When Al Gore lost his bid to become the country’s first “Environment President,” many of us thought the “global warming” scare would finally come to a well-deserved end. That hasn’t happened, despite eight good reasons this scam should finally be put to rest.
Similar scares orchestrated by radical environmentalists in the past--such as Alar, global cooling, the “population bomb,” and electromagnetic fields--were eventually debunked by scientists and no longer appear in the speeches or platforms of public officials. The New York Times recently endorsed more widespread use of DDT to combat malaria, proving Rachel Carson’s anti-pesticide gospel is no longer sacrosanct even with the liberal elite.
The scientific case against catastrophic global warming is at least as strong as the case for DDT, but the global warming scare hasn’t gone away. President Bush is waffling on the issue, rightly opposing the Kyoto Protocol and focusing on research and voluntary projects, but wrongly allowing his administration to support calls for creating “transferrable emission credits” for greenhouse gas reductions. Such credits would build political and economic support for a Kyoto-like cap on greenhouse gas emissions.
At the state level, some 23 states have already adopted caps on greenhouse gas emissions or goals for replacing fossil fuels with alternative energy sources. These efforts are doomed to be costly failures, as a new Heartland Policy Study by Dr. Jay Lehr and James Taylor documents. Instead of concentrating on balancing state budgets, some legislators will be working to pass their own “mini-Kyotos.”
Eight Reasons to End the Scam
Concern over “global warming” is overblown and misdirected. What follows are eight reasons why we should pull the plug on this scam before it destroys billions of dollars of wealth and millions of jobs.
1. Most scientists do not believe human activities threaten to disrupt the Earth’s climate. More than 17,000 scientists have signed a petition circulated by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine saying, in part, “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.” (Go to www.oism.org for the complete petition and names of signers.) Surveys of climatologists show similar skepticism.
2. Our most reliable sources of temperature data show no global warming trend. Satellite readings of temperatures in the lower troposphere (an area scientists predict would immediately reflect any global warming) show no warming since readings began 23 years ago. These readings are accurate to within 0.01ºC, and are consistent with data from weather balloons. Only land-based temperature stations show a warming trend, and these stations do not cover the entire globe, are often contaminated by heat generated by nearby urban development, and are subject to human error.
3. Global climate computer models are too crude to predict future climate changes. All predictions of global warming are based on computer models, not historical data. In order to get their models to produce predictions that are close to their designers’ expectations, modelers resort to “flux adjustments” that can be 25 times larger than the effect of doubling carbon dioxide concentrations, the supposed trigger for global warming. Richard A. Kerr, a writer for Science, says “climate modelers have been ‘cheating’ for so long it’s almost become respectable.”
4. The IPCC did not prove that human activities are causing global warming. Alarmists frequently quote the executive summaries of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations organization, to support their predictions. But here is what the IPCC’s latest report, Climate Change 2001, actually says about predicting the future climate: “The Earth’s atmosphere-ocean dynamics is chaotic: its evolution is sensitive to small perturbations in initial conditions. This sensitivity limits our ability to predict the detailed evolution of weather; inevitable errors and uncertainties in the starting conditions of a weather forecast amplify through the forecast. As well as uncertainty in initial conditions, such predictions are also degraded by errors and uncertainties in our ability to represent accurately the significant climate processes.”
5. A modest amount of global warming, should it occur, would be beneficial to the natural world and to human civilization. Temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period (roughly 800 to 1200 AD), which allowed the Vikings to settle presently inhospitable Greenland, were higher than even the worst-case scenario reported by the IPCC. The period from about 5000-3000 BC, known as the “climatic optimum,” was even warmer and marked “a time when mankind began to build its first civilizations,” observe James Plummer and Frances B. Smith in a study for Consumer Alert. “There is good reason to believe that a warmer climate would have a similar effect on the health and welfare of our own far more advanced and adaptable civilization today.”
6. Efforts to quickly reduce human greenhouse gas emissions would be costly and would not stop Earth’s climate from changing. Reducing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to 7 percent below 1990’s levels by the year 2012--the target set by the Kyoto Protocol--would require higher energy taxes and regulations causing the nation to lose 2.4 million jobs and $300 billion in annual economic output. Average household income nationwide would fall by $2,700, and state tax revenues would decline by $93.1 billion due to less taxable earned income and sales, and lower property values. Full implementation of the Kyoto Protocol by all participating nations would reduce global temperature in the year 2100 by a mere 0.14 degrees Celsius.
7. Efforts by state governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are even more expensive and threaten to bust state budgets. After raising their spending with reckless abandon during the 1990s, states now face a cumulative projected deficit of more than $90 billion. Incredibly, most states nevertheless persist in backing unnecessary and expensive greenhouse gas reduction programs. New Jersey, for example, collects $358 million a year in utility taxes to fund greenhouse gas reduction programs. Such programs will have no impact on global greenhouse gas emissions. All they do is destroy jobs and waste money.
8. The best strategy to pursue is “no regrets.” The alternative to demands for immediate action to “stop global warming” is not to do nothing. The best strategy is to invest in atmospheric research now and in reducing emissions sometime in the future if the science becomes more compelling. In the meantime, investments should be made to reduce emissions only when such investments make economic sense in their own right.
This strategy is called “no regrets,” and it is roughly what the Bush administration has been doing. The U.S. spends more on global warming research each year than the entire rest of the world combined, and American businesses are leading the way in demonstrating new technologies for reducing and sequestering greenhouse gas emissions.
Time for Common Sense
The global warming scare has enabled environmental advocacy groups to raise billions of dollars in contributions and government grants. It has given politicians (from Al Gore down) opportunities to pose as prophets of doom and slayers of evil corporations. And it has given bureaucrats at all levels of government, from the United Nations to city councils, powers that threaten our jobs and individual liberty.
It is time for common sense to return to the debate over protecting the environment. An excellent first step would be to end the “global warming” scam.
Common sense tells me the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is up to something other than science when it blames most of global warming on human activity -- specifically CO2 emissions.
My suspicion rose when the United Nations hurried a summary of the IPCC findings before the report itself was to be made public in May. Was the timing a deliberate attempt to take a free ride on media exposure of the Oscar-winning movie? I got even more suspicious when I learned the summary report was written not by scientists but U.N. bureaucrats. Why rush a summary for public view when it is impossible for the public to determine if the summary reflects the report's content accurately?
To my amazement, I found several scientists whose names would appear as supporters of the IPCC report have since asked to have their names removed from the final report. Paul Reiter of Paris Pasteur Institute even threatened to sue. He is not a climatologist; not even a meteorologist. But he is a scientist, an expert in malaria who disagrees with the science behind the U.N. report. He calls it a "sham" because it included names of scientists who disagreed with the findings and who resigned. "That is how they make it seem all the top scientists are agreed," he says. His name was removed only after he threatened legal action.
Just because one is a scientist, one doesn't become an instant climatologist. Many cited in the IPCC report were meteorologists who have trouble predicting local weather beyond a couple of days even with live satellite support from the heavens.
A climatologist is a different breed of scientist who studies precipitation cycles, solar activity, and global shifts through long periods of time gleaned from geological discoveries, including those from ice core samples.
Climatologists have discovered grapes were growing in Greenland, which was indeed green, during the Medieval Warm Period (AD 800-1300). Then came the Little Ice Age (AD 1350-1900) and Greenland turned white and a new warming period began. In a study published in 2003, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration concluded that solar radiation has increased 0.05 percent per decade since the 1070s.
Two separate NASA landings on Mars showed the ice cap at the southern pole (frozen CO2) has been receding as a result of solar activity. If the sun is warming Mars it should also be warming the Earth unless some unknown phenomenon directs any increase in solar radiation only toward Mars.
There is some hope, however, that the human-induced global warming doctrine may end up in the ash bin of history. London's TV Channel 4 recently aired a documentary called "The Great Global Warming Scandal." According to film reviews, it is a devastating blow to the U.N. report and to Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." Scientists from MIT and major universities in various countries, including some whose names also appear in the U.N. report, explain in plain language that the current warming of the globe results from natural solar cycles -- not from human activity. In fact, the globe will begin cooling again soon as solar flares diminish as they have done for millennia. I'll be watching to see if the documentary will find its way to U.S. TV channels.
One of the most decorated French geophysicists has converted from a believer in manmade catastrophic global warming to a climate skeptic. This latest defector from the global warming camp caps a year in which numerous scientific studies have bolstered the claims of climate skeptics. Scientific studies that debunk the dire predictions of human-caused global warming have continued to accumulate and many believe the new science is shattering the media-promoted scientific “consensus” on climate alarmism.
Claude Allegre, a former government official and an active member of France’s Socialist Party, wrote an editorial on September 21, 2006 in the French newspaper L'Express titled “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (For English Translation, click here: http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264835 ) detailing his newfound skepticism about manmade global warming. See: http://www.lexpress.fr/idees/tribune...asp?ida=451670 Allegre wrote that the “cause of climate change remains unknown” and pointed out that Kilimanjaro is not losing snow due to global warming, but to local land use and precipitation changes. Allegre also pointed out that studies show that Antarctic snowfall rate has been stable over the past 30 years and the continent is actually gaining ice.
