>Sender: Biology Tutors Discussion List <BIOTUTOR-L@...>
>From: Graham Simons <grahamsimons@...>
>
>I've been sent this by a "concerned parent". He is a conservationist and is
>shocked by its imbalance.
>
>It is, he tells me, pre-release material for an SEG GCSE in Englsih. I can't
>verify this because we don't use this particular syllabus.
>
>The point as far as I see it is that anyone is entitled to the heterodox
>views presented here but that there is no countervailing argument offered.
>GCSE candidates should expect their examiners to be reliable - and so we may
>well have a substantial number of young people being convinced that these
>views are "scientifically proven".
>
>I've scanned the text and there may therefore be some mis-copyings.
>
>What do Biotutors think?? And can anyone give me chapter and verse - which
>English paper was this?
>
>
>Graham Simons
>Pangbourne College (and a GCSE science examiner for Edexcel, papers 1531 and
>1538)
>
>***************************************
>
>TEXT OF GCSE PRE-RELEASE MATERIAL
>
>Welcome to the Garden of Eden
>
>Global warming? There s no need to worry, argues Dennis Avery. History shows
>it will lead to great benefits for the human race and the environment.
>
>Climate researchers do not agree on whether the earth will become warmer
>during the coming century. Even more importantly, none of them expects the
>planet to get very much warmer in the foreseeable future. They say that the
>earth is likely to warm by no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.5 degrees
>Fahrenheit) during the next century.
>
>That may sound like a lot, but it isn t. The world has experienced that much
>warming fairly recently. And we loved it. Between 900 AD and 1300 AD, the
>earth warmed by some 4 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit close to current
>predictions for the 21St century. Historians call it the Little Climate
>Optimum. Written and oral history tells us that the warming created one of
>the most favourable periods in human history. Crops were plentiful, death
>rates diminished, and trade and industry expanded while art and architecture
>flourished.
>
>The world s population experienced far less hunger. Food production surged
>because winters were milder and growing seasons longer. Key growing regions
>had fewer floods and droughts. Human death rates declined, partly because of
>the decrease in hunger and partly because people spent less of their time
>huddled in the damp, smoke-filled hovels that encouraged the growth and
>spread of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.
>
>The Little Climate Optimum was a boon for mankind and the environment alike.
>The Vikings discovered and settled Greenland around 950 AD. Greenland was
>then so warm that thousands of colonists supported themselves by pasturing
>cattle on what is now frozen tundra. During this great warming, Europe built
>the looming castles and soaring cathedrals that even today astonish with
>their -size, beauty, and engineering excellence. These colossal buildings
>required the investment of millions of man hours, which could be spared from
>farming because of the higher crop yields.
>
>Europe s population expanded from approximately 40m to 60m, an increase due
>almost entirely to lower death rates. Trade flourished, in part because
>there were fewer storms at sea and fewer muddy roads on land. (There was
>more rainfall, but it evaporated more quickly.)
>
>England was warm enough to support a wine industry. The Mediterranean basin
>was wetter than today. Farming moved further north in Scandinavia, Russia,
>Manchuria, northern Japan, and North America. Farmers in Iceland grew oats
>and barley.
>
>At the same time, technology flourished. The water mill, the windmill, coal,
>the spinning wheel, and soap entered daily life.
>
>Later in the 1 5~ century, however, the good weather ended. The world
>dropped into the Little Ice
>Age, with harsher cold, fiercer storms, severe droughts, more crop failures,
>and more famines. In
>China there were twice as many floods and four times as many big droughts as
>in the preceding Little
>Optimum.
>
>Predictions that we face a new global warming should be greeted with
>enthusiasm: the medieval experience should reassure us, and the latest
>scientific evidence supports such optimism. It is clear, for example, that a
>planet earth with longer growing seasons, more rainfall, and higher carbon
>dioxide (GO2) levels would be a plant heaven .
