1. The issue is now more driven by politics than science.
2. Otherwise intelligent individuals appear willing, against reason, to ignore the facts if it suits their general environmental mindset.
3. Emotion has overtaken logic, entrenching positions and making open-minded debate at best difficult, at worst impossible.

 Where discussion of emotive issues such as climate change is concerned, people act as if as well as being entitled to their own opinions they are also entitled to their own facts. There is also a widespread perception that frequent repetition of a proposition somehow guarantees its truth – especially if its advocates include politicians and celebrities. On the contrary, what matter are the facts alone and the truth of a statement is independent of the number of people believing it.

Science operates on the following broad methodology:

1. Study the data
2. Form an hypothesis
3. Predict results of experiment not yet performed
4. Conduct the experiment
5. If results agree with prediction – tentatively accept the hypothesis. If not, start again.
6. Predict and test again.

This is not, in general, how the climate change polemic proceeds; here, single ‘facts’ – e.g. recession of the polar ice cap or some heavy storms – are frequently taken as proving the fact of global warming and justifying calls for immediate action. In reality, climate change is a process, not an event and proving global warming (or cooling), as a genuine phenomenon, it is necessary to demonstrate:

1. A trend.
2. That temperature has risen (fallen) above millennial variability and is exceptional – i.e. that the trend is sustained, not short term. (very unlikely)
3. That the trend is statistically significant and due to human interference rather than natural factors. For example, the anthropogenic (human) contribution to greenhouse gas concentrations (of which CO2 is the most important) is relatively very small. Natural changes in CO2 concentrations have been shown to be very great – e.g. Vostock ice core samples show huge CO2 conc. variations over last 150,000 years but causality is wrong way round – T variations cause changes in CO2 – as cooler oceans absorb more CO2. Slight changes in earth’s orbital characteristics is felt to have caused the decline in T over the period. (W. Beckermann, Small is Stupid p. 81)
4. That changes in solar radiation are an insignificant forcing mechanism (demonstrably false)
5. That last century’s increases in temperature are correctly measured (unlikely)
6. That greenhouse gas increase is the main forcing agent of temperature (not proven)

To establish a convincing case that this matter is urgent and requires immediate, drastic action, it must also be shown:

7. That temperature will rise far enough to do more harm than good (very unlikely)
8. That continuing greenhouse gas emissions will be very harmful to life (unlikely)
9. That proposed CO2 emission limits would make a definite difference (very unlikely)
10. That the environmental benefits of remediation will be cost-effective (very unlikely)
11. That taking precautions, just in case, would be the responsible course (demonstrably false)
12. That predictions of significant climate change are reasonably reliable (Beckerman, op.cit.) – this is the only link in the argument for international action that has any strength at all – no wonder the media concentrate on it.
13. That the damage climate change might impose on the world as a whole will exceed the costs of limiting or preventing it.
14. That the distribution of the costs and benefits among countries of actions to drastically cut carbon emissions is accepted as reasonably equitable.

Even if a warming trend could be demonstrated, this alone is not enough to justify calls for immediate, drastic and costly intervention. As it is an integral part of the global warming platform that this is caused by human activity, one must further demonstrate:

1. The mechanism involved.
2. That observed climatic phenomenon correlate with relevant human activity.

Before going any further let me deal with one persistent argument that is constantly deployed to convert global warming sceptics. How often have you heard something like this: ‘most reputable scientists believe global warming is real, so we need urgent international action to stop/reverse it’. This device, known as ‘argument from authority’, is usually deployed to disguise an inadequate grasp of the evidence and thus curtail detailed discussion. The subtext is: if all these intelligent, qualified and important people are convinced then who are we to argue with them? This is wrong for two reasons: first, mere weight of numbers has no bearing on truth or falsity; second, while it is clear that many scientists do indeed support some form of a global warming hypothesis, there are many – and distinguished – others that are either unconvinced or outright dissenters. Unfortunately, in the battle of voices, those of dissenters and agnostics are drowned by the noisome clamour from the populist environmental lobby.

As Beckerman says: ‘One does not need to know much about it (CC/GW) in order to learn that the really top scientists in the climatology field are acutely aware of the gaps in their understanding of the process of climate change’ (op.cit p 80).

Those with longish memories may recall the 1970s when the leading climatologists were agreed that the planet was heading for another ice age. Eminent people, but unfortunately wrong.  For discussion of this issue to be productive it therefore makes sense to ignore the ‘eminent authorities’ game and stick to fact and logic.

This raises one further preliminary obstacle to making up our own minds: namely that the facts and science are so complex that non-climatologists cannot sensibly have an informed opinion. If this were really the case, then the demos could have no opinion on many issues. Although climate science has its complexities, the broad brush of facts and issues involved are perfectly comprehensible and well within the grasp of average intelligence. Unfortunately, many who proselytise on this subject are not prepared to go to the trouble of getting to grips with them, their grasp of the issues being defined by Al Gore’s popular film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ – of which more below.

Apologists:

Climate change is undoubtedly a complex issue. Those who discuss it (the mass media in particular) frequently focus on a few dramatic images or selectively use data to foster an alarmist view and to reinforce the impression that climate change is more serious, more certain and more influenced by human greenhouse gas emissions than suggested by the available scientific research literature. We have become used to screaming headlines and exaggerated rhetoric proclaiming the imminence of ecological disaster. Journalistic hyperbole and disregard of the evidence is no way to discuss a serious and complex issue.

The “confident pronouncements of scientifically unqualified environmental groups may provide sensational headlines, they are no basis for mature policy formation…It may be many years before we understand the Earth’s climate system. …. ‘Climate change is real’ is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural noise’ (Letter from 60 Canadian scientists to Canadian PM, 2006). Gore and others present climate change / global warming as a ‘Danger’. This is not the same thing as a ‘Scare’ which is what CC/GW are without reliable scientific data.

This from Sir John Houghton (who produced IPCC’s first 3 reports in 1990, 1995 & 2001): “Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen”

Exaggerated rhetoric: “Over the last few years a new environmental phenomenon has been constructed…the phenomenon of ‘catastrophic’ climate change. It seems that mere ‘climate change’ was not going to be bad enough, and so now it must be ‘catastrophic’ to be worthy of attention. The increasing use of this pejorative term – and its bedfellow qualifiers ‘chaotic’, ‘irreversible’, ‘rapid’ – has altered the public discourse around climate change. This discourse is now characteristed by phrases such as ‘climate change is worse than we thought’, that we are approaching ‘irreversible tipping in the Earth’s climate’ and that we are ‘at the point of no return’. (Hulme, 2006)

‘Other organisations and individuals parade the global warming scare for less worthy reasons – political popularity, personal ego-trips, parading their moral sensibilities, or financing pseudo-scientific activities’ (Beckerman, op.cit.)

