There’s an interesting story on the BBC website: Arctic muds reveal sea ice record
A new technique to track changes in the extent of Arctic sea ice over the past 1,000 years is being developed by a UK team from the University of Plymouth.
There is little in the way of sea ice records before satellite measurements began in 1979.
Dr Masse said: “Significantly, periods of sea ice cover frequently coincide with dramatic changes to human populations due to famines and illnesses.”
According to a new report by Greenpeace, Apple’s iPhone may contain potentially hazardous chemicals. Read the full report entitled ‘Missed Call: iPhone’s hazardous chemicals’
Article here in Accountancy Age.
Something else for Apple Board member Al Gore to tackle?
Apple’s environmental policy is here.
From The Times:
Please, sir – Gore’s got warming wrong
THE tormentors of Al Gore, who last week won a legal victory against his film, An Inconvenient Truth, are to step up their battle by sending British secondary schools a documentary attacking the science of global warming.
and The Independent:
Climate deniers to send film to British schools
Secondary schools across Britain are to be sent copies of the controversial television film The Great Global Warming Swindle, as the polemical battle over climate change heats up in the wake of last week’s Nobel Peace Prize award to former US vice president Al Gore and the UN’s climate change panel.
The main figure behind the move is Viscount Monckton, the journalist and former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher, who is likely to couple the Swindle film, made by radical television producer Martin Durkin and aired on Channel 4 in March, in a package with an anti-climate change film of his own entitled Apocalypse No!.
The President of the Republic,
Palais de l’Elysée, Paris, France.
Mr. President,
In a letter dated April 25 last to the officers of the Société Protectrice des Animaux (SPA) and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Mr. Alain Auvé, Technical Advisor to Ms. Nelly Olin, then Minister of the Environment and Sustainable Development, confirmed that the President of France at that time, Mr. Jacques Chirac, intended to prohibit trade in France in products derived from seals hunted in Canada.
President Chirac wrote to me on May 10 last to confirm that he intended to do so in order to “preserve the species in a context in which there have been changes in habitat as a result of climate warming.”
However, it would appear that, despite constant amendments to Canada’s legislation and regulations on marine mammals and slaughtering techniques, despite successive reports by the Eminent Panel on Seal Management and the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, despite the precautions taken by our scientists and the enhanced compliance of our hunting methods, and despite the transparency that Canada has sought in allowing foreign observers to enter Canada during the hunting season, non-governmental organizations are manipulating information, images and the emotions of citizens and parliamentarians of all countries, particularly in Europe.
First of all, allow me to say that Canada, a signatory to the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, poses no threat to seal populations. The number of Harp seals, the species most extensively hunted, has even tripled in 30 years to some 5.5 million head today. The European Commission moreover recognized our prudent management on January 26 last by refusing to act on the European Parliament’s written declaration calling for a European boycott on Canadian seal products.
Allow me to add that I have commissioned a study by the research service of the Parliament of Canada on the impact of climate change on Canada’s seal populations. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), the Arctic is highly vulnerable to climate change and will undergo major physical, ecological and economic transformations. However, climate change will have numerous positive and negative effects on the cology of seals, and the net effect on each species will be the result of a complex weighting of various effects.
Without downplaying the extent of the impact of climate disturbances on the seal population, to state that the species is in danger is an intellectual shortcut that no scientist today is taking. Not to mention the fact that all seal species, whose feeding, migratory and reproductive behaviour differs from one species to the next, will not be affected in the same way.
Mr. President, I know you are sensitive to the rational, science-based approach. In that respect, I hail the position you expressed in your letter to Brigitte Bardot on April 18 last, in which you said you wanted to ensure “that species management is henceforth conducted on a scientific basis”, adding that “the status of the conservation of species is all that counts.”
Canada bases its seal hunting quotas on government and independent scientific studies, which are available on the Web site of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada and may be consulted by the general public at:
www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/seal-phoque/report-rapport_e.htm
In addition, I can only be thankful that you informed Ms. Bardot that you wanted to “put a stop to the misconception […] that hunters and fishermen do not protect nature.” Indeed, who would believe that the Acadians, Quebeckers and Inuit who live year-round in contact with the natural environment, on which their culture, community and prosperity depend, are not knowledgeable and protective of the ecosystem?
However, Mr. President, I am satisfied that this rational approach is not embraced by those who discredit Canada’s image and that the media no longer rely on environmentalists, but rather on “animalists”, that is to say animal fundamentalists.
In conclusion, I would also like to express my concerns.
First, I believe that the animalist organizations manipulate emotions for profit. The constant use of the image of the whitecoat or “baby seal”, the hunting of which has been prohibited since 1987, is one of their main weapons in maintaining artificial pity and compassion. When John Hoyt became President of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), one of the most influential animalist organizations, in 1970, it had 30,000 members and an annual budget of approximately US $500,000. The average annual revenue of the HSUS increased by US $22 million starting in 1994. In 2003, the figure rose to US $123 million. When the HSUS merged with the Fund for Animals in 2004, the group announced that it had raised US $95 million for its operating budget alone.
