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What About Clouds?

According to the Anchorage Daily News (July 10, 1997) the U.S. Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program is going to fund a 10-year, $10 million study to “track how clouds soak up or reflect the sun’s energy in the Earth’s polar regions.” The effect of clouds on climate change is still a mystery for scientists. Sometimes clouds cool the earth, at other times they keep it warm.

Knut Stamnes, a researcher at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, asks, “Are increased greenhouse gases going to have an effect or not?” His answer? “To understand that, we need to understand what clouds do.”

Sensors located Alaska’s North Slope, Oklahoma and Guam will provide new information that will lead to a greater understanding of how clouds affect global climate change in polar, midlatitude and tropical areas. According to Martha Krebs, director of DOE’s Office of Energy Research, “The question is whether or not the use of energy is going to cause a major impact on our environment . . . . That requires more data, and better and more accurate models.”

Melting Icecaps, Schmelting Icecaps

According to David Vaughan, a British Antarctic Survey member, “At current warming rates it will take 200 years before the problem in the Antarctic became serious . . . . And it is very unlikely that the warming trend in the Antarctic Peninsula could be sustained for that length of time without very major changes elsewhere which would make this issue rather irrelevant.”

Warnings of rising seas that will flood island states are overblown and, according to Vaughan, it is very possible that the “effects of oceanographic conditions on the ice shelves could thicken them” (Daily Mail, July 10, 1997).

Birds of a Feather Arrive Early Together

Ecologists are puzzled by the return of some species of birds earlier in the spring than usual. According to records kept by ornithologist Elizabeth Browne Losey, birds are returning to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula 21 days earlier than they did in 1965, suggesting that spring’s arriving earlier than before.

Though a report by the World Wildlife Fund recently warned that, “The first signs of climate change have been detected and can be seen in our own back yards,” ecologists are more cautious about blaming ecological changes on human-induced climate change since “North America’s ecological systems have always been in flux.”

Eighteen thousand years ago ice sheets two miles thick covered the northern half of the American continent. Also, the mid 19th century saw the Little Ice Age with temperatures a few degrees colder than now. In fact, the warming we have experienced over the last one hundred years may be a natural recovery from that cooler period.

Dan Fagre, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Biological Resources Division, said, “Our goal is not necessarily to say human-induced climate change is responsible as much as to say that things are changing.”

Regardless, some ecologists are worried due to melting glaciers in Glacier National Park, warmer waters off the coast of California, declining bird and salmon populations, and other changes. Ken Cole, a government ecologist based in Flagstaff, Arizona says, “I think we can eventually do it but I’m not ready to commit myself and say that these changes are due to climate change and not these other causes.”

David Peterson, professor at the University of Washington states, “Change is natural and normal. The question at this point is: Are the changes that we’re seeing really natural or are they human-caused? And that poses some really tough questions” (Associated Press, July 7, 1997).

New and Improved Climate Modeling Computers

Japan’s Science and Technology Agency will develop a new computer system called the Earth Simulator to model regional climate variations with greater precision. To date limitations on computer power have frustrated the ability of scientists to accurately model the earth’s climate systems.

What will become the world’s fastest dedicated parallel-processing computer, the Earth Simulator will be able to model temperature variations on a grid 100 times finer than current advanced simulators. The Earth Simulator will allow scientists to better understand the regional effects of climate change (The Nikkei Weekly, July 7, 1997).

Early Humans Experienced Rapidly Changing Sea Levels

According to a study by Heiner et. al. appearing in the journal Science (“Early Humans and Rapidly Changing Holocene Sea Levels in the Queen Charlotte Islands – Hecate Strait, British Columbia, Canada,” July 4, 1997), humans during the Holocene era experienced rapidly changing sea levels.

Marine cores from the continental shelf edge of British Columbia, Canada show that sea level varied from -153 to +16 m between 14,600 and 10,100 calendar years B.P. Using marine core data and archeological evidence, researchers were able to determine that local sea levels rose rapidly (five centimeters per year) during the period of early human occupation.

To put this in perspective, climate change catastrophists are predicting a 2 foot increase in sea levels from global warming over the next 100 years. A five centimeter per year rise, however, would increase sea levels by about 19 feet.

“In this context,” states the researchers, “it is interesting that the Gwaii Haanas Haida Indian oral history abounds in legends of rapidly rising seas.” It is also interesting to note that sea levels changed by magnitudes far exceeding anything predicted by climate change proponents in the absence of anthropogenic influences.