Just a quick response to thank Malcolm and his US associate but also in a
sense to 'defend' Mike Davis. Perhaps as far as the article is concerned
Davis is using normal journalistic hyperbole. But Davis is somebody who we
should respect as being both very much on top of the geo-physical science
and its human consequence. See his  'Late Victorian Holocausts', on the
relationship between late 19th century El Nino-Southern Oscillation and the
interrelationship between the advent of  laissez-faire capitalism on a
global scale leading to third world famine in which millions -yes
millions -died.  A genuinely serious and important work.

The point of Crisis Forum is to join up the dots in a Mike Davis way. Even
if the apocalypse scenario turns out to be wrong -and surely the point is
we're unlikely to know exactly until it happens or nearly happens(mind you,
I'm a historian, not a scientist, so please correct me if I'm wrong) - the
more conservative prognostications will still be too much for our
over-complex, interdependent,  - in the West almost entirely consumerist and
hence over dependent -  international economy.

I propose Davis' alarm bells are valuable in these terms
a) for giving everybody a necessary kick up the backside : so that the
disconnect and denial is itself challenged
b) forcing us to face up to the possibility that the situation however one
reads it is immensely dangerous -more so than at anytime in human experience
and I say that very advisedly and reflectively - and that action (with
Aubrey's C and C as multilateral umbrella/framework) is  now absolutely
imperative.

The problem is not in the speculative science thus.  But in the society we
have created, its dysfunctionality,  smug complacency and inability to face
up to what is staring us in the face. I will send out my own manifesto for
historians/humanities people to you later this week. This is and cannot be
just an academic debate for and among scientists. It must engage and involve
other people in their own disciplines, work places, and lives.

mark




----- Original Message -----
From: "Malcolm H. Levitt" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 9:17 PM
Subject: Hurricane Catarina and other things


> Friends and colleagues,
>   I received the following comment on the Mike Davis Nation article
> from a trustworthy climatologist friend in the US.  He feels that
> some of the more extreme claims about global warming may be
> overstating the case, which could be very damaging in the long run. I
> would be grateful for your reactions. Ive suppressed his name since I
> didnt ask his permission before distributing his email.
>   best wishes
> malcolm
>
> >
> >At least some of this article is "journalistic hyperbole", as they say.
> >Deserts of New England.... tropical Yukon.  I have trouble with this
because
> >it makes me wonder about the rest of the article.
> >
> >Personally I think that the melting of the Arctic Ocean is potentially a
> >very big thing in terms of climate change.
> >
> >The Younger Dryas (12000 years ago) has been a major topic in climate
> >research, and the description here matches everything I've heard.  The
> >sudden melting caused a change in ocean temperatures and circulation,
which
> >caused a shift back to ice-age conditions.  But the size of the sudden
> >melting was larger than anything possible today (even if all Greenland
> >suddenly melted).  Ice was piled 2 miles high over most of Canada at the
> >time.
> >
> >Many researchers believe that a sudden, major climate shift is possible -
> >because it did happen in the Younger Dryas - so this is within the realm
of
> >"normal science".  I disagree personally, because sudden shifts don't
just
> >happen in the abstract through some chaos-theory, butterfly-effect
> >accidental change.  The Younger Dryas  change happened due to a very
> >specific, understandable event.  (Of course, if there IS a drastic,
sudden
> >climate change, it may be due to very understandable events that no one
knew
> >about until after it happens...)
> >
> >  >> ... growing numbers of
> >  >> geophysicists toy with the possibilities of runaway warming
returning
> >  >> the earth to the torrid chaos of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal
Maximum
> >  >> (PETM: 55 million years ago), when the extreme and rapid heating of
the
> >  >> oceans led to massive extinctions.
> >
> >I am skeptical about this.  I just looked up the PETM, and yes, there was
a
> >sudden, unexplained warming.  It was the only event of its kind in the
> >fossil record until the onset of the ice ages (starting 1 million years
> >ago).  The earth's climate was warm and stable ("the Eocene optimum") for
at
> >least 10 million years (from 55 to 45 million years ago) and then
gradually
> >cooled in the direction of present conditions.  The long warm period
> >probably related to the positions of the continents - north and south
poles
> >were open ocean - as Antarctic drifted to the south pole and Siberia and
> >Canada drifted north (isolating the Arctic Ocean), climate cooled
> >(gradually), leading to the current era of Ice Ages and sudden shifts
> >between glacial and interglacial (occurring repeatedly over the past
million
> >years).
> >
> >So, one might look to this period as a model for a future globally warmed
> >earth (since I believe it had higher CO2 than today), but the warm period
> >was also influenced by the positions of the continents.  But if one looks
> >there for a model, you need to look at the whole period - not cherry-pick
> >the one exceptional, catastrophic event.
> >
> >Hurricanes can only form at a certain distance away from the equator ( I
> >think it is past 15 degrees latitude north or south).  This is because
> >hurricanes require the Coriolis force (horizontal component) to make
winds
> >travel in a circle - at the Equator this is zero.  So hurricanes form in
> >narrow latitude bands - far enough from the equator, but still close
enough
> >so that the ocean water is still warm.  I looked up Hurrican Catarina,
and
> >the questions it raised were more on the level of the details of storm
> >formation (positions of the jet stream, etc.;  people compared its
formation
> >to certain other small hurricanes in Australia and in the North Atlantic,
> >referred to meteorological patterns that are relatively rare but which
occur
> >regularly.  No hint of climate change.
>
>
>
> --
> *****************************************************
> Malcolm Levitt
> School of Chemistry
> University of Southampton
> Southampton SO17 1BJ
> England.
> tel. +44 23 8059 6753
> fax: +44 23 8059 3781
> mobile: +44 77 6652 2964
> email: [log in to unmask]
> website: http://www.mhl.soton.ac.uk
> ******************************************************
>