Second, I believe that the objective of these so-called animal defence groups is not animal protection, but ultimately to impose their moral vision of society, which is inevitably based on vegetarianism. All the Web sites of these organizations promote vegetarianism, starting with that of Ms. Bardot, which features a vegetarian cooking column. Ms. Bardot has also announced her latest crusade: the prohibition of horse meat. I would add that these organizations have moved from the field of “animal protection” to tat of “animal rights”.
The approach of the Humane Society of the United States and its allies is thus to propose another moral vision of humanity the sectarian and religious nature of which should be questioned: “To point to economic advantage is insufficient as a moral justification […],” wrote the Reverend Andrew Linzey on the subject of the seal hunt, in a document entitled “Public Morality and the Canadian Seal Hunt” published by the HSUS in 2005. Reverend Linzey, who also holds a doctorate and is a member of the Faculty of Theology at the Oxford University, added: “There is no adequate moral justification for the seal hunt.”
In this new moral order, animals have rights and, surprisingly, no duties because, as Reverend Linzey notes: “Animals are morally innocent.” In the animalists’ vision, the purity of animals contrasts with that of Man, the author of original sin, corruptor of the Garden of Eden. It is therefore not morally acceptable that Man should take life in cold blood in order to support himself. “Language about seals as a ‘resource’ is sub-ethical,” Reverend Linzey states, adding, “The instrumentalization of animals still prevails in today’s world.”
The logic in thinking that animals are equal to human beings and therefore cannot be “instrumentalized”, that is to say consumed, leads directly to this dual concept defended by the animalists of “animal-human” and “animal-non-human”. One therefore understands Ingrid Newkirk, founding president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), when she says: “Six million Jews were killed in concentration camps, but six billion chickens are killed in slaughterhouses every year.” Now that Ms. Bardot has referred to the seal hunt as “animal genocide”, we will soon be seeing the creation of “crimes against animality”.
Third, and last, these animalist groups are not known for their open-mindedness. The lawsuit that the HSUS threatened to file last spring against the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and director Raoul Jomphe for refusing to broadcast the documentary “Seals, the film”, which presented them in an unfavourable light, speaks volumes. In addition, a more radical branch of “ecoterrorists” are operating in the United States and Europe, led by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Animal Rights Militia. France was moreover fell victim to their actions on August 31 last in the deliberate contamination of Novartis products.
To my knowledge, neither HSUS nor Ms. Bardot, nor any animal rights group has condemned these acts. What is worse, PETA previously reacted as follows to the violent acts committed by the Animal Liberation Front: “We cannot condemn the Animal Liberation Front… they act courageously, risking their freedom and their careers to stop the terror inflicted every day on animals in the labs. ALF’s activities comprise an important part of today’s animal protection movement.”
Consequently, Mr. President, as you can see, defending the seal hunt is not simply a matter of defending a hunt, a culture, a way and place of life or a means of subsistence for modest populations. It also means defending the truth against manipulation and disinformation, defending the spirit of democracy and freedom from the imposition of a moral order, and defending the language of science against extremism and anthropomorphism.
On this subject, it is rumoured that you recently met with Brigitte Bardot. Following that meeting, you purportedly made a commitment to ban seal products in France by the end of the year. Allow me to doubt this information, given that Ms. Bardot, who occasionally comes back to restore her notoriety on Canada’s ice floes, is so contrary to the archetypal scientist, to the rational discourse of which you are so much in favour. In her Ottawa press conference last year, for example, Ms. Bardot addressed journalists before an enormous poster showing a walrus – not a seal – with a club in its mouth, lying and wallowing in its blood at the foot of a young child. It would be difficult to be more cartoonish, anthropomorphic or grotesque. I am therefore sure you will agree with me that Ms. Bardot’s scientific competence in these matters is probably equal to that of Sir Paul McCartney or Pamela Anderson, who also recently spoke out on this issue. I recall what you wrote to Ms. Bardot on April 18 last, in reference to the Observatoire de la faune sauvage: “If there is any difference of opinion with other institutions, it is up to the
experts to reach an agreement.”
Mr. President, the seal hunt is a sustainable activity, carried on in a sensible manner for the animal species in question, under the control of our government and scientists, by Canadians who work hard in difficult conditions, but in a manner respectful of their environment.
That is the message that I would like to send to France through you and that I have undertaken to transmit both in and outside Canada.
Mr. President, I am,
Yours sincerely,
The Honourable Céline Hervieux-Payette, P.C.
Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Quebec, Canada
Graph of yearly averaged sunspot numbers 1610 to 2000 and text follows below:
The Maunder Minimum represents the coldest phase of the Little Ice Age, when solar activity was particularly low and there was an almost total absence of sunspots. In a previous blog post I presented evidence for the LIA in Australia, suggesting 17th century global cooling. There was also a slight fall in atmospheric CO2 concentrations for the period between 1550 to 1800.
