When it Comes to Global Warming, just Cool It
By
Larry Mounser
Sydney Morning Herald:
February 12, 2001Before you believe we're all about to be swamped by melting polar ice caps, writes, you should read the fine print.
Solicitors and purveyors of insurance love small print, and, when it comes to keeping themselves employed, so do some scientists. Just look at the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, reported in the Herald last week. Such IPCC reports are the backbone of the Greenhouse lobby's argument, and are continually referred to in debate on the issue. But they're a sham.
Last week's report, for example, contained a lengthy Summary for Policy Makers that pronounced in bold type that: "The global-average surface temperature has increased over the 20th century by about 0.6oC." How can you accurately make such fine measurements across the whole, varied planet? But it doesn't stop there: "Since the start of the satellite record in 1979, both satellite and weather balloon measurements show the global average temperature of the lowest 8 kilometres of the atmosphere has changed by +0.05 +/- 0.10oC per decade."
That's outrageous. The margin for error (0.10oC) is twice as high as the reading! Would you accept a car with a speedo that indicated that you were heading down the road at 180km/h while simultaneously saying maybe you were going backwards at 60km/h? In fact, the report shows the temperature of the atmosphere could have actually gone down by 0.05oC.
How much did those satellites and weather balloons cost in a world where children routinely die for want of the cheapest medicines? Next time you're measuring your 10-year-old's growth on the wall, you can say: "Well, we think you've grown by five centimetres, but you might have shrunk by five 'cause we're really not that good at measuring. But just in case you're growing too much, we'll stop feeding you. We will, of course, be spending your pocket money on further research."
And there's more: "The global average surface temperature has increased significantly by +0.15 +/- 0.05oC per decade. The difference in the warming rates is statistically significant [ie, it's a Big Problem for us but we can't explain it]. This difference occurs primarily over the tropical and subtropicalregions."
This means that on the surface, in some areas, the (fallible) people taking the readings—especially in progressively deforested and baked tropical areas—have found higher figures than the satellites, and since warming is the barrow we're pushing, we'll choose to focus on those findings, not on the satellites. And we'll totally ignore the fact that the planet's temperature changes naturally, so we've got a 50-50 chance of being right whatever we say.
But the most astonishing statements are about the supposedly shrinking Antarctic ice sheets and rising sea levels. Guess what? It's not happening. Apparently the ice cap is getting bigger and the rate of sea-level rise has not changed since industrialisation.
"The Antarctic ice sheet is likely to gain mass because of greater precipitation. No significant trends of Antarctic sea-ice extent are apparent since 1978, the period of reliable satellite measurements. Within present uncertainties, observations and models are both consistent with a lack of significant acceleration of sea level rise during the 20th century."
Hang on! Isn't the Antarctic ice sheet supposed to be shrinking and drowning everyone because of nasty old human-produced CO2? Isn't that what this is all about?
The document chooses to emphasise, in bold, all the likelihoods that the temperature is rising and that humans are to blame. At the same time it downplays material within the text which indicates: (i) they are not 100 per cent sure; (ii) the information is mixed; (iii) sampling is limited; (iv) there are still unknowns; and (v) significant parts of the research has margins of error that make it useless. And that there may, in fact, be no problem at all. But guess what these "many hundreds" of scientists who are earning a living researching the Greenhouse Fiasco finally recommend? You got it: more research. The 10-year-old with the possible growth problems would see straight through that and have every right to say: "Not with my piggy bank, you don't." No wonder there are scientists who have refused to be associated with previous IPCC reports because of the cynical way they have been edited to keep the greenhouse bogy alive.
There is no mechanism through which carbon dioxide, which makes up a measly th of 1 per cent of the atmosphere, could be responsible for any current rise. Our planet is literally awash with a substance whose thermal capacity, and hence heat retention, outstrips virtually every other known substance: water. So how is such a small percentage of carbon dioxide responsible for anything? When I last posed that question, the previously vocal CSIRO remained deafeningly quiet. Fellas?
