Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist (76 page)

“Ocean acidification” is a perfect example of a contrived catastrophe scenario. The average person does not have a grasp of the complexities of marine chemistry and biology. The activists simply coin a new, scary term like “acidification” and then effectively extort money from people who are concerned for the future. And all this emphasis on the dangers of CO
₂
tends to divert people from thinking about the real dangers to coral reefs like destructive fishing methods and pollution from sewage.

Our little house by the Sea of Cortez in Cabo Pulmo in southern Baja, Mexico, looks out over a National Marine Park that contains the only large coral reef on the west coast of the Americas. Pulmo Reef is a popular dive site, known for its rich abundance of reef fish, many of which school in the thousands. It was after a dive on the reef during our first visit to Cabo Pulmo in 1999 that Eileen and I decided to make a base there. Since then we have dived and snorkeled on the reef many times each year.

In September of 2002 a tropical storm brought torrential rains that dumped over 20 inches of rainfall in a 24-hour period. It must have been a once in a 100-year event as the flooding was the worst the locals could remember. A lens of freshwater about 20 feet deep spread out over the reef as a result of the runoff from the mountains. This killed all the coral, as coral cannot live in freshwater. Only the corals below the 20-foot depth of the freshwater layer survived.

For a few years after the event virtually no living coral could be seen in the shallower waters. The reef turned white and became covered in green algae, which in turn resulted in an explosion of sea urchins where there had been very few before. By 2006 the reef began to recover noticeably with nodules of new coral becoming established. Coral polyps from the deeper regions of the reef were recolonizing the shallow waters. The sea urchins died out and fish returned in greater abundance. Today the reef is in full recovery as the coral is now growing substantially each year. It may take another 20 years or more to recover completely, and will only do so if there is not another torrential rainstorm.

I imagine some people who believe we are causing catastrophic climate change would suggest we were responsible for the torrential rains that killed part of the reef. I don’t believe we can be so certain, especially as such events have been occurring since long before humans began emitting billions of tons of CO
₂
each year. And regardless of the storm’s cause, it is comforting to know that the reef can recover despite the dire predictions of the early death of coral reefs worldwide.

Figure 9. Global and Northern Hemisphere tropical cyclone energy 1979 to 2010. Since the peak during the 1990s, the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones has diminished considerably.
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Storms, Hurricanes, and Severe Weather Events

Everyone likes to talk about the weather and climate activists are no exception. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which caused so much devastation to New Orleans and the surrounding regions, Al Gore gave a rousing speech in which he predicted hurricanes would continue to
become more frequent and more severe as global warming intensified.
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Since that speech the intensity of global hurricanes has diminished by about half from the peak years of 1993 and 1998. Still, on the cover of his 2009 book,
Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis
, Al Gore had four fake hurricanes airbrushed onto a photo of the earth from space.
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He continues to push the fear of hurricanes when it has become clear there is no longer any basis for such concern. In fact, scientists at the U.S. National Hurricane Center predict that global warming will result in not more but fewer hurricanes.
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Al Gore must be aware of this.

Figure 10. Graph showing that sea level was 120 meters (nearly 400 feet) lower at the height of the last glaciation.
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Sea Level Rise

There is conclusive proof that increased CO
₂
levels will be good for plants both on the land and in the sea. If increased CO
₂
does make the world warmer, it will almost certainly make it wetter, which will also be good for plants and most animals, including us. Then what is so bad about global warming anyway, whether it is natural or caused by humans? The prospect that sea levels will rise in a warmer world is the main drawback as this would threaten the infrastructure we have built in lowlying coastal areas.

The seal level has fluctuated a great deal during the Pleistocene, as ice sheets have advanced and retreated and as temperatures have risen and fallen. At the height of the last glaciation, which ended 18,000 years ago, the sea was about 120 meters (nearly 400 feet) lower than it is today (See Figure 10). There was relatively rapid glacial melting and subsequent sea level rise between 15,000 and 6000 years ago as large, lower elevation ice sheets melted and disappeared. During the past 6000 years, the rise has been slower but steady. In recent times the sea level has risen by about 20 centimeters (8 inches) per century.
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Clearly human activity was not responsible for the end of the last glaciation, subsequent warming, and the retreat of the world’s glaciers during the past 18,000 years. To date we have no indication that the rate of sea level rise is increasing, whether by natural causes or by our impact on climate. Many predictions of future sea level rise have been based on computer models. In its 2007 report the IPCC predicted sea level would rise between 18 and 59 centimeters (7 to 23 inches) during the next century. The low end is entirely reasonable as this is about equal to the present rate. The high end is three times the present rate and would require a considerable amount of warming during this century. As yet there has been no warming in this century and sea level rise has not been increasing.