Drew Shindell of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies has attempted to explain the Maunder Minimum using a climate model. According to Shindell’s results less strong ultraviolet light was emitted by the sun, which in turn caused less ozone to be formed in the stratosphere. As a result the North Atlantic Oscillation became strongly negative, causing Europe to be unusually cold.
Read the story in more detail here.
Looking at the graph of yearly averaged sunspot numbers, we can discern a rising trend in solar activity following the Maunder Minimum, peaking in the 20th century, and remaining high despite a fall after 1950. Some solar scientists, including NASA’s David Hathaway are predicting a big fall in solar activity in the not too distant future, with an uncertain impact on global temperatures. Another Maunder type minimum on the way? We may not have to wait too long to find out.
Some notes about solar activity/the solar constant:
Measurements of the Nimbus-7 and Solar Maximum Mission satellites reported temporary large decreases of the solar constant of the order of a few tenths of a percent on a time-scale from days to weeks. Investigations show that these decreases were caused by ‘active’ sunspot groups with fast development and complex structure. This connection between the solar constant variation and the appearance of the active groups seems to be clearer in the maximum of the solar activity.
The intensity of the Sun varies along with the 11-year sunspot cycle. When sunspots are numerous the solar constant is high (about 1367 W/m2); when sunspots are scarce the value is low (about 1365 W/m2). Eleven years isn’t the only “beat,” however. The solar constant can fluctuate by ~0.1% over days and weeks as sunspots grow and dissipate. The solar constant also drifts by 0.2% to 0.6% over many centuries.
Samuel Langley and Charles Greeley Abbot of the Smithsonian recorded direct measurements of the solar constant (the level of the Sun’s radiation) over several decades. They concluded that this “constant” varies by about 0.3% on the short-term scale of several days and that on the longer term, the more active Sun is brighter by about 1%. [Hufbauer, 1991]
The proxy relationships observed during solar cycle 21 and the behavior of other sun-like stars [Baliunas and Jastrow, 1990] have been used by Lean et al. [1992] to estimate the solar irradiance during the Maunder Minimum as somewhere between 0.15 and 0.35% lower than the present solar-cycle mean value. An independent estimate by Baliunas and Jastrow [1993] gave a range of 0.1 to 0.7% based purely on observations of solar-like stars, discussed by Lockwood et al. [1992]. The use of other stars to infer solar variability has been questioned by Schatten [1993], however, who has pointed out that the observed irradiance is likely to be a function of the heliographic latitude of the observer, being a minimum near the solar equatorial plane, where the Earth is located. Since other stars are observed at random latitudes relative to their spin axes, the variations observed might not be directly relevant to the local situation.
Baliunas and Jastrow [1993] conclude that a reduction in irradiance of 0.4%, in the middle of their calculated range, would be enough to explain the cold average temperatures of the Little Ice Age, as estimated by Wigley and Kelly [1990]. Hoyt and Schatten [1993] have used a variety of possible proxies for solar irradiance to estimate a value for the Maunder Minimum period that is about 5 W m-2, or about 0.36% below current values, in general agreement with other estimates. Rind and Overpeck [1993] used a general circulation model to estimate the regional temperature changes caused by a decrease of solar irradiance by 0.25%, in the middle of the range estimated by Lean et al. [1992]. They found a global average reduction of 0.45C with no clear latitudinal variation, and with the largest effects over the continental land masses.
We are all aware of a claimed consensus on climate science, although what the consensus actually is and how far it goes has yet to be defined, in my view. That is not the issue raised here. A book authored by Janis, I. L. & Mann, L. (1977) Decision-making: A psychological analysis of conflict, choice, and commitment (New York Free Press), explores the concept of ‘Group Think,’ which shows a remarkable parallel with the way the climate science consensus is operated and protected.
Eight symptoms of Group Think are listed below:
1. Illusion of Invulnerability: Members ignore obvious danger, take extreme risk, and are overly optimistic.
2. Collective Rationalization: Members discredit and explain away warning contrary to group thinking.
3. Illusion of Morality: Members believe their decisions are morally correct, ignoring the ethical consequences of their decisions.
4. Excessive Stereotyping: The group constructs negative stereotypes of rivals outside the group.
5. Pressure for Conformity: Members pressure any in the group who express arguments against the group’s stereotypes, illusions, or commitments, viewing such opposition as disloyalty.
6. Self-Censorship: Members withhold their dissenting views and counter-arguments.
7. Illusion of Unanimity: Members perceive falsely that everyone agrees with the group’s decision; silence is seen as consent.
8. Mind guards: Some members appoint themselves to the role of protecting the group from adverse information that might threaten group complacency.
I can certainly see how ignoring the dangers of concentrating all of our efforts on futile CO2 reduction, ad hominem attacks, personal smears, US State Climatologists losing their jobs, and the likes of RealClimate plus some media outlets as ‘Mind guards’ fits into this framework. No doubt some blog readers will agree and can think of other examples. Others, of course, will disagree.
Thanks to John McLean for alerting me to the concept of ‘Group Think.’
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
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