My previous attempt to create a global-warming flame war failed, probably because I buried the bulk of the discussion in the Extended Entry section. But now Dr. Jeff Masters has given me another opening to get the debate going. From his interview with the Northwest Florida Daily News:
Q. Lately a debate has sprung up among meteorologists about global warming and its relationship to hurricane formation. In your blog you have made a point of stressing the jury is still out on such a relationship, if I’m reading your blog correctly. The evidence so far seems inconclusive one way or the other. Do you have a personal opinion about such a relationship?
A. There’s no doubt that there is an effect. Hurricanes are heat engines, and heating up the oceans makes stronger hurricanes. However, the amount of heating of the oceans we can blame on global warming, about 1 degree Fahrenheit, should (according to Dr. Emanuel’s theory) cause at most a 2-3 mph increase in the winds of a storm like Katrina. Is the theory wrong? That’s a question that is being seriously considered, and it is possible that global warming has made the strongest hurricanes much stronger than the theory would suggest. My opinion is that it its too early to tell. The database of global hurricane intensities is deeply flawed and doesn’t extend over a long enough period of time to determine if there has been a significant increase in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes due to global warming.
It should be noted that Dr. Masters’s opinion — that it’s not yet clear whether global warming is causing, or helping to cause, the recent increase in hurricane activity — is not the same thing as saying “it’s not yet clear whether global warming is caused by human activity.” The central global warming debate (and the secondary debate over whether the first debate is a legitimate debate at all, or just a faux-debate sponsored by the oil companies and the Republicans to advance Chimpy W. Hitler’s Evil Hegemonic Halliburtonization of Mother Earth) is a separate issue from the question of whether global warming, whatever its cause, is responsible for the recent increase in hurricanes.
With regard to the latter issue, Dr. Masters notes that the counterargument — the “natural cycles” theory — has flaws of its own:
The majority view is that most of the increase since 1995 is due to a natural decades-long cycle called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which is tied to sea surface temperatures and salinity in the Atlantic (the so-called “thermohaline circulation”). The trouble is, there is little observational support for this theory, as there are very few oceanographic measurements going back in time. In fact, ocean measurements taken in the past few years show a 30% slow down of the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic, which is the opposite effect one would expect to see if the AMO were truly causing the current upswing in hurricane activity. These measurements had a high potential for error, so more measurements are needed verify this finding. Dr. Kerry Emanuel, who developed much of the theory regarding hurricane intensification, has a new theory on the AMO–he thinks that this observed decades-long observed change in Atlantic hurricane activity is not a natural cycle. The lower levels of hurricane activity and lower SSTs observed from 1970-1995 were due to increased air pollution over the Atlantic reducing the sunlight. Since 1995, pollution control efforts, plus a significant increase in global warming, have acted to warm the oceans and drive increased hurricane activity. Except for the occasional strong El Nino year, he sees no end to the current pattern of increased hurricane activity in the Atlantic. I believe it is too early to say who’s right. Dr. Emanuel hasn’t published his findings yet; Nature magazine rejected his paper as being “too esoteric” for its readers.
That’s fascinating. Equally fascinating — and something I, for one, had never heard before — is the suggestion that the hurricane-heightening effects of higher SSTs may be offset by other factors. The Houston Chronicle’s SciGuy writes:
The general consensus I have gleaned is that increasing SSTs will have some effect on hurricanes. But temperatures in the upper atmosphere are also likely to increase, so there may be no net increase in the “convective fuel” that hurricanes thrive upon. Wind shear may also increase as a result of global change, which also dampens their ability to form and remain organized.
On a more alarming note (or alarmist? we report, you decide), if you missed my previous post, you may want to read this post by Stu Ostro. He’s not addressing the hurricane issue specifically, but rather talking about his general conviction that “something just ain’t right” in the atmosphere — and he says this as a former skeptic of claims that global warming is seriously affecting the weather.
Me? As I said previously, I believe, based on what I’ve read, that global warming is real, and that there’s a good enough chance we’re causing a lot of it that we should alter our behavior — because, as Ostro says, “if x-rays and blood tests point to very strong evidence of something but the doctor can’t be 100% sure that left untreated your future prognosis is grim, are you going to wait until the disease progresses to the point that your health is already rapidly declining?” Obviously not, and the same logic applies here. As for what course of treatment will work the best (Kyoto-type mandates? Market-based incentives?), I defer to people smarter and more well-versed in the topic than I. But we definitely need to do more than we’re doing now.