“Following the month of August experienced by the northern half of France, the prophets of doom of global warming will have a lot on their plate in order to make our fellow countrymen swallow their certitudes,” Allegre wrote. He also accused proponents of manmade catastrophic global warming of being motivated by money, noting that “the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!”
Allegre, a member of both the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences, had previously expressed concern about manmade global warming. "By burning fossil fuels, man enhanced the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Allegre wrote 20 years ago. In addition, Allegre was one of 1500 scientists who signed a November 18, 1992 letter titled “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity” in which the scientists warned that global warming’s “potential risks are very great.” See: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/sciwarn.html
Allegre has authored more than 100 scientific articles, written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States.
Allegre's conversion to a climate skeptic comes at a time when global warming alarmists have insisted that there is a “consensus” about manmade global warming. Proponents of global warming have ratcheted up the level of rhetoric on climate skeptics recently. An environmental magazine in September called for Nuremberg-style trials for global warming skeptics and CBS News “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley compared skeptics to “Holocaust deniers.” See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264568 & http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/03...y1431768.shtml In addition, former Vice President Al Gore has repeatedly referred to skeptics as "global warming deniers."
This increase in rhetorical flourish comes at a time when new climate science research continues to unravel the global warming alarmists’ computer model predictions of future climatic doom and vindicate skeptics.
60 Scientists Debunk Global Warming Fears
Earlier this year, a group of prominent scientists came forward to question the so-called “consensus” that the Earth faces a “climate emergency.” On April 6, 2006, 60 scientists wrote a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister asserting that the science is deteriorating from underneath global warming alarmists.
“Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future…Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary,” the 60 scientists wrote. See: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/f...e-4db87559d605
“It was only 30 years ago that many of today's global-warming alarmists were telling us that the world was in the midst of a global-cooling catastrophe. But the science continued to evolve, and still does, even though so many choose to ignore it when it does not fit with predetermined political agendas,” the 60 scientists concluded.
'Climate Change is Nothing New'
In addition, an October 16, 2006 Washington Post article titled “Climate Change is Nothing New” echoed the sentiments of the 60 scientists as it detailed a new study of the earth’s climate history. The Washington Post article by reporter Christopher Lee noted that Indiana University geologist Simon Brassell found climate change occurred during the age of dinosaurs and quoted Brassell questioning the accuracy of computer climate model predictions.
“If there are big, inherent fluctuations in the system, as paleoclimate studies are showing, it could make determining the Earth’s climatic future even harder than it is,” Brassell said. See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...101500672.html
Global Cooling on the Horizon?
In August, Khabibullo Abdusamatov, a scientist who heads the space research sector for the Russian Academy of Sciences, predicted long-term global cooling may be on the horizon due to a projected decrease in the sun’s output. See: http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060825/53143686.html
Sun’s Contribution to Warming
There have also been recent findings in peer-reviewed literature over the last few years showing that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing and a new 2006 study in Geophysical Research Letters found that the sun was responsible for up to 50% of 20th-century warming. See: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/200...GL027142.shtml
“Global Warming” Stopped in 1998
Paleoclimate scientist Bob Carter has noted that there is indeed a problem with global warming – it stopped in 1998. “According to official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK, the global average temperature did not increase between 1998-2005. “…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,” noted paleoclimate researcher and geologist Bob Carter of James Cook University in Australia in an April 2006 article titled “There is a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998.” See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/m...9/ixworld.html
“Global?" Warming Misnamed - Southern Hemisphere Not Warming
In addition, new NASA satellite tropospheric temperature data reveals that the Southern Hemisphere has not warmed in the past 25 years contrary to “global warming theory” and modeling. This new Southern Hemisphere data raises the specter that the use of the word “global” in “global warming” may not be accurate. A more apt moniker for the past 25 years may be “Northern Hemisphere” warming. See: http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/09/so...es-global.html
Alaska Cooling
According to data released on July 14, 2006 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the January through June Alaska statewide average temperature was “0.55F (0.30C) cooler than the 1971-2000 average.” See: http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/re...oaa06-065.html
Oceans Cooling
Another bombshell to hit the global warming alarmists and their speculative climate modeling came in a September article in the Geophysical Research Letters which found that over 20% of the heat gained in the oceans since the mid-1950s was lost in just two years. The former climatologist for the state of Colorado, Roger Pielke, Sr., noted that the sudden cooling of the oceans “certainly indicates that the multi-decadal global climate models have serious issues with their ability to accurately simulate the response of the climate system to human- and natural-climate forcings.“ See: http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/09/
Light Hurricane Season & Early Winter
Despite predictions that 2006 would bring numerous tropical storms, 2006’s surprisingly light hurricane season and the record early start of this year’s winter in many parts of the U.S. have further put a damper on the constant doomsaying of the global warming alarmists and their media allies.
Droughts Less Frequent
Other new studies have debunked many of the dubious claims made by the global warming alarmists. For example, the claim that droughts would be more frequent, severe and wide ranging during global warming, has now being exposed as fallacious. A new paper in Geophysical Research Letters authored by Konstantinos Andreadis and Dennis Lettenmaier finds droughts in the U.S. becoming “shorter, less frequent and cover a small portion of the country over the last century.” http://www.worldclimatereport.com/in...e-the-droughts
Global Warming Will Not Lead to Next Ice Age
Furthermore, recent research has shown that fears that global warming could lead to the next ice age, as promoted in the 2004 Hollywood movie “The Day After Tomorrow” are also unsupportable. A 2005 media hyped study “claimed to have found a 30 percent slowdown in the thermohaline circulation, the results are published in the very prestigious Nature magazine, and the story was carried breathlessly by the media in outlets around the world…Less than a year later, two different research teams present convincing evidence [ in Geophysical Research Letters ] that no slowdown is occurring whatsoever,” according to Virginia State Climatologist Patrick Michaels, editor of the website World Climate Report. See: http://www.worldclimatereport.com/in...ing-ocean-hype
‘Hockey Stick’ Broken in 2006
The “Hockey Stick” temperature graph’s claim that the 1990’s was the hottest decade of the last 1000 years was found to be unsupportable by the National Academy of Sciences and many independent experts in 2006. See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem....=rep&id=257697
Study Shows Greenland’s Ice Growing
A 2005 study by a scientist named Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showed that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass. See: http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO.../V8/N44/C1.jsp Also, according to the International Arctic Research Institute, despite all of the media hype, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930’s than today.
Polar Bears Not Going Extinct
Despite Time Magazine and the rest of the media’s unfounded hype, polar bears are not facing a crisis, according to biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Arctic government of Nunavut. “Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present,” Taylor wrote on May 1, 2006. See: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...d=970599119419
Media Darling James Hansen Hypes Alarmism
As all of this new data debunking climate alarmism mounts, the mainstream media chooses to ignore it and instead focus on the dire predictions of the number-one global warming media darling, NASA’s James Hansen. The increasingly alarmist Hansen is featured frequently in the media to bolster sky-is-falling climate scare reports. His recent claim that the Earth is nearing its hottest point in one million years has been challenged by many scientists. See: http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO.../N39/EDITB.jsp Hansen’s increasingly frightening climate predictions follow his 2003 concession that the use of “extreme scenarios” was an appropriate tactic to drive the public’s attention to the urgency of global warming. See: http://naturalscience.com/ns/article...6/ns_jeh6.html Hansen also received a $250,000 grant form Teresa Heinz’s Foundation and then subsequently endorsed her husband John Kerry for President and worked closely with Al Gore to promote his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” See: http://www.heinzawards.net/speechDetail.asp?speechID=6 & http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/dai_complete.pdf
American People Rejecting Global Warming Alarmism
The global warming alarmists may have significantly overplayed their hand in the climate debate. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll this August found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of any recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe that climate change is due to natural variability has increased over 50% in the last five years.
Senator Inhofe Chastises Media For Unscientific & Unprincipled Climate Reporting
Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, commented last week on the media’s unfounded global warming hype and some of the recent scientific research that is shattering the so-called “consensus” that human greenhouse gas emissions have doomed the planet.
“The American people are fed up with media for promoting the idea that former Vice President Al Gore represents the scientific ‘consensus’ that SUV’s and the modern American way of life have somehow created a ‘climate emergency’ that only United Nations bureaucrats and wealthy Hollywood liberals can solve. It is the publicity and grant seeking global warming alarmists and their advocates in the media who have finally realized that the only “emergency” confronting them is their rapidly crumbling credibility, audience and bottom line. The global warming alarmists know their science is speculative at best and their desperation grows each day as it becomes more and more obvious that many of the nations that ratified the woeful Kyoto Protocol are failing to comply,” Senator Inhofe said last week. See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem....=rep&id=264616
“The mainstream media needs to follow the money: The further you get from scientists who conduct these alarmist global warming studies, and the further you get from the financial grants and the institutions that they serve the more the climate alarmism fades and the skepticism grows,” Senator Inhofe explained.
Eco-Doomsayers’ Failed Predictions
In a speech on the Senate floor on September 25, 2006, Senator Inhofe pointed out the abject failure of past predictions of ecological disaster made by environmental alarmists.
