Climate and Prediction

Climate and Prediction

As a newspaper of record, Wellington’s Dominion Post does a good job in keeping us abreast of climate predictions.  Anyone noting these over a period of time will have an endless source of entertainment, given that one by one they fail to deliver their doomsday scenarios.

The DomPost of 3 April 2014 tells us that over the next 100 years “the Environmental Ministry advice said a rise of between 0.5 and 0.8m should be prepared for, but the new report, from US geophysicist Paul Komar, said it was more likely to be at least a metre.”

Well, we don’t have Dr Komar’s justification for this extraordinary figure, but we can provide input from others.  For example, Columbia University gives a relatively linear global sea level increase of 3.2mm per annum over the last two decades.  This makes for a one metre rise in 312 years, or less than a foot in the next 100 years.  Dr Komar needs 10mm per annum if his prediction starts now, and a whole lot more if there’s a delay.  Given the glacial pace of sea level rise, this strains credibility, but the nature of prediction is such that it’s hard to challenge.  It requires belief, which is hard for the sceptic to accept.

Tectonic effects are so difficult to predict that no-one really tries except in the most generalised manner.  Yet the effects on localised sea levels are far more significant than sea-level rise.  The Solomon Islands' Ranongga is just one example, Japan’s 2011 earthquake another. 

The panic that seems to accompany sea-level rise can hardly be justified on the grounds of cost, and again, Japan’s 2011 earthquake is a good example.  Despite Japan’s best efforts at protecting itself, the World Bank’s estimated economic cost was US$235 billion, making it the costliest natural disaster in world history.  In contrast, the gradual pace of sea-level change, 150mm in the last century, has resulted solely in coastal storm damage and its costs, since amelioration has, if anything, declined over that period.  Furthermore, the inclination to build on areas vulnerable to storm damage has increased.

There is a false sense of perspective in this sea-level rise prediction.  100 years is the equivalent of a lifetime, a figure that makes sense to people in a way that kiloyears and megayears that climatologists deal with does not.  Yet we move house every six to eight years, meaning our investment in a specific property is very unlikely to be lifelong.  The average life expectancy of a house is 90 years, with properties in attractive or suburban coastal areas likely to be on the short end of the scale as the intrinsic value is realised in new building.  Properties in less attractive, more remote, coastal areas won’t lose value suddenly, rather, investment in them will decline over decades until the buildings fail to meet council standards.

Predictions cover such a range of possibilities that they tend to be highly forgettable until the one correct guess in a thousand gets trumpeted abroad and the predictor gets their moment of fame.  But the myriad that fail remain archived for those who delve into the records.  The British Meteorological Office forecast a rise of 0.3°C between 2004 and 2014.  To date, 12-month average temperatures have risen just 0.03°C.  They also forecast half of all years between 2010 and 2020 are likely to exceed 1998, the hottest year so far.  Not looking good – calendar year averages since then have been well below.  Indeed, global temperatures have remained almost completely flat since 1998 in spite of predictions of increases through steadily rising CO₂ levels.  Extrapolating the linear trendline between 1998 and 2013, for an increase of 0.038°C over the 17 year period, gives a 100 year increase of just 0.22°C.  Accurate?  No, but I'll happily pit my estimate against The British Met Office's. 

Apocalyptic predictions are part and parcel of Judaic religious belief and its offshoots. Their routine failure to materialise ironically reinforces belief through sophistry.  Even in a post-Christian era, they form an ineradicable part of the Western world-view.  As British historian Norman Cohn notes, “The old religious idiom has been replaced by a secular one, and this tends to obscure what otherwise would be obvious. For it is the simple truth that, stripped of their original supernatural sanction, revolutionary millenarianism and mystical anarchism are with us still.”    The apocalyptic vision of new-age prophets’ climatic catastrophe offers unwitting new-age believers the catharsis of personal redemption through new-age canonical law.  Reduce your carbon footprint, eschew consumption, support sustainability, share your country with those less fortunate, leave animals alone, repudiate genetic modification, ban fossil and nuclear power.

They should beware of what they wish for.

