I was taken in by a book that presents that global warming has no basis in scientific fact, and ended up learning the facts, says Jill Kamil n article in The Spectator of 11 July attracted my attention this summer. I was in the UK where day in and day out I heard, read or saw on TV references to global warming being due to human activity. We are responsible for excessive carbon-dioxide in the air which is causing sea levels to rise, floods in Bangladesh, disappearing beaches on the East African coast, and starvation in Third World countries. I was not alone in wondering whether the panic generated was justified -- especially when I heard ludicrous statements that global warming was behind the early maturing of blackberries in England as well as Cairo's exceptional heat and humidity in January, February and March. Then along came an individual who claimed that it was all a con trick. I really enjoyed the review of Ian Plimer's book Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science (Quartet 2009), in which he claims that geologists have long recognised that climate changes over time, and that there's nothing that can be done about it. "Our time is thousands of millions of years", he is quoted as saying, " [while] modern-day scientists are only interested in the last 150 years." He pointed out that polar ice (the melting of which concerns so many) has been on earth for less than 20 per cent of geological time; that extinctions of life are normal; that climate change is cyclical and "a scientific fact", which, to quote him directly, "is more than you can say for any of the computer models turning out doomsday scenarios about inexorably rising temperatures, sinking islands, and collapsing ice shelves." Well, I am no scientist, but I was in the company of many people who strongly criticise political and environmental activists who circulate a doomsday scenario, and I had no difficulty in agreeing with these sceptics. I was happy to go against the popular theory that we human beings can help "contain" the looming danger. I reasoned that we cannot; that climatic change was inevitable, and I looked to the realm of my own interests (anthropology and archaeology in the Nile valley) to justify my stand. The thick belt of arid land, the largest desert in the world that spreads across the continent of Africa from the mountains of Morocco to the Red Sea, was not always the "empty space" that its name implies. Way back, in the period known as the Lower Paleolithic, between 100,000 and 50,000 BC, it was wet and rainy, and there were rivers, large lakes, and abundant life in the area. Fossilised bones between the Sudan and Egypt's western frontiers (which is to say the Libyan Desert and the semi-circle of oasis in the Western Desert) reveal the presence of elephant, cheetah, giraffe, ostrich, lion, wild ass, buffalo, gazelle and hyena. It was a semi-tropical environment, not unlike the highlands of Kenya today. Hand axes, fish wedges and other primitive implements used for chopping, digging, skinning, crushing and stabbing attest to the activities of nomadic tribes in search of sustenance. Gradually (in geological time) the weather became dryer, lakes dried up, and tribes began to settle in camps or caves around main sources of food. They collected wild plants, and developed hunting aids like clubs and spears from thigh bones of animals. As a result of a further decrease in rainfall along with increased heat and evaporation, food resources further shrank, fauna perished, and nomads began to move northward to water their herds. They migrated over vast areas and there was an imperceptible movement towards the River Nile where semi-permanent camps were set up. Adjusting to local conditions, large-game hunting was abandoned for small, and the people increasingly exploited the river resources. Comparative studies of early societies reveal that people do not become sedentary unless compelled to do so for environmental or other reasons. And also that, wherever they settle, they develop an elaborate cemetery culture; they begin to bury their dead; the differences in the size and content of their tombs reveal the emergence of strong leaders. The tribe who gravitated from the upper reaches of the Nile to escape from the increasingly hostile desert conditions eventually found ideal conditions for settlement at Napta Playa -- a vast savannah-like plain of more than 100 square kilometres extending from northern Sudan to the desert west of Abu Simbel in Nubia. They took with them long-horned cattle (providing the earliest evidence for cattle-herding in the ancient world), and for more than a thousand years, between 9000 to 8000 BC, they settled down in this region -- today a barren desert -- where there were drought-resistant trees such as acacia, seasonal lakes, and abundant wildlife in the form of hare, gazelle and small carnivores. Tools found at Napta Playa are similar to those found on the bank of the Nile near Wadi Halfa in northern