Global Warming, the myth?

I feel it is time to take this debate now, to explain myself, argue my point and elaborate how I think: I don't believe in global warming! Or rather that global warming is due to human activity.

a. I don't believe that human activity affects the weather on a global scale. I find it narcissistic to believe that we can, no matter how much we try, affect something that big. I find the arguments of proof of this to be lacking; mainly the statistics of temperature change. The thing is that we only have widespread reliable measurements since the late 19th century, i.e. less than 150 years. And the temperature of the earth is something that varies on a geological and astronomical scale, i.e. in periods of thousands or even millions of years. People today often speak of how weird the weather is and that each year has some extreme; last year for example it was the coldest winter in like ever and this year it was the warmest winter in like the same ever. For me this is definitely true, I have in my lifetime never experienced a colder winter than last year and neither have I experienced a more temperate winter than this year.

But I’m only 30 years old and I remember when I was young how people talked about the wicked winter of 1979 when snow piled up so high you could ride your sledding from the rooftops of Bjärred (in Southern Sweden). Not to speak of the winter of 1658 (often spoken of as the little ice-age) when it was so cold that the Swedish armies of Karl X could walk over the straits between Scania and Denmark and took the Danish king Frederik III by surprise.

b. And then there is the supposed relation between human activity and geological activity. I’m talking about how some people draw parallels between pollution, global warming and earth quakes. How people as soon as there is news of a natural disaster comments that there are more natural disasters these days. The hint is actually in the name, they are natural! I found it ridiculous and again extremely narcissistic that someone could believe that we humans could actually affect how the continental platforms move. And I shouldn’t even have to argue that even on as short a period of time as a hundred years the average frequency of earth quakes of various powers is followed pretty accurately. And again these are geological effects which should be viewed in periods of hundreds of thousands of years rather than decades. The only thing that is more frequent is the information we get about these disasters.

c. Notice that I’ve completely left out the fact that the ice around the poles of the earth are melting. That is because I don’t see any proof of the relation between the melting of the global icecaps and human activity. Earth is getting warmer though; there is no doubt of that. The changes to the sea-ice in both the Arctic and Antarctic region affects mainly the local fauna which is not really noticed by us unless you watch nature shows. But the indirect effect of melting sea-ice is that it accelerates the warming; ice is white and reflects sunlight while water is dark and absorbs it, basically creating a vicious circle where the more ice that melts the warmer it will get and the more ice will melt.

Directly worse for us is the melting of the land-ice in these regions. Most prominent is the land-ice of Greenland which all in all would raise the sea level of the world seas by over 7m (which would probably put my family home underwater!). And this is nothing compared to the ice sheet on the Antarctic continent which is ten times as much as the Greenland ice sheet. The Greenland ice sheet is melting/flowing into the sea at a fairly fast rate, but this process will still take hundreds of years, by which time the trend might have changed (in either direction).

Another secondary effect of the melting ice is changes to the ocean currents. The only reason the area I live in, and actually most of Europe, is at all habitable is because of the Atlantic Gulfstream. Sweden is actually so far north that it far north the American border, way into Canada by comparison, or similarly in Russian Siberia, areas that are nearly completely inhabitable. Not to speak of the Swedish capital Stockholm which is already on level with the Northwest Territories in Canada, Alaska and, well still Siberia. And Europe is still habitable even far North of Stockholm and people live far into to Arctic Circle. Southern Europe is also affected; take Madrid for example, which is on the same Latitude as both Beijing and New York, both cities with cold winters (I’ve been in Beijing when the temperature was below -20 centigrade), while Madrid very rarely have temperatures below 0 (average temperature in Madrid in December and January is just below 10 centigrade).

