-Caveat Lector-
While the following article displays ignorance concerning the
cost and health benefits of chemical-free agriculture (etc.),
it also exposes the dangerously one-sided propaganda of Al Gore
and similar naked political opportunists.
Are these "nice" politicians controlled by wealthy sponsors
who are experimenting with HAARP electronic weather warfare ?
Is the source of these "owned" politician's fear (of the recent
global weather instability) an appropriately guilty conscience ?
--BK
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
From: "Taylor, John (JH)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, 31 May 1999
Subject: [CTRL] Global Warming -- Boon for Mankind
Global Warming -- Boon for Mankind?
by Dennis T. Avery
American Outlook Magazine, Spring 1998
http://www.hudson.org/American_Outlook/
articles_bin/Global%20Warming.htm
Global warming may be coming, but if it does, it won't be
as extreme as previously thought. And it might actually
be a boon for the environment.
"Climate extremes would trigger meteorological
chaos-raging hurricanes such as we have never seen,
capable of killing millions of people; uncommonly long,
record-breaking heat waves; and profound drought that
could drive Africa and the entire Indian subcontinent
over the edge into mass starvation."
--U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell,
World on Fire, 1991
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the
populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to
safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of
hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
--H.L. Mencken, newspaper columnist,
Baltimore Sun, 1925
We've all read the global warming scare stories lately.
Be prepared for more of the same as the Kyoto Treaty sits
stalled in the Senate and Al Gore ties his presidential run
to environmental issues.
Fortunately, there is no reason for alarm. Senator
Mitchell's scary scenario was implausible when he presented
it -- at a time when the crude computer climate models of
the day were predicting three times as much warming as they
currently do -- and is clearly untenable today.
Climate researchers still do not agree on whether the earth
will become warmer during the coming century. Even more
importantly, none of them expect the planet to get very much
warmer in the foreseeable future. They say that the earth
is likely to warm by no more than 2 degrees Centigrade
(3.5 degrees Fahrenheit) during the next century.
All the climate circulation models have cut their original
warming forecasts at least in half in recent years, after
satellite studies indicated that additional cloud cover
would moderate any warming trend. Highly accurate satellite
data for the last nineteen years show a slight cooling of
the atmosphere. Most of the one-half-degree Centigrade of
warming that has occurred in the last one-hundred years took
place before 1940 -- before humanity put very much CO2 into
the air. Thus there is strong evidence that the two are
unconnected.
Research has only recently produced a computerized climate
model able accurately to mimic the weather the world has
actually had. This more-accurate model projects only a
2 degree Centigrade increase in temperatures.
Medieval Global Warming
That may sound like a lot, but it isn't. The world has
experienced that much warming, and fairly recently in
history. And we loved it!
Between 900 AD and 1300 AD, the earth warmed by some 4 to
7 degrees Fahrenheit -- almost exactly what the models now
predict for the twenty-first century. History books call it
the Little Climate Optimum. Written and oral history tells
us that the warming created one of the most favorable
periods in human history. Crops were plentiful, death rates
diminished, and trade and industry expanded -- while art and
architecture flourished.
The world's population experienced far less hunger. Food
production surged because winters were milder and growing
seasons longer. Key growing regions had fewer floods and
droughts. Human death rates declined, partly because of
the decrease in hunger and partly because people spent less
of their time huddled in damp, smoke-filled hovels that
encouraged the growth and spread of tuberculosis and other
infectious diseases.
Prosperity, fostered by the abundant crops and lower death
rates, stimulated a huge outpouring of human creativity --
in engineering, trade, architecture, religion, art, and
practical invention.
Soon after the year 1400, however, the good weather ended.
The world dropped into the Little Ice Age, with harsher
cold, fiercer storms, severe droughts, more crop failures,
and more famines. According to climate historian H.H. Lamb,
during this period, "for much of the [European] continent,
the poor were reduced to eating dogs, cats, and even
children." The cold persisted until the 18th century.
The Little Climate Optimum was a boon for mankind and the
environment alike. The Vikings discovered and settled
Greenland around 950 AD. Greenland was then so warm that
thousands of colonists supported themselves by pasturing
cattle on what is now frozen tundra. During this great
global warming, Europe built the looming castles and soaring
cathedrals that even today stun tourists with their size,
beauty, and engineering excellence. These colossal
buildings required the investment of millions of man-hours
-- which could be spared from farming because of the higher
crop yields.
Europe's population expanded from approximately forty
million to sixty million during the Little Climate Optimum,
the increase due almost entirely to lower death rates.
