TRANSCRIPT from the Radio Ecoshock Show November 19, 2010.
Alex
Smith (host)
As you've
heard, there are big changes in the Arctic.
The temperature is going up rapidly, sea ice and glaciers are
melting. The Permafrost is giving way. The
Arctic is in a Death Spiral.
That's why I was excited to get out and record the latest, in a speech called "Drivers Of Environmental Change: The Case Of The Arctic." The speaker was a Polar veteran, Marie-Françoise André of the University of Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand, France. I welcomed the opportunity for a European perspective, known for climate science leadership.
As I
listened, my head began to quietly explode. The latest
science was missing, the old refrains of denial emerged, and another roomful of
College students was mid-led about climate science.
How could
this happen, again? I didn't see any
brochures for oil companies lying about.
The lecture series appears to be funded by the Liu Institute for Global Issues, which is
relatively progressive.
I believe
this lecture represents yet another current of discontent among scientists
whose work has been overshadowed by the spotlight on climate change. We'll give it a few minutes, for others who
run into this strange twist, and those influenced by it. You can recognize the symptoms.
Over her
career, Dr. Andre has made 19 field expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. How could she deny the major changes there,
obvious to the naked eye? She does
not. A good part of this lecture, given
October 28th, 2010 - consisted of slides showing massive changes in ice fields,
sea ice, and glaciers. The warming is
obvious. Andre is not a climate
denier. She questions whether the
changes are consistent with human-induced climate change. And whether we will really see significant
impacts, such as rising seas.
I learned
from Dr. Andre. For example, I did not
realize the huge extent of frozen ice under the Northern Continents holds so
much of the world's water. Let's hear
about the Permafrost.
[Clip 1
permafrost]
"You
have on the right, the hidden ice, I mean the Permafrost ice, the ground ice
which covers much space in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. Permafrost occupies 50 percent of Canada, 60
percent of Russia, and 85 of Alaska."
Amazing. With rapid Arctic warming, all this land ice
will eventually thaw, releasing vast amounts of water vapor into the
atmophere, where it is a global warming gas.
And massive runoff into the rivers and oceans, adding to rising sea
levels. Most of the structures,
pipelines, and forests will be destablized as this underground ocean of ground
ice melts. Dr. Andre did not discuss
this.
We learn
that there are human-caused changes in the Arctic - even though only 4 millon
people live within the Arctic Circle.
She tells us about the localized impacts of settlements, especially the
old Russian factory cities. And the
growing impact of Arctic tourism on the delicate plant life. I cannot seriously equate these with the
vast melting of the Polar worlds - but it gives us a clue to Andre's
motivations, in my opinion.
Dr.
Marie-Françoise André is not a climatologist. Like the
host for this series, and her co-author in a book, the Canadian scientist Olav
Slaymaker - Marie-Francois is a Geomorphologist.
According to Wikipedia, quote:
"Geomorphology
is the scientific study of landforms, and the processes that shape them, and
more broadly, the evolution of processes controlling the topography of any
planet. Geomorphologists seek to understand why landscapes look the way they
do, to understand landform history and dynamics, and to predict future changes
through a combination of field observation, physical experiment, and numerical
modeling."
Geomorphology
is often placed within Geography. It
seemed evident, to me at least, that Dr. Andre is one of several disciplines
who see more media, research money and equipment going to climate science,
while their important contributions are passed by.
We do know, from the work of Canadian scientists, that climate events, such as the major sea ice melt and heating of 2007, can radically reshape the geomorphology of the Arctic. On one Canadian island, old rivers were blocked as landscapes slipped down hillsides, over melting ice below. These big changes likely happened across the Canadian North, in that one season alone.
That is
large-scale change from Arctic warming, which cannot be compared to the
foot-traffic on Svalbaard, trampling plants.
These lesser influences, championed by Dr. Andre, should not be ignored. The Arctic is fragile, and we need to
protect that environment, as she says.
But Andre
is critical of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. As it sounded to me, she suggests the IPCC
has been taken over by something like a cult.
In particular, she laments the loss of the Medieval Warm Period,
as show on a graph presented by the IPCC in 1990. That assessment was later replaced by the famous hockey-stick
graph, produced by Dr. Michael Mann.
Dr. Andre tells the students, quote:
"That
finally, the Medieval Optimum, the fact that the Middle Ages climate was a bit
warmer than ours, is again admitted... The debate continues.... So you can see
the problem. Some people say, 'Well, if
the climate was warmer in the Middle Ages, probably it was not because we
pollute the atmosphere, that the present climate warming exists.' So you can see the implications."
As Joe
Romm often says in his blog climateprogress.org
- you have to put your head in a vice to continue with this. Contrary to the impression given by Andre,
Dr. Mann did not use just tree ring data to construct his graph. Studies from all over the world, including
such things as coral and ice cores, show the European warming around the year
1,000 was a local event, possibly caused by a change of ocean currents. It was not a globally experienced
warming. The Medieval globe was not
warmer than today.
The
American National Academy of Sciences was asked by Congress to investigate
Mann's work. They found the new IPCC
map of climate over time, was accurate.
The Hockey stick graph, which shows the present is much, much hotter
than the Medieval warm period, stands.
It has been cross-checked over by Academies of Science world-wide.
Wikipedia
has a whole page on this Medieval Warming debate - with the correct science!
You must
see Peter Sinclair's Climate
Denier Crock of the Week - Medieval Warming on You tube.
The
French Academy of Science stands behind it, as Marie-Francois knows well. After puckishly suggesting the world
might be cooling, and showing us a graph supposedly showing cooling over
the past ten years, Dr. Andre admitted, under my questioning, that nobody in
France talks about global cooling anymore.
Why does she tell students it is a possibility? In the face of NASA data showing the first
years of this century to be among the hottest ever recorded, year after
year? After 30,000 French people died
in the massive heat wave of 2003?
Dr. Andre
uses Peter Ward's new book "The
Flooded Earth" literally as a poster-boy for alarmists. Against all the recent findings by top
European and American institutes, which warn of a minimum five foot sea level
rise this Century, Andre doubts sea level rise will amount to much.
She
explains this is because more snow is piling up on Greenland, and even more on
Eastern Antarctica. This extra snow
will absorb both the expansion of the oceans, and the melting ice. She does not tell students that hard data
from the American Grace satellites refutes this theory. The Satellites measure changes in gravity,
showing a big loss of ice mass on both Greenland, and surprisingly, even in the
coldest parts of Antarctica.
Just for
a starting point, launch yourself from this
collection of Arctic science links from Joe Romm at
climateprogress.org. THAT'S what the
students needed to hear!
Andre
said nothing about recent Polar science from NASA, NOAA, MIT, the National
Academy, or the Geophysical Union. The
data presented stopped at 2007. She
plainly prefered the chart from the 1990 IPCC report.
All
through, we heard "some say," and veiled accusations that climate
critics had to hide carefully behind their words. It felt like we were at a
secret meeting of Apostates.
I
wanted to demand half an hour to refute, a chance to explain to the students that a boat-load of
expert science contradicted Andre's views of the Arctic. But I was just a guest, allowed to record a
speech. Only two questions were asked,
and then people filed out of the room, turning on their IPODs and IPhones.
This
series at St. John's College, part of the University of British Columbia, is
designed to explore uncertainty about
climate change. It ends next Spring
with Canada's own science doubter, Dr. Vaclav Smil. He
told Andrew Revkin of the New York Times, there has been no global warming
in the past 10 years. He must have been
away during the last decade, on some other planet.
Bring
your own head-vice for that one. I won't be there.
I'm Alex
Smith