Sudan, suggesting migration from that region. Human beings have an amazing propensity for adjustment to changing conditions, and archaeologists excavating at Napta Playa found that the new settlers lived in mud huts built on mounds. Lakes were seasonally filled with rainfall so there was an abundance of wild cereals. And then, about 7000 BC or maybe even earlier, they began to give up their hunter- gathering economy in favour of organised farming. They began to collect and process grain and store it for times of need. Consequently, fewer people were needed to feed large numbers. This freed individuals from the task of finding food, and craft specialisation was a direct result. Better tools were produced with which to hunt and process food. Ceramics were made for food storage, and vessels from which to drink and eat; some had rounded bases so that they would rest steadily in the ground. There developed an interest in decoration, and particularly fine was the ware with polished red exterior and shiny black interior. Some pottery was incised or stamped with designs in a zigzag pattern. Clay figurines of humans and animals were produced. They are often classified as having a religious function, but they could simply have been playthings for children. I watched a TV programme on a community of Icelanders who, far from bemoaning the melting of the Arctic ice belt, were taking advantage of the warmer weather to develop local industries and cultivate crops. And I was reminded of Napta Playa, where archaeologists have excavated neat rows of well- built huts within community centres, storage pits and water- wells to help out through the drier winter months. The weather will change. Indeed, it is changing. Massive death tolls resulting from natural disasters like typhoons and earthquakes; as well as sinking islands and threatened beaches, will not cease but, I reasoned, people all over the world are adjusting to that change. "Eco-guilt", wrote Plimer, is "a first-world luxury". He wrote that when he tried to explain global warming to people in Iran or Turkey "they have no idea what I'm talking about. Their life is about getting through to the next day, finding the next meal." And that, I felt, was largely true for Egypt too. Environmental damage was due to modern technology, not climatic change, I reasoned. We bewail the denudation of what was once the fertile Delta as salts rise to the surface of fertile fields no longer replenished by the annual flood. We voice concern that the construction of canals like the Al-Salam in northern Sinai, and the Toshka Canal 200km south of Aswan, have so far failed to reap the expected rewards. And we reason that it is not because of climate change but, in the words of famed Egyptian geologist Rushdi Said, "because agriculture is an economically unfeasible process to start with, let alone cultivation of the desert." So you can see that my mind was set. Or, in modern terminology, my "mindset" this summer was alarmist. Polar ice caps were indeed melting so rapidly that the whole world was at risk. Lagos in Nigeria, Monrovia in Liberia, Karachi in Pakistan, Jakarta in Indonesia, Khulna in Bangladesh, Calcutta, Bangkok and Egypt's Damietta and Ras Al-Barr on the Mediterranean were all threatened. And there was nothing we could do about it. And then, after Ramadan, I returned to Egypt and I was reminded, in an article in The Egyptian Gazette, that Alexandria and Port Said, two low-lying cities, are already being affected by rising sea levels; I was also reminded that we are not looking at "geological time" but to today's rapidly changing environmental conditions. I got in touch with Guy Jobbins, a senior programme officer with the International Development Research Centre working on adaptation to climate change in Africa, and he had much to say on global warming and climate change. "It is a question of how the rapid changes currently underway will challenge, threaten or benefit human society on local and global scales," he said, and added "and that depends what we do about it." When I asked him about Plimer's book, he responded that the author was a geologist, not a climate expert. "He is an expert on ore deposits," he said. "Human civilisation has been around for such a short period of time that the geological timescales Plimer mentions are essentially meaningless. Almost the entire evolution of modern human society has occurred within the last ten thousand years. This has been made possible largely due to a long period of unusual climatic stability that has made agriculture possible. In human history, however, local climate shifts have precipitated economic, social and political upheaval. For example, multi-decadal droughts around 2200BC are thought to have played a role in dynastic upheavals in both Egypt and Mesopotamia," he added. I checked some facts, and learnt that it has been clearly demonstrated that by 2015 the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance because of climate