Global warming can halt the slide from nice to ice
 

Save the environment, by all means. But if the Earth doesn't heat up, hell
might freeze over.

By LARRY MOUNSER

Seven hundred years ago, Dante Alighieri told us that the deepest level of
the Inferno consists not of fire, but ice.

Down there, Satan keeps Judas's head firmly clenched in his jaws while other
sinners are immobilised in solid H0 for eternity. It's ice we
sinners need fear. Not fire.

And yet - possibly because of that other prediction that the Earth will be
destroyed by flames - we have a politically enhanced,
media-driven frenzy that if we buy just one more car or open just one more
factory, we are all going to burn. Not only that, our favourite
holiday island resorts and waterfront villas will become homes for fish.

Tripe.

Though the Earth will finally be destroyed by fire, that won't happen for
another 5,000 million years - when the sun goes supernova - so
don't start wearing asbestos underpants just yet.

It is global freezing we have to fear. For at least the past 2 million
years, the Earth has normally been much colder than now. We are in a
warm period, and we should be grateful.

In the past - as little as 10,000 years ago - almost a third of the Earth
was covered by ice. And we're not talking fluffy mittens and Walt
Disney. We're talking northern America and Europe, the top of Asia, all of
Britain, as one big ice block, and huge tracts of ice in Africa,
Australia and South America. We're talking massive equatorial glaciers.
Crystalline giraffes. Frozen sloths. Mass extinctions.

We will go that way again; so much water will be sucked up by the ice caps
that the tram to Nouveau Bondi will terminate somewhere
between Ben Buckler and Nouveau New Zealand.

This is a far worse scenario than Melbourne becoming tropical (and all the
Victorians staying down there for Christmas). Or that some
Vaucluse residences and a few island republics will have to be visited by
submarine.

Increased heat means more plant growth, and more food. That's what
greenhouses are all about. Cold is bad. Ice means death.
Greenhouse is good. (Try growing rice on ice.)

So, we should be pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as fast as we
can - even though there is probably not a real lot we can
do to affect temperature trends on the planet. It's overreaching hubris to
think so, according to those who should know.

Associate professor Colin Ward, head of the School of Geology at the
University of NSW, thinks that greenhouse gases could make only
"a blip in the records".

"I wouldn't like to be quoted that there will be no effect," he says, "but
any greenhouse impacts have got to be considered in the light of
longer-term natural trends and variations. We are quite likely to go back
into another ice age whatever happens. We could easily be near
the peak of warmth right now. Current increases could be natural."

Less circumspect is the school manager, Dr Malcolm Buck. "If you ask me,"
laughs Buck, "putting 'global warming/greenhouse' on a
research application is a sure thing to attract grant dollars ...

"There's evidence that the CO₂ level has been higher, during past
interglacial periods, than it is now, anyway. It's the next cold period we
have to worry about."

And the thing is just how quickly it could get cold once it starts. Pollen
samples in deep-sea sediments suggest that in the past, Earth has
gone from nice to ice in just 70 years. All it needs is a change of
direction of the Gulf Stream - which currently carries warm water to the
Arctic - for "Bondi, Icebergs" to become a weather report. Never mind your
children's children. Your children, in fact, you, - if you're
under 30 - could end up doing the Clan of the Cave Bear next century.

The change could start tomorrow, though the irregular cycling of hot and
cold, based on a mixture of such factors as the 26,000-year
precession of the Earth's axis, is not likely to send us into the deepest
part of the next ice age for another 50,000 years.

Let's consider Greenland, the place that has so much ice that the land has
been pushed below sea level in places. When Eric the Red first
went there, in 982, he didn't call it Greenland because he'd forgotten to
take off his Ray-Ban Wayfarers. A thousand years ago, a lot of
Greenland was green, even if Eric was exaggerating and/or simply had a thing
for monochromatic names. Up until the 13th century there
was pastureland supporting cattle. Then, within 150 years, it got so cold
everyone had to leave.

If that is indicative of a trend that could occur in the rest of the Europe,
it won't be long before border guards are accepting buckets of
diamonds for fake visas as Europeans try to bluff their way into places like
Bangladesh.

The next glaciation will kill far more than any C0-enhanced temperature
rises, especially as any such rises will cause more evaporation
and more rain. The result could be completely benign - even beneficial -
spreading tropical conditions further south (and north). In this
two-up game, I'll go for heads.

While some measurements do suggest that temperatures on the Earth are
rising, and the increase may be partly due to additional
greenhouse gases, that could as easily be a natural rise in temperature
before the next southerly buster. And if it is due to person-made
C0, or cow-(and bull-) made methane, who cares? Heat is good. Cold is bad.

It's worth remembering that greenhouse gases have existed in the atmosphere
for all of Earth's history. Without them the current average
temperature in Sydney would be minus 60C. Your hands would be shaking so
much you couldn't even read this.

None of which is to suggest that we should do any more harm to the
environment. Pollution, deforestation, soil erosion, and marinas in
the midst of national treasures are all bad. But we should direct our energy
to real means of damage control, rather than going on
endlessly about glacial retreat, sea-level rise and carbon taxes.

Prove I'm wrong. And what if I am? I'd rather have contributed to people
living in nice, tropical, beachfront homes in Katoomba,
supping on pineapples grown on the lush slopes of Mount Kosciusko, than risk
us having to take the dog sleds between the New Bondi
and the mountain-island ski resort of Kiribati every time we wanted to go to
on holidays. And forget London, New York, Paris and
Rome. It'd be so cold there, they'd be busy doing credible imitations of
Dante's Lowest Level.