were before. So if it was bloody cold in England, and warm and mild in Sydney Town, then 22C (71F) would be hot. Then again, if you've lived in Singapore all your life, and you arrive in Sydney on a mild summer's day, it's cold. You see? It's all relative.

I've seen it myself... go to the tropics... Cairns or Miami, on a cool day in the middle of winter. There will be dozens of tourists walking around wearing T-Shirts while the locals rug up.

So, back to global warming. Apparently, the last 5 years have been the hottest 5 years on record. Hmmm... age of earth is 5 billion years + (or 5 thousand years + depending on your religious belief). And accurate, objective records go back... um... about 160 years. So I'm happy to accept that the last 5 years might have been hotter than the 160 years before that, but what about the 4,999,999,840 years/4,840 years (pick one) before that?

Ok... I hear you... botanists tell us that they can get a longer measurement by looking at tree rings. Really? Just remember the piece I wrote yesterday about subjectivity. If you go into the forest looking for something to validate whatever it is you believe, you'll find it.

Ice core scientists tell us they can give you an accurate picture too... but that's over, say, a hundred years. They have to make assumptions about how much snow fell, not just in the period they're looking at, but each year since. They make educated guesses but the chances are those guesses will be influenced by the same subjectivity.

We may be responsible for global warming, or we may not. If we are, and if the politicians REALLY believe we are, then there's a simple solution... spend whatever it takes to develop the technology to fix the problem. The Americans did it during WWII with the Manhattan Project, and the world could do it again right now. Actually, the immediate job wouldn't be that difficult because most of the technology already exists for a short term fix.

If we're not, and I'm not convinced either way just yet, then this seems like a very convenient issue to allow politicians the world over to prance about and make us think they're doing something, because right now, they're not doing much more than prancing.

One more thought on the environment... back in the early 1500s, Henry the VIIIth was so concerned about preserving the forests that he enacted what is widely considered the world's first environmental conservation law. You see, back in those days, most of England was covered by huge and mighty oak trees. Henry was so worried about the rate at which the oaks were being cut down and turned into wood coke that he outlawed the felling of oak trees for fuel. Like many things back then, including stealing a loaf of bread or marrying the King, it was a capital offence.

That lead to two things... first, it meant that when Elizabeth I took the throne, there were huge forests of oak trees available out of which she could build a navy, thus setting up Britannia to rule the waves for the next 400 years.

Second, people had to find some other way to keep warm (remember the mini ice age?). They turned to a curious black rock that you could dig out of the ground in parts of Wales that burned hotter and longer than the wood coke. They soon found out it was a much better fuel, and because they could now burn the furnaces hotter, they could make stronger steel, out of which they could build the machines of the industrial revolution, which, of course, needed even more of that black rock to make steam so they could make more machines to burn more black rock to make steam.

Within a couple of hundred years, the acid rain from burning all that coal the peasants had learned to burn because some conservationist wanted to save the trees, had decimated the forests Henry's law was supposed to save, which, in turn, meant the British had to learn how to build their ships out of iron or steel, which meant they could build the ships bigger, which meant more people could now travel more cheaply, which meant ideas were more readily exchanged, which meant the pace of technology could accellerate, which, if we're responsible for global warming, caused the whole bloody problem in the first place.

So blame Henry VIII.