Countering the "Naïve World-View Question"

From the 1/6/13 BBC Any Answers’ moderator's question on the imposition of multiculturalism in the UK, “What is it you fear about multiculturalism?”, the caller could not define the problem in a way that satisfied the moderator for the obvious reason of having an unrehearsed answer to an unexpected question.  He initially made a comment about his concern for the host country's cultural solidarity under the Muslim onslaught. A succinct and prepared statement needs to be made to counter this line of questioning.  A response might be worded thus:

It’s not possible to answer what might be called a “naïve world-view” question in a tweet.  What the multicultural trend has wrought since the 1970s is being seen by increasing numbers of people as nothing less than the Muslim conquest of Europe.  Mark my words. By the mid-21^st century this will form part of Islam’s historical narrative.  If this isn’t thought of as a problem, name one part of the Islamic world which can be seen as an improvement on Western Europe.  Ask yourself why Muslims head in unending numbers into Europe.  Then ask why they bring with them the cause of their problems, Islam, instead of adopting the more successful culture.

On the Monarchy

Prince Charles’ visit to New Zealand is bringing out the usual calls for an end to our collective obeisance to the monarchy.  Yet nobody mentions monarchy's real value, which is quite independent of the Queen and her family. 

  

The significance of monarchy is that it is effectively an apolitical, unifying, eternal and extrinsic narrative, in a way that a president, indeed any supra-governance option, cannot be.  In these secular times monarchy is the only transcendent entity a nation such as ours has.  In rejecting its players as they strut and fret their hour upon the stage, we will lose a lot more than a source of mass entertainment.

I care not about the actors, but a lot about the play.

On Muslim Integration

In a Radio New Zealand programme Asian Report, Muslim Women’s Camp, broadcast on the 4^th of October 2011, a 13 year old girl makes what to my ears is an extraordinary statement, “I’m from India and I was born here.”

I am sure my attitude is commonplace when my national identity is questioned, to describe myself as, “I am a New Zealander, born in England but have lived here fifty-two years.”  My primary identity is as a New Zealander, notwithstanding having been born overseas. Yet here is an NZ-born girl who considers her primary identity to be Indian.

This programme was useful in highlighting other issues of New Zealand Muslims as they attempt to integrate without assimilating, to become New Zealanders while holding onto a culture, society and religion which are antithetical to so much that mainstream New Zealanders unwittingly take for granted.

The camp participants wear hijabs when in public.  Yet one of the leaders says, “It’s about connecting the youth to the land so that they feel because they are here, they are Kiwi Muslims, they are New Zealanders and recognising that this is their land as well as knowing the traditions… We are teaching them the history of New Zealand knowing what it is and allowing them to see themselves as part of this community.” Yet keeping themselves apart.

The girl quoted above, and others on the programme, make themselves identifiably Muslim by the way they speak.  There is, in England, and no doubt in all countries with high levels of Muslim immigration, a trend to a Muslim accent which the TV character Ali G reifies.  It is an overlay on the regional accent, yet common to all regional accents when spoken by Muslims.  I’ve seen little research on this and its origins, though I suspect it may be faux Arabic via Middle Eastern imams who are contracted to mosques in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.  Having frequently heard such speech on BBC news and documentaries, it seems to operate on the level of a patois without a vocabulary, in contrast with, say, that of a Jewish or Black enclave.  Put another way, its culture is not living or creative; it is simply one of vocalised identity.

The accent stems in part from the shibbolethic pronunciation of ‘Muslim’ by Muslims.  The ‘u’ is a sound not heard in NZ or native English, lying midway between ‘moon’ and ‘mud’, whereas the English / New Zealand pronunciation is as in the latter.  Other words with a similar ‘u’ sound to ‘mud’ are changed in the same direction.  An example from this broadcast is ‘culture’, and this may be due to a high use of the word in terms of their identity.  While I’ve not seen this commented on, G K Chesterton made mention of it in The Flying Inn of 1914: 

It was fully four minutes before she could understand a word the man was saying: he spoke English with so extraordinary an accent that she supposed at first that he was talking in his own Oriental tongue.  All the noises of that articulation were odd; the most marked was an extreme prolongation of the short “u” into “oo” as in “poo-oot” for “put”.

It is interesting then, to hear this accent develop in New Zealand, making it a worthwhile pursuit for a phonetician. 

Muslim Women’s Camp was brief, just eleven minutes, but carried insights into NZ Muslim’s attitudes to integration which are unlikely to be commented on elsewhere.  The reason for this will be difficult to understand for people whose culture and sense of history has been diluted to the point where they no longer recognise it.  To them, ‘all people are basically the same,” without realising that their underlying assumption is “like me.”  They could not be more wrong.