If the sea were to rise nearly two feet as the IPCC suggests in its extreme case, there would be disruptions to infrastructure and related activities. While natural ecosystems would adapt with little difficulty, coastal infrastructure would definitely be impacted negatively, especially our wharfs, buildings, farms, and industries. It wouldn’t matter whether or not the sea level rise was due to natural or human causes.

The 120-meter (400-foot) sea level rise during the past 18,000 years did not damage the environment and was not a significant factor in human survival. We have managed to cope with the 20-centimeter (8-inch) rise over the past century. But we have built vastly more coastal infrastructure over the past century than we have in all of human history, and we will continue to do so during the next century.

What should we do about this? Is it wise to assume we are the cause of sea level rise and then to end the activities we think are responsible? Or would it make more sense to plan for a sea level rise of, say, 30 centimeters (12 inches) over the next century. If we are not the cause of sea level rise, which I believe is likely, then there is not much we can do to stop it anyway. If we plan for continued sea level rise at 50 percent above the present rate, we could avoid all or most damage by thinking ahead. We could build the dykes a little higher, not develop suburbs in areas that are susceptible to sea level rise, and generally plan our infrastructure to withstand sea level rise. How could that cause more negative impacts than an 80 percent or larger reduction in fossil fuel use worldwide in the next decade?

I repeat my assertion that we should make an effort to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and switch to alternatives where this is technologically feasible and reasonably cost-effective. But anything approaching an 80 percent reduction in fossil fuel use over the next decade or two would do more to destroy our civilization than any plausible impact of climate change, even if we were responsible for it. Yet that is what many climate activists, including Greenpeace and Al Gore, are calling for. I believe there are more practical and logical steps that can be taken to find a balance between our environmental, social, and economic priorities. I believe it would be possible to reduce fossil fuel use by 80 percent over the next 50 to 75 years, but we must consider the economic and social cost of doing so.

Pacific Islands and Sea Level Rise

Climate change activists have made great fanfare about the possibility that many island states, such as the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Tuvalu, and the Maldives, will be inundated and disappear due to rising sea levels caused by human-induced climate change.
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The government of the Maldives has made the case that rich, carbon-emitting industrial nations should provide financial compensation for the loss of their countries. None of the projections of sinking island states has taken into account the fact that most of them are built on coral reefs and atolls and that coral reefs are alive. A recent survey of 27 Pacific Islands, comparing aerial photographs from up to 61 years ago with current photographs, demonstrated that 23 islands maintained the same land area or increased in size, while only four islands suffered a net loss in size.
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During this period there was a rise in sea level of 2 mm per year. This indicates that the coral is able to grow as fast or faster than the rising sea, and that coral islands grow as a result of coral breaking off and forming reefs that in turn catch more coral and grow in size. Many of the coral islands in the tropics have existed for thousands of year, while during that time the sea has risen by hundreds of feet. It is therefore likely that yet another doomsday scenario regarding the impact of climate change is wildly overblown and may actually have no impact even if the sea does continue to rise.

The “Trick” to “Hide the Decline”

The most quoted email among the thousands released from the Climatic Research Unit, which led to the “Climategate” crisis, was one from the CRU’s head, Phil Jones, referring to “Mike’s
Nature
trick…to hide the decline.”
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Mike is Michael Mann, the creator of the infamous and, to many, discredited hockey stick graph.
Nature
is the science journal that shows a marked bias in support of human-caused climate change. The “trick” was to discard tree-ring data that did not fit the true believer’s bias, data that showed a drop in temperature in recent decades. These climate scientists clearly colluded to hide the data that showed the decline and to substitute data that indicated unprecedented warming over the past 50 years.

In response to the “Climategate” emails the U.K. House of Commons Science and Technology Committee held hearings to determine if Phil Jones and his staff at the Climatic Research Unit had done anything untoward. They concluded that “trick” and “hide the decline” were “colloquial terms used in private emails and the balance of evidence is that they were not part of a systematic attempt to mislead.”
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This is an obvious whitewash, because whether or not they are colloquial terms, “trick” means “trick” and “hide the decline” means “hide the decline.” The committee did not provide an explanation of what it thought the terms meant in a “colloquial” context. It is amazing what deceptions can be perpetrated in broad daylight by people in responsible positions.