Text 18787, 131 rader
Skriven 2006-04-10 13:52:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: Global Warming
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xm
l&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html

There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998
By Bob Carter
(Filed: 09/04/2006)

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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