“The history of the modern environmental movement is chock-full of predictions of doom that never came true. We have all heard the dire predictions about the threat of overpopulation, resource scarcity, mass starvation, and the projected death of our oceans. None of these predictions came true, yet it never stopped the doomsayers from continuing to predict a dire environmental future. The more the eco-doomsayers’ predictions fail, the more the eco-doomsayers predict,” Senator Inhofe said on September 25th. See: http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm...=rep&id=263759
Related Links:
For a comprehensive review of the media’s embarrassing 100-year history of alternating between promoting fears of a coming ice age and global warming, see Environment & Public Works Chairman James Inhofe’s September 25, 2006 Senate floor speech debunking the media and climate alarmism. Go to: (epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759)
To read and watch Senator Inhofe on CNN discuss global warming go to: (http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem....=rep&id=264308 )
To Read all of Senator Inhofe’s Speeches on global warming go to: (http://epw.senate.gov/speeches.cfm?party=rep)
“Inhofe Correct On Global Warming,” by David Deming geophysicist, an adjunct scholar with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (ocpathink.org), and an associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma. (http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264537)
http://globalwarminghoax.wordpress.c...ming%e2%80%9d/
THE CONTRARIAN
GLOBAL WARMING
AND DAVID SUZUKI'S LIES
by David MacRae
When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, one of the highlights of my TV-viewing week was David Suzuki's excellent The Nature of Things. Each week I looked forward to yet another lucid insight into the workings of technology and the natural world. As a consequence of that long-running series, Suzuki is by far the best-known scientist in Canada. In fact, he has a considerable reputation worldwide.
Half-truths man
It's sad to see how a man I once admired has recently stooped to obfuscation, half-truths and outright lies in support of the Luddite cause of stopping technological progress. He imagines that we should return to some mythical past in which Mankind lived in harmony with nature.
Of course, Man has never lived in harmony with nature. Instead he has fought it from the beginning, and rightly so. Until the capitalist revolution of the last 250 years gave us some control over Nature's depredations, the vast majority of people lived lives that were brutish, backbreaking and short. The « rich » were those who had a full belly with an occasional helping of meat.
In their mad dash back to this imaginary garden, Suzuki and the other eco-nuts have always set their sights first and foremost on the energy industry. This is because energy is the foundation of a modern of economy. Destroy that and mankind will truly return to the past. In their lemming rush, they ignore one small detail: if they ever achieved their goals, billions of people would die. In their death throes, they would unleash an ecological catastrophe that would dwarf the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Twenty-five years ago, the eco-nuts were fussing about how another ice age was coming. Remember that? Today it's the opposite problem; the ice caps are about to melt and we're all going to be drowned. Conveniently, the cause of this coming disaster is the energy industry. To support this idea Suzuki and the rest of the eco-nut fringe present us with the following « reasoning »:
1) The earth is warming up;
2) Man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, are the cause;
3) This global warming will have a disastrous effect on the future of Mankind and the planet on the whole;
4) The Kyoto Protocol, forcing developed nations to cut back on carbon emissions, will save us from this disaster.
All four of these claims are false. Let's take them in turn:
Claim: The earth is warming.
Fact: The global temperature reached its modern peak about 1940 and declined somewhat in the following decade. It has not changed significantly in the last fifty years although there has been considerable variation from year to year, largely due to the El Niño phenomenon.
Claim: The cause of warming is man-made increases in atmospheric CO2.
Fact: The cause of global temperature change is – wait for this – changes in the amount of radiation emitted by the sun. Should this surprise anyone? It is intuitively obvious and was first verified scientifically more than a hundred years ago.
Claim: This warming will cause global disaster.
Fact: A somewhat higher global temperature would be beneficial. Since the end of the last Ice Age, the global temperature has usually been higher than it is today. A long high plateau occurred between 8000 BC and 4000 BC. This period is called the Neolithic Climatic Optimum, not the Neolithic Climatic Disaster. Another shorter rise around 1000 AD has a similar name: the Medieval Climatic Optimum. Global temperatures were at a minimum between 1300 AD and 1650 AD. This period is called the Little Ice Age. To put it simply: Heat good. Cold bad. Can any Canadian really doubt this?
Claim: Kyoto will save us all.
Fact: Even if fully implemented, Kyoto will have a minimal effect on atmospheric accumulations of carbon dioxide. According to the exact same climate models which supposedly prove that the earth is heating up due to CO2 emissions are the cause, Kyoto would not change things by more than 0.1ºC over the next century, an insignificant amount.
I am not going to justify these statements. If you want to look further into it, Junkscience.com has some good links. I especially recommend John Daly's Still Waiting for the Greenhouse and Arthur B. Robinson's Oregon Petition Project. Instead I want to concentrate on Suzuki part in this scam.
Since his thesis contradicts known facts in every way, he necessarily resorts to lies, blustering and misdirection in order to support his position. This is typical of any fanatic.
The Canoe Session
Let's watch his mendacity and obfuscation in action. On September 21st, canoe.ca sponsored him in an Internet Chat Session on this subject. From the transcript, I've extracted all the exchanges he made with his debunkers, people who disagree with his precepts. The rest were supporters or people who were simply looking for information.
We'll start with a simple request for information before we go on to people who actually confront his lies.
Richard Weatherill: Is it fairly conclusive that human activity is the primary cause of climate change, or can it be attributed equally as well to some cyclic phenomena, of which we are only dimly aware, if at all? Thank you.
David Suzuki: It's possible of course that there are things we don't even know about but the overwhelming consensus of climatologists is that we are a major cause of a warming that is not a natural cycle.
This claim is simply a lie. The overwhelming consensus of climatologists is that, if warming exists at all, its causes are natural. In all polls of climatologists conducted so far, those who expressed an opinion were far more likely to disagree with the Greenhouse theory than to accept it. For example, a 1997 Gallup poll indicated that 83 per cent of North American climatologists disagree with it.
Alan Caruba: Is it not true that the earth's overall temperature has not increased in at least the past fifty years? That no satellite or radiosonde balloon data has found a rise in temperature since around 1950 or so?
David Suzuki: The data that have been gathered, including recalibrated satellite info, support a 1º rise in the last century.
Notice that he did not answer the question. Everyone agrees that temperatures have risen over the last century. In fact, they have risen steadily over a three hundred year period starting about 1650. As I noted, the modern peak in 1940 and temperatures have been stable since 1950. Yes, temperatures rose in the first half of the twentieth century. The question was about the second half.
« As the years go by, there is a stronger and stronger consensus among climatologists that global warming does not exist. There is virtual unanimity that if warming is taking place, the causes are natural. »
Three completely different temperature measurement techniques, two in balloons and one in satellites, have shown essentially no change in global temperature since balloons were first used in 1958 and satellites in 1979. Instead they show a random walk (influenced by El Niño) and they agree with each other on where the walk took us. They also agree locally with surface measurements made in the stations with the best records (North America, for example). Other surface measurements, notably in Siberia, indicate a rise in temperature over this period. Four reliable sources, which agree with each other, must surely trump an unreliable source out in left field.
Besides, how could satellite measurements detect any change previous to 1979? Does Suzuki have some data from UFOs that he is hiding from the rest of us?
This recalibrated satellite data that Suzuki refers to delights the eco-nuts to no end. Because of the recalibration (made to account for the fact that a satellite's orbit deteriorates over time), the data now show that global warming has occurred, unlike the original data which embarrassingly showed a cooling effect. But in fact, all that has really changed is the sign of the tiny fractional change since 1979. The data now show a change of +0.04º per decade instead of -0.04º. There have been some further re-recalibrations which may yet flip the sign again, but the bottom line is that zero is zero is zero.
Warren: How do you respond to arguments that the general circulation models used to predict how increases in greenhouse gases will affect climate are so unreliable that we ought not to use them as a basis for large changes in our way of life?
This question was asked three times and Suzuki never offered any response. He couldn't even find a way to lie about it. Admittedly, his task is difficult. The models all say that temperatures in the lower troposphere should increase faster than ground readings, but the opposite is true. They completely disagree with each other on what the future will hold, not to mention that they can't « retrodict » the past either. They all show bizarre effects from future warming such as closely juxtaposed hot and cold regions. This is not really surprising because they are full of fudge factors, some of which have a bigger effect than the actual data. This is junk science at its worst.
Alan Caruba: You say that climatologists agree that human activity is responsible for the earth heating up, but 18,000 have signed a statement disputing this. There have been other proclamations disputing global warming. There is no consensus. Do you disagree with this?
David Suzuki: The poll/petition you are referring to was a semi-fictional effort by some sceptics in which they misrepresented themselves as the National Academy of sciences. In fact the national academy took the unprecedented step of issuing a press release condemning the tactic. Some of the signatories to the poll included fictitious characters.
The petitioners have never represented themselves as the National Academy of Sciences. Furthermore, the NAS press release in question did not accuse them of doing so. As Frederick Seitz, one of the people behind the petition was a former Academy president, the press release simply stated that « The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences » and that they did not agree with its position. Caruba was right. There is no consensus.
