Malcolm,
where have you been raised and educated? Tectonics got nothing to do with Austrian laws. If we need a new law in Austria, than it should be a law which makes it easier for universities and research organizations to buy state-of-the-art laboratories and employ qualified researchers. In Austria we welcome international geoscientists, who teach our government, that the geosciences are a fact and not a byzantine, illusionary science. I try to convince the Austrian geological community since years, that we need a working volcanological group for international research and local civil protection, Vesuvius is meteorological close to the Alpine countries.
If you got ideas, how Austria could monitor the active lineaments within the Alpine realm, we give you a job right away. You might be interested that the top governmental health agency of Austria told me today that they got no legal structure now or in a near future to become responsible for Austrian tourists visiting volcanoes. Finally we do not provide young innocent people from entering i.e. As-, Hg-, Cd-bearing environments.
May be this is the subconcious way to punish Austrian citizians for a political situation times ago.
May be ourgovernment is still afraid that the studyof explosive eruptions could lead to the construction of a new bomb. Whoknows, may be they are right? If you are interested I can send you my contributions to the problem volcanoes and hydrogen economy. But be careful, there is a short way from the hydrogen economy to the hydrogen bomb, as old Teller would say -he had been Hungarian. I met him, when I had been invited guest scientist at Los Alamos.
Old gas can be the killer or the material to survive for a little bit longer on this planet. Are we willing to share these resources or are we going to prepare regional groups for another clash of civilizations?
The young geoscientist got the opportunity to teach. One of the highest risk lineaments in Austria is the Periadriatic lineament in Carinthia. The lineament is geologically not very active, but the locals (German-speaking and Slovenian-speaking Austrians) cannot cope with each other.
Please come and study this lineament, I will ask our government to pay you as an international expert, being not evolved in local conflicts.
Cheers
Johannes
----- Original Message -----
From: Malcolm McClure
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 5:27 PM
Subject: Re: AAPG Journalism Award to Michael Crichton
Eric
Perhaps it is your views that are as antiquated as the Austrian laws on Holocaust denial. Science has always advanced through healthy debate.
Malcolm
(1) I support any AAPG initiative that raises the standard of the debate about climate change. If this requires supping with devil Cricton, then I trust them to use a long spoon.
(2) There have been several mini-ice-ages in the past 2000 years but I don't recall anyone blaming them on CO2 deficiency.
(3) . Manabe's CO2 quadruplng was purely hypothetical. Before industrialisation, the atmosphere contained 280 ppm of CO2. At present, it stands at 370 ppm. Assumption is that CO2 is main culprit. Has anyone examined trends in terrestrial heat flow?
(4) I spent a field season on North Slope Alaska. Curiously, mammoths were thriving there when NW Europe was covered with ice. Explain that? Where does your permafrost thickness data come from? (Take a look at West Greenland coast on Google Earth. The contrast with E. Greenland coast suggests that oceanic currents are delivering the heat there that accelerates iceberg calving on that side only— trivial in any case, compared with volume of ice up there.)
(5) Where exactly are all these "already devastating island nations"? Sounds like a hypothetical scare story again.
(6) Gregory gained much publicity for himself in rags like New Scientist by basing his doomsday scenario on a few observations below the snowline in E. Greenland.
(7) I am not accusing modelers of tweaking calculations, simply pointing out the flaws in the argument.
Malcolm
On 24 Feb 2006, at 14:17, Eric Essene wrote:
Malcom,
Below are few comments on your antiquated views.
eric
(1) You have nothing but praise for AAPG policies? Why should a communications director who may have no background in climatology (and maybe not even in geology?) be permitted or encouraged to offer opinions at all on an important scientific and societal topic?
(2) Yes, rapid climate change has occurred, e.g., in the younger Dryas, ca. 13,000 years ago, in the waning stages of the last Pleistocene glaciation (e.g., Mayewski et al., 1993). That doesn't mean that the current changes are driven by the same mechanism. After all, we are not in a glacial period right now.
(3) You are ignoring the model calculations that show extreme warming in the Arctic directly related to CO2 quadrupling (Manabe et al., 2004). It is going to be nearly impossible to prevent this level of increase no matter what actions are taken.
(4) The effect of significant warming is already being felt in the Arctic, as has been widely reported in the press. The thickness of permafrost and the pack ice has rapidly shrunk over the last 50 years in the Arctic. These changes are leading to serious consequences for the lifestyle of Eskimos and have serious negative implications for the survival of Arctic megafaunas such as polar bears, and caribou.
(5) The effect of warming on sea level rise is a clear threat, one already devastating island nations, and one that will have a major impact on civilization around the world in the next millennium, given the location of major cities and populations on the coasts around the world.
(6) The argument about the stability of Greenland ice is absurd. Warming is now melting the base of the Greenland ice sheet, alreading leading to glacial surges and much more rapid loss of ice there (Gregory et al., 2004). This process may be irreversible, at least on a millennial scale (Toniazzo et al., 2004).
(7) Any respectable scientist doesn't set out to disprove a hypothesis but to test it. The results fall where they may. The idea that modelers tweak their calculations to obtain an expected result is a serious charge.
eric
Gregory, J.M., Huybrechts, P. & Raper, S.C.B. (2004) Threatened loss of the Greenland ice-sheet. Nature 428, 616.
Huybrechts, P. & de Wolde, J. (1999) The dynamic response of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to multiple-century climatic warming. J. Clim. 12, 2169-2188.
Manabe, S., Wetherald, R.T., Milly, P.C.B., Delworth, T.L. & Stouffer, R.J. (2004) Century-scale change in water availability: CO2-quadrupling experiment. Clim. Change 64, 59-76.
Mayewski, P.A., Meeker, L.D., Whitlow, S., Twickler, M.S., Morrison, M.C., Alley, R.B., Bloomfield, P. & Taylor, K. (1993) The atmosphere during the Younger Dryas. Science 261, 195-197.
Toniazzo, T., Gregory, J.M. & Huybrechts, P. (2004) Climatic impact of a Greenland deglaciation and its possible irreversibility. J. Clim. 17, 21-33.
On Feb 24, 2006, at 6:12 AM, Malcolm McClure wrote:
I was a member of AAPG for 25 years and have nothing but praise for the professional way in which they conduct their affairs.
I have not read Crichton's novel but could make the following analysis:
1) All geologists are aware that there have been extreme swings in climate over the past hundred millenia.
2) Some short-term global warming is plausible and quite normal, based on historical records.
3) The threat of global warming gets a lot of attention in the media.
4) Many academics welcome the public attention that media exposure of their work can bring.
5) Getting evidence of abnormal warming involves expensive trips to remote locations.
6) Public concern makes large grants (and their accompanying kudos) easier to justify.
7) If the grant application states that the research is intended to disprove global warming, it is unlikely to be approved
8) Therefore it is in the academic's self-interest for all the above reasons to cry 'wolf'.
Anyway, the vast majority of the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are above the snow-line and base of permafrost, so they cannot melt in less than many millenia.
Malcolm McClure
