Canaries in the Coal Mine Warnings of Global Warming
Samwik raised this issue in “Issues with Global Land Surface Temp Trends” but in the spirit of seeing of we can get threads to follow single issue I’ve started this thread to address the points raised.
It is Samwik’s contention, and he certainly is not alone, that there are a great many indicators of serious global warming, even if there is some argument about the actual amounts. Since I have a problem with the current data actually showing any warming “trend” at all since 1980 I do not think that the actual amounts in global temperature variation are in any way a minor part of this discussion but that is a different point to the “Canaries in the Coal Mine”.
Samwik provides a couple of examples. These include coral reefs, glaciers. I could add in a few more such as the melting sea ice in the Artic region, the Greenland melt, the loss of ice in the Antarctic, the increase in tornadoes in the US, the increase in number and intensities of hurricanes, cyclones or typhoons depending on what they are caused locally.
Without going into any great detail on any of these I would suggest to Samwik that just because something when added together with a great many other apparent changes seem to point towards a common change does not mean that individually or even that ANY of the items actually demonstrate the change that is being touted as occurring. The real trouble with the “Canaries in the Coal Mine” supposition to the global warming debate is that nothing that is used to suggest that they are actually the equivalent of canaries actually has been reasonably established. In other words not only has it not been shown that the canaries are dying because of poisonous gases, to push the analogy, it hasn’t even been shown that the canaries are actually dying!
Coral reefs are touted very often because the destruction to coral reefs is very visible, the evidence that it is widespread but is more recent in nature than say a cycle that occurs regularly over several centuries, seem to be there. But any expert in coral reefs will actually tell you that, while they may blame global warming for some of the reefs’ ills, the main culprits are such things as changes to agricultural usage of the coastal areas and especially the estuary and river systems that flush into the coral reef areas plus of course pollution, the transfer of foreign species in ballast water and as attachments to ships, and things that just seem to occur naturally from time to time. Coral reefs seem to be extremely robust in nature and survive massive changes in their environment. They have managed to hang on despite massive changes in sea levels, in water salinity and temperatures during the changes between glaciation and interglacial periods. However, the visible effects of what humans have been doing around coral reefs especially in the second half of the 20th Century sure makes for wonderful film and photos that can then be presented as “proof” of global warming. There could be an overall global cooling just as there was for almost 40 years from the 40s until the 1970s but the coral reef problems would still be there and will only get worse until environmental protections actually start to occur to the areas that affect coral reefs. Changes are already occurring such as the changes in fishing system, the phasing out of reef dynamiting by local populations, the stricter enforcement of pollution in reef areas and reef regeneration has occurred in many parts. But pointing to photos of healthier reefs than they were 30 years ago is not the point to any of the aguments relating to either humans being big bad polluters or global warming.
Next, we have glaciers. This one really is a complete furphy when it comes to being any “proof” relating to global warming. There is clear evidence that major glaciers have retreated much more in this Epoch than their current levels and that they expended again, only to retreat again starting about 250 years ago. The ones that are really trotted out to be the proofs to global warming such as the African sub tropical glaciers are the result of regional climate change that probably occurred due to land use changes but certainly occurred well before the Industrial Revolution. If between 40% and 80% of the glacier in these regions were lost before the beginning of the 20th Century, really what does that have to do with anything to do with either global warming or CO2, since neither were an issue when these glaciers really started to shrink in a big way. Glacier data gets misrepresented, often blatantly. Greenpeace managed to get egg of their face by running a campaign concerning a South American glacier that had retreated vast distances but managed to neglect in their campaign that there were six glaciers feeding into the same lake and only one, the one they were using in the campaign, was retreating.
But glaciers are a very poor “Canary” since we are in an Interglacial period, meaning that the period consists of the planat mostly being free of glaciers with those that remain being remnant glaciers. Given enough time in an interglacial period and the vast majority of glaciers will disappear. Since this Interglacial period has been rather long at a bit over 11,000 years, the disappearance of glaciers is not something that really should be unexpected and there does not seem to be good evidence that glacier retreat has accelerated dramatically in the relevant periods.
Pick a “canary” proof of global warming and pretty much all of them have much more mundane explanations that do not help support the global warming argument at all. But, hey, feel free to list ones you think cannot be refuted and we might be able to look at the specific evidence.
Regards
Richard