‘Environmental activists, for example, seize eagerly on the occurrence of extreme events (hurricanes, floods, drought etc) as signs of an ongoing change of climate. Even though extreme events may be harbingers of change, there is still as yet little scientific evidence to prove this, nor can we as yet ascribe such changes to human interference’ (Bert Bollin, late Chairman IPCC).

The head of the US Weather Channel has called Global Warming ‘The Greatest Scam in History’. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/09/eaweather109.xml

A recent book by Singer and Avery: Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 years, examines the work of 500 scientists and concludes that the evidence for man-made global warming is unproven. Prof Singer, a specialist in atmospheric physics at the University of Virginia, said: “We have a greenhouse theory with no evidence to support it, except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events… The models only reflect the warming, not its cause.”

Economic Consequences:

Debate on the consequences and costs of dealing with any significant global warming are often ignored. The phenomenon alone is taken as self-evident justification for action, almost irrespective of the consequences.

1. On mortality rates due to heat: recent studies in Germany (1998) suggest that a warmer climate is likely to reduce mortality and disease in developed countries. Colder weather is a more significant killer than hotter weather. Another, British, study (1997) concludes that, ‘ceteris paribus, a rise in average annual T of 3 deg Celsius would reduce annual mortality in Britain by 17,500.
2. Climate Change can have positive as well as negative effects. Moderate GW in the range predicted by the IPCC is likely to be beneficial for the world as a whole in that it will open up new areas to agriculture (northern areas of USA, Canada, Russia & China) and make existing ones more productive. For the world as a whole, GW means more rain, snow and increasing cloud cover means warmer nights and cooler days, so greater soil moisture. However, no denying that the impact on developing countries where average temperatures are higher, soils are often poorer and technology / infrastructures less developed will be harmful than that on developed countries in more temperate zones. So agnosticism among experts as to overall net damage for the world as a whole is not surprising.
3. Overall Balance and Its Distribution (Beckerman, A Poverty of Reason): ‘Compared to an estimated present value of a loss of world income if carbon concentration double their present levels of nearly $5trillion, the cost of stabilizing carbon emissions at recent levels would be nearly $9trillion and the cost of trying to restrain the rise in T to 1.5deg C would be over $37trillion (Nordhaus 2000). Restraints on carbon emissions would impose heavy burdens on developing countries in particular. Any attempt by various pressure groups in rich countries to impose unwanted carbon reduction policies on poor countries is a modern form of imperialism.
4. Best safeguard for poor countries is economic growth. At least then they have a better chance of having the right infrastructure to cope with a disastrous weather event. The more developed their economies, the fewer the number in poverty or without basic sanitation, housing, water supply etc.
5. ‘If one is seriously concerned with equity – as those who parade their devotion to the cause of sustainable development claim to be – it makes no sense to impose heavy burdens on today’s generation in order to raise the welfare of people alive 100 years from now. And if one take account of the different groups of people who will benefit most from reduced global warming and those who will bear the costs of measures to reduce global warming, such measures are even more difficult to justify. The pretensions of the global warming lobby to occupy the moral high ground are a travesty of the truth.
6. We need healthy, strong economies to have the resources to deal with proven environmental problems that affect the 75% of the world’s population that live in developing countries. Any significant cut in fossil fuel consumption would mean a drastic cut in world energy consumption and thus in living standards and this, in turn, would lead to serious social, political and economic upheavals.
7. Doubling CO2 will reduce output by 1-2% p.a. by 2100. Given that per capita income will quadruple in that time, the sacrifice in output is minimal; in other words, people will have to wait until 2101 to enjoy the standard of living they would otherwise have enjoyed had there been no climate change.
8. Most assessments of future economic growth prospects are based on the assumption that there will be no disastrous environmental developments.
9. It seems impossible to escape the conclusion that, even under pessimistic assumptions, the annual cost to the world as a whole of GW associated with a doubling of CO2 concentrations is likely to be almost negligible by comparison with the value of world output over the period in question. Estimates: doubling CO2 concentration would reduce world output by 1 to 2 %.

The Scientific Community:

• Global cooling was the consensus 35 years ago. In the past 100 years, scientific consensus has twice held that the earth is definitely cooling (1905-1930 and then 1968-1975) and twice that it is warming (1930-1960; and 1981 to present). In every case it has been attributed to human causality.
• Example: Newsweek, April 28 1975: “After ¾ of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down”. Wide agreement among experts that this global cooling would reduce growing seasons and produce famine in marginal areas – e.g. wheatlands of Canada and USSR and parts of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia. Cooling in some N areas matched by fraction of a degree of warming around the equator which ‘could result in drought and desolation’. ‘The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it’. A survey ‘reveals a drop of ½ a degree in av. ground temperatures in the northern hemisphere between 1945 and 1968’. Some ‘regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and N. America between 1600 and 1900.
• Naomi Oreskes of Univ. Calif, San Diego: (Science v. 306 2004) – “Politicians, economists, journalists and other may have the impression of confusion, disagreement or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect”. Review of 928 peer-reviewed papers 1993-2003 showed consensus to be real and near-universal. Even sceptics agree that we must accept some warming – but differ as to its extent, putting it at the bottom end of the IPCC scale.
• Gore, for example, did not tell viewers that the 48 scientists whom he quoted as having accused Pres. Bush of distorting science were part of a political advocacy group set up to support the Democrat Presidential candidate, John Kerry, in 2004.
• “Scientific understanding” is so crude that the central question of how much can T be expected to rise as a result of a given additional amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere – has not been definitely established, either empirically or theoretically…It is insufficiently clear whether or to what extent the T increase since 1900 is attributable to anthropogenic as opposed to natural factors, and it is not even clear by how much the T rose between 1900 and 1998: UN 0.6C; NCDC 0.53C; AccuWeather: 0.45C. (Viscount Monkton)
• Stern Report (2006) assumes far more rapid climate change even than the UN. This, and the use of an unrealistically low discount rate (2.1% – half that which would be used for any normal commercial project), therefore exaggerates the economic rewards of acting now and the costs of waiting. Correcting for these, the case for substantial, immediate investment vanishes. (Monkton)
• If asked whether a continuation in the upward trend in CO2 emissions, other things being equal, would lead to some global warming, all scientists would answer ‘yes’. Like asking whether earth is round. What really matters is: i) how far will other things remain equal – e.g. how far will greater warming impact of increased atmospheric carbon be modified by warming impact of increased cloud cover from tendency towards greater warming, or increased sulphate aerosol accumulations in the atmosphere or a greater rate of absorption of carbon in the oceans and hence ii) by how much the global climate is expected to change, after allowing for these and other complications. To such questions, the degree of consensus is very much lower. Prof. Lindzen ‘ global warming is the only subject in atmospheric science where a consensus view has been declared before the research has hardly begun’.