But as for the hurricane thing, when experts like Dr. Jeff Masters, the SciGuy, and the SciGuy’s interview subjects are telling me that it’s unclear what effect global warming has on hurricanes, I am inclined to believe them. And I really do believe that people who scream “GLOBAL WARMING!!!” every damn time a severe-weather event occurs are giving sensible advocates of greenhouse-gas reduction a bad name. I realize what the counterargument will be: Evil Bush and the Big Oil Companies will do whatever it takes to win the argument — they have no qualms about distorting the truth — and because this issue is so urgent, if we need to play their game and distort the truth in order to win the argument, so be it. The moral high ground won’t do us any good when Arizona is uninhabitable and the Great Plains have become the Sahara Desert, you weak-kneed, Lieberman-loving closet Republican!!! We have to FIGHT!!! Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it all before. But see, I don’t believe we can win the argument if our strategy is to distort the truth, crying wolf “global warming” every time there’s a hurricane or a haboob or a rain shower. Our argument needs to be more nuanced than that, because the truth is more nuanced than that. I’m not looking for the moral high ground — I just think the best thing global-warming believers have going for us is that the truth is, in fact, on our side, and if we distort the truth by saying obviously false and patently ridiculous things like Tuesday’s duststorm in Arizona was the result of global warming, we actually diminish the effectiveness of our argument and stand to lose public support. So let’s leave the absurdity and dishonesty to the worst excesses of the other side, and stick with scientifically valid facts and theories (always clearly distinguishing between the two) in making our argument, OK?
So, there you go. Now, flame away. That’s an order! :)
June 9th, 2006 at 10:28:50 pm
We live on a planet that demonstrably has a weather cycle of that lasts in the millions of years. Ice ages come and go, the poles change places, the oceans warm and cool. That planet circles a sun that has clear, but not entirely understood influences on the weather of our planet. We have accurate records of weather and climate that go back 200 hundred years at best.
It is sheer audacity and arrogance to even pretend we understand the weather and climate patterns of Earth, let alone the effects of civilization on those patterns.
June 9th, 2006 at 10:45:34 pm
We live on a planet that demonstrably has a weather cycle of that lasts in the millions of years. Ice ages come and go, the poles change places, the oceans warm and cool.
Yes. And many of those events are sufficiently drastic that they will — obviously — kill off the human race, or at least severely f**k us up, unless, by the time they happen, we either a) have colonized outer space, or b) have developed much more highly advanced technologies which would allow us to somehow withstand the climate changes you’re talking about. But who cares about that right now? I’m not concerned about a million-year time scale. I personally suspect we’ll kill ourselves off well before that (hell, I’m not sure I’d give us 50/50 odds of getting to the end of my natural life without some sort of nuclear holocaust), but if by some miracle we don’t render ourselves extinct or throw ourselves into a new Dark Ages by the year 1,000,000 A.D., I suspect we probably we probably will have colonize space and/or developed advanced technologies such that we could withstand the next ice age. So I’m not sure why we’re talking about that. It’s a distraction and an irrelevancy to the issue at hand, which is that even admittedly “minor” changes to the climate (”minor” in nature’s eyes, in the grand scheme of things) have the potential to DEVASTATE HUMANITY, if they happen fast enough and soon enough. And that’s the key: the type of changes you’re talking about are extremely severe, but they happen very gradually on a human time scale. With manmade global warming, we are talking about seriously devastating changes that could happen in just a lifetime or two. That’s much different than an ice age which develops over thousands of years.
It is sheer audacity and arrogance to even pretend we understand the weather and climate patterns of Earth, let alone the effects of civilization on those patterns.
It is sheer folly to ignore the science of climate change, and base your opinion on nothing but a mere hunch that we cannot possibly have that much of an effect, so it isn’t even worth studying or considering or talking about. This is a piss-poor argument; I suggest you try again from scratch.
June 9th, 2006 at 10:50:42 pm
P.S. I’m not saying that global warming is going to make the human race extinct. It’s obvious that I’m not saying that, because I didn’t say it, but I just have a sneaking suspicion that someone is going to accuse me of having said it, so I wanted to make that clear.
Global warming has the potential to severely alter the climate in ways that will devastate economies and ways of life, and kill lots of people. It won’t make us extinct.
