GLOBAL WARMING IN WAYNEDALE?
It is February 14, Valentines Day. I sit in my office at The Waynedale News, and look out the window and wonder if I have ever seen the sun so bright or the sky so blue. It always seems so much clearer and brighter after a big storm. The temperature is back down into the single digits.
The late Ed Noble had written about climate in this area, how glaciers once stood where we now stand. In fact, there have been four glaciations over the past 1.6 million years. Each encroaching and then receding, leaving a path of glacial till in their wakes.
The last glacier (Wisconsinan) was in this area 10 to 20 thousand years ago and when it receded it washed out the river drainages we see all through Fort Wayne. This is only important because it created a watershed that runs both north to the Great Lakes and south to New Orleans. That made our Summit City a crossroads for early pioneers following the water route available from north to south. Without those flat portage conditions there would be no Fort Wayne.
Once upon a time there was a tiny, tiny chicken named Chicken Little. One day Chicken Little was scratching in the garden when something fell on her head.
“Oh,” cried Chicken Little, “the sky is falling. I must go tell the king.”
So Chicken Little ran and ran, and she met Henny Penny.
One of the examples that supposedly prove that global warming exists is the premise that glaciers all over the world are melting. We have had a warming trend in the Fort Wayne area over the past 10,000 years which is why the glaciers have disappeared. If you look at this area, ie, southwest Fort Wayne, there are no glaciers present. That means it is warmer in this area than when the last glacier was here.
Some glaciers are surge glaciers and they advance and retreat without anyone knowing exactly why and there are several hundred surge glaciers in Alaska.
*12 percent of Iceland is covered with glaciers and since 1970 the glaciers have been steadily advancing. There are many glaciers all over the globe, some receding, and some advancing.
Antarctica is one and a half times the size of either Europe or the United States and holds ninety percent of all the ice on the planet. In many places the ice is five or six miles thick. **The data shows that one small area called the Antarctic Peninsula is melting and calving off huge icebergs. But the continent as a whole is getting colder and the ice is getting thicker. There are one hundred sixty thousand glaciers in the world. ***About sixty-seven thousand have been inventoried but only a few have been studied well. No one really knows if the net total of glaciers are melting or not.
So Chicken Little ran and ran, and she met Henny Penny.
“Where do you travel so fast, Chicken Little?” asked Henny Penny.
“Ah, Henny Penny,” said Chicken Little, “the sky is falling, and I must go and tell the king.”
“How do you know that the sky is falling, Chicken Little?” asked Henny Penny.
“I saw it with my eyes, I heard it with my ears, and a bit of it fell on my head,” said Chicken Little.
“I will go with you to the king,” said Henny Penny.
So they ran along together, and they met Ducky Daddles.
The theory of global warming states that increased levels of carbon dioxide and certain other gases are causing an increase in the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere because of the so-called ‘greenhouse effect.’ In other words, as carbon dioxide levels go up, temperatures go up.
The problem with this theory is that from 1940 through 1970, carbon dioxide levels went up and average temperatures went down. In fact, every computer model created thus far to predict global warming has been wrong. The computer model predicts the average temperature…and the weather refuses to cooperate. ****Another problem with the theory is that it predicts that the upper atmosphere will warm from trapped heat just like a greenhouse. The surface of the earth will warm later. But since 1979 the satellites which continuously measure the temperature shows that the upper atmosphere is warming much less than the ground is. Weather balloons agree with the satellite readings, which is another problem for those espousing global warming.
“Where do you travel so fast?” asked Ducky Daddles.
“Ah, Ducky Daddles,” said Chicken Little, “the sky is falling, and Henny Penny and I go to tell the king.”
“How do you know that the sky is falling, Chicken Little?” asked Ducky Daddles.
“I saw it with my eyes, I heard it with my ears, and a bit of it fell on my head,” said Chicken Little.
“I will go with you to the king,” said Ducky Daddles.
So they ran along together, and they met Goosey Loosey.
About sea levels rising: It seems obvious that during the last ice age, 10-20 thousand years ago, sea levels were lower than they are now. Anthropologists tell us that the low sea levels created a land bridge between Russia and Alaska, allowing people to walk from Siberia to the United States. There is no longer a land bridge present through the Bearing Strait so the oceans must have risen since then. The problem is that ocean levels, whether they are increasing or decreasing at this point in
time, is fiercely debated, with neither side being able to prove a point.