>
>Modest warming would help crops, not hinder them. There is virtually no
>place on earth too hot or humid to grow rice, cassava, sweet potatoes, or
>plantains, for example, and corn can be grown in a wider variety of climates
>than any other crop.
>
>The expected increase in CO2 will be an additional blessing. It will make
>forests all over the world healthier and more robust and allow them to
>support more wildlife. Canadian forestry researchers estimate that in a new
>warming their forest growth would increase by 20%.
>
>Of course, it would put less stress on our wild species if the world always
>stayed at the same temperature, but the planet has never done that. Our
>species models mostly evolved 600m years ago, and they have already
>survived several ice ages and hot spells.
>
>Scientists examining the impact of global warming on wildlife species in the
>two most at-risk environments (tropical forests and the Arctic) say that
>they would expect a modest global warming to produce little or no species
>loss.
>
>We must also note that any wildlife species too fragile to survive this kind
>of mild warming probably disappeared from the planet several hundred years
>ago during the Little Climate Optimum.
>
>Most of the trillion-dollar estimates of global warming costs headlined in
>the 1 980s were based on forecasts that cities such as New York and
>Bangladesh would be drowned under rising seas. In 1980, for example, some
>activists claimed that global warming would raise sea levels by 25 feet. In
>1985, a national research council panel estimated a three-foot rise in the
>sea level. Frightening scenarios, but completely untrue.
>
>The Medieval Climate Optimum did not produce devastating floods. Nor will a
>new global warming. It may seem paradoxical, but a modest warming in the
>polar regions will actually mean more arctic ice, not less. The polar ice
>caps depend on snowfall, and polar air is normally very cold and dry. If
>polar temperatures warm a few degrees, there will be more moisture in the
>air and more snowfall, and more polar ice.
>
>The world s ocean levels have been rising at approximately the same rate
>seven inches per century for at least 1,000 years. No one knows why. In
>1992, Science magazine published a paper based on ice core studies
>suggesting that the projected warming would actually reduce the sea level by
>one foot...
>
>Global warming scaremongers have also claimed that a warmer world would
>suffer more extreme weather events. This too is unlikely. History records
>that the Little Optimum brought fewer floods and droughts.
>
>Some alarmists have claimed that a warmer world would suffer huge increases
>in deaths from horrible plagues of malaria, yellow fever, and other
>warm-climate diseases. One study predicted 50-80m more cases of malaria
>alone per year. Fortunately, these claims are unlikely to come true, because
>they ignore some fundamental realities. Global warming would be very slight
>near the equator and thus would only slightly expand the range of the
>malarial mosquitoes. Hence there is little reason to expect tropical plagues
>to increase naturally.
>
>As it happens, far from creating a plague of pestilences, the Little Climate
>Optimum engendered a worldwide population surge and set the stage for
>several historic invasions such as the Viking incursions into Normandy and
>England and the movement of German peoples into eastern Europe. This time,
>however, global warming is quite unlikely to produce a population surge.
>
>The modern world s population is currently restabilising thanks to
>affluence, urbanisation, and contraceptive technology. With or without
>warming, we can expect a peak population of approximately 8.5 billion people
>around the year 2035. That peak will be followed by a slow, gradual decline
>through the rest of the 21St century.
>
>History and the emerging science of climatology tell us that we need not
>fear a return of the Little Climate Optimum. If there is any global warming
>in the 21St century, it will produce a milder, more pleasant and fertile
>climate with the added benefit of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and
>therefore a more luxuriant natural environment. We have nothing to fear but
>the fearmongers themselves.
>
>
>Source: adapted from The Guardian, 15 May 1999
>
>N4/S02/2400/P
>
>END OF TEXT
>
>*************************************************
>
>
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--


Dr. Keith S. Taber
http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/staff/taber.html
University Lecturer in Education
University of Cambridge Faculty of Education
Homerton College site
Hills Road
Cambridge CB2 2PH



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