Trade flourished, in part because there were fewer storms
at sea and fewer muddy roads on land. (There was more
rainfall, but it evaporated more quickly.)
England was warm enough to support a wine industry. The
Mediterranean Basin was wetter than today. Farming moved
further north in Scandinavia, Russia, Manchuria, northern
Japan, and North America. Farmers in Iceland grew oats
and barley.
At the same time, technology flourished. The water mill,
the windmill, coal, the spinning wheel, and soap entered
daily life. Sailors developed the lateen sail, the rudder,
and the compass. New iron-casting techniques led to better
tools and weapons.
Real earnings in China reached their highest point in
3,000 years, thanks largely to the more-plentiful crops.
There were half as many floods and one-fourth as many
big droughts as in the Little Ice Age that followed.
The increase in wealth produced a great flowering of art,
literature, and invention, the products of which we still
enjoy and appreciate.
The Indian subcontinent prospered as well, producing
colossal temples, beautiful sculptures, and elaborate art.
The Khmer people built the huge temple complex at Angkor
Wat. The Burmese built 13,000 temples at their capital,
Pagan.
We know less about what went on in North America. We do
know that the Great Plains, the upper Mississippi Valley,
and the Southwest apparently received more rainfall than
they do now. The Anasazi civilization of the Southwest
grew abundant irrigated crops -- and then vanished when the
Little Optimum ended and the rainfall declined. The Toltecs
and Aztecs built marvelous civilizations in Mexican
highlands that were plentifully watered.
Thus, we can cast aside the forecasts that global warming
will bring more drought and expanding deserts. Global
warming brings more clouds and more rainfall, especially
near the equator. That is what apparently happened during
the Little Optimum. For instance, North Africa received
more rain than today, and the Sahara -- and presumably many
other desert regions -- shrank in response to the increase
in rainfall.
There were some negatives, of course. The steppes of Asia
and parts of California apparently suffered dry periods.
Also, it is important to remember that today's climate
models are not precise enough to tell us anything about
local rainfall in the future. The British global
circulation model recently predicted that the Sahara Desert
and Ireland would get exactly the same rainfall in the
twenty-first century. That certainly seems unlikely.
Agricultural Bonanza
The medieval experience with global warming should reassure
us greatly, and the latest scientific evidence supports such
optimism. It is clear, for example, that a planet earth
with longer growing seasons, more rainfall, and higher
carbon dioxide (CO2) levels would be a "plant heaven."
Modest warming would help crops, not hinder them. There is
virtually no place on earth too hot or humid to grow rice,
cassava, sweet potatoes, or plantains, for example, and corn
can be grown in a wider variety of climates than any other
crop.
The prospective global warming will not be uniform. It is
expected to moderate nighttime and winter low temperatures
more than it raises daytime and summertime highs. Thus, it
will produce relatively little added stress on crop plants
or trees -- and on people.
The expected increase in CO2 will be an additional blessing.
Carbon dioxide acts like fertilizer for plants. Dutch
greenhouses, for example, routinely triple their CO2 levels
deliberately -- and the crops respond with 20 to 40 percent
yield increases. Extra CO2 also helps plants use their
water more efficiently. The "pores" (stomata) on plant
leaves partially close, and less water vapor escapes from
inside the plants. More than a thousand experiments with
475 crop plant varieties in 29 separate countries show that
doubling the world's carbon dioxide would raise crop yields
an average of 52 percent.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does seem to
be rising. In fact, we are nearly halfway to the expected
CO2 peak of 550 parts per million. The current levels of
CO2 in the earth's atmosphere are very low, however,
compared to past periods. In fact, most of the earth's
species of plants and animals evolved in much-higher
levels of carbon dioxide than we have today -- up to
twenty times the recent pre-industrial level of 280 ppm.
Lush Forests and Prairies
The increase in CO2 will make forests all over the world
healthier and more robust -- and allow them to support
more wildlife. Canadian forestry researchers estimate
that in a new warming their forest growth would increase
by 20 percent. In fact, the world's crops, forests, and
soils may well be nature's "missing carbon sink." (Not all
human-produced carbon dioxide shows up in the atmosphere or
is absorbed by the surface layers of the ocean, which
suggests that it is being used by plants.)
Of course, it would put less stress on our wild species if
the world always stayed at the same temperature, but the
planet has never done that. Our "species models" mostly
evolved in the Cambrian Period (six-hundred-million years
ago), and they have already survived several Ice Ages and
hot spells.
Scientists examining the impact of global warming on
wildlife species in the two most at-risk environments
(tropical forests and the Arctic) say that they would
expect a modest global warming to produce little or no
species loss.
