Other voices on climate change

“Many, particularly the conscientious young, have been persuaded that anthropogenic global warming is a very serious problem for mankind and one which governments can and should do something about. Sir David King, the UK’s chief scientist said it was a more serious problem than terrorism. So strong is the belief among some that they are prepared to resort to civil disobedience, shut down power stations and disrupt major airports. It is by all measures as important a field of research as medicine, and ought to operate to standards at least as high, but it does not. On the contrary, it is steeped in bias, concealment and spin….

“Unless all important studies are independently verified, it cannot be said that the late 20th century warming was particularly exceptional. And especially so given that no global warming at all has occurred since 1998, a period of eight years over which atmospheric CO2 increased by 15 ppm (4%). It is crystal clear that natural causes are a possible explanation for the entire instrumental temperature record to date. Indeed, beyond that and in conformity with Occam’s Razor, the appropriate null hypothesis for climate research is that the changes in climate that we measure are a result of natural forcing agents unless and until it can be demonstrated otherwise. So far as I am aware, there is no empirical evidence published in refereed journals that invalidates this null hypothesis.”

For the article in PDF form by engineer David Holland, appearing in Energy and Environment, Vol 18, 2007, click here.

Bishop Hill (he’s not actually a bishop) has posted an excellent article explaining the climate science chicanery behind the famous (and phony) Michael Mann “hockey stick” graph that purports to show the global temperature soaring in the late 20th century. A Canadian, Steve McIntyre, checked Mann’s methodology and found the “hockey stick” line would appear with almost any set of data. However, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change needed the hockey stick to make its point that the climate was heading toward disaster. As Hill puts it, “The story is a remarkable indictment of the corruption and cynicism that is rife among climate scientists, and I’m going to try to tell it in layman’s language so that the average blog reader can understand it.”

For the full text of the article, click here.

Worried about “runaway” global warming? That the “greenhouse” is going to overheat? Then this may be the article for you. JunkScience.com offers a comprehensive look at the facts on how the “greenhouse” gases affect climate, including that these gases don’t, in fact, act like a “greenhouse” (”greenhouse” is a metaphor and not a very accurate one). Greenhouses trap warmth; the “greenhouse” gases simply delay the release of warmth from the earth into space.

The main greenhouse gas isn’t carbon dioxide, it’s water vapor. Water vapor (plus clouds, which are another form of water vapor) make up more than 90 per cent of the “greenhouse” effect. Humans are responsible for less than 4 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere every year (nature does the other 96 per cent), and human-caused carbon dioxide might — might — be responsible for about 2.5 per cent of the greenhouse effect. This is not enough to be “driving” the climate.

Further, the effect of carbon dioxide on temperature is logarithmic: the more CO2 you add, the less effect it has on temperature. Doubling CO2 to 700 ppm might raise the global temperature by about .5 degrees Celsius, which is barely noticeable except that earth’s plantlife would flourish — plants love CO2. That’s why greenhouse growers add CO2 to their hothouses — up to 1,200 ppm, three times the current level in the atmosphere. Finally, isn’t more CO2 bad for human health? Only at levels of over 6,000 ppm, and we’re very unlikely to reach that.

You can read more about the “greenhouse” effect, and then wonder why “consensus” climate science exaggerates the problem so much, by clicking here.

“No amount of empirical evidence will overturn what has become not a scientific theory but a form of religion [anthropogenic global warming]. But what kind of religion? More than 200 years ago, Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume put his finger on the process. His essay, Of Superstition and Enthusiasm, describes how even in civilized societies the mind of man is subject to certain unaccountable terrors and apprehensions when real worries are missing. As these enemies are entirely invisible and unknown, like today’s greenhouse gases, people try to propitiate them by ceremonies, observations, mortifications, sacrifices such as Earth Day and banning plastic bags and petrol-driven lawnmowers.

“Fear and ignorance, Hume concludes, are the true source of superstition. They lead a blind and terrified public to embrace any practice, however absurd or frivolous, which either folly or knavery recommends. The knaves today, of course, are the would-be high priests of the global warming orthodoxy, with former US vice-president Gore as their supreme pontiff. As Hume points out, the stronger mixture there is of superstition, with its ambience of ignorance and fear, the higher is the authority of the priesthood.”

To read the full article by historian Arthur Herman in The Australian, click here.

“I believe in global climate change, but there is no way that humans can influence the temperature of our planet to any measurable degree with the tools currently at their disposal. Any human contribution to global temperature change is lost in the noise of terrestrial and cosmic factors.

“Our beautiful home planet has been warming and cooling for the last 4.8 billion years. Most recently, it has been warming-be it ever so slightly-but there is nothing unusual about it! The changes and rates of change in the Earth’s temperature, just since the Industrial Revolution, have occurred many times in our climatic history. While climate scientists generally agree that the Earth’s temperature is always changing, not many of them would say that humans are responsible for those changes.

“None of this is to say there are not legitimate reasons to restrict emissions of any number of chemicals into the atmosphere. We should just not fool ourselves into thinking we will change the temperature of the Earth by doing so.”

To read the rest of this article by a former NASA astronaut, click here.

“The facts are stark: The world simply isn’t warming. That’s why 31,000 other scientists, including world figures such as physicist Prof Freeman Dyson, atmospheric physicist Prof Richard Lindzen and climate scientist Prof Fred Singer, issued a joint letter last month warning governments not to jump on board the global warming bandwagon. “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the earth’s climate.”

“That’s why Ivar Glaever, who won a Nobel Prize for Physics, this month [July 2008] declared “I am a sceptic”, because “we don’t really know what the actual effect on the climate is”. And it’s why the American Physical Society this month said “there is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.”

“So let me go through my seven graphs that help to explain why even Nobel Prize winners question what [Australian Prime Minister Kevin] Rudd keeps claiming–that man is warming the world, and dangerously.”

To read this article from the Australia’s HeraldSun.com, click here.

“I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry (Google on “FullCAM”). When I started that job, in 1999, the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause. I am now skeptical. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

“I worry that politics could seriously distort the science. Suppose that carbon taxes are widely enacted, but that the rate of global warming increase starts to decline by 2015. The political system might be under pressure to repay the taxes, so it might in turn put a lot of pressure on scientists to provide justifications for the taxes. Or the political system might reject the taxes and blame science for misinforming it, which could be a terrible outcome for science because the political system is powerful and not constrained by truth.”

You can read the full article here.

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