Scary climate change...

As the Eyjafjallajokull volcano reminds us that Nature doesn't just mess with people in the third world, I'd like to direct people's attention to two very informative books dealing with climate change...and this would be real and documented climate change, not the Al Gore/James Hansen junk science silliness that everyone considers "climate change" these days. Presented for your edification: The Long Summer and Flood, Famines, and Emperors, both by Brian Fagan. Fagan is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at UC-Santa Barbara who has written extensively on the effect that the vagaries of climate have had on past civilizations. The two books I've cited are both very readable and, I'd say, reasonably accessible to the non-technical reader.

In both books, Fagan references anthropogenic global warming and makes the expected worrisome comments about a future of human-induced climate change. However, his careful cataloging of ten thousand years of climate changes provides a powerful argument for a more measured interpretation of recent climate "changes". Two general observations stand out in reading Fagan's books. First, all significant climate change since the end of the last Ice Age has been driven by changes in ocean and air currents. Second, and more significant, is how frequently the phrase "we don't know why.." appears in Fagan's descriptions.  Fagan admits that the mechanisms that drive changes in ocean and air currents are poorly understood and this is a significant revelation in a time when climate "scientists" are making dire and, apparently, precise predictions on the effects of the average global temperature changing by a few tenths of a degree.

What is known about ocean and air currents is that they are driven by convection; warm air (or water) rises and cool air (or water) sinks.  Temperature differences between the poles and the equator provide an engine for the movement of air and water on an inconceivably massive scale.  Throw in some continents, island chains, ocean basins, and deep ocean trenches and you have a lot of quasi-stable ocean currents set up that defy modelling...and this fact points to the very heart of the intellectual dishonesty of the climate change gloom and doomers.  Even if we assume that human activity has caused the average global temperature to rise (and let me stress that this is an "if" that puts us close to the realm of science fiction), we don't know how that is going to change the climate and we know so little about movement of air and water on a global scale that it is impossible to say that a global temperature rise would be a bad thing.

What Fagan does point out is where the very real danger of climate change lies.  An astounding 70 percent of the world's population live in regions that would be affected by a significant El Nino event such as those that ended the Mayan civilization in Central America or drove the Anazasi out of the New Mexico deserts.  Both of these cultures were dependent upon very intensive farming on a limited amount of available land.  When an El Nino event triggered a multi-year drought, both cultures collapsed.

Fagan points out that with the earth's present population of 6 billion people, essentially all agriculture is as intensive as that feeding the Maya and Anazasi cultures and that literally hundreds of millions of people are currently dependent upon the agricultural output of marginal lands that would become untenable in a major El Nino event.  As Floods, Famines, and Emperors makes clear, the shifting of trade winds and ocean currents in the central Pacific that characterizes an El Nino is a global event that affects weather around the entire globe in ways that are not clearly understood - again, let me stress the "not clearly understood" aspect here.  A significant El Nino could cause agriculture to crash in places as far away as sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and China with the resultant famine and subsequent unrest destabilizing governments and economies around the world.

...and here lies the true crime of the scientists and bureaucrats who have built reputations, careers, and institutional empires on anthropogenic global warming.  By squandering billions and billions of research dollars in their attempts to "prove" human-caused climate change, studies of the real and historically documented threats that climate change presents to humanity have been left largely under-funded.  Fagan's books would suggest that it is only a matter of time - as in years, not decades or centuries - before we come to regret our ignorance.

Who are these "scientists" in the Union of Concerned Scientists and what are they concerned about?

Because of these standards, Americans will drive vehicles that save them money at the pump, cut the country's oil dependence and produce a lot less global warming pollution.

Thus quoth Jim Kleisch, Senior Engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists referring, of course, to the recently mandated automotive fuel efficiency standards. In and of itself, Mr. Kleisch's statement is not particularly notable...walk into any wonk drinking establishment in Washington these days and you'll hear something to this effect two, maybe three, times before you've finished your first beer. However, it was Mr. Kleisch's title that caught my attention, "Senior Engineer" with the Union of Concerned Scientists. Impressive...and I'm left wondering as to what qualifies one to gain a "Senior" title at the UCS.

