The thinking error that makes people susceptible to climate change denial
From 1871:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;trove.nla.gov.au&#x2F;newspaper&#x2F;article&#x2F;1298497&#x2F;60952" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;trove.nla.gov.au&#x2F;newspaper&#x2F;article&#x2F;1298497&#x2F;60952</a><p>IMAGINARY CHANGES OF CLIMATE.
(Pall Mall Gazette.)
THREE consecutive years of drought, while
they have stimulated the inventive resources of
practical agriculturists, have had the natural
effect of calling forth a plentiful crop of specu-
lation from weather prophets and projectors,
and half-instructed meteorologists, and all the
philosophic tribe of Laputa in general, to whom
the periodical press now affords such fatal
facilities. We have often noticed that in the
tabular statements of those compilers of weather
records who write to the Times, useful and
welcome as their communications are, every
season is sure to be &quot;extraordinary,&quot; almost
every month one of the driest or wettest, or
windiest, coldest or hottest, ever known. Much
observation, which ought to correct a tendency
to exaggerate, seems in some minds to have
rather a tendency to increase it. And many
seem now to regard three dry hot years in
succession as betokening some general change
of climate, as if it was not perfectly certain, in
the wide range of the table of what we call
chances, that with our existing condi-
tions of climate such a combination must
every now and then recur. We know an
ingenious theorist who would fain persuade us
that a cycle of six hundred unfavorable years
has just reached its termination, and that
English agriculturists, who left off making wine
about A.D. 1250 because their grapes ceased to
ripen, will soon be making it again, and con-
tinue to do so for an equivalent number of cen-
turies. Others, speculating quite as conjectur-
ally and even more absurdly, seem to attribute
the impending change of climate—of which
they assume the reality—to the operation of
men. They fancy that by extended drainage
and the cutting down of trees the amount of
rainfall may have been diminished. As to
drainage, it may suffice to remember that our
rain is derived from the evaporation of the
Atlantic, and is not likely to be affected by the
diminution of that which proceeds from a few
swamps. As to the effects of cutting down
trees, the subject has been made so much of in
recent times that it requires to be treated more
respectfully. Yet there are two considerations
which militate against the theory; the first
relative to its application to England, the
second to the doctrine in general. As to the
first, it may be greatly questioned whether there
has been for some generations past any
diminution of our tree-covered surface. There
is a balance of gain and loss. Some woods have
been felled. Some districts, once rich in hedge-
row timber, have been partially stripped for
reasons of scientific agriculture. But, on the
other hand, the Englishman&#x27;s passion for plant-
ing and for preserving timber has been steadily
at work in the contrary direction. Take the
neighborhood of London for an instance; any
of us who are old enough may remember how,
scarcely more than a generation ago, the specta-
tor from any height commanding an extensive
prospect would note great bare tracts of heath,
of cultivated but unenclosed land, and of re-
cently enclosed common with low treeless
hedges. All this is altered now. Go where
you will for a view in the &quot;home counties,&quot; a
sea of leaves seems to extend around on every
side. And we believe that most people, if they
consult their experience, will make the same re-
port of the parts of the kingdom with which they
are acquainted. The local authorities who have
been lately bestirring themselves to prevent the
disforesting of the New Forest, on the ground
of apprehending deficiency of rain, are certainly
indulging in very imaginative apprehensions.
But in the next place, what real ground is
there for connecting together, in temperate
climates at all events, the presence of forests
and the frequency of rain as cause and effect?
The assertion is so commonly made that to
doubt its truth seems almost like contradicting
a received physical fact. And yet it will be
found on examination that it really rests on no
solid foundation either of reasoning or ex-
perience. The question is a procès jugé et
pas plaidé. As for the reason of the supposi-
tion, none whatever has been assigned, so far
as we are aware, except that a surface shaded
with woods is somewhat cooler than one de-
nuded of it, and therefore likelier to attract the
passing shower. How far this may be true it
would be difficult to verify, or whether a hun-
dred acres covered with wood really present a
cooler area than if covered with turnips or
other vegetation; but the effect of such a cause
as this must be very limited at any time, and
(which is more important) it can apply only at
the warm season of the year. In winter, when
a full half of our rainfall takes place, the
&quot;open&quot; is notoriously cooler than the shaded
surface, and therefore should, by the supposition,
attract more moisture. In cold countries—
Canada, for instance—the woodman can ply his
trade in the sheltered interior of the forest
when out-of-door work is completely suspended
in the cleared land by reason of extremity of
cold. Supposing, therefore, the precipitation
from the air to be in any degree affected by the
presence or absence of forest covering, one-half
of the year ought to balance the other.
In France the prevalence of the theory that
the clearing of woodlands diminished rain was
such, a few years ago, as almost to produce a
panic among philosophers; and in France the
question could be tried experimentally with
greater ease than here, because the surface of
that country is more markedly divided between
thick wood and bare fields than is the case with
ours. Something meriting the name of obser-
vation was, therefore, applied to the problem,
and we believe we are right in saying that the
result hitherto arrived at is altogether adverse
to any connection between the alleged cause and
effect. Rainfall cannot be shown to have di-
minished generally in France through the re-
moval of forests, which in the last hundred
years has been very extensive, nor can it be
shown locally that rain has diminished where
forests have been cut down. One experimen-
talist compared for some years the meteorology
of two adjoining valleys in Burgundy, the one
covered with wood, the other entirely bare, and
found that less rain fell in the former. But
observation of this kind must no doubt be far
more extensive and more prolonged to be really
valuable, and none such has been applied since
this question began to be agitated.
Of course, this scepticism of ours does not in
any degree touch the real and provable utility of
forests in agricultural economy. It has not
been shown that they increase the rainfall, nor
any good reason given for supposing it, but
they are of the greatest service in economising
it. They preserve the fallen water, both by the
percolation which takes place more readily on
the soil shaded by them than on exposed sur-
faces, and also by obstructing evaporation.
They are most useful accessories both against
flood and against drought. But under our
English climate there is a contingency perhaps
more injurious in the long run both to human
health and the fruits of the earth than even flood
or drought. This is the prevalence of damp, cold,
sunless weather. Some suppose that an over-
abundance of trees has a tendency to aggravate
this particular evil. Certain it is that in the
vicinity of that very New Forest, of which the
maintenance is now so strongly urged by some
climatologers, a large number of the inhabitants
who can afford it are apt to migrate in what
they deem the unhealthy season—the fall of the
leaf—and resort to a more bracing and invigor-
ating air.
Not only the effect of forest but the effect of
modern field drainage requires to be established
on far more accurate evidence than has as yet
been obtained. We do not mean its effects on
climate in the general sense, which we believe
to be none at all; but on the preservation and
distribution of water, on the permanent pro-
ductiveness of the soil, and on human and ani-
mal health. These are questions of which we
shall have to leave the scientific investigation to
those who may come after us; for the present
we seem likely to content ourselves with deduc-
tions from very narrow experience with very
large conjecture and very confident assertion.
ACCORDING to a note in the American Natura-
list, the name &quot;White Mountain&quot; is naturally
applied to the highest mountains in all coun-
tries, that being the signification of the names
Himalaya, Mont Blanc, Hoemus, Sierra Nevada,
Ben Nevis, Snowdon, Lebanon, Chimborazo,
Illimani, and White Mountains.