Those evil humans are at it again

A recurring pet peeve for us is when people want to turn science into a religion. A fresh example is a report in Science Daily that claims humans are responsible for the warming of the Antarctic ice shelf, large chunks of which have fallen off in recent years.

"The disintegration of Larsen B is almost certainly a response to human-induced global warming," says Queen's geographer Robert Gilbert, the only Canadian researcher on the international research team.

Oh, really? What he says next casts serious doubt on that:

"Antarctic temperatures have increased more than 10°C in the last 25 years. By comparison, the world-wide temperature change during the entire post-glacial period has only been 2 -- 3°C," he adds.

Ignore for a moment the fact it is an historical fact that grapes once grew in Greenland, several hundred years ago, and that other scientists have found evidence of wide fluctuations in global temperatures, greater than 2 or 3 degrees C, that seemingly occur in cycles. Let's simply try to put some logic to the immediate presumption that humans must be responsible for a 10 degree C change in Antarctic temps.

There is no doubt that changes are taking place worldwide, and especially at the poles. Some data suggest that the sun itself is putting more than the average amount of thermal radiation into our globe (not to mention electro-magnetic, in a process we do not as yet understand). Thus there is a question: How much warming is human-induced and how much of it is the result of other forces?

As far as we know there is no evidence that warmer temperatures "migrate" to the poles through some as yet unknown natural process. But you would have to assume this as a given in order to say that the warming "almost certainly" is caused by human activity. You would also have to rule out any other causes.

This is not science. A scientist would say, "How is this possible? What other factors might be involved? How can I know for certain that more human-caused heat is pooling at the South Pole rather than being equitably distributed throughout the earth's atmosphere?"

A scientist might say, "Perhaps there is an as yet unknown source of heat that is acting on the Antarctic ice shelfs. Perhaps there are undersea fissures releasing volcanic material that we have yet to detect and measure. We know it is happening elsewhere." And that scientist would get his grant money aligned, pick research associates, and get after it, trying to nail down this mystery.

What he would not do is automatically go to his Scientific Catechism and re-read the chapter on the Evils of Human-Caused Global Warming, and issue a press release.

BIO-MASS -- Also in the news today is an alarmist report from Siberia that an area of permafrost peat the size of France and Germany combined is thawing, with the possibility of releasing billions of tons of methane into the atmosphere. As usual, the press found a "scientist" with his dog-earned catechism handy:

Climate scientists yesterday reacted with alarm to the finding, and warned that predictions of future global temperatures would have to be revised upwards.

"When you start messing around with these natural systems, you can end up in situations where it's unstoppable. There are no brakes you can apply," said David Viner, a senior scientist at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

"This is a big deal because you can't put the permafrost back once it's gone. The causal effect is human activity and it will ramp up temperatures even more than our emissions are doing."

Two questions come to mind:

One: If this permafrost is so unstable, how did it handle the aforementioned earlier period of global warmth? Did it melt and then refreeze? What happened to the earlier methane release?

Two: In a world facing the spectre of PeakOil, wouldn't a sizeable chunk of real estate with readily available methane offer at least a tempting solution to energy resource demand? Methane, when burned, produces carbon dioxide and water. It's a clean natural gas.

But why pester yourself with optimistic "can do" questions when it is so much easier to point the finger of doom and declaim, "Woe to you polluters, the end is nigh!"