One of the necessary and annoying facts in modern science is that you have to provide all the proofs for your argument. Even when you have, others will argue that you have in fact got it wrong because you have used something as a factor which is actually a variable, or that you are not qualified or that you have used the wrong criteria or that the terminology is ambiguous etc,. Even the proposition that the earth is round is argued by such people as the Flat Earth Society and various other organisations. So, there is no bottom line at which we can all agree on anything really. Whilst peace is preferable to some, war is preferable to others. Growth and progress are important to most but again not everyone believes in growth and progress. There is no one rule on which we can all agree as humanity and from this stems our diverse nature.
Every year, someone appears in the British media claiming to be able to forecast what sort of summer we will have in the UK for that year. Envariably, they have a formula, method or trick, which they use, and which they claim has been accurate for the past 25 years or so. Every now and again a correct forecast occurs but never for 2 years running. These forecasts are in essence a form of lighthearted entertainment reflecting the British preoccupation with the weather, after all, we do not have a method to forecast seasonal weather in the UK
Forecasting events accurately is very difficult. We are constantly bombarded with forecasts via the media on matters as diverse as the bank interest rates to the likely outcome of a General Election. In general terms, as an analyst who produces forecasts, I need to know ‘ Where You Are Coming From', ‘What Direction You Are Pointing In', ‘How Much Force You Have' and the main factors which work for and against you'. Armed with this data, I can provide a reasonable assessment of where you will be in the future though how far ahead will depend on the variability of the factors involved. In 1991, during the Gulf War, I went to handle a project on the idyllic holiday island setting of Gran Canaria. At that time literally hundreds of empty luxury cruise liners lay at anchor off the islands. Where You Are Coming From was a popular holiday destination which had suffered greatly because holidaymakers were frightened of flying and travelling generally because of potential terrorist attacks. What Direction You Are Pointing To was the future in time. How Much Force You Have was the average holidaymaker's desire to holiday. The for and against factors were quite different for the 9 different nationality of holidaymakers. Overall, I had a good understanding of past trends by nationality from historical data and I knew the maximum saturation because I knew the number of beds available for them. I also knew that at some stage people would be saying that it ‘was nearly as busy as it used to be', ‘was as busy as it used to be' and one day would say that it ‘was busier than it used to be'. I knew what all the graphs would look like in shape quite early on in the project. The actual headlines of the patterns were still there in essence, it was just that the peaks and troughs which had the same relationship to each other, occurred at lower levels. As I was dealing with forecasting the numbers of staff required to support the tourist levels, a mistake could be costly. It was an analysts dream come true. There was the average travelling party / family size by nationality. The numbers of aircraft allocated by nationality and a whole wealth of other data which in the end provided forecasts which matched the actuals to within less than a half percent overall, some months the forecasts were within 10 travelling passengers. This type of forecasting does not happen by accident and whereas I had always said ‘they don't teach business management at Sunday School' I said at the end of the task there is no Teach Yourself Pinpoint Accuracy In Forecasting book either. Possibly because we hear so much of forecasts, we believe that for example if a government forecasts a trend, that they will provide the necessary infrastructure to deal with the problems it brings with it.
What I am putting forward is that there is a typical anatomy of decline and that this can be represented pictorially within a graph. That suggests that all declines have a similar format and that we merely need to substitute X and Y plots to be able to see them. It actually says a great deal more even than that because if you can draw an accurate picture of a decline, you merely need to take some dimensions from the picture to see where you are in relation to the decline at any one point. For example. Looking at the subject of British rule in America, the Boston tea party is the point of no return. Effectively, the game was lost for the British at that point. Had they understood the relationship of all the factors in the argument, they might have decided on a different route in respect of colonies but you cannot rewrite history. The factors there were ‘what you give in real terms versus what you take in real terms' and ‘how much you value the opinions of those you rule'. Evaluating the data used is crucial because the British clearly thought that the value of British rule was greater than the cost of British taxation. Where that may be true on overview, there are practical limits. I am not offering an argument for or against that subject by the way because it is now history and therefore part of ‘Where You Are Coming From' . It could just as easily be the Chernobyl catastrophe or the demise of the Bison or Communism in the Russian States. All demises have common traits and start with a sort of stacis and have a sudden ending that has an exponential relationship to previous points.
