I think I am losing my memory. That may represent a very personal mental deterioration but I suspect it’s a normal, natural human condition called stupidity. It’s just that, on average, we humans don’t remember much for long- which is why we invented record keeping. It doesn’t make us smarter, it just reminds us not to do stupid things as often as might otherwise do them. I remember, during the great drought in Southern California of the late 1990’s a city councilman suggested we build a new freeway atop the empty L.A. river to relieve congestion on the Golden State Freeway. It was seriously considered for awhile, at least until the records reminded folks that the one consistency in Southern California is that first it rains and then it doesn’t. And then it rains again.
On average, during “normal years” as the local weathermen insist upon saying, L.A. gets less then 12″ of rain; and that in just three months. But the average includes 1936 when Long Beach turned into an island and 1811 when a log jam and a cloudburst in the Verdugo Hills conspired to shift the course of the L.A. in one night. Then there was the decade long drought that wiped out the cattle rancheros of the 1860’s, and the drought of the 1870’s that devastated the replacement sheep industry, leaving Southern California settlers with no choice but to grow naval oranges from Brazil. The phrase “On Average” has about as much meaning as the phrase “that never happens” – which, after all, is something you say only after “that” happens. Look, sooner or later everything happens. It’s just that on average it doesn’t.
Sea captains used to point out that on average the ocean is enormous and empty and on average ships are small and maneuverable, which is why ships never hit icebergs. But of course they did and with disturbing regularity. In July of 1839 the Emily Johnson , bound for Boston. passed masts and rigging drifting beside two bergs. In July of 1876, the brig Lilly spotted fresh wreckage floating in the lee of another berg. The accounting could go on for hours. The Harvard Injury Research Control Center figures that between 1882 and 1890 14 ships ran into icebergs and sank just in the fog shrouded fishing grounds of Grand Banks, off of Newfoundland. But given all the ways you could die at sea, running into an iceberg seemed the least of your worries.
Then came the night of April 14th, 1912 when the H.M.S. Titanic ran into a little chunk of a Greenland out for a spring cruise. Two thousand people went into the water and a little over 500 climbed out. Suddenly 13 nations were willing to shell out money to set up an International Ice Patrol. And since then nobody has died because they ran into an iceberg they weren’t looking for.
Since 1913 we have detailed records of icebergs spotted floating in the North Atlantic South of 48 degrees North Latitude, and by consulting log books the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA – pronounced Noah) has pushed those records back to 1900. The leanest year for Icebergs in the last century was 1966, when none were spotted. The busiest year was 1984, when 2, 202 were tracked.
The record of icebergs, like the rainfall records in Southern California, is a lesson in the caprice of nature, the meteorological whimsy of climate. The first decade of this century saw an average of 437 bergs each year in north Atlantic. That number when down to 418 a year in the second decade, but grew to 473 per year during the roaring twenties. It dropped to 410 a year on average during the Great Depression and the dustbowl, then 460 on average per year during the 1940’s, 241 average per year during the 1950’s, 148 per year during the 1960’s. Then the average number of icebergs each year started to rise, to 571 on average during the 1970’s, and an average per year of 667 during the 1980’s. The peak (so far) has been the 1990′ s when on average every year the ice patrol tracked 1,148 icebergs. During the first five years of this century, the ice patrol has had to track only 433 per year – on average – but one big year before the year 2010 could radically change that average for the decade.
We didn’t have a big year, with more than a thousand icebergs spotted until 1909. There was another in Titanic’s year of 1912, but not another until 1929. The next wasn’t until 1945, and there was not another one thousand plus year until 1972, when 1,588 bergs were spotted.. But the 70’s were also the first decade that produced two big years when 1974 saw 1,387 ice bergs tracked. The nineteen eighties saw three big years back to back to back; in 1983, 1894 and in 1985. The nineteen nineties saw five years with over 1,000 bergs sighted. Of course it also saw 1999 when only 22 bergs were tracked.
Even if there is an increased trend in iceberg production that is not proof of global warming. Lots of things might influence the 100 glaciers on Greenland’s west coast to “calve” more bergs into Baffin Bay. And a lot more than simple ocean temperature influences how many of those bergs and growlers get carried by the Labrador Current south through the Davis Strait and the Flemish Pass to Iceberg Alley, Southeast of Newfoundland. And even if rising ocean temperature is the likely and logical cause of more bergs making that long journey, that certainly isn’t proof that humans are the cause of global warming.
But then the records on icebergs were not collected to prove or disprove global warming. Like the rainfall records in Southern California, they were collected merely to keep us from doing something stupid, like building a highway in a river bed, or pumping more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
A year after the L.A.. River Freeway was shelved a cloudburst dropped 2″ of rain in an hour over the Sepulveda Basin. Dozens of people had to be rescued by helicopters from the roofs of their cars. That kind of thing never happens in Southern California, on average.