Basic Physics:

• It is beyond doubt that certain gases in atmosphere, most importantly water vapour and CO2, trap infrared radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface and so have a greenhouse effect. No bad thing, for without them planet would freeze.
• Also beyond doubt that human activity is pumping CO2 in the atmosphere and that this has resulted in a sustained year-on-year increased in CO2 concentrations.
• “There are more greenhouse gases in the air than there were, so the world should warm a bit, but that’s as far as it goes” (Monkton)
• Even sceptical scientists agree that
  • Our activities are making the planet warmer
  • We can expect more warming as we release more CO2 into the atmosphere
• These uncontested facts are enough to establish that ‘anthropogenic’ greenhouse gas emissions are tending to make the atmosphere warmer.
• However, little is understood about the way some of the feedback mechanisms in climate-change atmospheric physics work.
• Basic story: GW will take place because of the accumulation in the atmosphere of certain GHG’s of which CO2 is most important for practical purposes. This is produced by burning fossil fuels and by other means (some of them natural). These gases do not block much of the incoming energy from the sun, which is the way that the earth warms up; but the do block some of the outgoing long-wave radiation reflected back from the Earth (including the oceans). And this outgoing radiation is one of the ways that the earth cools down. Normally the system would be in balance – incoming warming matched by outgoing cooling but increasing CO2 blocks outgoing radiation and thus promotes warming. This is a highly simplified description. ‘Average layman watching the usual TV pictures of arrows representing energy escaping back from the atmosphere gets the impression that it is the outgoing radiation that explains most of the cooling of the earth’s surface. But in fact, the most important cooling process is evaporation, with evaporated moisture being carried upward by convection. And it is not yet possible to model accurately behaviour of water vapour and cloud cover, or the interaction between the atmosphere and the oceans, or the way that water mixes at different depths and at different temperatures, or even whether, on balance, clouds have a cooling effect or add to warming, and how far their effect depends on other complex scientific characteristics of clouds. (Beckerman, Small is Stupid, p. 83).

The Evidence:

• For almost 60 years, measurements at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii have charted the rise in CO2, and it is largely uncontested that today’s concentrations are about 35% above pre-industrial levels.
• Effect on planet is measurable: Imp. College London researchers examined data covering almost three decades to plot changes in amount of infrared radiation escaping from the atmosphere into space – an indirect measure of how much heat is being trapped. In the part of the infrared spectrum trapped by CO2 – wavelengths between 13 and 19 micrometers -  they found that between 1970 and 1997 less and less radiation was escaping and concluded that the increasing quantity of atmospheric CO2 was trapping energy that used to escape and storing it in the atmosphere as heat. The result for other greenhouse gases was similar.
• Temperature records from around the world going back 150 years suggest that 19 out of the 20 warmest years – measured in terms of average global T, have occurred since 1980 and that 4 of these have occurred in the past 7 years (at 2005, Fred Pearce). Recently, UK researchers have declared that the warmest decade in Britain on reliable record was the 1930s, not the 1990s.
• Alternative explanation: warming is natural. Generally recognised that up to 40% of climatic variation since 1890 is probably due to two natural phenomena:

1. 1. Solar cycles, which influence amount of radiation reaching the earth – some scientists argue that increased solar activity can account for most of the warming of the past 150 years.
   2. Changing frequency of volcanic eruptions, which produce airborne particles that can shade, and hence cool, the planet for a year or more.

• However, no known natural effects can explain the 0.5C warming seen in the past 30 years. In fact, natural changes alone would have caused a marginal global cooling.
• Concentration of CO2 in atmosphere now around 375ppm. A doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels of 280ppm which could happen as early as 2050 will add only 1 C to av. Global T, other things being equal.
• But, we can’t count on other things being equal; some important things will change.
• Planet likely to respond in a variety of ways, some of which will dampen down the warming (negative), while others will amplify it (positive). IPCC conclude that feedbacks will be overwhelmingly positive and estimate that doubling CO2 levels will warm the world by anything from 1.4 to 5.8 C. This equates to a rise in global T from pre-industrial levels of c 14.8C to between 16.2 and 20.6C.
• Mechanism mediating global cooling (as reported in 1970s): ‘slight drop in overall temperatures …produces large numbers of pressure centres in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases’ (Newsweek, 1975).
• Far more land is being lost through soil erosion than is likely to be lost through climate change.
• Even if the UK were to close down completely and were to cease altogether using energy, operating industries or driving cars, the reduction in global T by 2035 would amount to 0.006C.
• Kyoto exempted, Nairobi excused China already has 30,000 coal mines, opens a new mine every week and will continue to open a new coal-fired power-station every five days until 2012. If global warming is indeed a problem, the West, even acting collectively, can do nothing without the co-operation of India, China, Indonesia, Brazil and other fast-emerging, fast-polluting countries.
• Trading CO2 emissions: The EU emissions trading system trades more emissions rights than are currently emitted, contributes nothing to reducing CO2 emissions, and actually encourages the increases which are happening across Europe.
• There is extensive scientific literature on the lack of connection between hurricanes and climate change. “Globally, there has been no increase in tropical cyclone frequency over at least the past several decades” (Pielke et al, 2005) although there is contradictory evidence as to intensity. IPCC report (1996): “Some in the insurance industry perceive a current trend toward increased frequency and severity of extreme climate events. Examination of the meteorological data fails to support their perception in the context of long-term change”. In fact ‘far from an increase in storms, there has been some evidence of a downward trend’. (Beckerman, Poverty of Reason p.34)
• Population growth and increasing wealth means that we should expect an increase in damage (in monetary terms) and casualties. “The primary factors that govern the magnitude and patterns of future damages and casualties are how society develops and prepares for storms rather than any presently conceivable future changes in the frequency and intensity of the storms”. (Piekle et al, 2005).
• Storms: It is true that insofar as the seas become warmer the area over which hurricanes ‘breed’ will expand. On the other hand, storms are correlated with T gradients – i.e. the transition between high and low Ts so that insofar as the T increase I s predicted to be greatest in high latitudes, where it is generally colder, the world-wide T gradient will diminish. To calculate the incidence of storms would, therefore, require a far more accurate breakdown by small geographic area of the effects of the climate change than is feasible given current modelling.
• Kyoto: If all signatories were to comply in full (most won’t) world T in 2100 would be one-twenty-fifth of a degree C lower than it would be if Kyoto had never happened. We should not fool ourselves that feel-good, gesture politics will make any difference to the reality of the problem, if there is a problem (Monkton – citing Senator J. Inhofe)
• Carbon molecules persist in the atmosphere for up to 200 years – also a very long lag in the climate change process.
• IPCC 1992 report said its ‘best estimate, based on model results and taking into account the observed climate record’ was that a doubling of CO2 concentrations would lead to a T increase of 2.5C deg. But with a range around that estimate of one or two degrees on either side. And the IPCC’s best estimate of the relationship between the carbon concentration and the resulting rise in T yields a rise in fifty years time of between 0.8C and 1.5C’ (WB SS p 82).

