Cool Ain’t Cool
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Just seven years ago at this time, Sachi and I were preparing ourselves for an extensive trip hiking in the Grand Canyon. We knew it would probably be hot, so we were training ourselves by deliberately going out and hiking (here in SoCal) in July and August.
By this time, mid-July 2002, we were routinely getting temps here over 100° F, some days as high as 105° F in the shade (not that there’s much shade on the ridge hike we take). We were day-hiking while wearing full-sized backpacks filled with rocks and bottled water, to simulate a full pack.
Even so, we really weren’t prepared at all when we got to Grand Canyon. During one hike along Clear Creek Trail, the temperature in the sun (there is no shade on that part of the Kaibab Plateau) was more than 125° F: That’s as high as our thermometer registers, and it was pegged. Sachi swore she was evaporating.
Even during the night, the temperature never dropped below 100° F until an hour or so before dawn, the coldest time of day. We should know; we got dehydrated and suffered through the night before turning back the next morning.
And this was on September 24th-25th, 2002. (This isn’t my seven-years faded memory; I just now went to the file and looked it up.) I can’t imagine how hellish it would have been two months earlier.
What’s the point? Well, so far this year, the temperature here in Southern California has only topped 90° F once, I think. And according to the 7-day forcast by the National Weather Service for Phantom Ranch (right at the bottom of Bright Angel Trail, on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon), the highs range from 109° F to 113° F, and the overnight lows are mid to high 70s! In mid-July!
The hottest temperature ever recorded at Phantom Ranch, according to the National Park Service, was 120° F in the shade, “on several dates.” Clearly, the current temperature is much lower than the maximum, and indeed, significantly lower than just seven years ago — both in SoCal and in the Grand Canyon.
I worry a lot more about global cooling than I do about global warming; at least the latter would be accompanied by a staggering increase in crop growth. Global glaciation could well be accompanied by worldwide crop failures.
Vikings — the sea warriors, not the football team — called their island Greenland precisely because it was lush and burgeoning; they even grew grapes for wine there. Today it’s pretty much ice-locked; but I doubt even Al Gore could find a way to blame the Mediaeval Warm Period on industrial release of carbon dioxide.
During the last actual full-blown glaciation — which peaked about 18,000 years ago — the ice sheets completely blanketed Canada and Alaska and came all the way down to Minneapolis. They carved out the Great Lakes, and the ice-melt filled them. Glaciers created Niagara Falls (by rerouting the river) and the Ohio River system.
Oh, and another minor side effect: Glaciation produced a land bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska… which is why the Americas were already inhabited by humans (and old-world mammals) before Columbus got here… or even Vikings.
“Too hot” just means too hot. Maybe a little rise in the sea level, but nothing a good seawall can’t handle; the Dutch have been reclaiming land from below sea level since the 1500s. It doesn’t mean molten lava lakes in Kansas.
But “too cold” can mean “no longer human habitable,” at least not without massive technological intervention, which most of the rest of the world could not possibly afford: hydroponics, animal-protein synthesis, underground raising of livestock, nuclear powered heating, environmental suits for venturing outside, transportation challenges, and so forth.
For our own sakes, let’s hope that if we’re destined to live to see the nightmarish predictions of a group of global alarmists come true — it’s the ones of today, not the global-cooling nuts of the 1970s!