Actually Caruba is not quite right either. As the years go by, there is a stronger and stronger consensus among climatologists that global warming does not exist. There is virtual unanimity that if warming is taking place, the causes are natural.
For example, Seitz himself signed the IPCC protocol of 1995, which the eco-nuts use to prove their case. He has since changed his mind. Or maybe he didn't. The protocol was fraudulently altered after he signed it. Among other things, the following two paragraphs were removed:
1) « none of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases. »
2) « no study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to ... man-made causes. »
We next find out that the « fictional character » accusation is a lie too.
Bob Ferguson: Your response to Mr. Caruba is inaccurate. That is a false claim circulated by Ozone Action, a radical environmental group. Which signers were fictional?
David Suzuki: For more information on the poll you should check out the National Academies of Science web site. I believe you can find a definite statement on the poll in the archives of their press releases.
Once again, Suzuki did not answer the point – that he was repeating the lies of a radical environmentalist group. Instead he repeated his references to a NAS press release which did not say what he claimed it said. Suzuki must have known the contents of the press release when he propagated his lie. He also appears to know that Ozone Action fabricated the accusation that there were fictional signers. Certainly he did not refute the questioner. Yet he repeated Ozone Action's libel anyway. As for why he insists on misrepresenting a petition as a poll, this is simply bizarre.
Dick Kahle: Half of the warming of this century, about 0.4 C, occurred prior to 1940 before most of the big increase in CO2. The 0.4 C warming left, which might be caused partially by man, is much less than the 0.8 C that the latest models predict, which include aerosols. Why the difference?
David Suzuki: Historically greenhouse gas emissions have been on the increase since the Industrial Revolution. I believe that the 0.8 includes the earlier 0.4. More importantly future warming is likely to be based on the emissions which are taking place now and those from the past two decades, when emissions soared.
The eco-nuts do, in fact, claim a warming of 0.8º C over the last century (notice that Suzuki earlier rounded it up conveniently to 1ºC). But he ignores the writer's point – that half of this claimed warming took place in the first half of the century when CO2 emissions were a fraction of what they are today. In fact, Man has been adding to CO2 levels in the air since the invention of fire. Almost all of this increase has taken place in the last fifty years, yet the global temperature today is somewhat below the average of the last 10,000 years.
Aside from this, where exactly does he get his idea that « future warming is likely to be based on the emissions which are taking place now »? Nobody has ever made such a claim, including the junk scientists themselves. Their models all assume that current warming is caused by current emissions.
There's a good reason for this. If I build a greenhouse today, the area underneath its roof won't experience a temperature rise 50 years from now. It happens when I construct the roof. His explanation here doesn't even qualify as junk science. It's ad-hoc argumentation pure and simple. It's designed to shut up his opponent, not advance science or the human condition. It's shameful.
After this exchange, the transcript ends but Suzuki's hypocrisy on this issue certainly doesn't.
Of farts and belches
James Hansen was one of the original alarmists who brought forth this notion of global warming in 1988. He was the principal instigator behind the original IPCC protocol in 1992, which claimed that global warming was a serious problem and that carbon dioxide emissions are the cause.
Mr. Hansen now believes that he was wrong, that global warming is, at fact, caused by emissions of other gases. His reasoning is that when fossils fuels are burned, soot and other impurities are also thrown into the air, which prevent solar energy from reaching the earth. The consequence is that the net contribution of fossil fuels to the greenhouse effect is roughly zero.
Hansen now believes that the main culprit causing global warming is methane emissions, primarily generated by cow farts and rice paddy belches. So the solution is thus to reduce methane emissions. By attaching a hose to the aft side of cattle, perhaps? Maybe the answer is to return to using dirty gasoline and inefficient engines in order to throw more pollution up into the atmosphere.
Bah. Maybe the answer is that Hansen didn't know what the hell he was talking about back in 1988 – and still doesn't.
As for Suzuki, when Hansen made his new ideas public, the Great Canadian Environmental Guru responded by saying simply that he hadn't read the report but doesn't believe that it would have anything useful to contribute to the debate.
The fact of the matter is that Suzuki has nothing useful to contribute to the debate either.
As to why he lies in public, the answer can only be either that he and his causes benefit hugely from the publicity and the money it generates or simply that he is a fanatic. I make no claim to know which is the truth. Perhaps both. One thing is clear. He is no scientist.
It’s B-a-a-ck!
Similar scares orchestrated by radical environmentalists in the past--such as Alar, global cooling, the “population bomb,” and electromagnetic fields--were eventually debunked by scientists and no longer appear in the speeches or platforms of public officials. The New York Times recently endorsed more widespread use of DDT to combat malaria, proving Rachel Carson’s anti-pesticide gospel is no longer sacrosanct even with the liberal elite.
The scientific case against catastrophic global warming is at least as strong as the case for DDT, but the global warming scare hasn’t gone away. President Bush is waffling on the issue, rightly opposing the Kyoto Protocol and focusing on research and voluntary projects, but wrongly allowing his administration to support calls for creating “transferrable emission credits” for greenhouse gas reductions. Such credits would build political and economic support for a Kyoto-like cap on greenhouse gas emissions.
At the state level, some 23 states have already adopted caps on greenhouse gas emissions or goals for replacing fossil fuels with alternative energy sources. These efforts are doomed to be costly failures, as a new Heartland Policy Study by Dr. Jay Lehr and James Taylor documents. Instead of concentrating on balancing state budgets, some legislators will be working to pass their own “mini-Kyotos.”
Eight Reasons to End the Scam
Concern over “global warming” is overblown and misdirected. What follows are eight reasons why we should pull the plug on this scam before it destroys billions of dollars of wealth and millions of jobs.
1. Most scientists do not believe human activities threaten to disrupt the Earth’s climate. More than 17,000 scientists have signed a petition circulated by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine saying, in part, “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.” (Go to http://www.oism.org/oism/s32p31.htm for the complete petition and names of signers.) Surveys of climatologists show similar skepticism.
2. Our most reliable sources of temperature data show no global warming trend. Satellite readings of temperatures in the lower troposphere (an area scientists predict would immediately reflect any global warming) show no warming since readings began 23 years ago. These readings are accurate to within 0.01ºC, and are consistent with data from weather balloons. Only land-based temperature stations show a warming trend, and these stations do not cover the entire globe, are often contaminated by heat generated by nearby urban development, and are subject to human error.
3. Global climate computer models are too crude to predict future climate changes. All predictions of global warming are based on computer models, not historical data. In order to get their models to produce predictions that are close to their designers’ expectations, modelers resort to “flux adjustments” that can be 25 times larger than the effect of doubling carbon dioxide concentrations, the supposed trigger for global warming. Richard A. Kerr, a writer for Science, says “climate modelers have been ‘cheating’ for so long it’s almost become respectable.”
4. The IPCC did not prove that human activities are causing global warming. Alarmists frequently quote the executive summaries of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations organization, to support their predictions. But here is what the IPCC’s latest report, Climate Change 2001, actually says about predicting the future climate: “The Earth’s atmosphere-ocean dynamics is chaotic: its evolution is sensitive to small perturbations in initial conditions. This sensitivity limits our ability to predict the detailed evolution of weather; inevitable errors and uncertainties in the starting conditions of a weather forecast amplify through the forecast. As well as uncertainty in initial conditions, such predictions are also degraded by errors and uncertainties in our ability to represent accurately the significant climate processes.”
5. A modest amount of global warming, should it occur, would be beneficial to the natural world and to human civilization. Temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period (roughly 800 to 1200 AD), which allowed the Vikings to settle presently inhospitable Greenland, were higher than even the worst-case scenario reported by the IPCC. The period from about 5000-3000 BC, known as the “climatic optimum,” was even warmer and marked “a time when mankind began to build its first civilizations,” observe James Plummer and Frances B. Smith in a study for Consumer Alert. “There is good reason to believe that a warmer climate would have a similar effect on the health and welfare of our own far more advanced and adaptable civilization today.”
6. Efforts to quickly reduce human greenhouse gas emissions would be costly and would not stop Earth’s climate from changing. Reducing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to 7 percent below 1990’s levels by the year 2012--the target set by the Kyoto Protocol--would require higher energy taxes and regulations causing the nation to lose 2.4 million jobs and $300 billion in annual economic output. Average household income nationwide would fall by $2,700, and state tax revenues would decline by $93.1 billion due to less taxable earned income and sales, and lower property values. Full implementation of the Kyoto Protocol by all participating nations would reduce global temperature in the year 2100 by a mere 0.14 degrees Celsius.
7. Efforts by state governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are even more expensive and threaten to bust state budgets. After raising their spending with reckless abandon during the 1990s, states now face a cumulative projected deficit of more than $90 billion. Incredibly, most states nevertheless persist in backing unnecessary and expensive greenhouse gas reduction programs. New Jersey, for example, collects $358 million a year in utility taxes to fund greenhouse gas reduction programs. Such programs will have no impact on global greenhouse gas emissions. All they do is destroy jobs and waste money.
