Updated 27 November
“We only understand 10% of the climate issue. That is not enough to wreck the world economy with Kyoto-like measures.”
Henk Tennekes, Former Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute in an article:
The limits of predictability, January 19, 2007 here
So the climate debate is hotting up, even if the climate itself isn’t. The leaked emails and other documents from the Climatic Research Unit of the UK’s East Anglia University prove beyond a shadow of doubt that the data used to substantiate the theory of man-made global warming are being falsified, and that those who don’t agree to toe the line are being discredited or worse.
Whatever, it’s another indication of how the science/industrial complex, through the politicians, is misleading the public for its own ends.
Of course it’s true that a reduction of pollution is desired, no one would dispute the fact, but there are other honest ways to go about it if the will is there. Unfortunately, it would appear that we can’t rely on the objectivity of scientists to help in this respect.
An independent inquiry into the facts of global warming would seem to be overdue, though how one is to assure the independence of such a body I wouldn’t know, with so much corruption around these days. But something should be done before the delegates assemble in Copenhagen in December to decide on the ingredients for their witches brew.
Meanwhile, the controversy concerning financial bailouts for failing western banks continues as huge amounts of tax payers hard earned cash are still being used to support, in seemingly illegitimate as well as legitimate fashion, these staggering giants who some economists believe should be allowed to fall anyway to allow support for healthier alternatives.
With Christmas approaching it would be nice to know that the scrooges of this world are not gaining the upper hand.
References:
1. Britain’s bank bail-out may have broken world trade rules
2. Climate money ‘unaccounted for’
3. Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?
4. Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out
5. Climategate: Dr. Tim Ball on the hacked CRU emails
6. Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)
(very readable – Jan)
7. Dr Vincent Gray – GLOBAL WARMING SCAM
Insight into the uncertainties behind the models
“Climategate” started out when there appeared on the Internet a collection of e-mails of a group of climatologists who work in the University of East Anglia in England. These documents reveal that some climatologists of international preeminence have manipulated the data of their investigations and have strongly tried to discredit climatologists who are not convinced that the increasing quantities of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere are the cause of global warming.
It is true that a majority of the scientists who study climatic tendencies in our atmosphere have arrived at the conclusion that the world’s climate is changing, and they have convinced a group of politicians, some of whom are politically powerful, of the truth of their conclusions.
A minority, however, is skeptical. Some believe that recent data that suggest that the average temperature of the atmosphere is going up can be explained by natural variations in solar radiation and that global warming is a temporary phenomenon. Others believe that the historical evidence indicating that the temperature of the atmosphere is going up at a dangerous rate is simply not reliable.
Such lacks of agreement are common in the sciences. They are reduced and eventually eliminated with the accumulation of new evidence and of more refined theories or even by completely new ones. Such debates can persist for a period of decades. Academics often throw invective at one another in these debates. But typically this does not mean much.
But the case of climate change is different. If the evidence indicates that global warming is progressive, is caused principally by our industrial processes, and will probably cause disastrous changes in our atmosphere before the end of the twenty-first century, then we do not have the time to verify precisely if this evidence is reliable. Such a process would be a question of many years of new investigations. And if the alarmist climatologists are right, such a delay would be tragic for all humanity.
The difficulty is that economic and climatologic systems are very complicated. They are not like celestial mechanics, which involves only the interaction of gravity and centrifugal force, and efforts to construct computerized models to describe these complicated systems simply cannot include all the factors that are influential in the evolution of these complicated systems.
All this does not necessarily indicate that the alarmist climatologists are not right. But it really means that if global warming is occurring, we cannot know exactly what will be the average temperature of our atmosphere in the year 2100 and what will be the average sea level of the world’s ocean in that year.
It also means that we cannot be confident that efforts by the industrialized countries to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere will have a significant influence on the evolution of the world’s climate.
Alas, the reduction of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere would be very costly and would greatly change the lives of all the inhabitants of our planet–with the possibility (perhaps even the probability!) that all these efforts will be completely useless.
Harleigh Kyson Jr.
Thank you for your reaction. I agree with your comments. Although there is still dispute among scientists at an academic level as to whether the Earth is warming and if so why, due partly , as you suggest, to the simplicity of models compared to the complexity of climate change and man’s interaction with it, research has obviously become too enmeshed in politics. The emphasis should be on a reduction of pollution in general and not, as now, of CO2 with its dubious role in global warming. As you rightly say, the latter will be a very costly business that will have devastating effects on economies already reeling under the financial crisis, including those of developing nations.
The recent disclosures of scientific fraud and intimidation (not an exaggeration I feel) have also added to a growing distrust of scientific research in the eyes of the public, which scientists seem too ready to dismiss.
It would seem time to take a pause and submit the facts to independent and open inquiry before proceeding further, but I can’t see this happening now that climate change has become such a political issue.