disasters will have grown to 375 million; that the risks of increased malaria and cholera epidemics due to warmer temperatures will reverse progress earlier made against those diseases in Africa; that sustained drought in many parts of the world is causing dispute over increasingly scarce water resources -- in places like Darfur -- triggering tribal conflicts, and that Egypt's water resources will rapidly diminish once all the dams in Upper Nubia are completed. These are very real problems that have to be addressed now, today, before it is too late. So what was all this about global warming being a con trick? I decided to look up the Internet for reviews of Plimer's book and was in for a surprise. Heaven and Earth has received such wide coverage in the Australian and international press that it has become a best-seller -- not because of its worth, but largely because it has been so severely criticised. To quote George Monbiot in The Guardian : "Seldom has a book been more cleanly murdered by scientists than Ian Plimer's Heaven and Earth, which purports to show that manmade climate change is nonsense. Since its publication in Australia it has been ridiculed for a hilarious series of schoolboy errors, and its fudging and manipulation of the data." Barry Brook of Adelaide University's Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability (who is at the same university as Plimer and has often debated climate change issues with him) described the book as a case study "in how not to be objective" and accused Plimer of using "selective evidence". On BraveNewClimate.com Barry Brook charged that the author's assertions about man's role in climate change were "naive, reflected a poor understanding of climate science, and relied on recycled and distorted arguments that had been repeatedly refuted." He further suggested that many of the scientific authors cited by Plimer actually supported the consensus view, and that their work was misrepresented in Plimer's book. How well I understand that statement. As a journalist I am aware of the danger of citing quotations out of the context. I was fascinated by the number of reviewers that highlighted "factual and source problems" in Heaven and Earth, and the apparently "humorous way they were presented". The book, many implied, will be remembered for the confrontation it provoked rather than the science it stimulated. It is clear that Plimer's book is not aimed at a scientific audience. It was written for the uninformed layperson, like me, and he draws on miscellaneous and often outdated records, combining what one literary critic calls "bits of science with bits of fiction". Michael Ashley, an astronomer at the University of New South Wales, criticised the book at length, describing it as "largely a collection of contrarian ideas and conspiracy theories that are rife in the blogosphere. The writing is rambling and repetitive; the arguments flawed and illogical." He furthermore accused Plimer of having "done an enormous disservice to science and the dedicated scientists who are trying to understand climate and its influence on humans, by publishing this book." Who is guilty? The writer, who hopes that the book will be a bestseller and who plays around with the facts to make it as readable, as accessible, as possible? Or the publisher, who is high on the list of income earners from a popular book, especially when it is controversial, and, let me add, when the publisher owns bookshops? I would say the latter. They should be discerning. That is why they have acquisitions editors. I learnt that several notable publishers refused to publish Plimer's book. And when he did eventually find a willing publisher, Robert Manne (a lecturer on politics at La Trobe University in Melbourne), criticised the "gushing praise" given to it, and called its publication "a grave intellectual, political and moral mistake". Those who endorse Plimer's book point out that he is a prize- winning scientist and professor. They stress that his book, being accessible to the layperson, will help bridge the gap between them and the professionals. The British Daily Mail' s columnist Andrew Alexander called it "the best book on science and scientists I have ever read". And that is how I felt about it... in the beginning. Now I have changed my mind because, in the field of Egyptology, I am aware of how disturbingly high are the many outdated archaeological theories that re-emerge in some articles and books, and how decades of research and observation can be mixed up with regurgitated myth and legend. As for The Spectator 's featuring Heaven and Earth as a cover story (the one I was taken in by), George Monbiot of The Guardian criticises it as "one of the gravest misjudgments in journalism this year," since "a quick check" would have shown that the book was "utter nonsense". Here we come full cycle. See how easily one -- should I say "I" -- can be taken in by the written word, especially when it comes in a glossy cover.