“Where do you travel so fast, Chicken Little?” asked Goosey Loosey.
“Ah, Goosey Loosey,” said Chicken Little, “the sky is falling. Henny Penny and Ducky Daddles and I go to tell the king.”
“How do you know that the sky is falling, Chicken Little?” asked Goosey Loosey.
“I saw it with my eyes, I heard it with my ears, and a bit of it fell on my head,” said Chicken Little.
“I will go with you,” said Goosey Loosey.
So they ran along together, and they met Turkey Lurkey.
If you have a lake cottage or go to the lake for a week vacation you may be familiar with Urban Heat Island Effect, or Land Use Concepts. These are two ways of saying the same thing. It means that it is warmer in Waynedale than it is at the lake. It makes sense that if you pave a few square miles with blacktop and concrete and add a bunch of buildings that you will experience a warming in the city greater than that of the county. A high percentage of weather stations that were out in the countryside forty years ago are now surrounded by urban sprawl, which makes the temperatures register higher. The readings at the WOWO Fire Escape, Baer Field and the lake are all different, which makes any trending over the last thirty years very suspect. People spouting off about global warming are talking in terms of 0.3-0.7 degrees Celsius. How much faith can anyone really have in those types of average measurements? (Source: R. Bohm, “Urban bias in temperature time series”)
“Where do you travel so fast, Chicken Little?” asked Turkey Lurkey.
“Ah, Turkey Lurkey,” said Chicken Little, “the sky is falling, and Henny Penny and Ducky Daddles and Goosey Loosey and I go to tell the king.”
“How do you know that the sky is falling?” asked Turkey Lurkey.
“I saw it with my eyes, I heard it with my ears, and a bit of it fell on my head,” said Chicken Little.
“I will go with you to the king,” said Turkey Lurkey.
So they ran along together, and they met Foxy Loxy.
What about the Hurricanes?”
We are led to believe that storms are becoming more severe and that climate is being changed for the worse, yet the data does not show that. From 1900 through 2004 there has been an average of 16 hurricanes per ten-year period. The ten-year period having the highest number of hurricanes (23) occurred from 1940-1949.
“Where do you travel so fast, Chicken Little?” asked Foxy Loxy.
“Ah, Foxy Loxy,” said Chicken Little, “the sky is falling, and we go to tell the king.”
“Do you know the way to the king’s house?” asked Foxy Loxy.
“No,” said Chicken Little.
“No,” said Henny Penny.
“No,” said Ducky Daddles.
“No,” said Goosey Loosey.
“No,” said Turkey Lurkey.
“Then come with me and I will show you,” said Foxy Loxy.
But shouldn’t we error on the side of caution?
In this case to error on the side of caution would mean to spend billions of dollars on a theory only to find out that we did more harm than good. It would be like yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater and after a hundred people have been trampled to death, the global warming people would say, “Well, there could have been a fire,” or “there will be a fire sometime, may as well get the people out before it happens.”
What we need is legislation based on science rather than politics.
In a few years the great Global Warming hysteria will go the way of acid rain, bomb shelters, Y2K, and all the unfounded hype about species extinction, especially the new unfounded concerns about the polar bear.
Does anyone out there know how many species there are on the planet? Estimates range from 3 million to 100 million…quite a range. *****Fifteen thousand new species are described every year.
Every time I watch a nature show they end with a scare phrase…”Send us your money or this species will go extinct.”
And just as he was about to lead them into his den to eat them…
…the sky fell on him.
“Oh dear,” said Chicken Little.
“We’re too late,” said Henny Penny.
“Poor Foxy Loxy,” said Ducky Daddles.
“No sense in going to the king,” said Goosey Loosey.
“Nothing to do now but go home,” said Turkey Lurkey.
And they did.
And so, I look out my window at the snow and cold and am reassured by the blue, blue sky that the rest of the world may feel guilty and afraid, but in Waynedale the world is doing just fine.
(Thanks to Julie, who gave me the book, “State of Fear,” by Michael Crichton, which provided some of the source material for this article.)
*P.Chylek, et al. 2004, “Global warming and the Greenland ice sheet,” Climatic change 63, 201-21. “Since 1940 …data have undergone predominantly a cooling trend.”
**Comiso, J.C.,2000, “Variability and trends in Antarctic surface temperatures in situ and satellite infrared measurements.”
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