Bishop Hill Another sceptic
Sep 16, 2007 Climate: Sceptics Jennifer Marohasy points us to another climate sceptic- Anton Uriarte of the University of the Basque Country, who is a geographer and climatologist and the author of a book on paleoclimate. He also has a blog if you happen to speak Spanish.
By way of finding out a bit more about him, I've translated an interview he gave to a Spanish newspaper. I've reproduced this below for anyone who is interested. (This comes with the major caveat that my Spanish is very ropy, but between me and Babelfish, I think the gist of it is there. If you can help with the bits I've not been able to translate, or if you see anthing wrong, do let me know.)
ANTÓN URIARTE, Geographer and climatologist: Earth is not becoming desertified, it’s greener all the time
Luis Alfonso Gámez
URL: http://www.diario-elcorreo.es/vizcaya/pg050323/prensa/noticias/Sociedad/200503/23/VIZ-SOC-054.html
(Interview originally published in the newspaper El Correo)
Luis Alfonso Gámez / Bilbao
Antón Uriarte has studied the climate for more than a quarter of a century and believes that it has not been demonstrated that human activity has been the cause of global warming. Tomorrow, he will take part in a scientific conference on climate change in Bilbao.
A few days ago we were all wrapped up, and now we’re in shirtsleeves. Has the weather gone crazy?
We’re not talking about any madness. There’s a logical explanation.
Which is?
For the planet as a whole, February was a warmer month than normal. We received masses of cold polar air, but the Arctic wasn’t left empty. Warm air from Greenland filled the Arctic. Greenland has had one of the warmest Februaries in its history. The air moves, the Earth is round and continually interchanges air masses between the tropics and the poles.
Here it’s cold, but in other parts of the world it’s hot; and vice versa.
Yes. In August 2003 we suffered a heat wave because of the arrival of air from Africa; but in the Atlantic and Russia they were quite a lot colder than normal.
Is the climate changing ?
The climate has always been changing. It’s in imbalance.
It’s unforeseeable.
The Earth being spherical, the tropics always receive more heat than the poles and the imbalance has to be continually rectified. They changes places because of the tilt of the earth’s axis. And, moreover, the planet isn’t smooth, but rough, which produces perturbations in the interchange of air masses. We know the history of the climate very well and it has changed continuously.
Yes, but now it’s said that the main cause is man
The discussion is about to what extent the climatic change is the product of human activity. There are 6 billion human beings on earth, and that’s well known.
Enough to show how we’ve changed the landscape.
Yes. And this also has repercussions for the climate, not just industry. It’s evident that the Earth is a human planet, and that being so, it’s quite normal that we influence the atmosphere. It’s something else altogether to say that things will get worse. I believe that a little more heat will be very good for us. The epochs of vegetational exuberance coincided with those of more heat.
On a geological scale, the last glaciation ended not long ago.
About 11,500 years ago.
And now we’re in a warm interglacial period.
Yes. Since then, there have been changes in the climate but they have been less pronounced. This is another thing which people are not clear about: in warm periods, when there are more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – more CO2 and water vapour – climate variability is less. In these periods greenhouse gases, which act as a blanket, cushion the differences between the tropics and the poles. There is less interchange of air masses, less (temporales???) storms. We’re talking about a climate which is much less variable. There is another (malentendido??) misunderstanding: they augment the extremes, the waves of cold and heat
Isn’t it so ?
Let’s take the monsoons. The data that we have, which go back about 120 years, show that there is no tendency to increase or decrease. For tropical cyclones, if anything, there is a slight tendency to a decrease. The fact that this year has been a major one for cyclones doesn’t impact this tendency.
Glaciers and deserts
There is alarming news, such as the disappearance of the perpetual ice of Kilimanjaro
The ice of Kilimanjaro occupies two square kilometres. It’s not much. It’s minute, compared to the 16 million square kilometres of snow spread among the continents. It’s been calculated that in 1912, there were 12 million square kilometres, which is still quite a lot. And we know that it has diminished over the twentieth century. But it’s not certain that it’s due to a rise in temperatures. Satellite measurements in fact indicate a cooling. Some believe that humidity might have diminished, others that solar radiation has increased. At planetary scales, it appears that glaciers have retreated, but with some exceptions.
And what about desertification ?
To believe that the Earth is desertifying is totally erroneous. Satellite images show the opposite to be true: the Earth is becoming greener. Firstly, because there is more CO2 and this has augmented photosynthesis. Secondly there is nothing to say that warming should be accompanied by drought. At the moment we are suffering a major drought in Spain because winter has been affected by the situation in the North, by the cold. In Spain it rains more in warm weather than in cold; and in the situation of the planet too. In climate history the warmest epochs have always been the most rainy.
But there are islands and coasts condemned to disappear under the sea.
Not so. The sea is not flat, nor is its level the same everywhere. Changes in salinity mean that in some places, sea level is higher than in others: the north Baltic, with fresher water, is 40cm higher than the south. In the Atlantic, there are differences of metres. With phenomena like El Niño, it will rise in some places and fall in others. The south pole is at -40oC. With a warming of two degrees, very little is going to change. Moreover, in Antarctica, the tendency is towards cooling.
Can we relax then ?
Yes, there’s no need to be worried. It’s very interesting to study it, but there’s no need to be worried. There are a minority of scientists, among them myself, who believe that to say that man is causing a climatic change is a fairy tale.
Original spanish text here.
Updated 17/9/07 with a couple of answers to missing Spanish words. For these, thanks to Ex-pat Alfie in the comments.
Reader Comments (4)
Regards,
Paul Biggs
When are you going to attempt the really adventurous and start a service translating menus?
Incidentally "temporal(es)" may be translated as "storm(s)" and "malentendido" as "misunderstanding"
Ex-Pat Alfie