When It Comes to Global Warming, Just Cool It
by
Larry Mounser
Sydney Morning Herald:
February 12, 2001Before you believe we're all about to be swamped by melting polar ice caps, writes , you should read the fine print.
Solicitors and purveyors of insurance love small print, and, when it comes to keeping themselves employed, so do some scientists. Just look at the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, reported in the Herald last week. Such IPCC reports are the backbone of the Greenhouse lobby's argument, and are continually referred to in debate on the issue. But they're a sham.
Last week's report, for example, contained a lengthy Summary for Policy Makers that pronounced in bold type that: "The global-average surface temperature has increased over the 20th century by about 0.6C." How can you accurately make such fine measurements across the whole, varied planet? But it doesn't stop there: "Since the start of the satellite record in 1979, both satellite and weather balloon measurements show the global average temperature of the lowest 8 kilometres of the atmosphere has changed by +0.05 +/- 0.10C per decade."
That's outrageous. The margin for error (0.10C) is twice as high as the reading! Would you accept a car with a speedo that indicated that you were heading down the road at 180km/h while simultaneously saying maybe you were going backwards at 60km/h? In fact, the report shows the temperature of the atmosphere could have actually gone down by 0.05C.
How much did those satellites and weather balloons cost in a world where children routinely die for want of the cheapest medicines? Next time you're measuring your 10-year-old's growth on the wall, you can say: "Well, we think you've grown by five centimetres, but you might have shrunk by five 'cause we're really not that good at measuring. But just in case you're growing too much, we'll stop feeding you. We will, of course, be spending your pocket money on further research."
And there's more: "The global average surface temperature has increased significantly by +0.15 +/- 0.05C per decade. The difference in the warming rates is statistically significant [ie, it's a Big Problem for us but we can't explain it]. This difference occurs primarily over the tropical and subtropicalregions."
This means that on the surface, in some areas, the (fallible) people taking the readings - especially in progressively deforested and baked tropical areas - have found higher figures than the satellites, and since warming is the barrow we're pushing, we'll choose to focus on those findings, not on the satellites. And we'll totally ignore the fact that the planet's temperature changes naturally, so we've got a 50-50 chance of being right whatever we say.
But the most astonishing statements are about the supposedly shrinking Antarctic ice sheets and rising sea levels. Guess what? It's not happening. Apparently the ice cap is getting bigger and the rate of sea-level rise has not changed since industrialisation.
"The Antarctic ice sheet is likely to gain mass because of greater precipitation. No significant trends of Antarctic sea-ice extent are apparent since 1978, the period of reliable satellite measurements. Within present uncertainties, observations and models are both consistent with a lack of significant acceleration of sea level rise during the 20th century."
Hang on! Isn't the Antarctic ice sheet supposed to be shrinking and drowning everyone because of nasty old human-produced CO2? Isn't that what this is all about?
The document chooses to emphasise, in bold, all the likelihoods that the temperature is rising and that humans are to blame. At the same time it downplays material within the text which indicates: (i) they are not 100 per cent sure; (ii) the information is mixed; (iii) sampling is limited; (iv) there are still unknowns; and (v) significant parts of the research has margins of error that make it useless. And that there may, in fact, be no problem at all. But guess what these "many hundreds" of scientists who are earning a living researching the Greenhouse
Fiasco finally recommend? You got it: more research. The 10-year-old with the possible growth problems would see straight through that and have every right to say: "Not with my piggy bank, you don't." No wonder there are scientists who have refused to be associated with previous IPCC reports because of the cynical way they have been edited to keep the greenhouse bogy alive.There is no mechanism through which carbon dioxide, which makes up a measly th of 1 per cent of the atmosphere, could be responsible for any current rise. Our planet is literally awash with a substance whose thermal capacity, and hence heat retention, outstrips virtually every other known substance: water. So how is such a small percentage of carbon dioxide responsible for anything? When I last posed that question, the previously vocal CSIRO remained deafeningly quiet. Fellas?
Chemical pollution, overpopulation, species depletion, human greed and misery are real problems on this planet, so let's not waste any more time jousting at windmills. I'm proud our Government stood up to this nonsense.
Larry Mounser, who has worked as a geophysicist, is now a research fellow in mass communications at the University of NSW. herald.htm
For the Summary for Policy Makers see www.ipcc.ch
See "Myths of Global Warming".
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/