This letter originally appeared in the College Voice on 11/30/07
I’d like to respond again to Mr. Krogh-Grabbe, and now also the Renewable Energy Club (REC).
First, Mr. Krogh-Grabbe: he seems to have missed my argument in the first part of my article of November 9,16th, in which I state that all it takes is a single piece of confirmed contrary evidence to overturn a hypothesis, while it takes a very large amount of data to confirm a hypothesis. This is the way science operates. The fact that the data I presented is a “small sample” has nothing to do with its validity in refuting a hypothesis. I’ll present another example: in the late 1800’s a truly “overwhelming majority” (to use the REC’s phrase) of physicists were convincced that light traveled through a substance called the “ether”. Then along came Michelson and Morley who did an experiment to measure the ether. They failed in their attempt. In fact, Michelson remained so convinced, even after their failed experiment, that he would not give up the idea of the ether. However, that ONE single experiment overturned our notions of light, and laid the foundations for Einstein’s relativity. The experiment wasn’t really a failure, it was just nature telling us we were wrong in our thinking.
The REC accuses me of scaring them because of I offer no alternative to stopping solar variation. Of course I do not; there isn’t a solution. We live with the star we have. There is absolutely nothing we can do at present to alter in any way our star’s output. However, I don’t think all is lost. Looking at the historical data I presented I would have assumed that when presented with the fact that the Middle Ages were much warmer than today and no major ecological disaster occurred, that would be a comforting revelation. I look forward to perhaps some wine from Great Britain again. In fact, looking at the data for 10-100,000 year time frames shows the current variation to be well within past trends; there is nothing today outside of the variability the planet has shown in the past. The REC also is irresponsible when it invokes the scare image of imminent coastal flooding of New England and Florida, which I assume refers to the rising ocean levels. A very recent paper reappraises sea-level rise rates and adjusts the data using GPS techniques, thus giving an even more accurate estimate than that given in the recent IPCC report. The IPCC reports 1.8 mm/year, while the new report gives a value of 1.3 mm/yr (Woppelman et al, Global Planetary Change, vol 57, 396 (2007). I assume New London qualifies as coastal region and has an average elecation of maybe at most 2 meters. So using both the IPCC and the new values we find that New London will be under water in either 1100 years or 1500 years. That’s a long time from now. It also assumes the climate won’t change again, which the historical data tells us is most unlikely.
Where in my article did I ever exhibit a “do-nothing attitude”? If the REC is going to use personal insults as an intellectual argument, they could at least back up such statements. In the very last paragraph of the article I state quite clearly that I would like to see the entire US transportation system to be petroleum free. How is that “doing nothing?” I also never stated anywhere that I thought reducing CO2 emissions is a worthless effort. The REC might want to look back into the Environmental Modeling Committee minutes of a couple of years ago and see who was the prime supporter of installing a large number of solar panels for campus energy generation before they accuse me of trying to “stop their greening efforts.” Further, would the REC support the construction of nuclear power plants for electric generation? They have absolutely no CO2 emission. If not, I cannot take their rather emotional and political fight for CO2 reduction too seriously from a scientific standpoint.
- Michael Monce, Professor of Physics
