Stef's Long Post About Climate Change

We’ve just come back from a couple of days in the Western Isles of Scotland. And, as one does, we caught a couple of ferries between one island and another.

I could enthuse about the scenery in that part of the world for a long time, even if it does piss down most of the time, but that’s not important right now. The reason why I mention our ferry rides is that we saw a lot of raised beaches from the boat.

Raised beaches are beaches or wave cut platforms raised above the shoreline by a relative fall in the sea level. In some places you can see three or four distinct platforms on a hillside. What those beaches tell us is that…

• Sea levels have changed quite significantly over relatively short geological timescales.
• The changes are quick, with relative sea level changing by fifty-foot or more in sudden jumps. Otherwise they wouldn’t be as distinct as they are. Sometimes the sea jumped up or down, sometimes the land did.

OK, I’m a geology geek but this stuff is relevant to the global warming ‘debate’ that is currently raging in the media.

I have said this before but the reality of our existence is that we are sitting on the crust of a ball of molten rock, spinning through a vacuum at thousands of miles an hour. The ambient temperature of the space around us is –273C and our planet is constantly bathed in lethal radiation. If it wasn’t for the stabilising effect of the Moon, our planet would tumble erratically, seasons would last for years and the business of Life would be extremely difficult, if not downright impossible. On top of all that, this stuff is variable. The Earth is constantly cooling and degassing, the heat from the Sun has increased by at least 30% since the Earth was first formed.

I really could go on about the improbability of our continued existence for a very, very long time.

Now, I’m a non-fundamentalist advocate of intelligent design. That’s not to say I believe that ‘God’ set this all up, just that someone did but I’ll shelve that belief for a minute. Thinking strictly scientifically, how could it be that the conditions on this planet; temperature, availability of water, surface radiation etc, have stayed within the relatively narrow range required for the continued existence of life as we know it for the 650+ million years that it is supposed to have existed?

The scientific explanation invokes the concept of Homeostasis

Homeostasis is the property of an open system; especially living organisms, to regulate its internal environment so as to maintain a stable condition, by means of multiple dynamic equilibrium adjustments controlled by interrelated regulation mechanisms.

Which is techno-babble for ‘It just happened’. Fans of homeostasis basically believe that life adapts to changes in the environment and may actually interact with the environment in a way that encourages equilibrium. The classic Daisyworld computer simulation and the Gaia concept are examples of homeostatic thinking. More sun = more white daisies. Less sun = more black daisies. A real world example would be trees growing more vigorously due to more carbon in the atmosphere. More vigoroustree growth = reduction in atmospheric carbon.

There’s no doubt that the living world does contain an almost infinite number of interactions that help stabilise our environment. It’s fucking marvellous. What is not so clear is whether this system was established by accident or design. I’m particularly interested to know how the homeostatic argument accounts for all the astronomical factors that ensure environmental stability and shield life from harm. The tremendous significance of the moon, the shielding effect of the Earth’s magnetic field, a rotation pattern that ensures reasonable days and nights and annual seasonality. Again I could go on for a long time. Just take a look at any of the other planets in the Solar System to see how extreme the results would be if just one of those factors were out of whack.

It’s one thing to say that living things have an impact on atmospheric composition, it’s another to imply that they can collectively move planets around. Actually, there is the basis for a very interesting theory of life in that last statement if someone smarter than me ever got hold of it.

When pondering upon such things, my heart is always warmed by the Biosphere 2 story. Built in the 1980s and costing something like $150m, the idea was to demonstrate that people could live in a scientifically designed closed system. I still fondly remember the coverage of the first ‘mission’ and the sight of eight intrepid pioneers suited up like astronauts or, more appropriately, Heaven’s Gate cult members, waving and smiling before being sealed up on their voyage of exploration.

It didn’t work. Twice. Homeostasis proved terribly elusive in the real world and the Bionauts began to run out of oxygen straight away. They had to have more pumped in. The last time I looked the site was up for sale for use as a spa, resort or, most significantly, a church. The Eden Project in Cornwall is sort of a homage to Biosphere 2, without the inconvenience of trying to make the system work.

I’ll chuck a couple of more personal favourites into the pile whilst I’m at it. If you radiocarbon date the Earth’s atmosphere it comes out at less than 30,000 years old, which is why radiocarbon data needs ‘correcting’ before publication. If you date the atmosphere based on Helium isotopes it comes out at 175,000 years old. I mention these two nuggets on the basis that they either mean radioactive dating techniques are crap, that Bible fans might have a point or, more intriguingly, the Earth has been stripped of its atmosphere more than once. Which would beg the question what were living things doing whilst all that was going on?

So, where am I going with all this?

First off, the notion that there is a 'correct' temperature for the Earth, as advocated by the Global Warming industry, just blows me away. The Earth’s temperature has always shown variability and always will. The real blessing, or handy accident, has been that this variability has somehow managed to stay within a survivable range over millions of years. My, how fortunate. The notion that we should somehow strive to stabilise the Earth’s temperature is arrogant and chauvinistic in the extreme, even if it were possible.

Secondly, we really haven’t the faintest fucking idea how this system works. Scientists acknowledge that the ecosystem is self-correcting but have decided that human pollution is being generated at a rate faster than it can be absorbed and that it is the major driver in climate change. And data that doesn’t fit in with that view is flatly ignored. Take the news that the Sun’s temperature has increased steadily over the last 20 years for example.

Finally, you’ve got to ask yourself what are the scientists and politicians playing at? What’s the real agenda here? The level of debate over this issue is retarded and misleading to say the least. Even a non-atmospheric disaster such as last year’s tsunami managed to get groups with a vested interest in climate change shamelessly jumping onto the bandwagon.

Sea levels are going to change and we ain’t going to stop that, with or without Kyoto. Instead of pissing about worrying about continued consumption of hydrocarbons that scientists are saying we’re going to run out of anyway, we should be discussing how to deal with the certainty of sea level change. The reason why this year’s hurricanes had they effect they did, and the tsunami before that, is partly because of sloppy management but more significantly because more people are occupying marginal land, all over the world. How much debate is taking place about that?