8. The best strategy to pursue is “no regrets.” The alternative to demands for immediate action to “stop global warming” is not to do nothing. The best strategy is to invest in atmospheric research now and in reducing emissions sometime in the future if the science becomes more compelling. In the meantime, investments should be made to reduce emissions only when such investments make economic sense in their own right.
This strategy is called “no regrets,” and it is roughly what the Bush administration has been doing. The U.S. spends more on global warming research each year than the entire rest of the world combined, and American businesses are leading the way in demonstrating new technologies for reducing and sequestering greenhouse gas emissions.
Time for Common Sense
The global warming scare has enabled environmental advocacy groups to raise billions of dollars in contributions and government grants. It has given politicians (from Al Gore down) opportunities to pose as prophets of doom and slayers of evil corporations. And it has given bureaucrats at all levels of government, from the United Nations to city councils, powers that threaten our jobs and individual liberty.
It is time for common sense to return to the debate over protecting the environment. An excellent first step would be to end the “global warming” scam.
it should be pointed out that glaciers in many other parts of the world are not shrinking but in fact are growing.
Norway’s glaciers are growing at a record pace. All 48 glaciers in New Zealand’s Southern Alps are growing, the Franz Josef by about 4 metres a day. Pio XI, the largest glacier in the southern hemisphere, and the Perito Moreno Glacier, the largest in Patagonia, are also growing despite the fact that they should be melting because of warm winds zephyr’d from El Niño seas.
Glaciers are real cool in California, where all seven on Mount Shasta are growing apace and three have doubled in size since 1950. Further north, in Washington state, America’s youngest glacier in the crater of Mount St Helens holds a record for fastest-growing lump of ice. Not far away is America’s most studied glacier, the one on Mount Rainier, which was melting catastrophically until 1931.
News from the Antarctic shows that the harsh desert valleys have been getting cooler since the 1980s and that the ice in many parts is thickening. So bad is it in places that the old Admiral Byrd station has disappeared, squashed under 3 metres of ice.
Meanwhile at the other end of the world researchers point out that, contrary to global-warming headline-grabbing dogma, Greenland has over the last 40 to 50 years shown statistically significant cooling.
Indeed, if you take all the evidence that is rarely mentioned by the Kyotoists into consideration, 555 of all the 625 glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich, Switzerland, have been growing since 1980.
Where is all this new ice coming from? It can all be explained by the 0.6 °C rise in temperature of the past century or so. Admittedly it is not much, but enough to evaporate billions of tonnes of extra water vapour up into the air.
A series of recent studies shows that the polar ice caps, which should be shrinking if dire global warming theories are correct, are maintaining their mass and in fact growing slightly. The studies suggest satellite temperature readings, which indicate no global warming of the lower atmosphere, are more reliable than surface temperature readings, taken by humans under varying conditions, that had indicated a slow, gradual warming.
A study published in the December 3, 1999 issue of Science magazine, authored by Ola Johannessen, Elena Shalena, and Martin Miles, reported Arctic sea ice had declined by 14 percent from 1978 through 1998. In a related story, columnist Richard Kerr pondered "Will the Arctic Ocean lose all its ice?" The mainstream press ran with the story, giving dire warnings that global warming was upon us.
However, CO2 Science Magazine later noted that in the Johannessen study, "essentially all of the drop . . . occurs rather abruptly over a single period of not more than three years (87/88-90/91) and possibly only one year (89/90-90/91). Furthermore, it could be argued from their data that from 1990/91 onward, sea ice area in the Arctic may have actually increased."
More recent studies of the polar ice caps verify CO2 Science Magazine's skepticism, and show the polar ice caps are holding their own and actually growing slightly.
Antarctic sea ice edge expanding
A study published in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate (Yuan, X. and Martinson, D.G., "Antarctic sea ice extent variability and its global connectivity," Volume 13: 1697-1717 (2000)) demonstrated the Antarctic polar ice cap has been expanding. According to the study, 18 years of satellite data indicate the mean Antarctic sea ice edge has expanded by 0.011 degrees of latitude toward the equator each year.
A later study, also published in Journal of Climate (Watkins, A.B. and Simmonds, I., "Current trends in Antarctic sea ice: The 1990s impact on a short climatology," Volume 13: 4441-4451 (2000)) reached a similar conclusion. The study reported significant increases in Antarctic sea ice between 1987 and 1996. The study further indicated the 1990s exhibited increases in the length of the sea-ice season.
Arctic ice thickening, expanding
A study published in Geophysical Research Letters (Winsor, P., "Arctic sea ice thickness remained constant during the 1990s," Volume 28: 1039-1041 (2001)) found the same to be true in the Arctic. The study concluded, "mean ice thickness has remained on a near-constant level around the North Pole from 1986-1997." Moreover, the study noted data from six different submarine cruises under the Arctic sea ice showed little variability and a "slight increasing trend" in the 1990s.
Just off the Arctic polar ice cap, ice coverage in Greenland was also shown to be steady and likely increasing. A study in Journal of Geophysical Research (Comiso, J.C., Wadhams, P., Pedersen, L.T. and Gersten, R.A., Volume 106: 9093-9116 (2001)) concluded that, annual variances notwithstanding, the Odden ice tongue in Greenland exhibited no statistically significant change from 1979 to 1998. Moreover, proxy reconstruction of the ice tongue utilizing air temperature data indicated the ice covers a greater area today than it did several decades ago.
Viewed as a whole, the new ice cap studies indicate no global warming has occurred in recent decades, at least not in high latitudes. These findings also offer an important insight into one of the more significant controversies surrounding global warming theory.
Surface vs. satellite readings
Surface temperature readings taken by humans indicate the Earth has warmed by approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 100 years. This warming is certainly not much, but it is often cited as evidence that global warming is occurring, even if it is merely in its initial stages.
However, precise satellite readings of the lower atmosphere (a region that is supposed to immediately reflect any global warming) have shown no warming since readings were begun more than 20 years ago.
"We have seen no sign of man-induced global warming at all. The computer models used in U.N. studies say the first area to heat under the 'greenhouse gas effect' should be the lower atmosphere, known as the troposphere. Highly accurate, carefully checked satellite data have shown absolutely no warming," explained Tom Randall of the National Center for Public Policy Research.
Global warming skeptics have pointed out that most of the surface temperature readings indicating a warming have been taken in underdeveloped nations, where reliability and quality-control are questionable. In developed nations such as the United States, by contrast, the readings tend to show no warming. Moreover, skeptics note, surface temperature readings are influenced by artificial warming associated with growing urbanization, which creates artificial heat islands around temperature reading stations.
"While the greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have grown in the last 50 years, the correlation with a warming of the world's climate is weak and far from being generally accepted by the scientific community," James L. Johnston, a member of The Heartland Institute's Board of Directors, observed in the August 4 Chicago Tribune.
Global warming proponents, on the other hand, now counter that warming, despite prior consensus to the contrary, might occur in the lower atmosphere only after a general warming of the Earth's surface.
Models shown to be inaccurate . . . again
The recent polar ice studies, which measured surface rather than atmospheric temperature trends (and which were far removed from the effects of urban heat islands and questionable third-world temperature readings), lend weight to the argument that satellite readings, not surface monitoring stations, are correct.
"In considering all of the above results, it is likely that the global extent of sea ice is on the rise. Such observational evidence flies in the face of model predictions of global warming that say climate will change first and to the greatest extent in the Earth's polar regions," concludes CO2 Science Magazine.
CO2 Science suggests that self-regulating mechanisms, such as clouds, enable the Earth to keep a relatively steady climate despite the changes in CO2 concentration that have been a regular part of Earth's history.
Viewing the new data in conjunction with other studies that properly filter out the imperfections of human-collected temperature readings, CO2 Science concludes, "There has been no global warming for the past 75 years."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1055542/posts
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/in...ature-history/
http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVF.../ice_ages.html
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7x.html
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO...V7/N4/EDIT.jsp
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=11548
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20070...2226-6282r.htm
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/kincaid020707.htm
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p357.htm
http://www.oism.org/pproject/b_sci.htm
http://www.oism.org/pproject/b_sci.htm
Are these people Physicists, Geophysicists, Climatologists, Meteorologists, Oceanographers, Evironmental Scientists Chemistry, Biochemistry, Biology, and other Life Sciences wrong?
Speaking of carbon offsets and shell games, guess where Gore buys his carbon offsets? Well, he buys them from a firm call Generation Investment Management LLP, a tax-exempt U.S. 501(c)3 corporation. The chairman and co-founder is Al Gore. In other words, he buys his carbon offsets from himself. Others who buy these offset are really buying stock in Gore's growing business. You, too, can green up his portfolio, if not Earth itself.
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&statu... 258075474834657
http://billhobbs.com/2007/02/more_on_gore.html
A hoax is taking place in Canada. The recently (Dec. 2002) ratified Kyoto Accord/Protocol is the hoax. Top Federal government officials are the perpetrators. The citizens of Canada will be the victims. Their already high taxes will increase to buy ''carbon, green credits'' (stocks in Al Gores growing business) from poor, perhaps corrupt, regimes... and all oh so needlessly because the much lambasted scapegoat, carbon dioxide, CO2, is actually a good, clean, natural, and ecologically essential gas for life in the seas and on land.
