Climate Skeptics In Siberian Self-Exile: The Tunguska Event Stikes Again!
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 01. 5.07
Al Gore has so succeeded with his lead role on the Climate stage, we figured that the skeptics would have to suffer a year or two out of the limelight. But, we were stuck inside the North American box with that kind of thinking. The skeptics, it seems, have cleverly moved their propaganda cheese to a developing nation with big oil pools, where their old tricks are less recognized. The Financial Times (which long ago beat the Wall Street Journal to the rational side of Climate Street), has the story. In "Seasonal Gloom," The FT's Observer From Moscow sets the stage with a description of how lousy Muscovites feel with no snow on the ground to reflect the winter's low light into their eyes. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) amplified by climate change: a first! Here's the goods: "NTV Television, owned by state-controlled Gazprom, hardly helped lift the gloom by screening a documentary suggesting the mild winder was the belated result of global warming sparked not by carbon emissions but by the so-called Tunguska Event of 1908 - when a meteorite or comet is believed to have exploded into the air above a remote part of Siberia with the force of a nuclear blast". The supposedly unaccounted-for solar irradiation increases and the the 'Little Ice Age' are so yesterday, so uncool. Moving on, the skeptics now have their own "Tunguska Effect" to spew uncertainty with (see critique on RealClimate here). Gazprom could teach Exxon a thing or two about the medium being the message.
Al Gore relly needs to explain the global warming
that happened from 1000 to 1400 CE to those of us who are unbelievers.
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If you are seriously interested, visit RealClimate, search Midaeval Warming or Little Ice Age (LIA), and see what actual climate scientists have to offer on your question.
High points: global climate is the running average of all weather, all over the earth's urface and up to the stratosphere. The MW phenomena was regional or continental in nature, and driven by marine currents. Skeptics seem to use it as a regional anomaly to infer a global trend when the data do not strongly support that view, but do correlate with a regional climatic variation. Please, rather than dispute my points of summary here (I'm no climate scientist), do read the RealClimate post and discussion on this topic.
re: arguing by analogy from the local to the global.
After a while, a mere "difference in degree" can become so significant as to become a "difference in kind". IE the cumulative effect of incremental or local changes eventually provides enough evidence to overwhelm an assertion that these are unrelated events.
Climate skeptics who attempt to argue LEI have already pre- conceded a lot of territory, namely that the localized evidence can eventually pile up against them, and the only argument left for them is when the pile is big enough.
I think the snow-free Alps are a pretty big pile!
Other facts and blather aside, all the climate scientists seem to see the causal processes accelerating at about 10 to 20 times the rate of the proposed responses by humans. I have seen no discussion of the probable role played by the ever more rapid decrease of the Earth's magnetic field strength (for hoit & horrific FX of the potential symptoms, see "the Core"). Unfortunately, nobody is likely to obtain 'unobtainium' and bore down to the core for a quick fix. Nor have I seen any science on the effect of the major ocean currents and cyclotrons on the rotation of the cores & field effects. Those salt water currents are gargantuan dynamos, but one of the big cyclotrons creates a field 13,000 X stronger than the planet's. It's all energy and all the factors and effects are interrelated. I recommend prayer & meditation. M
Eh the Core? I'm not sure what you are talking about exactly, but many scientists think the magnetic poles are on the verge of a flip. It happens.