Amiram Hayardeny's My China Experience

More Food and Global Warming

I have mentioned to a friend that my menu was significantly extended since my daughters visited in Beijing.  The reason is that one of them is (almost) strictly vegetarian.  My friend immediately suggested that I put it in my blog, so other visitors with similar restrictions will be able to enjoy it.

This conversation made me think about blogging.  I realized quite a while ago, that blogging actually changed the way I experience life.  I know it's a big statement, but I really think that.  I find myself often looking at things and considering whether this topic will make a good blog entry.  When I realize that it will, I start taking mental notes (and sometimes real notes) so I can recall it later when the time comes to write it down.  Later I look at the notes, look up some data on the web and write the entry.

I had lunch today with two colleagues.  We went to the vegetarian restaurant here in the Tsinghua Science Park.  In my opinion it is the best restaurant around.  They serve a large variety of meat looking and tasting dishes which can be easily mistaken for the real thing.  Yet they are all made of tofu, eggplant, and other vegetables.  I love it.  I can't remember what brought it on, but suddenly we started talking about global warming.  I admit that it is rather difficult to talk about global warming when the outside here in Beijing is frozen.  Yet, it is a great topic to discuss anyway.  The variety of opinions is incredible.  Starting with those who think we should all move back to the mountains and eat fruits and vegetables, to those who don't even think that the phenomenon exists.  I will not state my opinion here, but I do want to point out a book I have read a couple of years ago.  "State of Fear", was written by Michael Crichton.  He is by far my favorite author of all times.  In fact, when I travel to the US, I have a mandatory visit to Barnes and Noble.  If there's a new Michael Crichton book available - probability is 100% that I will buy it, and be sorry that there was only one...

To make a long story short, Crichton states that the science of global warming is inaccurate at best, and may be manipulated by interested parties.  Again - I will not state my opinion.  The Heartland institute, published this article, which sums up the reasons why global warming data should be very carefully considered.  (Heartland Article)

• most of the warming in the past century occurred before 1940, before CO2 emissions could have been a major factor (p. 84);

• temperatures fell between 1940 and 1970 even as CO2 levels increased (p. 86);

• temperature readings from reporting stations outside the U.S. are poorly maintained and staffed and probably inaccurate; those in the U.S., which are probably more accurate, show little or no warming trend (pp. 88-89);

• “full professors from MIT, Harvard, Columbia, Duke, Virginia, Colorado, UC Berkeley, and other prestigious schools ... the former president of the National Academy of Sciences ... will argue that global warming is at best unproven, and at worst pure fantasy" (p. 90);

• temperature sensors on satellites report much less warming in the upper atmosphere (which the theory of global warming predicts should warm first) than is reported by temperature sensors on the ground (p. 99);

• data from weather balloons agree with the satellites (p. 100);

• “No one can say for sure if global warming will result in more clouds, or fewer clouds,” yet cloud cover plays a major role in global temperatures (p. 187);

• Antarctica “as a whole is getting colder, and the ice is getting thicker” (p. 193, sources listed on p. 194);

• The Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica has been melting for the past 6,000 years (p. 195, p. 200-201); “Greenland might lose its ice pack in the next thousand years” (p. 363);

• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is “a huge group of bureaucrats and scientists under the thumb of bureaucrats,” and its 1995 report was revised “after the scientists themselves had gone home” (p. 245-246);

• James Hansen’s predictions of global warming during a Congressional committee hearing in 1988, which launched the global warming scare, were wrong by 200 percent (.35 degrees Celsius over the next 10 years versus the actual increase of .11 degrees); in 1998, Hansen said long-term predictions of climate are impossible (pp. 246-247);

• there has been no increase in extreme weather events (.e.g., floods, tornadoes, drought) over the past century or in the past 15 years; computer models used to forecast climate change do not predict more extreme weather (p. 362, 425-426);

• temperature readings taken by terrestrial reporting stations are rising because they are increasingly surrounded by roads and buildings which hold heat, the “urban heat island” effect (p. 368-369); methods used to control for this effect fail to reduce temperatures enough to offset it (p. 369-376);

• changes in land use and urbanization may contribute more to changes in the average ground temperature than “global warming” caused by human emissions (p. 383, 388);

• temperature data are suspect because they have been adjusted and manipulated by scientists who expect to find a warming trend (p. 385-386);

• carbon dioxide has increased a mere 60 parts per million since 1957, a tiny change in the composition of the atmosphere (p. 387);

• increased levels of CO2 act a fertilizer, promoting plant growth and contributing to the shrinking of the Sahara desert (p. 421);

• the spread of malaria is unaffected by global warming (pp. 421-422, footnotes on 422);

• sufficient data exist to measure changes in mass for only 79 of the 160,000 glaciers in the world (p. 423);

• the icecap on Kilimanjaro has been melting since the 1800s, long before human emissions could have influenced the global climate, and satellites do not detect a warming trend in the region (p. 423); deforestation at the foot of the mountain is the likely explanation for the melting trend (p. 424);

• sea levels have been rising at the rate of 10 to 20 centimeters (four to eight inches) per hundred years for the past 6,000 years (p. 424);

• El Niños are global weather patterns unrelated to global warming and on balance tend to be beneficial by extending growing seasons and reducing the use of heating fuels (p. 426);

• the Kyoto Protocol would reduce temperatures by only 0.04 degrees Celsius in the year 2100 (p. 478);

• a report by scientists published in Science concludes “there is no known technology capable of reducing [global] carbon emissions ... totally new and undiscovered technology is required” (p. 479);

• change, not stability, is the defining characteristic of the global climate, with naturally occurring events (e.g., volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis) much more likely to affect climate than anything humans do (p. 563); and

• computer simulations are not real-world data and cannot be relied on to produce reliable forecasts (p. 566).

 Here's my extended menu.  Enjoy.  I must admit that my wife and I are particularly fond of 宫爆鸡丁 and  地三鲜!

Posted at 01:54PM Mar 07, 2007 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[2]