Cultural Gadfly

I’ve realized that we Gadflies haven’t gotten into the ClimateGate story much recently, probably because we’ve been looking at ultimately more important things, like The Immaculate Conception, Pearl Harbor Day, and Call of Duty.

But according to AlGore, who responded to Sarah Palin’s Oped in the Washington Post:

The scientific community has worked very intensely for twenty years within this international process and they have now said that the evidence is unequivocal. 150 years ago this year, was the discovery that C02 traps heat. That is a principle in physics, its not a question of debate. It’s like gravity, it exists.

I transcripted Gore’s comments from the video Allahpundit gives there. I listened to Gore, so you don’t have to. Then I put his words in a lock box. Anyway.

That quote (offered in greater context than most representations kicked around the web today) doesn’t mean that global warming is literally “a principle in physics,” but the implication is obviously there, he’s subtly pushing you along the road towards treating Global Warming as if it’s a law in physics.

It’s a cunning twist on words, and I have to give the Goracle credit for the verbal sleight of hand. But when you get down to it…um…

No. I can’t find anyway to explain it sensibly. Just step back from the proposition for a second approach the notion “AGW is a law of physics, like gravity,” it just sounds ridiculous. Laws of physics are supposed to be immutable and permanent. Gore’s whole career rides on proving that the natural state of the earth is being corrupted by humans. The same thing, it is not.

But let’s go back to the point about Co2 as a greenhouse case. I’m no scientific expert on much of anything, but I can throw the occasional anecdotal piece of evidence or drudged up memory out there.

Like the fact that it’s a popular theory in some academic circles that one of the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was a massive volcano somewhere in Southeast Asia (possibly near Krakatoa) around the 3rd-5th centuries, which caused a planet-wide cooling. Funny that volcanoes don’t produce greenhouse gases…

And isn’t the leading theory of Dinosaur extinction known as the asteroid-throws-up-enough-dust-to-kill-everything-like-nuclear-winter theory?

I had a Medieval History Professor in College who was fond of looking up the classic “global warming conference cancelled due to blizzard” headlines, who once pointed out in passing that, during the 13th century, England had a pretty good wine industry, which is only just now recently starting to reassert itself. Meaning that we’re just now getting back to the temperatures of the High Middle Ages. Most half-way decent textbooks on the Middle Ages bother to make note of this fact. At roughly the same time that High Medieval European culture started to emerge, roughly around 1000 A.D. temperatures got warmer. Coupled with the new heavy plow (see picture below) which could more easily break up the heavier soil of Northern Europe, crop rotation, and longer growing seasons thanks to Warmer Temperatures, Europe for the first time since Antiquity was able to support a surplus population that wasn’t permanently tied to sustenance production. Meaning towns and cities exploded across Europe as farmers were growing more than they could eat by themselves.

And on the flip side, any decent historian of the Late Middle Ages will point out the “mini-ice age.” Barbara Tuchman did not fail to emphasize it in A Distant Mirror. In the first few decades of the 14th century, temperatures dropped and winters became much harsher, some areas in the Baltic actually froze over. The Viking settlements on Greenland and Iceland Died out (that same professor I mentioned above also described how you can follow the decreasing size of the Viking graves as malnutrition from the colder temperatures set in over successive generations). And the shorter growing seasons across Europe lowered immune systems across the board, just as the Bubonic Plague arrived from the East.

Just a couple ideas off the top of my head. I know this doesn’t disprove the current AGW peddlers, but I haven’t seen them offer any compatible explanations. On the contrary, all the by-now infamous “Hockey Stick” graphs ignore the Medieval Warm Period. (Go here to see what I mean about the MWP, and here for a description of how badly the contemporary dataset from Australia is corrupted).

Anyway, more Gore for you now. Hey, I transcribed all this, I should share it:

“Global Warming Deniers persist in this air of unreality, after all, the entire North Polar Ice Cap, which has been there for the last three million years, is disappearing before our eyes. 40% already gone, the rest is expected to go completely within the next decade, what do they think is causing this? The Mountain glaciers in every region of the world are melting at an accelerated rate, threatening drinking supplies and agricultural water supplies, we have these record storms, droughts, floods, fires, tree deaths in the American West, Climate Refugees beginning, now expected to rise to the hundreds of millions unless we take action, these effects are taking place all over the world, exactly as predicted by the scientists who have warned for years that if we continue putting 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every day, cumulation is going to trap lots more heat, raise more temperatures, and cause all these consequences that are already happening…”

Wait, sorry, just gave away the plot to “The Day After Tomorrow.” If you haven’t seen it, at one point, a pack of wolves chase Jake Gyllenhal through New York City. He gets away.

Sorry to disappoint you.

Categories: Culture, Global Warming, Main Stream Media, Miscellany, Religion, Science \\ Tags: Al Gore, Allahpundit, Climate Change, Fall of Rome, gadfly, Global Warming, Hockey Stick Graph, Hotair, manbearpig, Middle Ages, Sarah Palin Oped, Vikings