Here’s the thing, though. Global warming will force us to adapt more quickly than evolution would normally allow a species to adapt to severe climatological changes. And that’s what makes this so different from the (admittedly much more severe) global events that you are talking about: there is simply not enough time for us to adapt to the sort of rapid changes we are potentially inflicting on our planet. Besides which, whereas “nature’s way” is for the strong to survive and the weak to perish, we have a moral sense in our society that we want everybody to survive. To nature, the death of a weak person — or, more broadly, the collapse of a poorly situated region or nation — is not a tragedy or even a problem. It just is. But we, as human beings, don’t accept as OK the notion that, oh I dunno, everyone in Arizona has to either move or die, because the state becomes uninhabitable; or that the entire nation of Kiribati is submerged by rising ocean waters. Nature doesn’t care about stuff like that; we do. This is a crucial fact that must be understood if you’re going to make specious comparisons between ice ages of the past and global warming of the present. Just because “it happens in nature” doesn’t mean we can be OK with doing it to ourselves.
The bottom line is that IT IS NOT A VALID ARGUMENT to say that manmade global warming is no big deal because the Earth goes through much more extreme climate changes than that. Of course it does — but the fact remains that a global temperature rise of just a few degrees right now will have incredibly serious negative effects on our society right now. And I’m much more concerned about right now than I am about something that will happen in 10,000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000 years.
June 10th, 2006 at 3:41:44 am
Brendan -
I think Gahrie’s point is that we understand so little about the earth’s weather patterns right now that all the concern over global warming can be in fact normal fluctuations in climate cycles.
I’m not sure I agree with that but his points on weather records is very valid. We only have about 150-200 years and we’re getting told absolutely that in 100 years we’ll destroy the planet. I know you’re castigating the howlers in your post, but there is a lack of historical data to put current data in context except for the very near future.
On global warming, I am not convinced on its effects and existence though I’m sure willing to listen. Problem is that nobody has any good suggestions. As I’ve read myself and heard multiple environmental activists state, if we adopted every Kyoto Treaty provision TOMORROW, it will have at most, a 0.05 degree effect over the next 50 years. That’s because the growth in China and India and over third world countries is making anything we do in the US here, moot.
June 10th, 2006 at 3:48:29 am
Lojo,
Maybe it’s just phraseology, but the way you frame the argument, I can respect it and agree with parts of it. But the way Gahrie said it, it came off (to me, anyway) as this sort of assumption that the Earth’s natural cycles are obviously so vast and so much huger than our petty human activities that we can’t even possibly hope to begin to understand or affect it… as opposed to, “we only have a small data sample at this time.” The latter is a valid point, the former is just ignoring science on the basis of a hunch.
Anyway, Gahrie, I apologize if I was overly harsh… I disagree (in large part because of that x-ray analogy) but I didn’t mean to totally rip you apart.
I’m far too sleepy now to debate this further at the moment. But I’m pleased that the flame war is officially underway. Hehe. :)
June 10th, 2006 at 6:16:45 am
Given the current fears of global warming, and the amount of ground debate has lost to sound byte hysteria over the years, what do you suppose the tone of the coverage would be like if the decade-long Dust Bowl of the 1930’s were happening right now? What drastic solutions would be proposed?
Flame on.
June 10th, 2006 at 7:15:35 am
The Population Bomb–and with it, worldwide food shortages (1974).
The New Ice Age (1976).
Now, Global Warming.
What’s the next crisis?
June 10th, 2006 at 7:56:43 am
“It is sheer audacity and arrogance to even pretend we understand the weather and climate patterns of Earth, let alone the effects of civilization on those patterns.”
As it is sheer audacity on your part to assume you know more than the overwhelming majority of credible scientists who believe global climate change is happening and that human activity is likely a major contributing factor.
Oh the audacity of Galileo to pretend he knew the Earth wasn’t the center of the Universe or Sir Isaac Newton to pretend he knew what gravity was. Whatever, moron.
June 10th, 2006 at 8:05:20 am
“We only have about 150-200 years and we’re getting told absolutely that in 100 years we’ll destroy the planet.”
That’s bullshit. We have millions of years of geological records that can at least give us some evidence of what was happening to the climate at a given time. Often huge swings in the climate in the past have left some sort of geological record to offer clues as to what caused that change (meteor impact, volcano, etc). Glaciers, fossil records, etc, can also provide hints as to the CO2 levels during given periods.
I find scientists with little to gain by talking about global climate change and hell of a lot more credible than talking points from oil companies that have everything to lose if fossil fuels are causing global warming.
June 10th, 2006 at 8:27:14 am
1)Lojo has accurately summarized my point concerning Earth’s weather history.
2) No one has addressed the theory that current global warming has a solar source. It is becoming clear that Mars and other planets are experiencing global warming also.
