B2X4CJ Melt water on the Greenland ice sheet near camp Victor north of Ilulissat

THE DEARTH OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE ONLY ADDS TO THE ALARM

1. Global warming scientists cited the shrinking of the Chorabari Glacier in the eastern Himalayan Mountains as evidence that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels is causing global warming and that global warming in turn is causing Himalayan glaciers to melt. Although the data are insufficient and conflicting, they project that in a hundred years, the glacial loss will affect water supply to a vast region whose rivers get their water from these glaciers. With respect to the absence of sufficient data to support this projection, they propose the odd logic that “the dearth of scientific knowledge only adds to the alarm”.
2. There are a thousand glaciers in the Himalayan Mountains. Some of them are retreating. Some of them are expanding. Some are doing neither. We don’t have sufficient data to know what most of them are doing except that there has been a gradual net retreat of the glaciers since the year 1850 which marks the glacial maximum of the Little Ice Age.
3. The Himalayans are folded mountains and the folding is currently in process. It is a geologically active area. There is a lot of geothermal activity in these mountains particularly in Uttaranchal where Chorabari Glacier is located. Steamy hot springs are a major tourist attraction in Uttaranchal.
4. Neither the geothermal nor volcanic activity is included in the assessment of glacial melt as an effect of fossil fuel emissions. The assessment is that the end is near for Himalayan glaciers due to fossil fuel emissions. The end may very well be near but the prediction of its coming would be more credible if their computer model included volcanic and geothermal activity both on land and in the bottom of the ocean.
5. A computer model based on the assumption that all surface anomalies of the planet are due to human activity is not the appropriate tool for the determination of the role of human activity in surface anomalies.

FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS MELTING ICE IN GREENLAND

1. Although there has been some thinning of coastal ice in Greenland, the total ice mass there is actually increasing because of a rapid increase in ice thickness at higher elevations. If we could cause all of Greenland’s ice to melt into the sea, it would raise the sea level by 7 meters, as the scaremongers say, but that scenario does not appear likely given the data.
2. One should also take note that during the last decade, Greenland has not become warmer. It has become colder. It is therefore not possible to ascribe changes in its ice mass to global warming or to fossil fuel emissions. As a footnote, Greenland’s coast was in fact green with vegetation in the tenth century when it was discovered by Nordic sailors. It was warmer then than it is now.
3. Since then it has been through the Little Ice Age from which it is currently recovering. Studies of ice mass balance in Greenland by climate scientists ignore geothermal activity and begin with the assumption that all observed ice loss are due to fossil fuel emissions and that they can be attenuated by taking climate action in the form of cutting emissions.

FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS CAUSE DROUGHT IN AFRICA

1. Africa is a drought prone continent and has suffered numerous tragic droughts over the last 500 years. These droughts are natural occurrences. They are not caused by carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. There is no trend in the severity of these droughts and the current one is not the most severe. African scholars have written to refute efforts to associate the current drought with the global warming agenda. One of these scholarly articles was recently published in the Bangkok Post.
2. The dropping of water levels in Lake Victoria and other lakes there is a known effect of a cascade of dams on the Nile and cannot in any way be related to the use of fossil fuels.
3. The New York Times columnist who makes these alarming charges is the same individual who once fell for the oldest trick in book in Cambodian brothels and paid a large sum of money to “purchase freedom” for a young prostitute and then wrote a column about his heroic deed. The young lady had by then returned to the brothel. This is the level of gullibility we are dealing with in this column as well. One should use a big dose of critical thinking when consuming this kind of information.

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