Uncertainties:

• How much uncertainty surrounds positive feedbacks?
  • Melting of polar ice. This exposes new, darker surface which absorbs more heat from sun and so warms planet. However, evidence is equivocal. Research shows that ‘vast quantities of ice are melting at a faster rate than previously recorded, yet conclude that year-to-year decadal variability of the snowfall is so large that it makes it nearly impossible to distinguish trends that might be related to climate change from even a 50-year record’. Andrew Monaghan, from Ohio State, on research with West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS)  - a marine ice sheet with a base below sea level (this is thinner than the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS). “There were no statistically significant trends in snowfall accumulation over the past five decades, including recent years for which global mean temperatures have been warmest” (Monaghan). Presenting data that only suggest accelerating ice mass loss (e.g. in Greenland) creates the impression that melting of polar ice is accelerating and is rapidly raising sea levels. Furthermore, presenting these data without any other context creates the impression that the melting is unprecedented and due to human greenhouse gas emissions. Yet all these implications are false. (Witherspoon letter, 2007). Contrary data:
    • Chylek et al (2006), show that Greenland was hotter during every decade from 1915 to 1965 than from 1995-2005. This half century of high (compared to current) temperatures did not result in catastrophic melting of Greenland’s ice during the 20^th Century. Furthermore, Greenland cooled from 1930s-1990s, even though anthropogenic greenhouse warming would be expected to have its largest effect in polar regions. So, whatever the rate of Greenland ice melting, the temperature trend is not consistent with anthropogenic greenhouse warming. Also, Wingham et al (2006) report that Antarctica is gaining ice.
    • “Both the Antarctic and Greenland icecaps are thickening. The T at the South Pole has declined by more than 1 deg C since 1950 and the area of sea ice around the continent has increased over the last 20 years (Dr. RM Carter, Marine Geophysical Lab, Townsville, Australia.
    • Gore asserted that today’s Arctic is experiencing unprecedented warmth while ignoring that temperatures in the 1930s were as warm or warmer
    • Gore asserted that today’s Antarctic was warming and losing ice but failed to note that is only true of a small region and that the vast bulk has been cooling and gaining ice
    • One of the most widespread myths is that GW would lead to calamitous flooding as a result of the melting of polar ice caps. Recently debunked by team of experts who suggest that world’s largest ice sheet remained stable during more the 14 million years or dramatic natural fluctuations in T. They have even stated that GW might reduce sea levels on account of increased evaporation and precipitation leading to more snow falling on the ice caps. If water is removed from the sea and deposited on the ice caps as snow, the sea level must clearly fall.
  • Trends in sea level: Gauge date from the San Francisco Bay show the sea-level rose more from 1860-1885 than from 1950-2000 (Calif. Envir. Protection Agency). The same data show sea-level has been rising in the Bay Area since the 1920s, even though 80% of all human CO2 emissions occurred after 1950. Holgate (2007) showed that sea-level has been rising more quickly since at least the beginning of 20^th Century than during the second half. These observations are inconsistent with human greenhouse gas emissions as a main cause of sea-level rise. Also, mean sea level is very difficult to measure accurately. It probably rose by less than 1 inch between 1988 and 2000; the rate of increase – 1 inch every 15 years – has not risen for a century and there is little reason to believe it will accelerate (Monkton). One expert concludes that “sea level records are now dominated by the irregular redistribution of water masses over the globe… primarily driven by variations in ocean current intensity and in the atmospheric circulation system and maybe even in some deformation of the gravitational potential surface (Morner, 2004). He also says that the ‘mean eustatic rise in sea level for the period 1850-1930 was of the order of 1.0-1.1 mm/year” but that “ after 1930-1940 this rise seems to have stopped; thereafter, the record can be divided into 3 parts: i) 1993-1996 with a clear trend of stability; ii) 1997-1998 with a high amplitude rise and fall and iii) 1998-2000 with an irregular record of no clear tendency”. Most importantly “there is a total absence of any recent acceleration in sea level rise as often claimed by IPCC and related groups”. His ‘best estimate’, considering past records  recorded variability, causational processes involved and the last century’s data, is +10/-10cm in a century, or maybe, even +5/-15cm.
  • Sea Level: One of the most familiar of the “urban myths” used to promote panic over climate change (is) rising sea levels engulfing the tiny Pacific islands of Tuvalu (formerly part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands and still loyal to the Queen). It is 15 years since we were first told that the Tuvaluans would be among the first “global warming refugees” as their homes sank beneath the waves. In 2001, however, a detailed study published in Science revealed that, far from rising, the sea levels around Tuvalu had in fact been sinking for decades, by as much as a foot. Even if the Pacific were to rise to the maximum degree predicted by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the 12,000 Tuvaluans would not see their sea level back to where it was 50 years ago until 2050.
  • Water vapour. This is responsible for bigger slice of today’s greenhouse effect than any other gas, including CO2, any change in amount of moisture in atmosphere is critical. A warmer world will evaporate more water from oceans, accelerating warming. But, complication: some of water vapour will turn to cloud – effect of more cloud on both incoming and outgoing heat is unclear. Clouds radiate energy from sun back into space, but they also trap radiated head from the surface, especially at night. Whether warming or cooling predominates depends on i) type of clouds and ii) height. IPCC accepts that clouds are biggest source of uncertainty in their models.
