Actual Science Disputes Theory Of Man-Made Global Warming

Due to my playing hooky yesterday (actually, it was food poisioning; I suspect bad clams), I didn't link this amazing column on global warming. I imagine most who are interested have already read it, but if you haven't, it's a must-read.

There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998

By Bob Carter
(Filed: 09/04/2006)

For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).

Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, 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.

In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.

...

The problem here is not that of climate change per se, but rather that of the sophisticated scientific brainwashing that has been inflicted on the public, bureaucrats and politicians alike.

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Two simple graphs provide needed context, and exemplify the dynamic, fluctuating nature of climate change. The first is a temperature curve for the last six million years, which shows a three-million year period when it was several degrees warmer than today, followed by a three-million year cooling trend which was accompanied by an increase in the magnitude of the pervasive, higher frequency, cold and warm climate cycles. During the last three such warm (interglacial) periods, temperatures at high latitudes were as much as 5 degrees warmer than today's. The second graph shows the average global temperature over the last eight years, which has proved to be a period of stasis.

The essence of the issue is this. Climate changes naturally all the time, partly in predictable cycles, and partly in unpredictable shorter rhythms and rapid episodic shifts, some of the causes of which remain unknown. We are fortunate that our modern societies have developed during the last 10,000 years of benignly warm, interglacial climate. But for more than 90 per cent of the last two million years, the climate has been colder, and generally much colder, than today. The reality of the climate record is that a sudden natural cooling is far more to be feared, and will do infinitely more social and economic damage, than the late 20th century phase of gentle warming.

It hardly needs pointing out that in the seventies environmental alarmists created a public scare over "global cooling," demanding that we immediately take drastic steps to protect the earth by, essentially, de-industrializing, or else the earth would freeze over.

The ink had barely dried on the "scholarly papers" predicting a new ice age before some of the exact same environmental "scientists" began scare-mongering over "global warming" in the late eighties, demanding that we immediately take drastic stesp to protect the earth by, essentially, de-industrializing.

They have an agenda. They don't like industrializing. They don't like cars. They don't like oil. They don't like the idea of cities, with humans living in a non-natural state, although, of course, just about every single one of them lives in a major metropolis.

Whatever the evidence, whatever the temperature, they always offer the same cure: We must stop building, creating, producing so much damn wealth and civilization and comfort for human beings. The disease and diagnosis is ever-changeable, but the recommended treatment never changes.

This is not science. It is Marxist Rousseauian "natural state of man" utopianism, and a cult of the worship of Earth as "Gaia."

The earth is here for the benefit of human beings, not vice versa.

posted by Ace at 12:40 PM

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