Time Immortal

Which leaves unanswered, I suppose, the question of why warming trends analogous to trends observed on Earth have been observed on other planets in the Solar System, most notably Mars. It also leaves unanswered, one must note, the question of why most of the observed global average temperature increases have been undone in recent months, corresponding to the observation that the Sun, having finished one sunspot cycle, has not begun another one (contrary to expectations).

The article’s headline is a bit misleading, methinks. The specific solar radiation under discussion is what are called cosmic rays, the really intense radiation that the Sun gives off. Most of that stuff gets blocked by the Earth’s magnetic field anyhow — one of those beautifully-designed things, you know? Of course, cosmic rays are not the only sort of radiation emitted by the Sun, and radiation in other parts of the spectrum can penetrate the magnetic field (ultraviolet radiation would be an easy example to point to here).

The fact is, we can be fairly certain that what solar radiation does penetrate the magnetic field must be responsible for warming the Earth, because we are fairly certain that were the Sun to suddenly stop emitting said radiation, the Earth would become a frozen wasteland. Whatever solar radiation gets through the magnetic field is responsible, in large measure, for the fact that the temperature in most places on the Earth’s surface is in a range that humans find liveable. It still seems reasonable, even in light of findings which suggest that Henrik Svensmark may have been wrong in his theories about cosmic rays, that variations in the Sun’s output in other spectra still do produce changes in the Earth’s climate and average temperature.

Especially, I note again, since similar trends have been observed on other orbital bodies in the Solar System which, last time I checked, were not home to advanced, industrialized societies.

I heard only a snippet of a report about this while away on vacation, because Grace’s grandparents only listen to the CBC (and nothing else), and the news was playing over breakfast most mornings. Predictably, Mothercorp had some dial-an-expert come on the program to claim that the “breaking off” of a huge iceberg from the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica was a sure-fire sign of the spreading influence of global warming-influenced climate change.

To his credit, the CBC reporter did mention (briefly) that parts of Antarctica seem to be cooling, while others seem to be warming — but any objectivity that statement might have given to the news piece as a whole evaporated (heh) when the dial-an-expert (sorry, I didn’t catch his name while I was passing the bacon) spoke up.

Predictably, though, this iceberg breaking off is not the harbinger of doom it was made out to be.

The full Wilkins 6,000 square mile ice shelf is just 0.39% of the current ice sheet (just 0.1% of the extent last September). Only a small portion of it between 1/10th-1/20th of Wilkins has separated so far, like an icicle falling off a snow and ice covered house. And this winter is coming on quickly. In fact the ice is returning so fast, it is running an amazing 60% ahead (4.0 vs 2.5 million square km extent) of last year when it set a new record. The ice extent is already approaching the second highest level for extent since the measurements began by satellite in 1979 and just a few days into the Southern Hemisphere winter and 6 months ahead of the peak. Wilkins like all the others that temporarily broke up will refreeze soon. We are very likely going to exceed last year’s record. Yet the world is left with the false impression Antarctica’s ice sheet is also starting to disappear.

Ice shelves breaking off to form icebergs is a pretty common phenomenon, or so I’ve heard. It isn’t the climate that has changed in an extreme and dangerous way — what has changed thusly is our ability to look at the normal dynamics of our environment in a rational and calm manner.

I’ll be back late tomorrow, so regular posting will resume on Tuesday…most likely, and assuming I get enough rest. It’s been…a trip with ups and downs, to say the least, and I think both Grace and I are going to be glad to get back.

One thing struck me as rather funny this morning, however: yesterday was apparently when Earth Hour was supposed to happen. Grace’s family, however, wasn’t taking part in the “lights out” campaign to fight…climate change or global warming or whatever (as though turning the lights out for a single hour, even in several major cities, would do anything to stop a process driven, primarily, by an even more powerful light source that won’t be extinguished for…what?…billions of years yet?

Instead, the lot of us were partying it up on a docked boat, using a diesel generator to power the lights (and sound system) while we grilled nine racks of pork ribs and two beef tenderloins (as in, the whole loin) on a propane barbeque.

This family knows how to party.

At any rate, I haven’t checked to see if Ed Darrell or anyone else has sent any Reader Mail my way since I left Edmonton, and I won’t be checking until I get back to Edmonton. So if I haven’t yet answered something you’ve sent my way, O Reader, rest assured that I’ll get to it…in April.

And I’ll have an announcement to make as well.

Update: Welcome, Steynians! I’m back now — slacking is at an end.

That doesn’t stop reporters from trying to make the lack of facts seem like proof of the threat of climate change, however!

Ed Darrell writes in with a response to this article, in which I remark on David Warren’s observations that once again, the latest fad among the rich and trendy in the West (that is, environmentalism) is serving only to further oppress those who live in poverty in Third World nations, as the biofuel craze drives the price of food through the roof world-wide.

…environmentalism seems to have become just one more playground for wealthy Westerners, a way we can wring our hands and make ourselves feel good for having done something, the same as when we banned DDT. And yet we do not, by our actions, achieve any meaningful positive environmental impact. Indeed, the only impact we manage to achieve is that, in our selfish desire to be “green,” we further impoverish and condemn to a most terrible fate thousands or millions of people living in poorer nations. And in the end, our selfishness backfires on us as well — the same “green” fuels we might desire to use in our cars are, in fact, very difficult to produce, and the production processes far more polluting than those used to refine crude oil into petrol.

But then, that pollution happens elsewhere, and not in our back yards or on the roads upon which we drive. We do not see it, and so can safely pretend it does not exist.

