Doomsayers and pseudo-science

The recent rage about World climate changes and the impact in our lives and the planet itself, has mobilized an army of people dedicated to research the “problem” - as they see it - and produced thousands of pages of studies in support of every conceivable theory.

The problem is that most of these studies and research are based on observations taken by fairly recent technologies, such as telemetry, satellites, computer models and such. None of the studies using the best technology available is much older than 10 or perhaps 15 years. Given the very, very old age of our planet, these diagnostics are the equivalent of a doctor trying to pinpoint an illness after examining the patient for 1/1000 of minute.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for studies and research, but I also believe that they should be put in perspective and with full understanding of the human limitations. Otherwise they are just personal opinions and projections and nothing else. Many in this field are all excited about their newly discovered techniques and carried away by the technology itself to the point of creating scenarios that would fit their own imagination and beliefs.

One of these scenarios is the preoccupation with the sea levels. According to E. Lynn Usery who lead the team for the U.S. Geological Survey, it was determined that current sea levels are rising between 0.04 and 0.06 inches per year and one quarter of the population lives at just 100 feet above sea level. In the same presentation he mentions the disaster occurred when a Tsunami hit parts of the Indian Ocean in 2004. He also said that 10000 years ago the sea level rose about 20 meters (65 feet) in the span of 500 years due to some natural disaster (the collapse of the ice sheets).

Assuming this is correct (again, calculations based on studies that may or may not be accurate) the collapse of the ice sheets can be construed as natural disaster and as such, unpredictable.
The only real numbers we have to play with are the current numbers, for whatever value they may have. And those numbers do not reflect any major change in the foreseeable future. At the current rate of rise it will take 170 years for the sea level to grow by 1 foot!

Of course, we don’t know (neither the scientists) if external man-made factors or natural ones will produce any changes, but the fact remains that many in the community are crying wolf and creating a doomsday scenario out of little science and much speculation.

A NASA study finds that “based on observations made over the past decade” the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets hold enough ice to raise the sea levels by 230 feet. So what? Does this mean one day all this ice will melt at once and wipe out more than 1 billion people living below certain level?

To me, statements likes this are nothing more than what they contain: Greenland and Antarctica have lots of ice. We knew that. Why present the potential scenario of a tragic meltdown? It’s beyond me.

I truly believe there is a whole industry dedicated to reinforce the panic view of a catastrophe in global warming and sea levels, while thousands of individuals make a comfortable living playing with numbers and statistics including the crowd at NASA, which have yet to prove the progress we have made on this earth, by all the money invested. Yeah the pictures from out of space are nice but try to feed the hungry with a glossy of Mars.

The only thing we can work with is the fact that sea levels “may” change at the present rate. Nothing else. Now, if we have tsunamis and earthquakes here and there the whole picture can change of course, but since we are not able to predict those natural occurrences, everything else is pure speculation. That’s why I titled this “Doomsayers and pseudo-science”.