  • Ocean warming: Lyman et al (2006) report a sharp decrease in ocean heat content from 2003 and that from 2003-2005 the top 750 metres of the Earth’s oceans lost about 20% all the excess energy they had accumulated during the last 50 years. While this is only two years of data, it represents a large, real cooling of the upper ocean that is not predicted by any climate model. Others (Pierce et al, 2006) claim to have detected an ‘anthropogenic warming signal in the oceans’. “The oceans are now heading into one of the periodic phases of cooling…modest changes in T are not about to wipe them (coral) out. Neither will increased CO2, which is a fundamental chemical building block that allows coral reefs to exist at all” (Dr. Gary Sharp, Centre for Climate/Ocean Resources Study, Salinas, Calif.).
  • None of the climate models come close to getting clouds right (Witherspoon letter 2007). A model that doesn’t get clouds right isn’t going to get climate right. Zhang t al (2005) showed that 10 different climate models failed by a large margin to accurately represent various aspects of cloud cover, cloud type and seasonal and latitudinal cloud cover.
  • Recent analysis suggests that clouds could have a more powerful warming effect than once thought – possibly much more powerful.
  • Other surprise positive feedbacks: e.g. release of some of the huge quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, stored frozen into the Siberian permafrost and the ocean floor could have a catastrophic warming effect.
  • An end of ice formation in the Arctic could upset ocean currents and even shut down the Gulf Stream.
• Uncertainties in IPCC model remain, to extent that sceptics contend that their conclusions are worthless.
• “Most models contain ‘flux adjustments’ or ‘fudge factors’ many times larger than the very small changes in tropospheric radiant energy that are at issue” (Monkton)
• Computer models are not capable of showing anything ‘unequivocally’ (as Gore suggests); they are only suitable for making projections which may or may not prove reliable. The models upon which the UN relied so heavily failed to predict either the timing or magnitude of the El Nino Southern Oscillation event in 1998. More recently, they failed to predict the very sharp cooling of the climate-relevant surface layer of the ocean that has occurred in the past two years. In their 2006 letter, already cited, 60 Canadian climate / related field experts said: “Observational evidence does not support today’s computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future”.
• Dr Vincent Gray (reviewer of IPCC’s report 2001) noted: “The effects of aerosols,and their uncertainties, are such as to completely nullify the reliability of any of the climate models”.
• Climate models do not take into account the anomalous absorption of radiation revealed by the Atmospheric Radiation Measurements. This is not a small error. If the ARM are correct, the error in the atmospheric absortion of sunlight calculated by the climate models is about 28 watts / sq. metre, averaged over the whole earth, day and night, summer and winter. The entire effect of doubling the present abundance of CO2 is calculated to be about 4 watts/ sq.metre. So the error in the models is much larger than the global warming effect the models are supposed to predict.” (Monkton)
• Mistaken, but widely encouraged belief is that climate models’ predictions have been confirmed by T changes of the past century. In fact, now generally conceded that there was a large upward bias in T trend indicated by earlier data (e.g. reflecting the growth of urban areas). (Beckerman, Small is Stupid, p.84)
• Complicating factors: i) effect of increasing emissions of sulphur particles from burning fossil fuels is to reduce size of water vapour droplets in clouds and hence increase extent to which cloud reflects back incoming solar energy. If true, this would tend to increase cooling – and some have suggested that it accounts for failure of main climate models to match past T trends. However, not possible to quantify this effect reliably; ii) decline in stratospheric dust should have added to the T, so amount of any rise attributed to CO2 should be reduced.
• ‘Even if one accepted the usual estimate that there has been an upward trend in T of as much as 0.5C over the past 100 years, it is difficult to match it with the geographical or time pattern that the global warming models would predict. This is because (i) most of the trend rise occurred between 1900 and 1940 when CO2 concentrations were increasing by only about 0.1% p.a. compared with 0.5% now; (ii) there was a fall in T between 1940 and the early 1970s; (iii) the models predict that more warming would take place at higher latitudes than near the equator, whereas the opposite has occurred. (This)…strongly suggests that these are natural climatic fluctuations’ (WB SS p 84)
• Also, there has been a slight long-run upward trend in global T since the end of the Little Ice Age which began around the 13C and ended towards the end of the 18C. So a rise in average T since then could well be the continuation of a recovery from the Little Ice Age.
• Even if one accepts a trend increase of 0.5C over the last century and that this is related to the actual increase in atmospheric CO2, the relationship between the two variables implies a ‘climate sensitivity’ that is less than that implied in the latest IPCC estimates.
• Most models agree that (i) climate change resulting from GW would not be evenly spread over the globe and (ii) that GW would result in more rainfall since higher T will mean more evaporation of water vapour which will come down as more rain (WB SS p 85); but impossible to predict with any accuracy where the predicted increased rainfall will take place.
• Difficulty of making climate predictions, especially regional ones – either seasonal or spatial: the fact is that the N Hemisphere has warmed less than the S Hemisphere, which is quite contrary to the prediction of the climate models. In any case this would not help explain why the Arctic region – not noted for its industrial output – has shown some cooling over the past 50 years when, according to the models, it should have shown the most warming. And, most important of all perhaps, the predictions that there would be increasing drought in the central States of the USA have not been born out.  Where the predictions have been consistent with the evidence of the last 50 years, the changes have been largely favourable from the point of view of food output – e.g. predicted increases in rainfall and cloud cover and that T will rise most at night (WB SS p 85/6). In general, the observational evidence is not pointing to disaster.
• The uncertainties were aptly summed up by Prof. Singer a specialist in atmospheric physics at the University of Virginia, said: “We have a greenhouse theory with no evidence to support it, except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events.

