I’ve Moved!
November 20, 2008
So I’m sure that most people have noticed that the site has been offline for a few days. There’s a reason for that, which I will get to shortly. But first, let me just say this:
In fact, I am blogging at a new site I have just finished setting up: kennethhynek.net. A full explanation for the reasons behind the move can be found here
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That said, this is not the end of Time Immortal. My wife Grace has expressed interest in taking over blogging at this domain, and I am working to make sure that she gets set up here as soon as possible.
Also, my profound apologies for the modification to the site face; the move was not as seamless as I would have hoped, and many of the image files for this theme, and in the gallery, were corrupted during the course of their evacuation from my previous web host’s servers. Until such time as I have repaired them, I’ve put a clean-looking template in place of the previous one.
Update: for the purposes of further traffic shaping, new posts from kennethhynek.net will be excerpted below. Full articles can be read at the new blog.
The Earth has warmed up before…
February 8, 2007
Every time someone expresses concern about global warming, invariably the issue of the amount of increase in the average temperature of the planet comes up, and falls generally into two categories: concern over the 0.6 (give or take) degrees of warming that have already taken place, or concern over the 1.1 to 6.4 degrees (all measures in Celsius) that could take place by the year 2100.
Typically, the mention of these increases in temperature is accompanied by a variable level of hand-wringing and/or doom prophecy: mass extinctions, the melting of the ice caps and the subsequent flooding of coastal regions, and a host of other horrific outcomes are predicted and prophesied. And to be fair, if one considers the evidence and argument apart from the hysteria, that evidence and the argument behind it seems convincing to a certain degree.
Still, as with anything, “convincing” does not equate (necessarily) to “correct”, and in fact the global warming alarmists tend to miss a few key points from history (as folk on the left are so often wont to do, save when it allows them to indulge in cheap ad hominem against men or religion). Specifically, it misses the point that some 10,000 years ago, Earth’s climate was 4 to 5 degrees warmer (and possibly as much as 8 degrees warmer in parts of Siberia) than it is now…to such an extent that boreal forests could be found on the Arctic coastlines of the world. That means forests were found between 400 and 1000 kilometres beyond their present northern extents worldwide. That means that the world was, at one point, warm enough “to melt all glaciers below 5 km elevation, except the Greenland ice sheet, which was reduced by ca 20-50%.”
And strangely, the world seems no worse for wear as a result of it. The climate of the world, being cyclical, cooled again, and the glaciers reasserted themselves, and the forests were pushed back.
Modern predictions of climate change and mass extinctions (polar bears have been in the news of late) tend to forget this fact or, worse still, actively ignore it (see yesterday’s commentary on the Medieval Warm Period). And if, through neglect or malice, they do not consider this aspect of Earth’s history (which, it serves to note, occurred recently enough that humans would have been around for it), we in turn should be wary of placing too great a weight on the arguments they make in turn, for they make those arguments in ignorance.
(Hat tip: Small Dead Animals)