3) Human history has seen rapid climate change in the past. I cite the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. (Neither of which could have possibly been caused by human action, and probably instead were tied to solar activity)
4) The same scientists now breathlessly warning us about global warming (and competing for government grants to study the same) are the same scientists who were warning us about global cooling in the 1970’s. Were they wrong then? If so could they be wrong now? Or maybe, just maybe, they don’t really have a clue how global weather and climate patterns work?
5) I have always believed that instead of trying to manipulate the Earth and Sun (impossible in my opinion) we should be attempting to reach beyond their affects. I agree with Brendan’s thoughts concerning the ultimate salvation of humanity and space exploration. That’s where we should be putting the money and research.
June 10th, 2006 at 8:31:01 am
Of course, Max, (insert appropriate flame here) you have to realize that scientists who gain grant money due to the alarmist nature of the coverage of the very real subject of climate change have financial and career incentives to keep it in the limelight, just as petrologists who work for oil companies have their own political incentives. Funding science is rarely without political implications in this day and age.
Of course we have millions of years worth of geologic evidence of changes in climate, we all know that, but it is dangerous to compare micro trends of 100 years or less with thousand year (and up) trends visible in the geologic record. The baseline afforded by modern direct measurements of the atmosphere is too short to reliably predict thousand year trends in a complex system, and both the resolution and completeness of the geologic record are insufficient in many cases to state with confidence exactly what was going on in the atmosphere they indirectly measure. Causation is notoriously difficult to tease apart from correlation!
Not saying that there is no cause for concern, just pointing out that the problem is not necessarily as clear-cut as you are making it, with regard to the science and the intelligence of those who may disagree with you. 8-)
June 10th, 2006 at 9:04:46 am
okay, a short thought experiment for those that think, “It is sheer audacity and arrogance to even pretend we understand the weather and climate patterns of Earth, let alone the effects of civilization on those patterns.”
Lets take that as absolutely true. We do not know, and have no reliable way of knowing for certain what is happening with the climate.
The simplest argument to make here would be one based on religion. When it comes down to it It is sheer audacity and arrogance to even pretend we understand God, his will, and his existence let alone our ability to influence it. Yet a great many people have faith, and take actions to get in His good graces. Why? At the simplest level, it is a hedged bet. If God does not exist, you’ve lost nothing in believing in him. If he does exist, by living a good upstanding life and or following various teachings etc. etc. you hope that will be sufficient to save you from hell fire and damnation. In other words, the consequences of ignoring something based on a we just don’t know in that case are just so great that the vast majority of people who have ever lived have believed in some kind of supreme power.
Now this analogy is not perfect. Clearly there are those for which the entire premise of that analogy collapses for a number of reasons, my self included. However, it is an alternate way of looking at the situation, that may be helpful to some.
There are many others that could be used. For the geeks, NASA just doesn’t know when a computer on the space shuttle is going to fails… So they put three redundant computers on the shuttle–the cost of hedging the bet is way less than the cost of loosing it.
You have no idea when a tire is going to fail on your car, you carry a spare.
You have no idea if it will rain today, but it looks kind of over cast and gloomy–you carry an umbrella.
you get the idea… There are a vast number of experiences we go through on a daily biases where we simply do not know what is going to happen and instead of just risking it we hedge our bet and take some sort of precaution against a potential serious harm.
Is global warming something worth taking the hedged bet on? I think it is. The potential consequence is total extinction of the species. That seems a rather high cost for inaction. The benefits gained from action are a more livable planet. And the consequences of action even if global warming is an inaccurate descriptor is high. For example cleaner coal technology would mean less mercury in the atmosphere. Which means less mercury in lakes, streams and oceans, which means less mercury in salmon which ultimately means less mercury in us, and therefore less heavy metal poisoning. That is a health good that is a total side effect of fighting global warming, but it is a pretty good deal. Better fuel efficiency in cars and cleaner technology means less air pollution and less asthma. Better toxic waist control means less carcinogens in the environment means less cancer. In other words there are a great many side benefits to the tasks required to combat the potential of global warming. AND reducing human impact on the environment is unlikely to cause thee extinction of the species.
And a side note for those that don’t care what happens to plants and animals because that isn’t me… well I have one question, what do you plan on eating?
June 10th, 2006 at 9:39:58 am
gahrie-
There have been studies of the sun and it is going through a cooling cycle right now so, if anything, solar activity should be causing the Earth to get cooler, not warmer. The incidents you point to in the Middle Ages can be attributed to volcanic activity or the lack thereof, which is not a factor at this time.