Counterbalancing negative feedbacks:

• • Ability of oceans to absorb heat from atmosphere. Prediction is that ocean’s ability to absorb heat will decline as the surface warms, as mixing between less dense, warm surface waters and denser cold depths becomes more difficult.
  •  Ability of some pollutants – such as the sulphate particles that make acid rain – to shade the planet. But sulphate and other aerosols could already be masking far stronger underlying warming effects than are apparent from measured temperatures. Aerosols only last in atmosphere for a few weeks, whereas greenhouse gases last for decades.
  • So, efforts to cut pollution by using scrubbers to remove SO2 from power station stacks could trigger a surge in temperatures.
  • Current models do not yet include negative feedback from vegetation which is already growing faster in a warmer world, and soaking up more CO2. (But warming may reduce ability of plants to absorb CO2, thus turning a negative feedback into a positive one.
  • More credible suggestion that negative feedbacks have been left out. Richard Lindzen of MIT claims warming may dry out upper levels of innermost atmospheric layer – troposphere – and less water means a weaker greenhouse effect. He says that this drying could negate all the positive feedbacks and bring the warming effect of doubling CO2 back to 1 C. This is a potential ‘Achilles Heel’ for catastrophists.
• GW not seen in India – winters are cooling there because high fossil fuel use creates smog which prevents sunlight from reaching ground (so what causes GW can also prevent it!).
• GW may also be slowing down Gulf Stream leading to cooler climate in Scandinavia & Britain.
• ‘Overall trend for Britain identified by the computer models as a result of global warming was wetter winters and drier summers…another of the paper’s authors (Dr Peter Stott) said more intense rain storms in wetter years would also fit into the pattern’ – because ‘when it rains it can rain harder because the atmosphere can contain more moisture in a warmer world’. (Cited by Charles Clover, DT 28 July 2007 – ‘Apocalypse Now’).
• Possibility that measurements are biased by the growth of cities near sites where Ts are measured as cities retain more heat than rural areas (do they?). UK Met. Office separated data into readings taken in calm weather and those taken in windy weather (which would disperse the head) and found no difference.
• Uncertainty on claim that 1990s was the warmest decade in warmest century of past millennium. This claim embodied in famous ‘hockey stick’ curve produced by Michael Mann of Univ. Virginia in 1998, based on ‘proxy’ records of past T, such as air bubbles in ice cores and growth rings in tree and coral. Critics point to poor methodology and criticisms confirmed by climate modellers who recognise that such proxy studies systematically underestimate past variability.
• Room for uncertainty in inferences drawn from the T rise over past 150 years. Warming itself is real enough, but that doesn’t mean that human activity is necessarily to blame.
• Well-established discrepancy between observed 20^th C T increase of 0.45-0.6C and the increase of 1.6-3.75C that would have been expected from projections made by the models relied upon by UN. Likely that UN are over-projecting the potential T effects of increased greenhouse gas concentrations; if so, their projections of future T increases may be around three times greater than they should be.
• Polar ice core data: this is indirect. T and CO2 concentrations have been deduced from air samples locked in Greenland or Antarctic ice. The results do not provide a basis for reliable estimates of the earth’s sensitivity to extra CO2; they show that increases in CO2 do not precede increases in T rather they follow it. “The CO2 decrease lags the T decrease by several thousand years” (Petit et al, 1999); Fischer et al (1999) conclude that “the time lag of the rise in CO2 concentrations with respect to T change is of the order of 400 to 1000 years during all three glacial-interglacial transitions”. Many studies confirm this long lag between T change and CO2 concentration change. “There is plentiful evidence in the scientific literature that increases in atmospheric CO2 have followed increases in T in former ages and cannot therefore have been the cause of those increases. In this respect, ice-core studies can tell us no more than that there may have been a small climate feedback from increased atmospheric CO2 in response to T” (Caillon et al, 2003).
• UN may have failed to take negative climate feedback sufficiently into account; there is no consensus among climate scientists on any of the three classes of evidence for the UN’s estimate of climate sensitivity cited by Gore, and that in all 3 classes – 20^th C observation, palaeoclimatological reconstruction and studies of volcanic eruption – there is recent, frequent and compelling evidence in the scientific literature that raises serious questions about the validity of the “consensus” position (Monkton).
• Eugene Parker, leading solar physicist: “The inescapable conclusion is that we will have to know a lot more about the Sun and the terrestrial atmosphere before we can understand the nature of contemporary changes in climate…In our present state of ignorance it is not possible to assess the importance of individual factors. The biggest mistake that we could make would be to think that we know the answers when we do not” (Parker, 1999)
• Warming ‘aloft’ (in the lower troposphere – surface to 5 miles up) should be at least as strong as that observed on the ground. In fact, the measurements don’t match – ground is about twice that observed in troposphere.
• Logic: The fact of warming does not tell us its cause. Though CO2 and other greenhouse gases are likely to be a contributing factor, they are not likely to be the only factor, and may not even be the main one. Even if GGs are the sole factor, there is no consensus about the UN’s projected warming trend for the future. Besides, the models do not match the observed change in T, the discrepancy is large, and there is no consensus either about the reason for the discrepancy or about whether the discrepancy is real (Monkton)

Precautionary Principle:

Consensus is that risk of CC is real and therefore we must err on the side of caution.

‘No regrets’ policies on emissions control make sense, but: scientists admit uncertainties in most CC models. (“No regrets” policy — one that will generate net benefits)

“Taking an FME (free market economy)-based, no-regrets approach to carbon reduction will recognize that:

• Deeply rooted technologies and energy sources can and will be replaced by alternate technologies and non-carbon emitting energy sources;

• Rapid depreciation of existing capital and reductions in capital gains and corporate taxes will hasten adaptation; and

• Subsidies and regulations that distort energy consumption and investment decisions and increase carbon emissions should be eliminated.”

(http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/04/05/bruce-yandle-on-quot-no-regrets-quot-quot-free-market-environmentalist-quot-approaches-to-climate-change-policy.aspx)

Political Considerations:

Winning side in CC debate will ‘shape economic, political and technological developments for years to come’. (Fred Pearce, New Scientist 12 Feb 2005) – so ‘ crucial that the right side wins’.

Ten facts about global warming they don’t want you to know:

   1. Britain is one degree Celsius cooler now than it was at the time of the Domesday book.

   2. Greenland got its name from the verdant pastures that attracted the Norse settlers under Eric the Red in 986. They carried on their normal way of life (based on cattle, grain, hay and herring) for 300 years until the Little Ice Age, when they were driven off by the encroaching ice and the Inuit took over. The ice and the Inuit are still there.

   3. Carbon dioxide is a minor greenhouse gas. In the atmosphere there is over a hundred times the concentration of water vapour, which is the dominant greenhouse gas.

   4. Without the Greenhouse Effect there would be no life on Earth.

   5. Temperature measurements by satellite, radio sonde balloons and well maintained rural surface stations in the West show no significant warming.

   6. The evidence of significant warming comes from surface stations that are probably affected by a variety of factors that contaminate the data.

   7. Computer models of the climate are worthless, as they are based on many assumptions about interactions between climate factors that are still unknown to science. They are generally unstable and chaotic, giving a wide variety of answers depending on the input assumptions.

   8. The Kyoto agreement would have a devastating effect on the world economy but, since carbon dioxide is a minor greenhouse gas, an undetectable effect on the climate.

   9. The IPCC (the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has been the main engine for promoting the global warming scare. It has become notorious for its corrupt practices of doctoring its reports and executive summaries, after they have been approved by the participating scientists, to conform to its political objectives.

  10. The really big lie about man-made global warming is that almost all scientists accept it. More than 4,000 scientists from 106 countries, including 72 Nobel prize winners, signed the Heidelberg Appeal (1992), calling for a rational scientific approach to environmental problems. Many senior scientists have also supported The Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming (1992), The Leipzig Declaration (1997) and finally the Oregon Petition (1998) which received the signatures of over 19,000 scientists.