So back to that secondary effect, how the warming up of the polar caps and the melting ice (both sea-ice and land-ice) could potentially change the ocean currents over time. This is also very much a geological phenomenon and will most likely be a gradual change over hundreds or even thousands of years, but even small changes to these currents can cause great changes to the local climate in some parts of the world, like for example here in Sweden.

d. Having said this I still believe pollution is bad and that we should be more environmentally concerned than we are. Pollution is bad and the way I see it there are more direct effects than global warming. For example there are local health problems; I’ve noticed while living in severely polluted areas that people seem sicker, they age faster and feel worse. There could of course be other factors to this, like overwork and stress, which seems to be coinciding with pollution more often than not.

I have a personal experience however; I seem to have contracted an allergy to some kind of pollution. I noticed a couple of years ago that I had a constant cough and runny nose that I at the time blamed on a cold. After seeing a doctor who stated that I did not have a cold, that it was probably an allergy and gave me antihistamines. The drugs worked and I got better. Now that is not much of an argument that it was caused by pollution, that argument is that while I needed to take the drugs daily while living in a polluted there is no effect at all where I’m living now. This could of course also be attributed to other factors.

My main argument is then that pollution feels bad. After living in an extremely polluted area for nearly a year, where the local geography and climate made it even worse, I could feel the harsh treatment of my throat and lungs and there were few things I craved more than fresh clean air.

Even in places that are not considered comparably polluted you can feel a difference. For example while going on skiing trips to northern Sweden the air feels cleaner than it does at home in the South. The South of Sweden is still like a polished white surface compared to the sooth-black air many other places in the world.

e. I don’t believe in global warming but I do believe in local warming; I have lived in a big city where in the city itself the temperature very rarely drops below 0 degrees centigrade, outside the city, only a couple of tens of kilometers, however the temperature seems to be several degrees lower. And this corresponds to historical readings, where only a few decades before it used to be that cold where the city is too.

Another very obvious effect of pollution is sooth. When you have to wash of a thick layer of sooth from your balcony at least once per month there is obviously a problem.

f. Having said all this I think there are things we can do about it. For example when it is cold in warm places (does that make sense?) it tends to “feel” much colder. I’ve discussed this with local people and argued that where I come from it is much colder but I will still be warmer, for which I’m always (yes always, every single time) counted with that we have central heating systems. Actually, we don’t. Apartment complexes often have, but not always. We do have heating though. But, to be honest I had eating in those warm places that were cold too. The difference is not about heating, it is about insulation. Warming up places with heat pumps, infrared heaters or various other heaters doesn’t help much if you don’t have any insulation to speak of. I still don’t understand the idea to build huge buildings without any insulation, sure it is more expensive to build but you must make up for that in reduced heating, and cooling, costs. Yes, cooling costs too. When the outdoors temperature is 35 centigrade and the humidity over 98% every single household will start blasting their air conditioners, and with poor insulation a lot of this cooling goes to waste. The best way to be warm is to stay warm, not to heat up.

Like I said in the beginning, I don’t believe in global warming from human activity. Earth is getting slightly warmer though and the polar caps are melting. And pollution is still bad and we should do all we can to not waste energy or materials.

How I lost my passport in China. Part 3 - The hot pot, the karaoke and the morning adventures.

We met up with Paul, Tiff and the others at the usual place where you can get everything you might ever need for a wicked night out. We started with hot pot and our friends had managed to both get me some gifts; a new backpack, some clothes, a Swedish movie and a porn (????), to cheer me up as well as getting themselves pretty drunk already. My mood was low during the whole dinner but there was no point in moping so I participated as well as I could. By 10pm we had managed to get both full and drunk and it was time to head over for the karaoke next doors.

The karaoke was awesome and wicked at the same time. I can't say much more than that we sang a lot, drank a lot and had a lot off fun.

I left at about 4am when most people were passed or passing out. I took a taxi back to where I used to live, with the regular communication problem. Weirdly the driver could not understand me saying renmin nan lu but he did get babaogei... I guess it comes down to tones and dialects...