In Global Warming and Biodiversity, for example, Dr. Gary S.
Hartshorn notes that the tropical forests already undergo
enormous variability in rainfall. He writes, "It is
unlikely that higher temperature per se will be directly
deleterious to tropical forest [wildlife] communities."
Hartshorn also notes that although scientists previously
estimated the number of wildlife species in the world at
three to ten million, they had to change their estimate once
they started counting tropical species. Now they estimate
roughly thirty million species, with the overwhelming
majority occupying the tropical rain forests. Thus, the
negligible effect of global warming on tropical forests
bodes very well for the world's biodiversity.
In the same book, Dr. Vera Alexander notes that Arctic
marine systems would be seriously threatened if the sea ice
melted. The Arctic, however, has already survived major
temperature changes, including the Little Climate Optimum,
without shrinking appreciably. Even with average worldwide
temperatures six to nine degrees Centigrade warmer than
today's, Alexander notes, the sea ice would re-form in the
winter.
Assessing an Arctic tundra ecosystem, Dwight Billings and
Kim Moreau Peterson predict that such a warming would have
no major species impact. They expect more snow-free days
in the summer, more photosynthesis, and somewhat more peat
decomposition, but these factors would mainly benefit the
primary food chain. Thus the available evidence suggests
that global warming will have little effect on Arctic
species.
Of course, we must also note that any wildlife species
too fragile to survive this kind of mild warming probably
disappeared from the planet several hundred years ago
during the Little Climate Optimum.
Decrease in Disasters
Most of the trillion-dollar estimates of global warming
"costs" headlined in the 1980s were based on forecasts that
cities such as New York City and Bangladesh would be drowned
under rising seas. In 1980, for example, some activists
claimed that global warming would raise sea levels by
twenty-five feet. In 1985, a National Research Council
panel estimated a three-foot rise in the sea level. Those
are frightening scenarios, but completely untrue.
The Medieval Climate Optimum did not produce devastating
floods. Nor will a new global warming. It may seem
paradoxical, but a modest warming in the polar regions will
actually mean more arctic ice, not less. The polar ice caps
depend on snowfall, and polar air is normally very cold and
dry. If polar temperatures warm a few degrees, there will
be more moisture in the air -- and more snowfall, and more
polar ice.
The world's ocean levels have been rising at approximately
the same rate -- 7 inches per century -- for at least a
thousand years. No one knows why. Data from the warming of
1900 to 1940 show a drop in sea levels and then a sea-level
rise during the subsequent cooler period. In 1992, Science
magazine published a paper based on ice core studies
suggesting that the projected warming would reduce the
sea level by one foot.
Global warming scaremongers have also claimed that a warmer
world would suffer more extreme weather events. This too is
unlikely. History records that the Little Optimum brought
fewer floods and droughts. There is good reason to believe
that this pattern would repeat in a new Little Optimum.
Dr. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of Environmental
Sciences at the University of Virginia, says, "One would
expect severe weather to be less frequent because of
reduced equator-to-pole temperature gradients."
In other words, the smaller the temperature difference
between the North Pole and the equator, the milder the
weather. Most of the warming, if it occurs, will be toward
the poles, with very little increase near the equator.
Thus, there would be less of the temperature difference
that drives big storms.
Forging onward intrepidly, some alarmists have claimed that
a warmer world would suffer huge increases in deaths from
horrible plagues of malaria, yellow fever, and other
warm-climate diseases. One study predicted fifty- to
eighty-million more cases of malaria alone per year.
(There are now approximately five-hundred million new cases
of malaria each year, and up to 2.7 million deaths.)
Fortunately, these claims are unlikely to come true, because
they ignore some important, fundamental realities. As
mentioned, global warming would be very slight near the
equator and thus would only slightly expand the range of the
malarial mosquitoes. Hence there is little reason to expect
tropical plagues to increase naturally.
Moreover, these diseases are nowhere near as relentless as
the scare scenarios assume. In the U.S., for example,
malaria and yellow fever once ranged from New Orleans to
Chicago. We conquered those diseases, however, and not by
changing the climate. We did it by suppressing mosquitoes,
creating vaccines, and putting screens on doors, windows,
and porches. Other countries can do the same.
Third World countries have had high disease rates because
they were poor, not because warm climates cannot be made
safe.
