Gravity more than Global Warming

The UN report on global warming made the front page of the Register Guard here in Lane County, Oregon, today. As expected, all moderation was stripped away and the main point was that catastrophe is now unavoidable. Even if we stop putting carbon into the atmosphere, we've done so much already that we're doomed to suffer. The only question will be, how much.

Actually, I saw very little in the actual report to support panic. In fact, the charts look much less frightening. Take the rise in the level of the ocean. The article suggests that 4.6 feet is realistic. The chart of historical worldwide changes in sea level shows changes in the 100-150 range, but it uses millimeters as the scale. There are 25 millimeters to an inch. The scary numbers are a little less frightening when you realize that.

Even more pertinent, the chart shows a long process of rising seas over a century and a half. Specifically, it shows that in the 25 years from 1945 to 1970, the oceans rose. And from 1970 to 2005, they rose again by about the same amount. The only problem is that the former period of 25 years saw overall global cooling. The rise during 25 years of cooling was as great as in the subsequent 35 years of warming. It makes a person wonder about the warming-rising nexus.

This was another AP report, probably taken by the R-G without editing, so a lot of my criticism is of AP. It was the same with the earlier report on how Bangkok was threatened by rising sea level, due to global warming. In reality, Bangkok is sinking many times faster than the water around it is rising. AP barely mentions that, deep inside the story.

Everyone should understand a basic fact of physics. What tectonic and volcanic activity moves upwards, gravity tends to pull back downwards. Since gravity affects everything, more places are likely to be going downward than upward. This is particularly true in deltas, which is why Dacca, Bangkok, and New Orleans have problems. Human activity tends to cause marshy land to sink under the best of circumstances, and the tendency to pump water from the readily available underlying aquifer just makes it worse.

We are going to have problems with coastal cities during the next century. We will have most of the problems whether we have global warming or not. We will meet and defeat all of them by improved engineering. We will run out of petroleum at reasonable cost, and we will replace it with new sources. We will not be wiped out by tropical diseases. Trust Yankee ingenuity. Or maybe Hindi.