By Peter Hannaford on 10.27.09 @ 6:06AM
Ms. Henny-Penny looks ahead to Copenhagen.
"Oh, it's you again," said Ms. Henny-Penny, as I rounded the
corner into the farmyard. I wanted to bring her some cheery news
that the sky was no longer falling. She is the founder and now
recording secretary of The Holy Order Of The Sky Is Falling
(whose pontiff is Al Gore). She didn't give me a chance to open
my mouth.
H-P: I know you're going to give me one of
your climate change-denier lectures. Well let me tell you, after
we've have the big U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen
in December, we will have solved the climate change problem for
good and the sky will be stabilized. We're going to come up with
a treaty that will cut production in the industrialized countries
to bring down carbon emissions. As you know, these cause climate
change."
Me: No. I don't know that, nor
does anyone else. Climate is changing all the time and you and
your pontiff have appropriated the phrase because your old
favorite, "global warming," has been discredited. And, no one has
proved that man-made carbon emissions are causing climate
change.
H-P: Everyone knows it's true. Besides, it
is causing the polar ice caps to melt.
Me: Here's some news for you. The
National Snow and Ice Data Center the other day released its data
on Arctic summer sea-ice. They showed that "second-year ice" (ice
thick enough to have withstood two summers of seasonal melting)
this summer made up 32 per cent of the total ice cover on that
ocean. In 2007 it was 21 percent and last year only 9 percent.
So, you're a year behind.
H-P: I'll bet that's not true of the
Antarctic.
Me: Yes, it is. A research
scientist at the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology, Marco
Tedesco, last month published in a professional journal his
report that ice melt in Antarctica was the lowest in three
decades during the ice-melt season this year.
H-P: If you're so smart, why is that the
Larsen B ice shelf on the western side of Antarctica is falling
into the ocean from warming?
Me: That part has been warming
for quite some time, but comprises barely 2 percent of the
continent. The other 98 percent is cooling. Prof. Don Easterbrook
of Western Washington University has done research showing that
the most important ocean cycle, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
(PDO), was in a warming cycle in the 1980s and '90s, but that is
now in a cool mode. He says this virtually assures us of three
decades of global cooling. Furthermore, many scientists have
concluded that the general cooling we are experiencing now
coincides with the fact there has been very little sunspot
activity over the last decade.
H-P: Our pontiff has not mentioned any of
this and he knows everything. I doubt anyone will mention it at
Copenhagen.
Me: You're probably right. After
all, the conference it not about improving the climate, but about
fulfilling the wishes of the devotees of deep ecology who want to
ratchet down industrial production, standards of living and
reduce the world's population.
H-P. Brr. I'm getting cold just talking
with you.
topics:
Climate Change, Antarctica
