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WHO MISSED THE BIG PICTURE?
Mark, you’re correct in your Macleans article that climate change science has been dealt a serious black eye by the lack of evidence to support the claim that the Himalayan glaciers may disappear by 2035, but this is, however, a minor distraction in the big picture— and certainly no basis for dismissal of the credible evidence that the earth's climate is indeed warming.
Maybe the Himalayan ice mass is shrinking, maybe it is not. But it is well documented that the ice masses of Greenland and Antarctica are shrinking. You say that there has been no global warming since 1997, but all this really means is that 1997 was the warmest year on record so far. Research by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies has shown that the 11 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1996. It should be obvious even to a non-scientist like you that long term changes in climate will not be linear, with each year being warmer that the previous one. Maclean’s readers deserve better science journalism.
Jim Bender
New Hamburg, Ontario
MARK SAYS: Well, as a non-scientist, I'd say we're about twelve years into a thirty-year mild cooling cycle. Get back to me in 2028 and we'll see who's right on that one. As to your confident assertion that Antarctic sea ice is shrinking, even warm-mongers acknowledge that it is, in fact, increasing (although they disagree on the reasons). And as for "the 11 warmest years on record", the problem now is all that those "records" have been so tortured to provide the pre-designated result that they're all but meaningless. The notorious "hockey stick", for example, depends on junking all tree-ring records after 1960 - and the creator (that seems the appropriate word) of the graph is now being investigated by his own university.The discarding of the "urban heat island" effect rests on "records" from rural Chinese weather stations that the relevant "scientist" cannot produce even the locations thereof. In Canada, the number of recording stations dropped from 600 to 35. The East Anglia CRU threw out its raw data. New Zealand has "lost" its records. Indeed, "record" is now a term of art. And all we know of the "adjusted" records is that they were all adjusted in the same direction, upwards and hotter. The question is: If the world is so obviously hotter than it's ever been, why do the "records" have to be ever more dramatically "adjusted" to demonstrate that?
I’LL STOP THE WORLD AND MELT WITH BREIDALBLIKKBREA
To some, the evidence seemed incontrovertible: the glaciers are melting. The World Glacier Monitoring Service based in Zurich says so, and they’ve been tracking glaciers for over a century (they’re also supported by the United Nations Environmental Program). But you say this is nonsense based on a casual remark run up by hysterical, mendacious, attention-seeking and/or money-grubbing rumor mills and represents nothing more than a cracked-ice theory suspended from a skinny icicle on a Himalayan crag in summer— the only vulnerable ice there.
Well, the WGMS reports that Norway's Breidalblikkbrea glacier thinned by 3.1 mwe (metres of water equivalent) in 2006, as compared with 0.3 mwe in 2005. But why should anyone care about a glacier they never knew existed and whose name is unpronounceable?
Doris Wrench Eisler
St. Albert, Alberta
MARK SAYS: I hate to break this to you, but glaciers have thinned and thickened from year to year, decade to decade ever since they first showed up. Are you suggesting that Breidalblikkbrea's measurements are evidence of a tenfold increase in "climate change" between 2005 and 2006? If so, clearly we need a tenfold increase in taxes to counter it. Demand action now!
“IN-OBJECTIVE” ANALYSIS
First Climategate, now Glaciergate. In your most recent Macleans article you try to use the unfortunate gaffe over the speed of glacial melting in the Himalayas to convince readers that glacial retreat has stopped dead in its tracks— and all this while here at home the Athabasca glacier keeps retreating ever faster (and has continued doing so even after 1997, the year you say global warming ended).
Also in our own backyard, satellite images show that the McClure Strait (on the northern route of the Northwest Passage) opened in the summer of 1998— the first time since observations began in 1978.
If you remain blind to observations and prefer to bombard us with in-objective sermons on climatic matters, it is natural to wonder about the objectivity of your other writings. His journalistic credibility may be melting faster than those far-away Himalayan glaciers.
Herb Helmstaedt
Kingston, Ontario
BEWARE THE “OBJECTIVE FACT” PROCLAIMER
You waste two pages of Macleans denying that Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035. They may or may not. Here, however, for you and the other opponents of action on climate change are some objective facts.
Both polar icecaps and many glaciers are melting at the fastest rate since history began. Most of the world's deserts are expanding, often significantly. This may just be one of those major climate changes that happens naturally from time to time, but the greatly increased amounts of carbon dioxide and pollutants constantly being spewed into the atmosphere at the same time as the forests that convert the gas to oxygen are being reduced substantially in size, cannot possibly be helping. Those pollutants are also causing thousands of deaths each year.
We’re also burning a finite supply of fossil fuels that will one day be exhausted. Either we take action now to reverse this process or we take the chance that there is no human component of it, and risk the future of humankind with this gamble. If we chose the far wiser course of change, we also create jobs, and improve the quality of the air and water which give us life. On the negative side, we slow the growth of the petroleum industry and reduce the capability of the fanatics running Iran to build nuclear bombs and the princes of the Persian Gulf to build more palaces to keep their women in. It is a no brainer!
Ken Frankel
Montreal, Quebec
THE GORACLE KNOWS ALL
I bother you, Mark, with a question that only you can parse in pithy detail: What temperature is the Earth supposed to be?
Ok, for the last hundred (or so) years, we have been keeping an eye on the Earth's temperature. Is it my imagination, or does the intelligentsia think that the temperature of the Earth at this very moment in time just happens to be the “perfect” temperature of the Earth— that we all must therefore scramble to keep the earth from changing?
Mr. Gore and the Chicken Littles of the left, for example, always rant about New York eventually being under water if we don’t do something… How do we know that NYC is not supposed to under water? Would a pre-historic Gore say Pangaea is not supposed to split into multiple continents?
Mark Willimann
TIME TO WASH THE KEYBOARD WITH SOAP?
Mark, I read your “Regular Guy, broken man” column, and… Dayum! The naughty words lobbed like mortar rounds! I think you might've made Patton blush— but continue to give 'em hell, Mark!
Joseph
MARK SAYS: As observant readers will know, I rarely use profanities in my writing. But I make an exception for Canada's "human rights" thugs because they're not worth expending the time requred to concoct an elegant Noel Coward witticism for. Also, in a world in which statist hacks like Commissar Lynch and Commissar MacNaughton take the view that they are justified in criminalizing words because words lead to deeds, you might as well use all the worst words, at least on them.
Thank you for your kind (and unkind) letters from America, Canada, Britain, Australia and around the world. Mark reads all mail, but especially enjoys the vicious ones. Each day Monday to Friday we pick six of the best for our Daily Delivery. So drop a line to Mark's Mailbox, and on Friday if you're chosen to be the one and only Letter of the Week you'll join our roll of winners from four Continents and receive a copy of Mark Steyn From Head To Toe. It would help if you could indicate your city or town, or, at any rate, your state, province or country. If not, at least let us know what planet you're on.
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