But, had we listened to the “environmentalists” about DDT in 1962, and dramatically reduced its broadcast use, it would still be effective against mosquitoes that carry malaria. Rachel Carson was right about DDT — it’s a killer, especially released willy-nilly in the wild. Bald eagles were just big canaries in our mine.

If we must designate a culprit in the DDT annals, it would be those who thought we could just poison the heck out of Africa and forget about the people there, rather than make serious efforts to fight malaria. Malaria is a complex problem, and throwing poison into the wild won’t improve the health care system, make governments stable, educate people how to look out for their own health and well being, or stimulate the economies so people can afford adequate housing to protect them from malaria-bearing mosquitoes.

Environmentalism is based in increasing our knowledge about God’s creation and where humans can and should fit in, and asking the question, “How can we be better stewards of this planet?” I think you may have given short shrift to those grander ideas.

Malaria really isn’t that complex a problem to solve — the ancient Romans knew exactly what they were doing when they dredged the swamps of Old Italy and wiped out mosquito breeding grounds on that little archipelago. In South American nations where comprehensive DDT programs were implemented, the same effects were achieved without the need to dredge swamps and destroy the natural habitats of other forms of wildlife.

The fact of the matter is, even the WHO ended its ban on DDT because the resurgence in malaria-related deaths marched in lockstep with the DDT ban in the first place. And in much the same way as Western use of biofuels is killing the poor in the Third World, the countries primarily afflicted by a resurgence in malaria (and the countries in which most malarial deaths occur as a result of the pressure by the West to ban the use of DDT) are poor, Third World countries. Western environmentalism, like every other fashionable trend, piggy-backs itself on the suffering and blood of the poor elsewhere in the world, and all so rich white folks can pump an alternative fuel into their SUV and tell themselves that they’re working to save the planet (even though that fuel cost more, in terms of pollutants released, to produce than normal petroleum does).

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was not a scientific study or a comprehensive research paper. It was a novel, and then a fictional one. And on the merits of the picture she painted with that novel, the West rushed to ban the use of DDT world-wide, despite the fact that DDT was later demonstrated to cause none of the harmful effects it was blamed (and banned) for. It does not cause eggshell thinning in avian populations, the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concedes that it does not pose a carcinogenic risk to human beings, and that it likewise poses no mutagenic/teratogenic danger. It does not appear to have any damaging effect on freshwater aquatic ecosystems either.

It was banned because of a work of fiction and the knee-jerk, guilt-ridden emotionalism of Western liberalism. And the poor, globally, in many Third World countries, will and have paid with their lives for that particular Western fad.

The thing is, DDT was effective — damn effective. In Venezuela, it reduced the number of cases of malaria from over eight million in 1943 to eight hundred by 1958. India and modern Italy saw similar dramatic reversals (Italy, in particular, recorded only 37 cases of malaria in 1967, down from over 400,000 roughly fifteen years earlier).

It would be nice to believe that environmentalists only want to increase our knowledge about the creation that God has made us stewards over. But the evidence on the ground tends to paint a different picture, and then not a pleasant one. environmentalism may have had noble intentions at its origin, as feminism did. But, like feminism, environmentalism has shaped itself into something much more malevolent. In the case of environmentalism, it has become a weird mash-up between those who would use it as a vehicle to advance an explicitly socialist (if not outright Marxist) political and economic agenda, and those who would use bad science to play upon the knee-jerk guilt of the modern Western liberal and by so doing enrich themselves (Al Gore would be a great example here).

David Warren spotlights a trend that I’d suspected might just be the case after all — that production of “environmentally friendly” biofuels not only results in increased carbon emissions* (since the process of refining various grains into vehicle-ready fuel requires many processing stages, all of which require fossil fuels to be burned in order to drive the various processes — by comparison, refining crude oil into petrol is a fairly clean and efficient process), but that it drives up the price of food globally, especially in already impoverished nations.

And while folks like me, living and working in Canada, might be able to absorb a twofold or threefold increase in the cost of food, people living in Third World nations would be crushed by similar increases. And here’s the kicker: such increases aren’t just possible or likely. They are already happening.

Even in the economically advanced West, the rise in Food prices has become noticeable. My observant reader will find plenty of signs in his local supermarket, where the price of dairy products is leading an advance that must necessarily spread — for wholesale prices are outstripping retail prices in food across the board. The secondary effect of the monetary inflation this re-ignites is in itself beginning to cause economic havoc.

But we, who spend (in North America) less than 15 percent of our income on food, can nevertheless survive if that proportion doubles or triples.

It is in the poorest countries of the world, where people often spend more than half their income obtaining food, that a doubling or tripling of prices is fatal. And note, the supply of food does not need to halve, in order to double prices. It only has to fall, consistently, a little behind demand.

Please don’t take my word for this. The United Nations’ World Food Programme and various other collectivist agencies are already becoming eloquent on the subject. In a statement to the European Parliament last week, the executive director of the WFP explained that their own cost of obtaining food for distribution to the world’s hungry had risen by 40 percent since last June. They are not predicting a catastrophe. They are experiencing one.

environmentalism seems to have become just one more playground for wealthy Westerners, a way we can wring our hands and make ourselves feel good for having “done something,” the same as when we banned DDT. And yet we do not, by our actions, achieve any meaningful positive environmental impact. Indeed, the only impact we manage to achieve is that, in our selfish desire to be “green,” we further impoverish and condemn to a most terrible fate thousands or millions of people living in poorer nations. And in the end, our selfishness backfires on us as well — the same “green” fuels we might desire to use in our cars are, in fact, very difficult to produce, and the production processes far more polluting than those used to refine crude oil into petrol.

But then, that pollution happens elsewhere, and not in our back yards or on the roads upon which we drive. We do not see it, and so can safely pretend it does not exist.