Two heretical comments on climate change theory

Newsletter n. 270

Verona, 08  January, 2010

 CLIMATE: IS THE DEBATE COOLING DOWN?

AN ARTICLE IN “LIBERTÉ POLITIQUE”  GOING AGAINST THE TIDE

Benedetta Cortese

In the latest issue of the French quarterly “Liberté politique” (n. 47, December 2009) there is an excellent article by Jerôme Stevenson on the theory of global warming in which the author, on the basis of readily available data and a good dose of common sense,  quite placidly illustrates not the inexistence of the issue as such, but rather the Al Gore-like ideological and reductive way of tackling it.

According to the theory of global warming, the greenhouse effect is produced by water vapor (H₂0) and carbon dioxide (C0₂). The first element that has to be determined is whether there really is an increase in C0₂. According to the Mona Loa Observatory in Hawaii, the increase in the amount of carbon dioxide over the last 50 years has been insignificant (from 0.0280% to 0.0383%). The oceans alone contain 40,000 billion tons of carbon dioxide compared with the 750 in the atmosphere. Therefore, very complex ocean-air-ocean transfer phenomena are potentially more relevant than whatever man does. Moreover, 45% of the C0₂ produced by man is absorbed by the sea. Someone has even argued that heating itself has increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and not vice versa. Were this true, the causes for global warming would have to be sought elsewhere.

But has the global temperature really increased? Even when taking into account the fact that the global temperature of the planet earth is a statistical construction, deemed reliable are the data provided by NASA, according to which upward and downward temperature anomalies were net from 1970 to 1988, but then became stable. Does this mean that as of 1998 the presence of C0₂ in the atmosphere no longer had an impact on the mean temperature?

Back in 2007 the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change) of the United Nations had forecasted that the concentration of C0₂ in the atmosphere would have ranged from 390 to 490 ppm by 2009. The actual level registered in 2009 turned out to be 385. The rise in temperature had been estimated to be between +0.8° and +1.6°, while it turned out to be +0.6°. The forecast models used by the IPCC where therefore overly pessimistic. Nonetheless, no one ventures to challenge them.

Research work being done on sun spots has observed a statistical correlation between changes in sun spots and the temperature on the planet earth over the last 130 years. According to the Danish scholar Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center, there is a relationship between cosmic radiation and the formation of clouds. Sun spots reduce cosmic radiation, and this increases the cloud coverage that causes an ensuing decline in temperature. Nonetheless, the IPCC refrains from factoring such elements into its own theories. 

The IPCC speaks about the retreat of glaciers and the shrinking of the polar caps. According to doomsday prophets, the city of Washington would be part of the ocean bed in 2089. And yet in both 2008 and 2009 glaciers covered more surface area than they did in 2007. There is also in inversion in the trend relative to the level of oceans: the IPCC had forecast an increase of 1 meter by the end of the XXI century, then reduced that to 77 centimeters, while the real datum is around 33 centimeters.

The article concludes as follows: “The complexity of the interactions among physical phenomena, gigantic masses of data, factors still unknown, and the existence of phenomena whose cycles combine or overlap makes any serious climatological forecasting impossible at present”.

The Newsmax website has this ironic comment on global warming theory and the unusual winter conditions in the the UK

5. Global Warming? Don’t Tell the Brits

The headline in Britain’s Daily Express on Wednesday said it all: “Snow Chaos: And They Still Claim It’s Global Warming.”

As many regions of the U.S. battled bone-chilling temperatures and ferocious snowstorms this past week, Britain was also socked with horrendous winter weather.

Unusually heavy snowfall — up to 16 inches in some places — closed highways, stranded hundreds of motorists, disrupted trains, and shut down schools and airports across Britain as the country suffered through its longest cold snap since 1981.

Temperatures at mid-week were well below freezing as far south as London.

“British winters are typically mild, and cities and towns are generally ill-equipped to deal with heavy snowfall,” according to The Associated Press.

But the Daily Express observed that climate experts say “blizzards, ice, and sub-zero temperatures that have gripped the U.K. for almost a month in a record deep freeze are not ‘robust’ indicators of global weather patterns.”

Unusually bad winter weather wasn’t limited to Northern Europe, however. Temperatures plunged to 10 degrees in parts of China and Beijing experienced its biggest snowstorm in 60 years on Jan. 3.

The cold claimed at least 157 lives in India during the week, and 30 died in Bangladesh.

Back in the U.S., a meteorologist with AccuWeather.com said in some areas this will be the “coldest winter in many people’s memory.”

Climate experts’ claims about global warming “come despite the fact that the rest of the northern hemisphere, from America to Europe and Asia, is suffering some of the worst winters in living memory,” the Daily Express noted.

Christopher Booker, author of “The Real Global Warming Disaster,” said, “It is amazing how this scaremongering from climate change lobbyists keeps arising even though they are constantly being proved wrong.

“Last year there was snow in Saudi Arabia and still they persist in saying the temperature is going up.”