Thursday, January 16, 2003
by: Paavo Siitam *
The Hoax is Spawned
A United Nations conference was held in Kyoto, Japan in 1997. The participants agreed upon a pact. This pact is now known as the Kyoto Accord or Kyoto Protocol (kyoto). The aim of the agreement was to reduce the amount of the so-called greenhouse gases emitted into air from developed countries by 5.2% of 1990 levels, during the period, 2008 - 2012. This pact was agreed on to stop, and even reverse global warming / global climate change. Although gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, HFCs, PFCs, among others, were identified as greenhouse gases, CARBON DIOXIDE gas, CO2, more than any of the other gases, was targeted for curtailment. Whatever for? CARBON DIOXIDE, CO2, is a good, clean, ecologically essential gas. The intentions of the attendees were, no doubt, laudable, but we must ask, "Is there global warming?" Ans. Probably not. "If global warming is real, is it out of control?" Ans. Probably not. "If global warming is a fact, is it really caused by a buildup of atmospheric CO2?" A most emphatic NO! If CO2 is not at fault, but is scapegoated, then we have a hoax.
I am a plant scientist. I have also been a teacher of biology and chemistry for close to thirty years in Ontario, Canada. Canada was a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol. I feel betrayed by my government, and by certain factions of the current environmental movement. I feel betrayed because my government decided to abandon logic and reason in order to scapegoate and lambaste CARBON DIOXIDE gas, CO2, this good, clean, natural, scarce, and ecologically essential gas in the biosphere.... just to get the Kyoto Protocol/Accord (kyoto) ratified and implemented in Canada, or so it seems. The Kyoto Protocol is based on flawed science, and is without moral or scientific merit. .....But all is not lost, yet. There is still time for the Government of Canada, et al, to distance themselves from kyoto. Most importantly, the Government of Canada does not have to implement the seriously flawed Kyoto Protocol.
If you can complete the following sentences, you will probably sense that something is wrong with kyoto. Try filling in the blanks: "Plants take in _ _ gas, and release _ gas. Animals inhale _ gas, and exhale _ _ gas". Sounds familiar? Sure. Most of us learned these simple truisms as kids, perhaps even before high school. The green parts of plants do absorb good, clean CARBON DIOXIDE gas, CO2, from air and release oxygen gas to the air, while the cells of animals (and plants) take in oxygen gas, and release good, clean CARBON DIOXIDE gas, CO2, back to the air. Students learn early on that the lives of plants and animals are entwined. Likewise, students learn early on that CO2 is essential for the growth and development of plants and for all life on Earth.
Ratification of Kyoto by the Parliament of Canada
Oddly enough, though, the kyoto gurus, and certain politicians in Ottawa, might not be able to fill in the above blanks correctly. By their actions, far too many of them seem to deny that CARBON DIOXIDE gas, CO2, is good and essential for life on Earth. In fact, many have taken to lambasting CO2. Why? Whatever for? Perhaps it's because people simply do not retain everything they learn as youngsters. Judging by the outcome of the kyoto debate, which raged across our land during most of 2002, forgetfulness of things once learned -- or was it selective amnesia -- struck certain Canadian federal politicians, including the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister Jean Chretien, and his Minister of the Environment, David Anderson, and most Liberal Members of Parliament, and the NDP MPs, particularly hard. It seems that they never did learn, or conveniently forgot, what they had once been taught about the carbon cycle, ecology, photosynthesis, cellular respiration, and how important CO2 is for the well-being of life on Earth. Had they remembered, they could not, in good conscience, have ratified the Kyoto Protocol. Consequently, and sadly for Canada, kyoto was adopted by Parliament on Tuesday, December 10, 2002, when a majority of the MPs, our Members of Parliament, voted for it, clearing the way for the Prime Minister to sign the document to complete the ratification process on Monday, December 16, 2002. Shame on the P.M., and shame on everyone who promoted the Kyoto Protocol; a document without moral or scientific merit.
Scandals, Corruption and Kyoto
As bad as the "science" of kyoto is, and it is very badly flawed, indeed, the ratification of Kyoto Accord set in motion what could become the most massive, devious, systematic "shafting" of the already beleaguered taxpayers of Canada, IF kyoto is implemented. Actually, this should not surprise anyone since the Party running the show in Ottawa has been prone to scandals from the getgo, as documented by the media.......
....... A billion dollars missing from HRDC, another billion gone with the gun registry, $7.7 billion in unaccountable charitable foundations, "Shawinigate", cronyism, Quebec advertising sponsorship scandals, lax immigration rules, hundreds of millions wasted on a faulty computer program to keep track of people moving into and out of Canada across our porous borders, $1 billion siphoned off through GST refund scandals, overcharging of hard working Canadians for EI (employment insurance), the P.M.'s multitude of patronage appointments (One particularly galling example came to light recently, because a particularly greedy appointee, a certain Privacy Commissioner, "G. R." got caught for excessive "feeding at the public trough"), $90+ millions spent on another museum in Ottawa - this one to glorify politicians, past and present. Wonderful, eh? As if the country has no more urgent needs! .... and on and on it goes. Apparently, it is OK and business as usual that theft of public monies takes place on a regular basis by elected and appointed government officials, yet rarely, if ever, is anyone called to account. Why not? Why aren't the responsible individuals indicted, and behind bars by now?
We should be outraged. Does any honest work for the Canadian public get done any more on Parliament Hill? Very questionable indeed, but, sad to say, "YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHIN' YET". It bears repeating, just wait til the newly ratified Kyoto Protocol is IMPLEMENTED, step-by-step, over the coming years. All past scandals, corruption schemes and mismanagement will pale. Some of us, in fact quite a few of us, in Canada, do care about corruption, and we don't like it. Also, some of us, unlike our politicians, do understand much of the biology and chemistry which has been misrepresented to bring Canadians on side of kyoto, by hook and by crook, and we don't like that one bit either.
What's Wrong with Kyoto?
What's wrong with the Kyoto Protocol? To the uninitiated, nothing. It seems to be the solution to dirty air and global warming. But to many plant scientists, climate scientists, chemists, and others, the science of kyoto is all wrong. The Kyoto Protocol is particularly problematic because it is based on falsehoods, some of which are as follows: (1) that CARBON DIOXIDE gas, CO2, is a pollutant; (2) that anthropogenic (human generated) CO2 content of air is too high and out of control; (3) that the concentrations of CO2 found in air, LOW though these are, still manage to cause global climate change / global warming; (4) that human beings / governments can affect, that is reduce, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere of planet Earth, at sea level. Lies, all lies.
Life on Earth is Carbon-Based
... All of that Carbon Originates with CO2 of Air
CO2 cannot possibly be bad because every ecosystem on Earth relies on green plants, and plants need CO2, like our public school teachers taught. Plants produce food and oxygen for all living things. Plants are the "primary producers", the "autotrophs", of every food chain, web and food pyramid. But in order to live and fulfill their ecological role, plants must have light, mineralized water, and they must have access to CO2 gas of air (or dissolved bicarbonate ions for phytoplankton, algae and other aquatic plants). Yes, during photosynthesis, all green plants "eat" light and INORGANIC, atmospheric CO2 gas with their leaves, and their other green parts. This is how they make living, ORGANIC glucose sugar which they then use to satisfy their own energy needs, and from which they make molecules of more complex substances such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, nucleic acids (DNA), etc. Take any plant. On a dry weight basis, most of the mass of that plant is due to its carbon atoms; the very same carbon atoms which were assimilated from CO2 gas of air. When plants and plant products such as firewood, cardboard, or coal (ancient plants) are burned, combustion releases the CO2 gas that that plant, or plants, borrowed from air for the duration of its / their lifetime(s). Once plants have consumed CO2 to create their living biomass, then heterotrophs, (the saprophytes, carnivores, and omnivores -- like us) also get to eat. We all eat plants directly or indirectly. LIFE ON EARTH IS CARBON BASED. The carbon atoms we get from food become a major part of our essential organic molecules. We must never forget that most of the carbon atoms, which every person has assimilated into his / her being, were part of the good, clean CO2 gas of air just a little while before.
Mister Minister of the Environment, and Honourable Prime Minister of Canada, do not lambaste CO2. CO2 is not a pollutant. The concentration of atmospheric CO2 is NOT out of control. It is exactly where it should be. The CO2 concentration of the air is already at a correct, LOW level, in a state of dynamic equilibrium with its biotic and abiotic environmental components. This CO2 concentration is dictated by the physical and chemical laws of nature; not by man and his laws, protocols and accords.
The Concentration of CO2 at Sea Level is Extremely LOW!
Globally, it is the consumption of CO2 by plants, AND the worldwide dynamic chemical equilibrium reactions, that keep the atmospheric content of CO2 low. Here on Earth, close to sea level, the normal concentration of CO2 in air has held steady for hundreds if not for thousands of years at about 0.033%. This low percentage is only 3.3 litres of CO2 in 10,000 litres of air, or 330 ppm (parts per million). [Contrast this with the normal amounts of nitrogen gas at 78% or 7800 L per 10,000 L of air, or 780,000 ppm of N2; and oxygen gas at 21% or 2100 L per 10,000 L of air, or 210,000 ppm of O2.] Of course, there are seasonal variations, and local variations (e.g. greater CO2 concentrations in marshy spots and low lying areas in the summer), but that is neither abnormal nor bad for life on Earth.