DT Article 06/12/05: (Rotten journalese, cliché-ridden stuff, but is an accurate parody of much reporting on the CC issue)

Is it just me or are the global warming headlines starting to overheat a little? The Independent on Sunday gave its report on the Montreal climate conference the somewhat overwrought title: “What planet are you on, Mr Bush? (And do you care, Mr Blair?)” Nothing in the rather dull article underneath justified the hectoring hysteria. And, to be honest, I’ve no real idea what it means. Is the IoS asking whether Mr Blair cares what planet Mr Bush is on? Well, no doubt he’d be startled to hear the President’s moving to Pluto, but I expect he’d take it in his stride. As to what planet Mr Bush is on, he’s not on Pluto but on planet Goofy, a strange lost world where it’s perfectly normal for apparently sane people to walk around protesting about global warming in sub-zero temperatures. Or, as the Canadian Press reported: “Montreal – tens of thousands of people ignored frigid temperatures Saturday to lead a worldwide day of protest against global warming.” Unfortunately, no one had supplied an updated weather forecast to the fellow who writes the protesters’ chants. So, to the accompaniment of the obligatory pseudo-ethnic drummers, the shivering eco-warriors sang: “It’s hot in here! There’s too much carbon in the atmosphere!” Is this the first sign of the “New Ice Age” the media warned us about last week?

The story originated in Nature, the hitherto distinguished scientific periodical whose environmental coverage increasingly resembles that celebrated Sunday Sport scoop about the London double-decker bus found frozen in the deepest ice of the Antarctic. That, of course, is absurd – in reality, as the trained scientists at Nature would be the first to point out, the Clapham omnibus would be lucky to make it as far as Tulse Hill before being embedded in a glacier. The eco-doom-mongers were speculating on possible changes in thermohaline circulation in the Atlantic – or, as the Daily Mail put it: “Is Britain on the brink of a New Ice Age?” Europe could get so chilly that shivering Muslim rioters might burn the entire Peugeot fleet on the first night. Which would be good for the environment, presumably. After that, they’d be reduced to huddling round the nearest fire-breathing imam for warmth. But the point is, as Steven Guilbeault of Greenpeace puts it: “Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter, that’s what we’re dealing with.” Got that? If it’s hot, that’s a sign of global warming, and, if it’s cold, that’s a sign of global warming. And if it’s just kind of average – say, 48F and partially cloudy, as it will be in Llandudno today – that’s a sign that global warming is accelerating out of control and you need to flee immediately because time is running out ! “Time is running out to deal with climate change,” says Mr Guilbeault. “Ten years ago, we thought we had a lot of time, five years ago we thought we had a lot of time, but now science is telling us that we don’t have a lot of time.”  Really? Ten years ago, we had a lot of time? That’s not the way I recall it: “Time is running out for the climate” – Chris Rose of Greenpeace, 1997; “Time running out for action on global warming Greenpeace claims” – Irish Times, 1994; “Time is running out” – scientist Henry Kendall, speaking on behalf of Greenpeace, 1992. Admirably, Mr Guilbeault’s commitment to the environment extends to recycling last decade’s scare-mongering press releases.

“Stop worrying about your money, take care of our planet,” advised one of the protesters’ placards. Au contraire, take care of your money and the planet will follow. For anywhere other than Antarctica and a few sparsely inhabited islands, the first condition for a healthy environment is a strong economy. In the past third of a century, the American economy has swollen by 150 per cent, automobile traffic has increased by 143 per cent, and energy consumption has grown by 45 per cent. During this same period, air pollutants have declined by 29 per cent, toxic emissions by 48.5 per cent, sulphur dioxide levels by 65.3 per cent, and airborne lead by 97.3 per cent. Despite signing on to Kyoto, European greenhouse gas emissions have increased since 2001, whereas America’s emissions have fallen by nearly one per cent, despite the Toxic Texan’s best efforts to destroy the planet. Had America and Australia ratified Kyoto, and had the Europeans complied with it instead of just pretending to, by 2050 the treaty would have reduced global warming by 0.07C – a figure that would be statistically undectectable within annual climate variation. In return for this meaningless gesture, American GDP in 2010 would be lower by $97 billion to $397 billion – and those are the US Energy Information Administration’s somewhat optimistic models.

I’ve mentioned before the environmentalists’ ceaseless fretting for the prospect of every species but their own. By the end of this century, the demographically doomed French, Italians and Spaniards will be so shrivelled in number they may have too few environmentalists to man their local Greenpeace office. Is that part of the plan? To create a habitable environment with no humans left to inhabit it? If so, destroying the global economy for 0.07C is a swell idea. But even the poseurs of the European chancelleries are having second thoughts. Which is why, in their efforts to flog some life back into the dead Kyoto horse, the eco-cultists have to come up with ever scarier horrors, such as that “New Ice Age”. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration’s Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate brings together the key economic colossi of this new century – America, China and India – plus Australia, Japan and South Korea, in a relationship that acknowledges, unlike Kyoto, the speed of Chinese and Indian economic growth, provides for the sharing of cleaner energy technology and recognises that the best friend of the planet’s natural resources is the natural resourcefulness of a dynamic economy. It’s a practical and results-oriented approach, which is why the eco-cultists will never be marching through globally warmed, snow-choked streets on its behalf. It lacks the requisite component of civilisational self-loathing. Wake up and smell the CO2, guys. Sayonara, Kyoto. Hello, coalition of the emitting.

Al Gore: ‘An Inconvenient Truth’:                                                                   

§  Gore’s credibility is damaged early in the film when he suggests that, by simply looking at Antartic ice cores with the naked eye, one can see when the US Clean Air Act was passed. Dr Ian Clark (Univ of Ottawa): “this is pure fantasy unless the reporter is able to detect parts per billion changes to chemicals in ice”. Air over the US doesn’t even circulate to the Antarctic before mixing with most of the northern, then the southern, hemisphere air, and this process takes decades. Most events relevant to climate change are undetectable in ice cores by an untrained eye.

§  Gore repeatedly labels CO2 as ‘global warming pollution’ when, in reality, it is no more pollution than is oxygen. CO2 is plant food, essential for photosynthesis without which Earth would be a frozen, lifeless, ice ball. The hypothesis that human release of CO2 is a major contributor to global warming is just that – an unproven hypothesis, against which evidence is increasingly mounting.

§  The correlation between CO2 and T that Gore speaks about so confidently is simply non-existent over all meaningful time scales. Over geologic time, the two are not linked at all. Over the intermediate time scales Gore focuses on, the ice cores show that CO2 increases don’t precede, and therefore don’t cause, warming. Rather, they follow T rise, by as much as 800 years. Even in the last century, the correlation is poor; the planet actually cooled between 1940 and 1980, when human CO2 emissions were rising at the fastest rate in our history.

§  Gore ignores the fact that H2O vapour constitutes 95% of greenhouse gases by volume.

