Letters to the Editor

• M(d)isinformation regarding global climate change research and the Earth system

  [Read the article: The paranoid withdrawal fantasy]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  I used to be a (qualified) fan of Camille Paglia until this most recent posting of hers. Too often her knowledge of climate change research and Earth processes, patterns, and systems in general is at best misguided, oftentimes just plain wrong.

  First of all is the inclusion of the comments by the "environmental groundwater geologist". "Anyone can read up on Holocene geology and see that climate changes are caused by polar wandering and magnetic reversals."?! I'd like to know where Hanson got this information. It is completely incorrect. While extraterrestrial forcing factors, particularly relating to changes in the intensity of solar activity, have long been recognized as impacting the weather and climate, polar wandering and magnetic reversals are not to the best of my knowledge key factors. Perhaps Hanson is thinking of the Milankovitch hypothesis, which operates on timescales of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. If true, and the jury is still out, Milankovitch cycles could explain the occurrence of ice ages over approximately 100,000 year periods, and not climate changes within the Holocene (last 12,000 yrs, approx.). Look it up yourself. Hanson, you should have majored in fine arts; if I need a well located, I will hire a water witch with a forked stick rather than you, as you obviously slept through more than a few lectures. Based on your comments, you are unqualified to call yourself a geologist of any kind.

  Then Paglia states: "The simplest facts about geology seem to be missing from the mental equipment of many highly educated people these days. There is far too much credulity placed in fancy-pants, speculative computer modeling about future climate change." Well, guess what? While general knowledge of Earth system science (and scientific literacy as a whole) is sorely lacking, Camille certainly does not possess a sound grasp of the subject, or seem to care to look anything up before spouting out pure nonsense. GCMs (General Circulation Models, AKA Global Climate Models) are based on state-of-the-art knowledge of Earth's physical, chemical and biological processes and systems, as well as emprical data. Are GCMs perfect? No they are not, but they are far from being "fancy-pants" and "speculative." In fact, the models have performed much better than the well-funded disinformation campaigns organized by vested interests such as Exxon-Mobile have claimed. More important, direct empirical observations indicate changes in the Earth system that support model predictions, such as the report released today regarding humidity levels. And in any case, why make a personal attack on the modelers themselves?

  Here is another good one from a previous Paglia column: "When I was 10, I lived with my family at the foot of a drumlin -- a long, undulating hill of moraine formed by eddies of the ancient glacier melt." A drumlin is a teardrop-shaped hill deposited by a retreating ice sheet. You seem to describe an esker, a long sinuous ridge of sorted sediments deposited by streams running under the ice sheet. A moraine, of which there are several types, is another class of glacial landforms altogether and not a type of glacially-deposited sediment. Thank goodness you did not major in geology or anything related, though if you did you might actually have something useful to say. By the way, geologic processes operate on timescales ranging from seconds to deep time, and across a range of spatial scales from microscopic to the entire Earth. The Earth will survive in any case; society might not.

  Climate change research and its findings are not "dogma" or a "massive attack of groupthink". To state this is irresponsible and ill-informed. You insult the integrity of thousands of scientists, who are as skeptical and conservative (from the standpoint of what is valid evidence)as you will find anywhere. You can do better.

  While I do agree that there is a growing and alarming tendency among many people to act and speak dogmatically with regard to climate change and other environmental problems, the reality is we are facing a serious crisis, almost certainly caused by human activities. Even the best-case scenarios could destabilize society, possibly leading to significant conflicts, maybe wars. Gore is perhaps a bit of an alarmist regarding global warming (I find the specter of nuclear war still the greatest threat), but he gets the science mostly correct.

  So go ahead, Camille, and point out when people are engaging in dogma and groupthink. In this case, it is not the climate scientists. The evidence compile to-date is overwhelming and well-established. Just check your facts before drawing conclusions and making statements about the climate and human impacts on it.

  Thank you for your kind words regarding The Who! To those of you who deride the band...have a nice day and remember taste is subjective and not subject to the scientific method.

  Permalink Wednesday, October 10, 2007 07:32 PM