Carbon "Sinks"
The amount of carbon atoms on Earth is finite. The large repositories of carbon on Earth are called carbon "sinks". A carbon content balance, or chemical equilibrium, exists among the different kinds of carbon compounds and ions in the different "sinks":
Sink #1. The atmosphere with its low CO2 gas content (only 0.033% at sea level)
Sink #2. Bodies of water like the oceans, lakes, rivers, and ponds containing vast, dissolved stores of bicarbonate, HCO3- ions, (dissolved CO2)
Sink #3. Organic carbon compounds in living things, and all dead organic matter, too. This category includes all of those atoms of carbon that were first absorbed from air as CO2 gas, and then assimilated, by green plants. The dead organic matter includes thousands of years' worth of dead peat moss deposits, coal seams, natural gas and petroleum wells, not to mention all corpses, fallen autumn leaves, and decaying logs, etc. Decay and oxidation (combustion reactions) will liberate the carbon that is stored in organic substances back to air as inorganic carbon dioxide -- and that is normal and good... even if it is the internal combustion and diesel engines of mankind that do the liberating from gasoline and diesel fuel.
Sink #4. Calcium carbonate, CaCO3(s); limestone in its many forms. In a sense, CaCO3 is a "petrified", solid form of CO2 gas. In nature, CaCO3 forms when CO2 gas reacts with a saturated solution of calcium hyrdoxide ("limewater"), or when bicarbonate ions, HCO3-(aq), combine with calcium ions, Ca2+(aq), in ocean water. Being a solid, the resulting CaCO3 precipitates, and settles out. After millions upon millions of years of such settling, the ooze of CaCO3 hardens to make limestone layers on the sea floor.
CaCO3 is usually the principal chemical ingredient in things such as: egg shells, skeletons of certain animals, TUMS antacid tablets, marble, dolomite, the coral reefs created by coral animals, shells of certain mollusks, sedimentary limestone bedrock everywhere including south of the Canadian Shield in much of southern and eastern Ontario, and wherever there are limestone caves all over the world, and CaCO3 does make up at least parts of certain mountains of Planet Earth like the impressive Himalayan Range. In these examples, the carbon atoms now trapped in the molecules of mineralized CaCO3, started out as carbon in CO2 of air. Such carbon may stay trapped as CaCO3 in the solid form for perhaps millions of years, for geologic time, before being released into air again as CO2..... for use by plants. Make no mistake, though. Such "rock" is reserve CO2 gas. In time it will return to the atmosphere to serve as "food" for phytoplankton and higher plants, or will precipitate again, perhaps millions of years hence.
Dynamic Chemical Equilibrium, and the Carbon "Sinks"
When it comes to carbon sinks, it might help to think of each sink as a "bulge", like the ears and nose bulging out of an immense, world encompassing, Mickey Mouse balloon. One bulge represents the CO2 gas of air "sink". Another bulge is the organic carbon "sink". Another the limestone "sink", and another bulge for the HCO3-(aq) ions "sink". Squeeze one bulge and "carbon" moves into one, or more, of the other bulges. In the real world, the "squeezing" might be achieved by perfectly normal and natural ways, or by artificial, human imposed ways as proposed by kyoto. An important, normal and natural way occurs every moment of every day, worldwide, when plants remove CO2 from air for use during photosynthesis as they convert inorganic carbon of CO2 gas to organic carbon compounds for themselves. Of course, the carbon, removed from air when plants use up the CO2 supply in air, has to be replaced, and it is. Some of the carbon in other "sinks" is converted to CO2 gas which then diffuses into the air. This happens because of a principle of chemistry (LeChatelier) which says in effect that, in a system at equilibrium, like the atmosphere and biosphere of the entire globe -- a very dynamic chemical equilibrium system, THAT chemical reaction will take place, inevitably, which will alleviate a "stress" imposed on the system. In our situation with carbon, the imposed "stresses" would be due to increases or decreases in the concentrations of gaseous and ionic forms of carbon (not solid). So, if plants remove CO2 from air, that's a "stress" imposed on the chemical equilibrium system of the planet. If not enough CO2 is returned to the atmosphere by cellular respiration or forest fires, or decay of organic matter, etc., then the oceans of the world will automatically convert some of the dissolved bicarbonate, HCO3-(aq) ions, back to gaseous CO2 of air. (By the same token, if the atmosphere gets too much CO2, from whatever source -- man-made or natural, the excess will dissolve in the oceans to make more HCO3- ions .) Exactly the same would happen no matter how much belt-tightening Canadians will be forced to undergo to cut down on so-called "greenhouse gases" -- i.e. CO2 gas. Kyoto Accord implementation would be the silliest, most futile thing, biologically and chemically speaking!
Anthropogentic CO2
Where does human activity fit into this equilibrium? Of course, anthropogenic CO2 happens, but in the greater scheme of things, it is insignificant. Imagine, compared to natural processes, CO2 generated by all human activities combined, including from the exhaled breath of the 6 billion people on planet Earth, and all of their livestock, plus ALL CO2 released into air by industrial and vehicular activities of human beings, all of that hardly amounts to anything on a percentage basis, worldwide. And please do not forget that whatever CO2 gets into the air, and from whatever source, that CO2 does not accumulate in the atmosphere. It is constantly recycled by the plant life in all bodies of water of Earth, and on terra firma.
The Futility of Meddling
Human meddling -- forcing industries and citizens by laws, edicts and regulations to curtail CO2 release into the atmosphere --, such as will be attempted in Canada upon implementation of kyoto, will not make any difference, one way or another, to the concentration of CO2 gas in air. If too much CO2 builds up in air, it will be consumed by plants, or dissolved into the seas. If CO2 levels drop, as by Kyoto efforts, the other sinks ("bulges") will liberate more CO2 to the air. There is not a damn thing people and governments can do to affect these natural processes. Quite frankly, it would be an easier task for human beings to prevent earthquakes, tornados and hurricanes, or to part the Red Sea once again, than to affect changes in the atmospheric CO2 concentrations, appreciably. No, Canadians will get NOTHING but much aggravation and costs with the implementation of kyoto; not further reduction of CO2, which concentrations are already low as it is -- in fact perpetually low, because of the equilibrium which exists among the carbon in the various "sinks".
Global Cooling, A "What IF" Problem
Given the opportunity, I would like to ask the outgoing Prime Minister and his Minister of the Environment, "If the climate of the world would be faced with global COOLING, instead of the currently (wrongly) perceived situation of global warming (not hard to imagine during the particularly cold winter of 2002 - 2003), would they, and their Liberal MPs, institute laws/regulations/edicts which would force the citizens of Canada, and Canadian industries, to manufacture extra CO2, perhaps by providing grant monies for buying SUVs and other gas guzzlers, and would they insist that citizens with fireplaces in their homes burn lots of coal to release as much of this greenhouse gas as possible into the air to warm up the atmosphere of Planet Earth?" For the sake of consistency, they should! But they would probably not do so... and I hope that they would not do so. That would be a ludicrous, stupid and futile thing to do. Yet that would be no more ludicrous, stupid and futile than what they are hell bent on doing now via implementation of the Kyoto Accord; to curtail CO2 emissions in order to stop and then reverse global warming. Either way, lots of money would / will be spent, but all for naught. Human meddling would not, and will not, work in either case!
CO2 is a Good, Clean Gas. Smoke is Pollution. CO2 is not Smoke
From all the government sponsored hype, it may be difficult for you to believe that in reality CO2 is a pure, clear, colourless, and odourless gas, but it really is thus. CO2 is most definitely NOT a foul smelling, blue-black smoke escaping from the tail pipes of gasoline guzzlers or from the smoke stacks of coal-fired electricity generating facilities. Those kinds of "clouds" are indeed smoke. Smoke contains particulate matter, which is pollution and should be cleaned up. Don't confuse smoke with good, clean, CO2 gas which you cannot see or smell.
Nature, and Human Beings, Make Lots of CO2, and That's OK.
Don't Feel Guilty
It is fortunate for life on Earth that although CO2 is removed from the air by plant life at a phenomenal rate, the atmospheric content of CO2 is restored equally rapidly, and by diverse pathways, most of which are quite "green" and proper, as a matter of fact. Here are a few examples to remind us of how Mother Nature, and how human beings, too, replenish the CO2 gas content of air......
.....The living, breathing lungs of the 6 billion people on Earth, and all respiring animals and most other forms of life on Earth, release good, clean CO2 into the air -- for recycling by living plants; not for global warming.
.....Decay of every kind, including the rotting of logs in old growth forests, produces good, clean CO2 -- for recycling by living plants.
.....Cremation of corpses produces good, clean CO2 gas -- for recycling by future generations of living plants.
.....Breweries, bakeries, and fermentation vats at biotechnological and pharmaceutical companies release lots of good, clean CO2 for recycling by living plants.
