Posted: Friday, December 1, 2006 12:00 am
All right, we know by now that almost everything bad is caused by global warming. But the people trying to make the public believe that human-caused climate change is a serious issue undercut their case by making wild and unlikely claims.
Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury was in Corvallis Wednesday for a lecture and slide show based on Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth." Among the points presented was that global warming was the cause of the unrest, bloodshed and even genocide in the Darfur region of Africa.
The problem, according to Bradbury's presentation, is that Lake Chad is drying up, and that has made other problems in the region worse. "At the core, the problems in Darfur are climate related," he was quoted.
That may be true. Climate and geography do shape history. But the question is whether the changes in Lake Chad can be blamed on mankind, which is the point of the global warming campaign.
Lake Chad is a large freshwater lake right on the edge of the Sahara Desert. Since the 1960s the lake has been shrinking because of drought and other factors. And according to the U.S. Geological Survey, which maintains a page on Lake Chad in its online series on environmental change, this is not new.
"About 10,000 years ago," the USGS reports, "Lake Chad almost filled its present drainage basin, and spilled southwest out the Benue River to the Atlantic. In the last 1,000 years, according to fossil evidence, the lake probably dried out a half-dozen times.
And it adds: "Following highs in the 1870s and 1890s, the lake dropped enough by 1908 to separate into north and south pools, with the 'Great Barrier' between. In the 1950s the lake rose enough to flood out irrigation systems, peaking this century in 1962. The lake then tapered off until the early 1970s, when it plummeted. The recent low levels are a concern. "
Clearly that region of Africa is in the grips of a changing climate. But if the lake dried out half a dozen times in the past 1,000 years, how does it follow that the current drying period is necessarily the fault of climate change induced by man? Isn't it just as likely that it's a repeat of the pattern of the last 1,000 years? (hh)