A Google search (72,100 hit's on "Jim Kleisch") later I find that Mr. Kleisch's official title is "Senior Analyst/Engineer" with the UCS and that he specializes in "clean vehicle technologies." Fair enough. A little more searching reveals that he has held the following positions:
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Senior Vehicles Analyst
Union of Concerned Scientists
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Senior Engineer
Union of Concerned Scientists
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Research Associate
ACEEE (American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy)
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Vehicle Analyst
ACEEE (American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy)
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Research Associate
American Councils
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Principal Vehicle Analyst
American Councils
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Researcher
American Councils

Wait...none of these jobs sounds particularly engineer-like. The UCS rounds out Mr. Kleisch's bio with "He holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Ohio University, and a master's degree in environmental and energy policy from the University of Delaware" and helpfully adds that "Mr. Kleisch has been widely cited in the national media, including the Detroit Free Press, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Rolling Stone, Washington Post and has appeared on CNN, CNBC, and the BBC." No papers in refereed journals or issued patents, but Mr. Kleisch has been quoted by Rolling Stone magazine...sorry, Jimmy, your professional credentials are entirely not impressive.

What I'm not seeing here is anything "automotive" in Mr. Kleisch's background or anything even vaguely related to engineering. Yes, he does have an EE degree, but there's no evidence that he has ever engineered anything, electrical or otherwise. What he has done in his brief career -- looking at the picture in his bio, I'd put Mr. Kleisch in his mid-30's -- is be a policy drone, who probably considers recharging his Starbucks card on-line to be an engineering feat...and yet, the Union of Concerned Scientists drags Mr. Kleisch out for a quote supporting their "Clean Energy" agenda and slaps a "Senior Engineer" title on him to give his musings an aura of technical credibility. This sort of obfuscation is unforgivable. There are very real issues associated with the oil-based economy that is currently driving the industrialized world. Issues of sustainability, of transfer of wealth and political power, of emission of pollutants, but for the UCS to attempt to drive the conversation by inventing a faux expert to issue feel good statements on cue is intellectual dishonesty in its most cynical form.

Earthquake predicting toads?

A story has shown up in newspapers and web news sites over the past days about a report that toads have the ability to "predict" earthquakes. The report even showed up on the prestigious journal, Nature's blog. Commenter "karl" at the end of the Nature blog report captures the gist of my thoughts on this particular scientific amusement.

The source of this report of almost magical powers in toads is a paper published in the Journal of Zoology by a Rachel Grant who noted that the toads around L’Aquila, Italy stopped doing their normal toad stuff and cleared out of the area shortly before an earthquake there. Granted, this is an interesting observation, but one wonders why the reviewers for the Journal of Zoology did not return this paper to Ms. Grant with a three letter review: "WTF??"

One group of toads acting oddly before one earthquake is interesting, but as Ms. Grant herself admits, "purely anecdotal." The J.Zoo. (was we scientists like to abbreviate journal titles) paper does make a weak attempt at a causal explanation:

The team suspect the strange toad behaviour was triggered by pre-seismic perturbations in the ionosphere, which were detected by very low frequency radio sounding.

As I said, weak...the ionosphere extends from 43 miles above the earth to 250 miles above the earth. Ms. Grant would speculate that stresses in the Earth's crust miles below the surface have some affect on the upper atmosphere that a male toad hopping around in a swamp, bent on finding female toads, is particularly sensitive to...I won't say this is utter nonsense, but I need a little more explanation for how this near magical communication takes place.

So how does something like this ever make the light of day? Here's my opinion: Ms. Grant and her team are studying the spawning behavior of common toads in Italy -- and why Italy? Don't common toads exist in Ms. Grant's native England? Call me cynical, but my boondoggle sensor is going off here. In any case... -- in the middle of their study, the toads clear out, which Ms. Grant understandably finds "annoying". The toad studiers go home with nothing to show for their efforts and then, boom! There's and earthquake back in the Italian toad swamp and, all of a sudden, Team Toad has something to write about...not much mind you, but it's better than admitting you couldn't find any toads to study. Paper written, Ms. Grant gets to add another line to her curriculum vitae -- and is one step closer to tenure -- and J.Zoo. gets to pad their next issue so they don't look like a loser journal than nobody reads or publishes in.

Has the body of knowledge we call "Science" been advanced? Maybe a wee tiny bit. This is a credible observation -- we hope -- and there might be a real, physical connection between the toads disappearing and the earthquake. Ignoring the ionospheric silliness, it's possible the toads were sensitive to very low frequency vibrations that were precursor to the fault slipping or were getting away from a release of radon gas -- or something -- prior to the quake. The way Science generally works in these matters is: 1) Make observation, 2) Form hypothesis, 3) Test hypothesis via experiment, 4) Compare experimental result with observation, and 5) Return to Step 2, as necessary. Jumping from the observation stage to publication is just a lazy person's way to pad their resume.