.....The fizz of escaping gas from newly opened bottles of champagne, beer and cans of pop is due to good, clean CO2 -- for recycling by living plants. (You wouldn't want kyoto to outlaw such refreshments, would you?)
.....Bonfires, flickering candles on dinner tables and in cathedrals, forest fires, dung fires in parts of Asia and Africa, and wood burning in fireplaces in homes of the humble and hauty, alike, all release good, clean CO2 -- for recycling by living plants.
.....Furnaces which burn heating-oil, or natural gas (methane), to warm homes during our long winter months, all release good, clean CO2 -- for recycling by green plants in southern climes, and during the following growing season in Canada. (Yes, when methane burns, it too, most assuredly, releases CO2.)
.....Using gasoline, or ethanol (grain alcohol) in internal combustion engines of cars, lawn mowers, trucks, motorcycles, snowmobiles, tractors, motorboats, or using diesel fuel in diesel engines of trains, vehicles and modern cargo and cruise ships, all produce good, clean CO2 -- for recycling by green plants.
.....Combustion of aviation fuel - kerosene power - which drives hot gases through turbine engines of jet planes, produces lots and lots of good, clean CO2, but this CO2 just might stay up high where the contrails form, because plants can not reach that CO2 so high up. This, out of reach CO2, is the only CO2 which might contribute to the greenhouse effect. But will Kyoto outlaw jet planes? Not on your life. Politicians and certain environmental activists, like to fly too much.
.....Swallowing calcium carbonate types of antacid tablets (like TUMS), or certain kinds of calcium supplements, might make you burp. Guess what? The gas released by that burp is also good, clean CO2 -- which plants will recycle before long.
.....When autumn leaves decay on forest floors across Canada, and when compost piles perk away to create rich humus for our gardens, immense quantities of good, clean CO2 is released -- for recycling by green plants.
.....Using coal fires, or natural gas to boil water to create pressurized steam to spin electricity generators, also releases lots of good, clean CO2 -- for recycling by green plants. That CO2 is NOT pollution. If such facilities produce smoke, then the soot must be filtered and "scrubbed" out. Kyoto is NOT needed to achieve this.
.....Finally, it must be stated that certain categories of volcanos spew out more CO2 gas in a few hours than is produced in a year by all human activities, worldwide. These volcanic eruptions go on every day, year in and year out, and have been going on for most of the 5 billion years that Earth has existed. But plants don't mind. This too is good, clean CO2 -- for recycling by plants everywhere. (The Kyoto Accord doesn't propose to plug up such volcanos, does it?)
Why Does Air Not Run Out of O2?
If you still have a hard time believing that CO2 is not out of control, and that CO2 content is LOW because of plant-life of Earth, let me challenge you to think about the OXYGEN, O2 gas content of the air at sea level. Since all of the six billion human beings on Earth, and all other animals, and most other living things, including plants, consume O2 gas every moment of every day around the clock, and have been doing so for about 4 billion years, AND since countless non-biological oxidation reactions like rusting, and corrosion of metals, and many combustion reations, also consume O2, do you not think that the oxygen supply of the atmosphere should be running out by now? Sure. Oddly enough, it is NOT! The O2 content of air at sea level is still at close to where it has been for long eons of time; at close to 21%. Amazing, yes, but no more amazing than why CO2 content remains LOW at 0.033%. Explanations: As is the case with CO2, it is also the PLANT-LIFE of planet Earth that regenerates and replenishes the O2 content of air, and maintains it at close to 21% by the sea. Plants regenerate O2 gas by the so-called "photolysis reactions" (or the photophosphorylation: "light reactions") of photosynthesis as they "break up" water molecules, H2O, to get energized hydrogen ions, and release oxygen gas, O2. This molecular O2 gas, a by-product of potosynthesis, just happens to be one of the essential materials needed by almost all living things to obtain energy from glucose molecules during cellular respiration. On the other hand, the energized hydrogen ions remain in the leaves and are used by all green plants during the so-called "Calvin Cycle" (also known as the "dark reactions" or "synthesis reactions") of photosynthesis... to consume the CO2 supply of air, and in this way, make biomass. It is the "dark reactions" of photosynthesis which keep the CO2 content of air LOW. Yes, 0.033% is SUCH A LOW AMOUNT OF CO2 THAT THE KYOTO PROTOCOL IS NOT NEEDED!!!
CO2 as "Fertilizer"
CO2 is CO2, no matter the source, and plants love it all. Horticulturists have been known to "spike" the air in their greenhouses with extra CO2 to promote more rapid, and lush plant growth just as they control the temperature of the air in the greenhouse, soil moisture, soil mixtures, soil nutrients (fertilizer), soil pH (acidity/alkalinity), light quality (proper wavelengths) and light quantity (hours of exposure and intensity of light). No, CO2 is not a pollutant. In a sense, carbon dioxide is a plant fertilizer absorbed through the leaves and other green parts.
Of "Green Credits", Potentates, Redistribution of Wealth, and Corruption
Now, more about the sinister ulterior motive, mentioned earlier: We, the ordinary citizens of Canada, have not been told the whole truth about kyoto. I may be wrong, but it looks more and more as if the Prime Minister now has a plan in place for ensuring his legacy --- an international legacy. Perhaps the P.M. wants to go down in INTERNATIONAL history as THE leader of an affluent Western nation who initiated systematic redistribution of wealth from the 1st world to the 3rd world; from the affluent, developed world to the poor, "developing" world. How? --by the pretense of buying so-called "carbon credits" from certain "poorer" countries like some in Africa, and of course Russia (....even though Canada already has lots of greenery which WE could "sell"). From where would the billions upon billions of dollars come? Where else, but from the already beleaguered taxpayers of Canada; from fees levied on the petroleum industry -- which of course will be passed on to us, the consumers; from the automobile industry -- which again will be foisted on the consuming, car-buying public. So, now Canadians and our industries are about to be hit with so-called "green fees" or "carbon taxes", EVEN THOUGH CARBON DIOXIDE IS NOT AT FAULT AT ALL. It really seems that the current Government is determined to ram through confiscation of more and more of the wealth of Canadians, and our corporations. What a farcical, stupid, corrupt wheeling and dealing we have at the top. What will Canadians get in return? Nothing! --only lost jobs, extra expense and lots of aggravation. You can be sure that the climate of Canada, let alone the WORLD, will not improve one iota due to implementation of the Kyoto Protocol.
One more time. Since there is no need to lambaste CO2, there is no need for the Kyoto Accord. Since there is no need for the Kyoto Accord in any way shape or form, there is no way in h--l Canadians should be forced to pay "green" fees. Most of us do NOT want to give any more: not for income taxes, not for property taxes, not for GST, not for airport taxes, not for higher gasoline taxes, and most definitely not for greasing the palms of corrupt politicians anywhere in the world by purchasing obscene, unneeded "carbon credits" from them. Sell the world Canada's "carbon credits", if you can. I doubt any other nation on Earth is gullible enough to fall for that Ponzi scheme.
A New P.M. and New Government = New Hope for Canadians, IF...
Finally, a plea to Paul Martin, our "Prime Minister - in - Waiting" (as of July, 2003), and to all Government of Canada politicians: As you assume control of the "ship of State", soon, please continue to support conservation programs, and do set aside more lands for national and provincial parks, but please, please insist upon high ethical standards. Sweep the halls of the Parliament of Canada clean of corruption and scandals as you replace the old regime. And for heavens sake, DO NOT IMPLEMENT the Kyoto Accord / Protocol, a scheme without scientific or moral merit!
References
* The author is a recently retired teacher of biology, chemistry, physics and general science. He is a former research agronomist (soil chemistry, fertility and microbiology), and has worked as a chemist in the sugar industry in the USA and Canada.
Some references:
1. An excellent, Canadian source http://www.friendsofscience.org/
2. Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.... http://www.oism.org/oism/#Top @ http://www.sitewave.net/news/
3. The Science & Environmental Policy Project.. http://sepp.org/
4. Readers Digest......... http://www.readersdigest.ca/debate.html?a=v&di=154
Then refer to contributions by the following:
Paavo Siitam (June 2, 2002), Allan MacRae (June 11th), Prof. Tim Patterson (June 12th), Bob Pawley (September 4th), and many others.
5. Read: "Climate Change is Natural", the "Comment" feature article in the Globe and Mail newspaper of Tuesday, November 19, 2002, written by Dr. Sallie Baliunas, Deputy Director at Mount Wilson Observatory and Astrophysicist at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Dr. Tim Patterson, Professor of Geology (Paleoclimatology) Department of Earth Sciences, Carlton University, Ottawa; and Allan MacRae, Professional Engineer, Investment Banker, and Environmentalist.
Al Gore won the Oscar for his movie "An Inconvenient Truth." The film's theme is that the Earth is warming alarmingly ("global warming") largely because humans produce too much CO2 and other "Green House Gasses" that trap solar heat.
There is an indisputable record that global temperatures have been rising. In the 20th century, the recorded average temperature rose 0.6 degrees Centigrade (1.08 degrees Fahrenheit), mostly before 1940. Nothing strange there. The planet has been either warming or cooling since its formation some 4 billion years ago.