Arriving near my old place I found to my dismay that I was out of money. In pure desperation I tried to get hold of anyone in Sweden and finally got both Maja and later Ville who could tranfer me some money, which was much needed as I had to buy some flight tickets in the morning (when it would be late night in Sweden). After all that hassle I once again calmed down and started walking around the area and found a new chaokao place just outside my former building entrance. Happily I bought some bbq sticks and was suddenly invited to sit down with the owner and two guys, of which one could speak a few words of English and the other two nothing. We still communicated well enough though and they bought me beer while I told my passport story to an interested but not in the slightest comprehending crowd.

After a while I went back to the hotel across the street but once I reached the door I realized I wanted massage (nothing dirty), so I headed back to the guys and asked them if they knew of any. They of course assumed I meant something dirty and gave me directions for both that and regular massage, I couldn't find that though. I did suddenly remeber about a proper massage parlor just a block away from my old home so I headed over there instead. Arriving at the place I just pointed at the longest and most expensive massage I could get (it is a proper massage parlor and most expensive does not mean sex as it might in some locations) and got the most amazing massage I've ever had for about two hours. It was a full body massage and the reason it was so good was probably because I was pretty drunk and tired which made me extremly relaxed. And it only cost me 130rmb!

When I left the sun was up and once I reached the hotel again it was already 8:30 in the morning. I passed out immediately and got about 4-5 hours worth of sleep before I had to check out.

How I lost my passport in China. Part 2 - The police, the registration and the hotel

My passport was in that backpack. Actually it might still be as far as I know, because who whould ever need my Swedish passport, excepting me of course?

We looked around everywhere we could think and asked bartenders in bouth Paname and the bar next doors but was met with nothing but indifference. We soon headed back to Tiffany's home far in the South of the city. I immediately called home for some assistant and after mom had contacted the Swedish foreign minestry I managed to calm down and get some sleep. From that point on and through the next 48 hours the only thing that was going through my mind was "it is only monetary".

In the morning I called the Swedish embassy of China's emergency hotline and got the advice to file police reports and make sure I got an official report which I could bring to either the Swedish embassy in Beijing or the Swedish consulate in Shanghai. I went out to meet my friend, Li Min (to whom I was supposed to give about fifteen hundred Swedish kronor/Hong Kong dollar/Chinese yuan worth of eye creams that was in the bag), and together we went back to Paname where we once again looked around, tried to talk to the staff of the bar and called the police.

The police here was actually very helpful and with Li Min's assistance I soon had a written report to take to the something something ministry of something something in Chengdu (I can't even remember what it was called to be honest). There we encountered our first major problem; it was already near 5pm when everything in China would close and remain such for the following four days, I basically had 15 minutes to finish everything or I would be a sitting duck in Chengdu for until the end of the holidays. And this is where the woman told me I need to go to my friend's home, find the closest police station and register there as I was staying in a local home and everybody visiting China must register where they stay within 24 hours. Now the problem of course was that she lives over an hour from where we were to her home, and even then we had no idea where the police station would be, and even if we did know that it would take slightly more than 10 minutes to finish that registration. This is not even counting that I had only been in Chengdu for about 17 hours, apparently that didn't actually matter, everything else had to be done by the book though.

She was not completely impossible though, actually she was fairly nice when it all came down to it; she suggested I check in to a nearby hotel immediately and she was willing to stay for another 30 minutes to help me out. So Li Min and I ran off to a hotel, that turned out to be outside the window of my old flat in Chengdu, checked me in and ran back to get the police report.

Calmed down now that we had done everything we could I went for clothes shopping, took a much needed shower and headed towards another night of wicked adventures with Paul, Tiffany and others.

How I lost my passport in China. Partt 1 - The wine, the flight and the theft...

It's been a long time since I last wrote here but the past few days events definitely qualify for something to write about. Actually I think it qualifies so much that I will have to be cutting stuff out for anyone to bear reading it.

