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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels April 29, 2004 Warming of the world By John Darling Tidings Correspondent If you listen to environmentalists such as Ashland author Bill Ashworth, you'll hear that global warming is here, it's caused by greenhouse gases from human activity and it's going to have a "drastic effect," including more severe storms and inundation of coastal cities. Climatologist Greg Jones explains a global weather pattern chart during a presentation at Southern Oregon University. Denise Baratta | Ashland Daily Tidings If you talk to climatologists, like Prof. Greg Jones of Southern Oregon University, you'll hear, yes, there is climate change going on, but humans are only a small part of it and that part - not the many cycles of nature - is what gets all the headlines. "Some places are getting warmer, some cooler," said Jones. "Glaciers are melting in Glacier National Park. That's what gets the news. But glaciers are growing on Mount Shasta and in Rocky Mountain National Park. You can make apocalyptic movies like 'Twister' and 'Volcano' but no one's going to see a movie called 'Climate Change Cycle.'" In the environmentalist camp, Tonya Graham, executive director of Headwaters, Ashland, said, "The best science in the world tells us that global warming is happening and that we don't know how it's going to affect the delivery of water (rain) and affect wet-dry cycles and access to resources. These can shift quickly and if they do, we as a species aren't going to be able to avoid catastrophic loss of life." The immediate local effect, said Headwaters board member Ken Crocker of Ashland, is more rain, with less snow (and less snowpack), so that more water runs off into the ocean, rather than trickling down for human uses in dry summers. "Can we afford to assume that humans are not responsible?" he asked in a letter to the Ashland City Council seeking policy changes to lessen dependence on fossil fuels. "Most people concerned about this are not extremists. I'm afraid that a person who hasn't read much about these issues will write (us) off as fanatics; however, the warnings are coming from the world's best scientists. To ignore (warming) due to fears of upsetting our economy seems astonishingly short sighted." Campaign coordinator Joseph Vaile of Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, Ashland, said warming is showing up here with encroachment of arid-loving vegetation into the habitats of ancient forests. Ashworth, author of 13 books on the environment, said warming in this century will bring tides of two to four feet through the streets of Miami and other low-lying coastal cities, charge the atmosphere with more energy for tornadoes and storms and dry out America's agricultural heartland, resulting in farming moving to Canada. Climatologists see a different picture. They agree the world is warmer than it was a century ago or even 30 years ago, said Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor, Corvallis, but such warming (and cooling) comes in regular cycles, with human activity contributing 10 to 25 percent to the warming. "Yes, the climate is changing and it always will be," said Taylor in a phone interview. "The warmest decade for Oregon was not the 1990s, but the 1930s. It warmed from the mid-1970s to 1997 and is now cooling off here." The natural variations in climate, all more powerful than human activity, include the El Nino and La Nina cycle every three to seven years, the sunspot cycle of 11 years, an 18-year cycle of tidal change from the position of sun and moon, a 25-year cycle of the sun's magnetic field, the Pacific Decadal Cycle of 50 years, plus several other cycles longer than a century, said Taylor. The main problem facing climatologists, he added, is lack of data to create models that map the true impact of human activity. However, one among their ranks modeled what would happen to global temperature if the Kyoto Accord (phasing out greenhouse gases) were fully implemented. "It would cost $500 billion and bring a decrease of one-tenth of a degree in temperature," said Taylor. "It would accomplish nothing, so using a cost-benefit analysis, it comes out on the short end." Far more important than climate extremes is a focus on weather extremes, he said, such as avoiding development in streambeds, mudslide-prone slopes and hurricane-prone seashores. Three big wild cards in global warming modeling, said Jones, are sun cycles, volcanoes and ocean currents that turn over layers of cold and warm water. Warming and glacier-melting could dump cold water into seas, causing warm water to sink and possibly triggering an Ice Age, he said, "and if three or four volcanoes go off in one week (blocking sunlight), then all bets are off about everything." DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams