18
SCIENTISTS DEBUNK GLOBAL WARMING
SCARE
The dire predictions about global warming
are a complete fallacy. This is what 20,000 scientists have recently said, and
among them are 2660 climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers and
environmental scientists. Here is their statement:
“A review of the research literature
concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric
carbon dioxide leads to the conclusion that increases during the 20th
Century have produced no deleterious effects upon
global weather, climate, or temperature.
Increased carbon dioxide has, however, markedly increased plant growth
rates. Predictions of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in minor
greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are in error and do not conform to current
experimental knowledge.” This Petition
was sponsored by Dr. Frederisk Seitz, former past
president of the National Academy of Sciences.
(The full paper debunking the global warming hypothesis is found on www.oism.org/pproject ).
The global warming hypothesis rests on the
claim that the increasing levels of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere by
burning fossil fuel (coal, oil and natural gas) will warm the earth to
dangerous levels, causing catastrophic raising of sea
levels and destructive weather patterns.
The global warming hysteria took off almost
exactly when the Cold War ended. It makes us wonder if human beings are bred or
conditioned to need some doomsday event upon which they can focus their fears.
The media certainly acts on the assumption that bad news sells
Give or take 0.1 degrees, climatologists
estimate that the earth has warmed by 0.5 degree Celsius in the last 100
years. This is well within the range of
natural temperature variations, especially when the following factors are
considered:
·
The
earth has been recovering from a “mini ice age” or cooling episode for
the last three hundred years.
·
Considering
earth’s temperature over a three-thousand year time scale (calculated from ice
cores) the earth has not quite climbed back to an average temperature after the
“little ice age” episode of 300 years ago. It was from 1-2 degrees warmer than
it is now during the Middle Ages.
·
The
temperature charts of the last century show quite clearly that most of the
warming occurred before 1940 – that is, before the levels of atmospheric carbon
dioxide rose to any significant degree.
Just as it has happened with other
environmental scares such as acid rain, de-afforestation, resource depletion,
the hole in the ozone layer or population explosion, the dire predictions about
rising temperatures or rising sea levels have had to be revised downward again
and again. The pattern is quite clear:
an environmental threat starts out to be as terrifying as a tiger but
winds up being something as benign as a pussy cat. The global warming scare is
no different.
For instance, in 1990 the Inter-governmental
Panel of Climate Control (IPCC) estimated that over the next 100 years, the
earth would warm 3.2 degrees Celsius. That was revised down to 2.6 degrees in
1992, then down to 2 degrees in 1995, and eventually down to 1.25 degrees when
allowing for other factors that were not originally taken into account.
The predictions of global warming have all
been based on computer modelling of climate, a science that is still in its
infancy. Climate is incredibly complex
with many variables not yet understood. The computer modelling did not factor
in the “negative feedback” effect of water vapour, clouds and the rate at which
plants would absorb the excess carbon dioxide. The computer projections,
therefore, have been at variance with the empirical data. Whereas the IPCC
predicted a very significant temperature rise between 1979 and 1998, the
earth’s temperature marginally declined over this 20-year period. Who knows,
the eco-alarmists may soon be whipping up hysteria about the onset of another
ice age just as they were doing in the 1970’s.
One of biggest single factors that has
brought all the gloomy predictions about global warming undone is the amazing
capacity of both plant and microbic life on the earth and in the ocean to
absorb excess carbon dioxide. The Oregon
Institute of Science and Medicine reports:
“As
atmospheric CO2 increases, plant growth rates increase…pine trees have shown a
sharp increase in growth rate during the past half-century…the Amazon rain
forests are increasing their vegetation by about…two tons of biomass per acre
per year…Trees respond to CO2 fertilization…Clearly the green revolution in
agriculture has already benefited from CO2 fertilization; and benefits in the
future will likely be spectacular…
“Human use of coal, oil, and natural gas has
not measurably warmed the atmosphere, and the extrapolation of current trends
shows that it will not significantly do so in the foreseeable future. It does however, release CO2, which accelerates the growth rate of
plants and permits plants to grow in drier regions. Animal life, which depends
upon plants, also flourishes…[The paper cites some experiments showing the
amazing effect that spiking the air with CO2 had on seedling trees, wheat and
orange trees]
“Mankind is moving the carbon in coal, oil
and natural gas from below ground to the atmosphere and surface, where it is available
for conversion into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush
environment of plants and animals as a result of the CO2 increase…This is a
wonderful and unexpected gift of the Industrial Revolution.”
Don’t let this good news scare you!