My boss recently mentioned that he'd been reading an interesting book on global warming called "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years." Authors Dennis T. Avery and S. Fred Singer present another view of climate change, and one that any thinking person should consider. They cite myriad studies of ice core samples, stalagtites, tree rings, etc. and present some interesting conclusions. The great ice age cycle of plus or minus 100,000 years seems to be linked to our solar system's passage through the arms of the Milky Way. There are documented shorter 1,500 cycles of warming and cooling that seem to be related to solar activity. And within those periods there are fairly sudden and dramatic shifts in temperature and weather patterns, including devastating storms.
They also look at human history -- periods of peace and productivity during the warm periods, when less effort is required to produce food and stay warm, and periods of strife and withdrawal during cold periods. They talk about an unnamed cold period prior to the Roman Era, the Roman Warming Period, the cooling period of the Dark Ages, the Medieval Warm Period (roughly corresponding to the Renaissance), the Little Ice Age, which ended around 1850, and the current Modern Warm Period. Hmmm...this has happened before, when people weren't running air conditioners and barging around in gas-guzzlng SUVs.
One of the thoughts I'm left with is that it's a lot less scary to think that we broke it and so we can fix it, rather than acknowledging our own puny place in the universe. Face it, people like to think they're in charge. People don't like change, and this is likely to bring lots of changes.
Should we abandon efforts to reduce greenhouse gases? Probably not.
Should we expect that reducing greenhouse gases will produce changes in the earth's climate? I wouldn't bet the farm on it.
I wish the policy makers would stop to consider what kinds of things might be productive. Maybe they should look at development patterns in coastal areas that are likely to be affected. New Orleans isn't the only vulnerable spot on earth.
The world is full of stories of great floods and drowned kingdoms. There's a Welsh folk song called "The Bells of Aberdovey," about church bells that can be heard beneath the waters off West Wales. There's a myth about the kingdom of Ys/Is off the coast of Brittany in France. The kingdom drowned, and the inhabitants retreated eastward until they came to a place along a river that was as wonderful as Ys, and they called it Paris (the equal of Is).
I could go on, but I'll write about this again soon. Meanwhile, I invite you to take a good look at the world around you. Remember that Ocean City, MD, gained prominence as an ocean resort after a great storm in the 1930s created an inlet that opened the inland bay to the sea. When you drive in the mountains, look at the folds in the rock that was blasted away when the highway was built. If you see a u-shaped formation, remember that the bottom of the u is actually the bottom of a layer of rock that was folded and then the upper layers eroded away by weather, or even by glaciers. The world that we see right now is not the world as it's always been. Does it really make sense to think that it will always be thus?
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