June 10th, 2006 at 9:43:34 am
Piercello-
Interesting, since most of the scientists making the biggest noise work for NASA, NOAA, EPA and other Federal Agencies. If anything, their speaking out threatens their career mobility, especially with this Administration.
Frankly, I would have to think there is more of a financial incentive for a scientist to work for an oil-friendly school, like LSU, and get all kinds of grants from Exxon Mobil, etc, trying to disprove global warming.
June 10th, 2006 at 9:46:16 am
“It is sheer audacity and arrogance to even pretend we understand the weather and climate patterns of Earth, let alone the effects of civilization on those patterns.â€?
I’ll be sure to turn off the Weather Channel next time they predict a tornado or hurricane, because it is sheer audacity to try to predict weather patterns.
While I am at it, gahrie, I want to assure you that fire isn’t magic and that birds really do fly without the help of spirits.
June 10th, 2006 at 9:54:23 am
Mr BS - are you sure you are not channeling Al Gore ? Mt St Helen’s activity is slowly rising, there is the Indonesian eruption(s) in progress, and what else volcanic even as we consider Brendan’s post ?
dcl - the problem with your rain-and-umbrella analogy is that such “solutions” as the Kyoto Accords are akin to the Western World carring said umbrella up and ovehead 24/7 except that China and India already removed the fabric covering the spokes … not only does the “solution” not help with the perceived problem, it would actively cause much more significant problems for the ‘entity’ carrying the umbrella …
Oh - and “Better toxic waist control” is just a tad judgmental against those of us carrying a little more avoirdupois about our middle, is it not ?
June 10th, 2006 at 9:57:32 am
Just because you can’t do everything does not mean you should do nothing.
June 10th, 2006 at 10:16:24 am
While trying to stay out of any flame war, I want to correct a possible misconception related to the question of whether global warming is “real.” Now, possibly, noone who has read or will ever read this thread shares this misconception, but I’ve known people who do, so…
Imagine a hypothetical planet, which we’ll call Ball-o-Rock. Ball-o-Rock has sufficient mass to support an atmosphere, but it does not in fact have an atmosphere. It’s a ball of rock. The surface temperature on this hypothetical planet will be a function of its distance from the Sun, its thermal properties, its albedo, etc. Now add an atmosphere of carbon dioxide. The surface temperature of Ball-o-Rock goes up. Period.
Back on Earth, things are obviously more complicated. Far more complicated. But it’s not as if (and here’s the misconception I’ve known some people to have) scientists went off searching for global warming on a whim, and then, believing they had found it, guessed that it was caused by human activity on a similar whim. We have been adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and, absent any negative-feedback mechanisms, that will cause (or, I should say, is causing) the planet to warm. It’s our incomplete knowlege (to put it mildly) of feedback mechanisms (both positive and negative) that is the biggest cause of uncertainty in climate predictions.
Again, I don’t mean to insult the intelligence of people for whom this stuff is basic knowledge. And I think it’s perfectly reasonable to be a global warming “skeptic.” We should just be skeptical for the right reasons.
June 10th, 2006 at 10:21:36 am
Mad Max -
I’ll be sure to turn off the Weather Channel next time they predict a tornado or hurricane, because it is sheer audacity to try to predict weather patterns.
June 10th, 2006 at 10:33:44 am
(Hmm..it kept the quote, and left off my reply..oh well)
1) Scientists can only predict hurricanes and tornados after a storm has formed and been studied. They cannot tell us which storms will produce hurricanes and tornadoes, or how strong they will be. They can only make gusses, which is why they are called hurricane or tornado warnings. And as anyone who lives in the midwest will tell you, they are just as likely to not result in a tornado as they are to result in a tornado. We don’t know how a tornado or hurricane will react after they form either, and they are among the most extensively studied forms of weather around. I rather think this example is more supportive of my position than yours.
2) As anyone who has ever used the weather predictions in the papers knows, we cannot even predict the weather 24 hours ahead with certainty, or more than a week ahead with any degree of accuracy. Yet we are suppossed to believe that scientists know what is going to happen in the next 100 years, even when we already have their previous prediction which they will all now acknowledge was completely wrong. I rather think that accepting the “the sky is falling hysteria” is more the actions of a moron.
June 10th, 2006 at 10:46:36 am
This site:
http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
presents most of my arguments in a logical manner, and with evidence and links to back them up.