To illuminate to process of graphing decline, I am fortunate to be able to refer to some work done by Lulea University in Sweden on behalf of Fallkniven AB in 2000. Each of the knives within the Fallkniven range was subjected to destruction testing to assess what forces were necessary to break the toughened steel blade. The resulting graph for the type S1 blade, which is standard issue to US Marines, is shown in Dia.1 below.
Dia. 1
This shape of graph is common in destruction testing. It shows a gradual and very precisely measured force against the amount of ‘give' that the product has. Eventually the product, which in this case was a knife, snaps and the amount of forces are shown on the graph. The actual force required to break this blade, which is an extremely strong blade, was a great deal more than the average human could impose and Fallkniven blades remain a foremost manufacturer.
In common with others destruction tests, the general shape of the graph is somewhat like a part section of a horn or trumpet. In this case, for clarity, Lulea University showed the graph going up as the force was applied but it could have also shown the deflection in reverse as Dia. 2 below.
Dia. 2
The Template – A Horn Shape
These combined reflected images of each other as in the examples above can be very helpful in plotting decline graphs. Because decline graphs effectively show the same pattern, we can use this basic shape and insert our own data and adjust the scale of the x and y plots.
Point AB
Point BC
Point CD
More for aesthetic reasons, I have changed the shape slightly in order to resemble a horn and the major part of our data will be around the bell of the horn as in Dia. 3 below. The point from B to D could actually be concave, convex or flat. Decline could be related to something, the value of which could increase or decrease so we can use either the upper part of the bell or the lower. To show the graph in action, we can show the core temperature of someone who has hypothermia.
Dia. 3
Take for example the core body temperature of a person who is immersed in freezing water . Though the process through to death will take only a few minutes, the points along the decline are well known and are shown on the plot. 37 degrees is normal. 36Degrees cold sensation with numbness of hands and feet. 35 degrees tremors and slurred speech. 34 degrees irrational thoughts, confusion , incoordinatiuon and memory problems. 33 degrees muscle rigidity. 32 degrees chills subside, collapse. 30 - 31 degrees loss of consciousness, lack of pain reactions. 29 degrees, slow pulse, low BP. 28 degrees cardio pulmonary arrest, absent pulse and pupil light reaction. <28 degrees absent life signs, pulmonary oedema.
<35 degrees warrants hospitalisation, 32 degrees marks the point at which hospitaization is needed as an emergency. 28 degrees marks the point a which death occurs.
Unless there are other factors involved (like being next door to a hospital), it is clear from the graph that the representative points mark the decline and that a body temperature of <33 degrees suggest impending death.
The Big Story – A Warmer World
Much is now made of global warming, a process where the atmosphere is filling with ‘greenhouse gases' and airborne particulates. These are being bombarded by increased radiation from the sun due to a large depletion in the protective upper ozone layer of our atmosphere. This ozone layer acts as an insulator between the earth and the sun. Over time, the gradual increase in temperature, though very small has an effect on the earth.
Point AB represents a period of 300 years
Point BC represents a period of 10 years
Point CD represents a period of 5 years
One of the great concerns at the turn of the century is the polar ice caps which are gradually melting. In fact they are melting and refreezing but in 2000, it was not possible for a time to walk to the North Pole because it had completely melted. The weather in general has become more extreme and in particular, the balance between rain and sun. Countries like the British Isles are having generally dryer summers which are suffering very brief but heavy outbursts of rainfall and flooding which is causing damage but not really meeting the water table because the ground is too dry to absorb it.
In catastrophe terms, we are somewhere along point AB in Dia 1. It is difficult to say how far along we actually are as we do not really understand yet where the critical point in average temperature is. It is assumed that an average increase of say 5 degrees Celcius will melt the ice caps to the extent that they would place a substantial part of the UK under water. This forecast was made some 15 years ago when the average temperature was xx. The average temperature now is xx which means we have already gone some way along the route of increased average temperature. We should not really be saying that an increase of 5 decgrees but we should discuss what the actual average emperature would need to be to arrive at the point where the scientists originally told us the ice caps will melt.
Point AB represents the initial decline
Point BC represents the ranges from the critical point where whatever is being measured gets out of hand and Point C. which represents the point at which nothing can be done in terms of a remedy. Interestingly, between these points lies the discovery point. Recovery action will only be taken after this point. We have a basic graph showing a decline with critical, discovery, remedial, Point of No Return and terminal points. So, lets look at various contributions to this ecological argument and place their numbers in the plot.