§  Humanity contributed 3 gigatonnes (billion tonnes) net per year to atmospheres total CO2 load. This is less than ½ of 1% of the atmosphere’s CO2 content. The CO2 emissions of the earth’s oceans and land amount to 210 gigatonnes. Also, the uncertainty in the measurement of atmospheric CO2 is 80GT – making 3 GT hardly worth mentioning.

§  Gore uses high-tech special effects to show how human-caused climate changes are producing more hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, infectious diseases, insect plagues, glacial retreats, coral die-outs and the flooding of nations due to sea-level rise caused by the melting of polar caps. “One wonders if Gore thinks nature is responsible for anything” (Tom Harris article, National Post (Canada) June 2006).

§  Scientists working in the field contradict Gore:

o   Allegations that EW (extreme weather) events will increase in frequency and severity as world warms and that this is already happening. Gore’s theories indicate that greatest warming will be in polar regions. Therefore, the temperature contrast with warmer regions – the driver of extreme weather – will lessen and, with it, storm potential will lessen. Many researchers are convinced the EW is not increasing globally. The severest and longest droughts, for example, occurred in 13^th and 16^th Centuries.

§  Hurricanes: Only area where hurricane incidence increased in last 10 years is North Atlantic. “In all other six ocean basins where tropical cyclones occur, there is either a flat or a downward trend” (Tad Murty). Murty lists 1900, 1926 and 1935 as the years when most intense hurricanes were recorded in USA. Hurricane experts and meteorologists in USA is that global warming has nothing to do with the recent increase in hurricane frequency in North Atlantic: “the feeling…is that it has to do with the North Atlantic oscillation, which is now in a positive phase and will continue for another decade or so”.

§  One expert (Prof. Paul Reiter, Inst. Pasteur, unit of insects and infectious diseases, Paris) called Gore’s film: “pure, mind-bending, propaganda”.

§  No-one has fled South Pacific Islands to NZ (as Gore claimed) – if Gore consults the data he will find sea-levels falling in some parts of the Pacific.

§  Altitude at which malaria is found is rising a/c Gore, who suggests that Harare and Narobi were expressly built just above the mosquito line to avoid malaria and that mosquitos are now moving higher. ‘Gore is completely wrong here – malaria has been documented at an altitude of 2,500 metres – Narobi and Harare are at altitudes of about 1,500 m. The new altitudes of malaria are lower than those recorded 100 years ago. None of the 30 so-called new diseases Gore references are attributable to global warming, none (Dr. Paul Reiter).

§  “Mr Gore suggests that the Greenland melt area increased considerably between 1992 and 2005. … If Gore had chosen for comparison the year 1991 (1992 was exceptionally cold and the area of ice sheet melt very low due to cooling caused by volcanic dust from Mt. Pinatubo), one in which the melt area was 1% higher than in 2005, he would have to conclude that the ice sheet melt area is shrinking and that perhaps a new Ice Age is just round the corner” (Dr. Petr Chylek, Dept of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Halifax).

§  Gore erroneously claimed that the ice cap on Mk. Kilimanjaro is disappearing due to global warming, though satellite measurements show no T change at the summit and the peer-reviewed scientific literature suggests that the dessication of the atmosphere in the region caused by post-colonial deforestation is the cause of the glacial recession.

§  Gore made assertions of massive future sea level rise that is way outside any supposed scientific “consensus” and is not supported in even the most alarmist literature.

§  Gore incorrectly implied that a Peruvian glacier’s retreat is due to global warming, while ignoring the fact that the region has been cooling since the 1930s and other glaciers in S America are advancing.

§  Gore blamed GW for water loss in Africa’s Lake Chad, though NASA scientists had concluded that local water use and grazing patters are probably to blame. The lake is shallow anyway and more water is being drawn from it for new irrigation that ever before.

Conclusions: Any unprejudiced reading of the evidence must conclude that beneath the superficial headline-grabbing rhetoric and gesture politics the climate change picture is complex and far from clear cut. What needs to be more widely understood is that:

1. The workings and relative importance of the various ‘forcing’ mechanisms which affect climate are imperfectly understood and their combinatory effects even less so.
2. Historical weather data before the 20^th Century is unreliable though there is no reason to doubt analysis of geo-physical data (ice-core samples etc).
3. Integration of knowledge from the various disciplines which impact on the understanding of climate is in its infancy. It is however essential for predictive accuracy.
4. Climate change can have positive as well as negative effects.
5. The predictive value of computer models, on which climate change platforms increasingly rely, are only as good as their baseline assumptions. Small changes in inputs can significantly affect out-turns yet their accuracy is questionable.
6. Predictions in many climate-related areas (e.g. sea level change) are compromised by the fact that current measurement capability admits error margins of even greater magnitude, so the results are cannot be considered statistically significant.  
7. Allocating funds to ‘stopping climate change’ is irrational as long as there is no consensus among climate scientists about the relative importance of the various causes of climate change.

All this adds up to considerable uncertainty. That is not to say that climate change is illusory or that global warming is not occurring; rather that the evidence presently available is equivocal and that the margin of error of predictive models largely vitiates their value. It is unwise to formulate policy on knee-jerk reaction or populist pressure and least of all on unresolved science.

If the world gives in to the demands of GW extremists, vast expenditure will be diverted to reduce emissions to the levels they regard as necessary (even in the unlikely event that the worst polluters can be persuaded to co-operate) for uncertain gain. There is no doubt that, beyond a certain point, the costs outweigh any possible benefits and in the case of developing countries compliance may break their fragile economies.

What is needed is funding for an international non-partisan drive for more and better science coupled with a political effort to reduce pollution. There is already a massive programme of research which is diverse and fragmented. It needs to be given cohesive force and removed from the political arena.

John Whiteley

Nov 2008

I read “Sense and Semblance” by Remington Norman with fear for our future and then with sparks of hope as it contains much food for thought. I have read it more than once and dipped back into the book when a thought took me back to a particular argument. As the monetary crisis hits us all in the next few years some of his comments will come back to haunt. Indeed, politicians Worldwide could do well to read the wisdom and ‘discussion’ between the pages.

“As this mindset becomes the norm – the way life is – its impact is lessened; rather like living with everyday violence in a sink housing-estate or a black African township you become inured to it. The fact is that, while many are busy chasing a chimerical, idealised, `lifestyle’, superficiality has corroded genuine quality of life. The argument of this book is that until these realities are recognised there is negligible chance of stopping, let alone reversing, the trend. This requires hard-edged, dispassionate thinking, free of obfuscation and sentimentality.”

I highly recommend this excellent book and it is definitely one to keep.
M. Wylie

Posted on Amazon.co.uk Nov 2008

By Patrick Obikwu

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