June 10th, 2006 at 11:13:08 am
Gahrie, the second point in your most recent numbered point comment is a common one, but it is severely flawed. It’s true that I don’t know if there will be a hurricane in the Atlantic basic on August 23rd. It’s also true that I can state with a great deal of certainty that there will be a hurricane in the Atlantic basin in the month of August. Weather prediction over the short term–days and weeks–is messy because you’re trying for spot-on certainty in incredibly chaotic systems. Stretch out the time scale and you’re instead looking at general trends, which are much easier to call. Weather forecasts of what the exact high and low will be 3 days from now are much less accurate than the projections of “6-10 days from now, it will be warmer-than-/coller-than-/average”. And when you get into the much longer realm, you stop trying to predict weather, and start trying to predict climate–still a messy proposition, but one which is substantially more accurate than predicting weather.
Also, Ehrlich published The Population Bomb in 1968, not 1974. I have to admit that I don’t like the man overly much–mostly as result of a seminar of his I was forced to take–but just because there are a few crazy people making inflatedly dire predictions about something does not necessarily mean that all who are concerned about it can be easily dismissed as loons.
Oh, and Brendan–for the most part, very few species evolved adaptations to ice ages, at least as most people use the term ice age, which is really more akin to what technical people refer to as glacial periods, given that we are technically in an ice age right now and have been for the past 40 million years. Species which were already sutied for the cold flourished; those which needed things warmer moved closer to the equator (for the mobile ones), or died out near the poles (for the sessile ones; tree don’t pick up and move very easily).
June 10th, 2006 at 11:41:05 am
Gahrie-
I don’t doubt that a variety of changes have impacted Earth’s climate throughout history. But to deny the idea that taking hundreds of millions of years of compressed organic matter and burning almost all of it in a 100 year period, resulting in massive amounts of CO2 being spewed into the atmosphere, that this somehow has no impact on the climate is just utter nonsense.
June 10th, 2006 at 12:02:42 pm
Mad Max -
Do a little research. The amount of greenhouse gases that have been produced by human activity as compared to natural and geological sources, is about equivalent to a fart in a hurricane.
June 10th, 2006 at 8:13:16 pm
gahrie - perhaps you are forgetting that, if it is that certain butterfly that farts, hurricanes can be produced elsewhere !
June 11th, 2006 at 12:25:17 am
Mad Max, you claimed the sun is in a cooling cycle. Can you back that up with a link? Everything I’ve read says the opposite, that the sun is having bigger solar flares and is emitting increased radiation.
Brendan, you express concern about our ability to adapt to climate changes in such a short time period. I submit to you that adapting to climate changes will be far easier (especially under market conditions) than will trying to reverse any impact we are having on the environment without causing the global economy to grind to a complete halt and send us back to the pre-industrial age.
June 11th, 2006 at 5:06:51 am
Written history, geology and myth all support the fact that the earth has not always been as it is now. There are stories of drowned kingdoms in western Europe and elsewhere. There is evidence that the arctic was once a tropical paradise. A seaport that St. Paul visited is now half a mile inland. The earth changes for all kinds of reasons.
If we’re really concerned about the effects of changes of climate on the human population, then we ought to be as concerned about destroying dune lines to build condos, altering the silting of the Mississippi Delta to “protect” New Orleans and other forms of misguided development as we are about the effects of human activity on global warming.
Humans do tend to adapt in various ways. A cold snap in the first years of the 19th century drove settlers from upstate New York down to the lower Ohio Valley, for example, something that’s documented in my husband’s family.
People find ways to survive, but we need to learn to respect and live as part of creation as a whole, and acknowledge that we’re NOT in control.
June 11th, 2006 at 6:18:53 am
Pointless. Nothing to debate.
June 11th, 2006 at 8:37:59 am
Barbara - while it is true that, as yet, I have not been able to find any human cultural group (as in ethnic, not just Kiwanis or Buffalo Sabres fans) who do not have some version of the Great Flood Myth, I have been equally unable to find scientific evidence supporting a Great Flood, historically, that would have left little or no land remaining above sea level …
Yes, some areas do get flooded for relatively short periods … some areas (due to tectonic movement) are rising or falling … some areas become silted up/over, and a port becomes landlocked … other areas are losing parts of their coastline to erosion … and all of those happen both with the ‘help’ of Mankind and in spite of the ‘best’ that Mankind can do …
As far as I can tell, Mankind, comparatively speaking (and comparatively recently), has tended to adapt less at a cellular/genetic level and has instead been tending to adapt at a behavioural level … rather than adapting to be able to eat more and different types of things, we have tended to learn how to process the things to make ‘em edible …