RE: [Paddlewise] Global Warming: Fact or Unproven Theory?

HI folks, could not help weighing in on this one,

Some of the work I do requires doing drainage studies from storm water 
run-off and snow fall data.  And, not one to trust "scientific studies" 
much, I looked into the basis for the numbers we typically use for the 5 
year, 10 year, 25 year, 50 year and 100 year events.  And found little in 
the way of valid statistical or scientific evidence.

The problem is we are ignorant on all of the forces that control weather: 
few of the process are known or understood with certainty and the earth 
itself (even it could be understood) is not a closed system.  With all of 
the weather stations, computers and satellites we can not see into future 
more than about three days, and we do not have reliable weather data for 
most of the country further back than about 100 years, and certainly none 
of it without any detail.

To be able to predict 1000 year, or even 100 year, trends based on this is 
totally laughable.  Everytime someone tried to take rational theories and 
applied it to known weather patterns they found none of the predictions 
even close.  For example someone took the greenhouse gas/global warming 
model back to the year 1900, the year most would agree was the initiation 
of widespread fossil fuel consumption, the model ended up showing that 
something like 90 percent of our atmosphere should be CO2 by Y2K.  Clearly 
there are other forces at work that are not understood.

There may indeed be evidence of global warming but the hard science that 
can predict the future of it, and the cause of it, are totally absent.  So 
everyone is engaging in speculation (and most of it not scientific) at this 
point.  Personally I would suspect that IF global warming is a real long 
term trend, THEN we as humans are likely unable to do anything about it, 
nor are we to blame.  We know that vast swings in global climate has been 
the history of this plant, and humans had nothing to do with it.  Why 
should we think the future will be anything different?  So if this is a 
real trend, not just a short term anomaly, than there is likely nothing we 
can do about it.

And even if it was possible to prove there is measurable contribution from 
human activities, which we can not at this point, I would say that the 
contribution due to people going kayaking is totally insignificant.  You 
will not make any changes what so ever even if you completely stop going.

You would be doing something else anyway, when kayaking you are using less 
fuel than most activities, including sitting at home in a heated house 
watching TV.  Simply living causes impact to the environment, you consume 
food, air and water, and put wastes out.  Besides that I suspect that 
animals, wetlands, forests, etc. put out far more "pollution", green house 
gases, than all human activity combined, and there are some studies that 
support this.  And it makes sense if you compare the total biomass of these 
things compared to humans (we should be so arrogant and self centered to 
even think that humans can actually have some control over the weather!).

It does not mean I would advocate irresponsible consumption or pollution, I 
just would be not throw around "scientific opinions" as if it some 
meaningful facts behind it.  Scientists are just as prone to media and 
political pressure as anyone, especially if their future income depends on 
it, which is usually the case.  I can remember just about 20 years ago the 
consensus of these same scientists was we were entering a cooling tread, 
complete with an artist's rendering of a giant glacier overtaking New York 
City on the cover of Science Magazine (I which I had kept that issue).  Of 
course this was before there we're lots of grants being offered by the EPA 
, NSF and others to study global warning.

The fact of the matter is that larger and larger numbers of people go out 
into the wilderness every year and there is no practical way to stop it.  I 
would offer that these wilderness areas are far better off if we encourage 
human powered wilderness activities instead of jet skis, snow mobiles, 
4x4s, etc.  So all of us should encourage human powered transport, and all 
of the benefits of it, as much as possible, and as responsibly as possible, 
and not quibble over things we have no control over.  The more responsable 
paddlers there are out there, instructing, teaching, or just be a good 
example for the rest of us, the better off we are.

Peter



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