As it happens, far from creating a plague of pestilences,
the Little Climate Optimum engendered a worldwide population
surge and set the stage for several historic invasions such
as the Viking incursions into Normandy and England and the
movement of German peoples into Eastern Europe. This time,
however, global warming is quite unlikely to produce a
population surge. The modern world's population is
currently restabilizing thanks to affluence, urbanization,
and contraceptive technology. Births per woman in the Third
World have fallen from 6.5 in 1960 to 3.1 today. The First
World is already below the replacement level (2.1 births)
and likely to stabilize at the modern equilibrium of about
1.7 births per woman. (See the article by Max Singer
elsewhere in this issue.)
Warming or no, we can expect a peak population of
approximately 8.5 billion people around 2035. That peak
will be followed by a slow, gradual decline through the
rest of the 21st century.
Why Be Wary?
The original global warming scare-stories were authored
by eco-activists who have subsequently admitted that they
were looking for ways to persuade people to live leaner
lifestyles. To frighten us into lowering our living
standards, they have announced a whole series of terrifying
claims, most of which have already been proven wrong:
The Population Explosion... Activists frequently warned
us that the human population would reach fifteen
billion, or fifty billion, or whatever astronomic level
would collapse the ecosystem. We now know that
affluence and contraceptives will give the world a
peak population of 8.5 billion around the year 2035,
followed by a slow decline in the late twenty-first
century.
Acid Rain... Activists warned us that acid rain from
industrial pollution would destroy the forests in the
First World. A billion dollars worth of research has
shown that acid rain is a very minor problem due mainly
to natural factors.
Cancer from Pesticides... We are still looking for the
first case of human cancer from pesticide residues, and
the National Research Council says that we will probably
never find one. Moreover, as the National Research
Council reports, "A sound recommendation for cancer
prevention is to increase fruit and vegetable intake."
Thus pesticides are actually helping cut cancer rates
by producing more plentiful, affordable, and attractive
fruits and vegetables.
There is no reason to believe that the authors of the global
warming scares have any special knowledge about the future
climate. In fact, their leading scientist, Dr. Stephen
Schneider, was predicting global cooling just a few years
ago, and he candidly states that he is willing to
misrepresent the facts if it will stir up the public over
the "correct" causes. New climate models make it clear
that he is wrong.
"But what if we're right?" the activists respond. History
says that they are not. And the problem is, the "solutions"
these activists recommend, however well intended, would
leave much of the world without an energy system -- and that
would be deadly for both people and animals. If we were to
triple the cost of coal, double the cost of oil, ban nuclear
power, and tear out hydroelectric dams -- which would be the
result of the activists' approach -- humanity would
essentially be left without energy.
Solar and wind power are extremely expensive and
undependable. Burning large amounts of renewable wood would
destroy huge tracts of forest -- and the animals that live
there. And in a world of expensive energy, people would not
be able to afford the window screens, latrines, clean water,
and refrigeration that prevent millions of deaths per year.
Diarrhea, due mainly to spoiled food and untreated water,
is the number one child-killer on the planet. Refrigeration
has helped cut stomach cancer rates by three-fourths in the
First World.
The widespread poverty caused by expensive energy would
reverse the current worldwide trend toward greater
affluence, decreasing birth rates, and better health. The
low-energy option would destroy millions of square miles of
wildlife habitat. High energy taxes would all but destroy
modern agriculture, with its tractors and nitrogen
fertilizer (produced mainly with natural gas). Shifting
back to draft animals would mean clearing millions of
additional acres of forest to feed the beasts of burden.
Giving up nitrogen fertilizer would mean clearing five to
six million square miles of forest to grow clover and other
nitrogen-fixing "green manure" crops. The losses of
wilderness would nearly equal the combined land area of
the United States and Brazil.
History and the emerging science of climatology tell us that
we need not fear a return of the Little Climate Optimum.
If there is any global warming in the twenty-first century,
it will produce the kind of milder, more-pleasant weather
that marked the medieval Little Optimum -- with the added
benefit of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and
therefore a more luxuriant natural environment.
The modest global warming now predicted should bring back
one of the most pleasant and productive environments
humans -- and wildlife -- have ever enjoyed. We have
nothing to fear but the fear-mongers themselves.
Further Reading:
American Council on Science and Health, Global Climate
Change and Human Health, New York, 1997.
Moore, Thomas Gale, Testimony before the House Science
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Nov. 16, 1995.
Haskins, Charles H., The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century,
HUP 1927, ISBN 0-674-76075-1.
Hubert H. Lamb, Climate, History, and the Modern World,
Methuen, New York, 1982.
Michaels, Patrick (Virginia State Climatologist), Sound and
Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming, Cato
Institute, 1992.
Kerr, Richard A., "Greenhouse Forecasting Still Cloudy,"
Science, May 16, 1997, pp. 1040-1043.
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