Posted on 04/09/2006 8:30:27 AM PDT by aculeus
For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).
Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.
Does something not strike you as odd here? That industrial carbon dioxide is not the primary cause of earth's recent decadal-scale temperature changes doesn't seem at all odd to many thousands of independent scientists. They have long appreciated - ever since the early 1990s, when the global warming bandwagon first started to roll behind the gravy train of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - that such short-term climate fluctuations are chiefly of natural origin. Yet the public appears to be largely convinced otherwise. How is this possible?
Since the early 1990s, the columns of many leading newspapers and magazines, worldwide, have carried an increasing stream of alarmist letters and articles on hypothetical, human-caused climate change. Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as "if", "might", "could", "probably", "perhaps", "expected", "projected" or "modelled" - and many involve such deep dreaming, or ignorance of scientific facts and principles, that they are akin to nonsense.
The problem here is not that of climate change per se, but rather that of the sophisticated scientific brainwashing that has been inflicted on the public, bureaucrats and politicians alike. Governments generally choose not to receive policy advice on climate from independent scientists. Rather, they seek guidance from their own self-interested science bureaucracies and senior advisers, or from the IPCC itself. No matter how accurate it may be, cautious and politically non-correct science advice is not welcomed in Westminster, and nor is it widely reported.
Marketed under the imprimatur of the IPCC, the bladder-trembling and now infamous hockey-stick diagram that shows accelerating warming during the 20th century - a statistical construct by scientist Michael Mann and co-workers from mostly tree ring records - has been a seminal image of the climate scaremongering campaign. Thanks to the work of a Canadian statistician, Stephen McIntyre, and others, this graph is now known to be deeply flawed.
There are other reasons, too, why the public hears so little in detail from those scientists who approach climate change issues rationally, the so-called climate sceptics. Most are to do with intimidation against speaking out, which operates intensely on several parallel fronts.
First, most government scientists are gagged from making public comment on contentious issues, their employing organisations instead making use of public relations experts to craft carefully tailored, frisbee-science press releases. Second, scientists are under intense pressure to conform with the prevailing paradigm of climate alarmism if they wish to receive funding for their research. Third, members of the Establishment have spoken declamatory words on the issue, and the kingdom's subjects are expected to listen.
On the alarmist campaign trail, the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, is thus reported as saying that global warming is so bad that Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century. Warming devotee and former Chairman of Shell, Lord [Ron] Oxburgh, reportedly agrees with another rash statement of King's, that climate change is a bigger threat than terrorism. And goodly Archbishop Rowan Williams, who self-evidently understands little about the science, has warned of "millions, billions" of deaths as a result of global warming and threatened Mr Blair with the wrath of the climate God unless he acts. By betraying the public's trust in their positions of influence, so do the great and good become the small and silly.
Two simple graphs provide needed context, and exemplify the dynamic, fluctuating nature of climate change. The first is a temperature curve for the last six million years, which shows a three-million year period when it was several degrees warmer than today, followed by a three-million year cooling trend which was accompanied by an increase in the magnitude of the pervasive, higher frequency, cold and warm climate cycles. During the last three such warm (interglacial) periods, temperatures at high latitudes were as much as 5 degrees warmer than today's. The second graph shows the average global temperature over the last eight years, which has proved to be a period of stasis.
The essence of the issue is this. Climate changes naturally all the time, partly in predictable cycles, and partly in unpredictable shorter rhythms and rapid episodic shifts, some of the causes of which remain unknown. We are fortunate that our modern societies have developed during the last 10,000 years of benignly warm, interglacial climate. But for more than 90 per cent of the last two million years, the climate has been colder, and generally much colder, than today. The reality of the climate record is that a sudden natural cooling is far more to be feared, and will do infinitely more social and economic damage, than the late 20th century phase of gentle warming.
The British Government urgently needs to recast the sources from which it draws its climate advice. The shrill alarmism of its public advisers, and the often eco-fundamentalist policy initiatives that bubble up from the depths of the Civil Service, have all long since been detached from science reality. Intern-ationally, the IPCC is a deeply flawed organisation, as acknowledged in a recent House of Lords report, and the Kyoto Protocol has proved a costly flop. Clearly, the wrong horses have been backed.
As mooted recently by Tony Blair, perhaps the time has come for Britain to join instead the new Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6), whose six member countries are committed to the development of new technologies to improve environmental outcomes. There, at least, some real solutions are likely to emerge for improving energy efficiency and reducing pollution.
Informal discussions have already begun about a new AP6 audit body, designed to vet rigorously the science advice that the Partnership receives, including from the IPCC. Can Britain afford not to be there?
• Prof Bob Carter is a geologist at James Cook University, Queensland, engaged in paleoclimate research
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Not sure.
It ticks me off that people are buying into the enviro-cause de jour after being duped on:
* Global cooling... ('nuff said there)
* Acid rain (it'll deforest the entire planet and sterilize every body of water!)
* The hole in the ozone (it's the end of the world - RUN!)
Don't people realize that the enviro-nuts love to blow this stuff out of proportion... and the liberal mags will fully cooperate by putting scary covers on every issue?
LOL!
Lying using statistics is a very old game. By choosing a specific time frame, we are either warming or cooling.
Blaming natural cycles on our little cars is funny, but believing such crap requires more provable facts than the current MSM hysteria.
Of course! Mongo caused it!
bump
Let's start a new one - since people in the US are moving southwest from the northeast, all the cars driving west must be causing the rotation of the earth to speed up. If we don't scrap all the cars, pretty soon we'll be going so fast we'll just fly off!
"I'd say you've had enough!"
LOL, thanks for the chuckle.
No, it must be second hand smoking.
bump for a later read.
You said -- "If it wasn't for FreeRepublic, we would never see this article in the U.S. Thanks for the post."
I've been here at Free Republic for a long time, but in this case (and many others) I see things "online" and through other sources, too. Free Republic simply makes it more convenient -- but other sources are there.
In this case, I saw it, thanks to the Drudge Report and thanks to the Internet. And then, after I read the article, I wanted to see if Free Republic had it. So, I did a search -- and it was here.
Keep in mind -- that if we didn't have (1) those other *primary sources* and (2) the *Internet* -- Free Republic wouldn't be of very much help (in what it does do). It provides for a convenient place to place all those different sources in one place.
But, Free Republic isn't providing the original sources. They are already out there. And you can see those other sources without Free Republic, if you want. I have a list of other sources I go to. Along with those, I use Free Republic, too.
Regards,
Star Traveler
You said -- "ased on past experience, I'm convinced Rush, Boortz and others scan FR for news tips. Let's see if they pick up this one."
I like Free Republic, too. It makes things just too easy, because of the "variety" of reading that others do -- and then post to "one place".
However, how do you know that these people (that you list) are primarily getting these things from Free Republic when the sources for this information is already out on the net. I found this out on the net -- first -- and then checked to see if it was here. It was.
But, I would imagine that their research would include a lot of other sources besides Free Republic. And if so, they would have found it by other means.
Regards,
Star Traveler
bttt
This article is more than a little deceptive. 1998 was an el nino year so that would spike it higher than average.
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