In 2001, researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, used a computer model to predict probable long-term increases in the Earth's temperature if no actions are taken to curb the emissions of gases and pollutants that many scientists blame for global warming. The researchers said the planet has warmed up by about 1 degrees (sic) over the last century. But they say it is likely to heat up by about 1 or 2 degrees as early as 2030.
By 2100, the most likely increase would be in the range of 4 to 7 degrees, while there is a 90 percent chance global average temperatures will rise 3 to 9 degrees, they said.
Tom Wigley, the lead researcher, said a broad range of possible long-term temperature changes does little to assist policy makers. For example, an estimated global warming range of 2.5 to 10.4 degrees was announced this year (2001) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established in 1988 by the U.N. World Meteorological Organization and U.N. Environment Program.
Wigley said the new study aimed to tell policy makers what level of global warming is most likely.
World leaders have been at loggerheads over what steps governments need to take to reduce emissions -- especially after the United States withdrew in March from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a global deal to cut pollution.
Dia 2.
Lets now look at some other data from someone else. This time we will look at the forecasts of how the earth will react to this increase in temperature. We are all aware that the earth supports us and that it is not in reverse. In cosmic terms we could properly describe ourselves as parasites of the earth. We both live on it and feed from it which are the descriptions of parasites. We are also aware that in general terms, food products grow within condition bands. This means that grazing cows in the North Pole would be fruitless because their food (grass) does not grow in conditions that cold and the animals themselves cannot exist in such cold temperatures. For a cow to exist, it needs grass and that needs light, rain and warmth. Grass cannot grow below xx degress celcius or reliably above xx degress celcius depending on humidity. It actually prefers a temperature of xx degress celcius and a relative humidity of xx% give or take a degree or per cent or so.
If we are to believe the scientific argument that an increase of 5 degrees would melt the ise caps, then we also have to accept that half of the UK and a fair part of Europe would be underwater. If this happened in say a very short timeframe like 2-3 years then there would be no effective way to redeveop agricuklture to enable enough food to vbe grown to feed us. If the melting happened over say 100 years, then we would stand a chance to be able to mofify agricultural methods. There are some factors however that I am not happy with and there seems little point in producing a graph without clarification on these aspects.
A, What would be the lowest increase in temperature which would melt the ice caps.
B, Can we trust the calculation of the amount of water produced if they did melt
C,What is a realistic value for overall land loss given that we know the water quantity.
D, At what point would no remedy be viable.
If are able to find proper answers to these questions, we will merely need to calculate the average temperature over the last say 10 years and find where it matches the decline graph.
We have a fair idea of the effect of higher temperatures on ice. We can plot the viability of the ice mass versus the average temperature. We actually know these figures quite well for the past 10 years and we can insert them in a graph to find out. Surprisingly, we have already reached the lowest increase in average temperature (A, above) in 1992 nand it is still increasing. So the ice caps are already melting.
The question posed in item D, (above) is a curious one. Technically, we have a lot of options at our disposal. The difficulty is that as we progress through the graph, the technical options become worryingly large and complex. The final options relate to treating the greenhouse gases chemically to change their structure without creating by products which cause other problems. This option would also include attempting to repair the ozone layer. Successful or not, both these options would effectively be the greatest tasks ever undertaken by mankind. But they could not be dealt with in isolation. On the other end of the remedy options scale is the refusal to allow the industrialiasion to occur. As that actually has already happened, it is an option rather like the Boston Tea Party in that it now forms the Where You Are factor. Even now, the sort of options we would be looking at for stacis and not quite remedy would be a complete halt to anything that contributed to the greenhouse gases. The thing all these options have in common is that they are not simple and require major changes to the way we live. We can save aluminium cans and recycle newsprint to our hearts content but the very fact they are both here in the first place has to do with the problem of global warming.
Do you remember the earlier reference to the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado? In that article it states that many (but not all) scientists blame the gases and pollutants for global warming. The scientific community seems to be split in 3 on the subject. They either believe the gases and pollutants are responsible or they believe they are not responsible or they do not know or have not made up their mind. It is important to understand that the scientific community has as many frailties as the community in general. There are still scientists who profess a belief that the world and all within it was created in 7 days. As in other areas, the lack of a firm bottom line allows us to be distracted from the facts of the issue. It has become a personal issue and the reason it has is because governments are aware of the problem and have downgraded it because of the enormous implications involved. We remain aware of it and whilst we do, the responsibility is ours. The graphs show some very important changes that are taking place and more than that, they show that we have already passed the point of no return. The graph shows that by 2100 blah blah