Chemical pollution, overpopulation, species depletion, human greed and misery are real problems on this planet, so let's not waste any more time jousting at windmills. I'm proud our Government stood up to this nonsense.
Larry Mounser, who has worked as a geophysicist, is now a research fellow in mass communications at the University of NSW. herald.htm
For the Summary for Policy Makers see www.ipcc.ch
See "Myths of Global Warming".
Promoting Tree Planting for Lowering the Water Table
by
Dr. Peter Gell
Snowy River Mail:
28 November 2001Dr Peter Gell Deputy Head of the of Geographical and Environmental studies argues that logging in the catchment areas undermines efforts to provide environmental flows.
Note that simultaneously, tree planting is being promoted for the purpose of lowering watertables. If it doesn't make sense, you are most likely dealing with the confused Greens. They babble on about 'ozone holes' which have been with us since time immemorial, and 'global warming' when the world is cooling, glaciers are growing, winters in the higher latitudes are becoming absolutely arctic.
We also 'Flat Earth Society,' the members of which refuse to accept that the Earth is a globe!
6,000 Years Past the Interglacial Maximum — WAKE UP!
We are 6,000 years past the Interglacial Maximum, when the Earth was a whole 6oC warmer than at present. When grapes were grown in Norway, and Greenland was in fact lush and green. When torrential rains caused 'The Flood,' when swollen rivers ran through the Sahara desert leaving wide and deep channels, now dry river beds called 'wadis.'
Global cooling, not global warming, causes drought. When the Earth's climate cools, more of the atmospheric water vapour (aka clouds) falls as snow upon the arctic regions and high mountain peaks, forming ice packs and glaciers. Less falls as rain im the temperate, sub-tropical and tropical regions. Droughts begin to dominate the climate.
Up to 6,000 years ago Global Warming produced more clouds, more rain, more lush growth, and thus the biosphere absorbed more carbon dioxide from the atmospere. So what came first, the chicken or the egg? Global Cooling reduces growth, and thus tends to increase carbon dioxide levels. Natural carbon dioxide produced by Nature is 'orders' greater than that produced by man. And carbon dioxide plays an insignificant role except as necessary plant nutrient. Water yapour is THE Major Green House Gas! The more water is removed from the atmosphere by cooling, the faster Earth cools. Look at frozen Mars, its atmosphere is significantly carbon dioxide!
Paradoxically, as Global Cooling produces less cloud cover, subtropical and tropical areas are scorched by the sun. Although in temperate regions winters are arctic, snowfalls have been decreasing there and reservoirs are only filled to around half of their capacity in many North American regions. The British Isles, notorious for their rainy weather, have experienced drought, and arctic winters!
When Rivers Flowed through the Sahara
Even 2,000 years aago Northern Africa was still the 'bread basket' for the known world, and a treasured part of the Roman Empire. From the 14th Century to the mid-19th Century the first signs of the approach of the New Ice Age brought arctic winters to our world. The river Thames froze solid many a winter, during the Mini-Ice Age which lasted 500 years.
Now only a few winters ago, Morecambe Bay froze, trapping shipping from the Irish Sea in Morecambe, Lancaster, and Heysham (reported in The (UK) Weekly Telegraph).
Paid to Act Stupidly
Unfortunately, as Emeritus Professor William Regelson of Virginia University Medical School, said in an interview in 1999, research institutes and universities, "are paid to act stupidly." And, as Gore Vidal said in a recent interview, aired by the ABC Radio National (Australia) on November 18, 2001, in 'Books and Writing,' presented by Romana Koval: "So we have a country, which isn't much of a country. A sort of plutocracy," where "the corporate world pays and buys" . . . "1% owns the place . . . 20% do very well, because they are working for the 1% . . . 80% are doing very badly. We never hear from them."
Well, almost never, except for the occasional mention of the Unemployed, the Homeless, the Hospitals, Aged Care and Educational Crisis, Illiteracy and Post-literacy, and, the condition of the Bonang Road.