Last friday me and my American friend Paul caught a flight from Shenzhen BaoAn international due for Chengdu, actually the "fun" started already before the flight when Paul in his eager to bring gifts for his friend Tiffany in Chengdu neglected the fact that you are not allowed to bring wine on the flight. We swiftly took care of that mistake in the taxi ride from Shenzhen bay port to the airport though. But this was of course not enough as he also considered it a swell idea to bring a couple of small bottles of wine on the flight, which of course was not allowed and the contents of those ended up in our bellies in about 30 seconds per bottle (there were two for us each) while trying to pass the security check. We then managed to, my fault admittedly, walk to the wrong gate and had to run for the last call, which for me meant a sprint like I haven't done in years (not saying too much as I never actually run).

In Chengdu we met up with Tiff herself and appologized for the missing wine. We had chaokao (bbq) and a couple of beer then headed to a nearby bar called Paname (I think I might have mentioned that place among my Chengdu blogs). The place has turend quite shady recently but it was cheap drinks and we had a good time. We were all sitting together talking to some people when I headed off to talk a bit from the bar, leaving my backpack with Paul and Tiffany. After a while they joined us and told me my bag was still over at the tables we were sitting at and we joked about how no one would steal a Swedish passport. Fittingly to the just past fools day I found the bag missing when I walked over there a moment later.

And that was of course when everything became a proper mess...

Dimensions

I'm pretty sure that you can consider color a dimension. I'm not just saying this out of the somewhat incapacitated mindset I'm just in but from a deeper though of comprehension of the world. We do define the world in terms of space and time and agree that a three dimensional space combinded with time is our minds the way things work. But as we have discovered color is just a wavelength of photons and photons are per definition (in a very difficutly comprehensible way) the relation between time and space, that appears, at least to me, to be the relation between time and space. So from this you could reflect or reinterprent at least one demension (preferably time as it is in time rather than space that color changes) on color and say that color is what spans up our world and time is just a value in the color dimension over a field in the three space dimenisions. This would of course complicate all mathematics regarding things like speed and acceleration to such a degree that it is nearly completely incomprehensable, but since we already comprehend things like speed and acceleration (and the changes of acceleration to any deriviable degree) we might actually benefit and understand other things that we can't comprehend in the dimensions we think in today.

I'm not challenging space and time as the proper dimensions we should consdier but rather saying that if something is only defined in time against space then why can't we use that dimension instead and define any of our proper dimension (preferably time as color is prety much linear and just directional in space) of that instead.

I say challenege the intellectual mind of anything and dream up a way we can concieve the world in a different but still rather concrete way.

And don't even bother asking me to do the math for this, I just can't. But I do know enough of linear algebra that if something is in one N-dimensional room you can reflect on it and use it as a dimension, and at least in my current state I'm convinced that color is something that can be a dimension rather than a variable value in a room.

May 12th

It was a Monday 2 years ago, I'd just come back in to town the night before and come back to work after a few days off. I'd had morning classes outside town but got a fierce belly ache and the driver took me home at lunch so at 2:28pm I was in bed and just woke up feeling a bit queasy. I got out of bed and found the cabinet doors over it shaking and realized the whole room, and in fact the whole building, was shaking heavily. At first I thought it was the subway construction going on downstairs but when I looked out the widow from my apartment on the 20th floor I saw the cranes on the construction across the street swinging back and forth with a swing angle as high as 90 degrees. I tried to call my friends but all lines where down, I tried to message friends but I got no replies. At this point people had started evacuating the building; people were running down the stairs and the streets were in chaos. The first shake only lasted about 3 minutes but there were several aftershocks, actually the aftershocks came back frequently over the next few months, and people all over were terrified. I decided this was it or it was not, either it will fall down or it won't, turns out I was right, so I went back to bed and fell asleep.

It took several hours before I knew what had happened; I finally gathered my energy and walked the 20 flights of stairs down to the ground and found a Starbucks which was closed but had left its wireless router on, I could finally let my friends and my family know I was still alive (it had never actually occurred to me that I wouldn't be).


In memory of the 68.636 dead and over 370 thousand people injured in the 7,9 magnitude earthquake in Sichuan, May 12th 2008.

Why do I wear shades when it is raining?

To keep my eyes from being impaled on other people's umrellas...