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Anonymous
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The myth of Global Warming
There follows an abridged version of an article in Sept 2001 edition of the Chemical Engineer. It is written by Philip Stott, professor of biogeography in the University of London.
"I believe the Kyoto Protocol is bad for science, for economics, for politics and for society in the widest sense. The idea that we can control, in any predictable manner, climate change through the management of one tiny set of variables, namely human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, is so fundamental a lie that it beggars belief.
"Climate is the ultimate coupled non-linear chaotic system. Unsurprisingly, our general circulation models remain intrinsically simplistic, with even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admiting publicly that it knows next-to-nothing about 75% of the major proxy variables involved.
"It is deeply alarming that a whole series of recently published heavyweight scientific papers questioning both the relationship between CO2 and temperature and the data/modelling underlying the concept of global warming have been basically ignored by the UK and European media. These scientific papers are found in major journals such as Nature, Climate Research, and the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, and involve institutions of the highest scientific distinction, inclusing NASA, the Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of the Ruhr/Ottawa-Carlton Geoscience Centre, Harvard University, the Smithsonian, and Stanford University. Yet, despite their undoubted scientific legitimacy, the papers have received scant public attention, above all because they do not support and legitimise the socially-constructed myth of global warming. I have tried to persuade environmental correspondents to report such work, only to be met with incredulity that such science might even exist.
"One critical focus has been on the role of that most important 'greenhouse gas' of all, water vapour (not CO2), and on the palaeo-geological relationships between water vapour, CO2 and temperature. Jan Veizer's work, for example, is widely regarded as magisterial in its decoupling of temperature from CO2, so much so that one editorial commentary written for the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change regards his work as creating a crisis in the global warming myth.
"A second focus has been on the many missing, or little-known, variables in the IPCC and other climate models, including newly discovered 'Pacific' vents...If confirmed...this effect alone, which is not recognised in current climate models, could significantly reduce estimates of future climate warming. Another neglected variable is particulates. New work on black carbon and aerosols was reported in the US, but hardly at all in Europe, yet may be responsible for 15-30% of global warming, although it is not even considered in any of the discussions about controlling climate change.
"A third focus has been on the need to correct many temperature measurements, especially those taken over oceans...Studies have demonstrated that, when scientists take proxy sea-surface temperatures out of the global temperature record for the past 20+ years, and replace them with air temperature data gathered more accurately by ships and buoys, the global warming trend...drops markedly by about one third. Other scientists argue that land temperature measurements and records are equally flawed, reflecting primarily the process of urbanisation and the well-documented 'urban heat island' effect rather than any significant rise in global temperatures.
"Climate is governed by a billion variables and it is intrinsically chaotic. These variables range from the flip of a butterfly's wing, through the changing albeldo of the earth's surface, erupting volcanoes, shifting ocean currents, waves and salinity, the dynamic geometry and cycles of the earth and the sun, the ever-changing mix of gases 'natural' and 'man-made', to planetary dust and meteors. The grand narrative that we can ultimately affect or 'control' climate change in any meaningfully predictive way simply by playing about with one or two politically selected variables has to be challenged publicly.
"Even if all 180 countries ratfied the protocol and then actually met their targets - a highly unlikely scenario - we still might only affect temperature by between 0.07 and 0.2 degC, and even this could be thrown out by a couple of erupting volcanoes or altering landscape albedos.
"According to recent models, implementing Kyoto will cost anywhere between $100bn and $1000bn, with a mean around $350bn. Now that amount of money could pay off the debt of the 49 poorest countries of the world and provide clean drinking water for all."
In a letter in the following edition of The Chemical Engineer, a reader quoted Kirchhoff's Law:
"At a given temperature the ratio of the emissivity to the absorptivity for a given wavelength is the same for all gases and is equal to the emissivity of an ideal black body at that temperature and wavelength. Or in layman's terms, there is no such thing as a greenhouse gas."
Discuss!
There follows an abridged version of an article in Sept 2001 edition of the Chemical Engineer. It is written by Philip Stott, professor of biogeography in the University of London.
"I believe the Kyoto Protocol is bad for science, for economics, for politics and for society in the widest sense. The idea that we can control, in any predictable manner, climate change through the management of one tiny set of variables, namely human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, is so fundamental a lie that it beggars belief.
"Climate is the ultimate coupled non-linear chaotic system. Unsurprisingly, our general circulation models remain intrinsically simplistic, with even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admiting publicly that it knows next-to-nothing about 75% of the major proxy variables involved.
"It is deeply alarming that a whole series of recently published heavyweight scientific papers questioning both the relationship between CO2 and temperature and the data/modelling underlying the concept of global warming have been basically ignored by the UK and European media. These scientific papers are found in major journals such as Nature, Climate Research, and the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, and involve institutions of the highest scientific distinction, inclusing NASA, the Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of the Ruhr/Ottawa-Carlton Geoscience Centre, Harvard University, the Smithsonian, and Stanford University. Yet, despite their undoubted scientific legitimacy, the papers have received scant public attention, above all because they do not support and legitimise the socially-constructed myth of global warming. I have tried to persuade environmental correspondents to report such work, only to be met with incredulity that such science might even exist.
"One critical focus has been on the role of that most important 'greenhouse gas' of all, water vapour (not CO2), and on the palaeo-geological relationships between water vapour, CO2 and temperature. Jan Veizer's work, for example, is widely regarded as magisterial in its decoupling of temperature from CO2, so much so that one editorial commentary written for the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change regards his work as creating a crisis in the global warming myth.
"A second focus has been on the many missing, or little-known, variables in the IPCC and other climate models, including newly discovered 'Pacific' vents...If confirmed...this effect alone, which is not recognised in current climate models, could significantly reduce estimates of future climate warming. Another neglected variable is particulates. New work on black carbon and aerosols was reported in the US, but hardly at all in Europe, yet may be responsible for 15-30% of global warming, although it is not even considered in any of the discussions about controlling climate change.
"A third focus has been on the need to correct many temperature measurements, especially those taken over oceans...Studies have demonstrated that, when scientists take proxy sea-surface temperatures out of the global temperature record for the past 20+ years, and replace them with air temperature data gathered more accurately by ships and buoys, the global warming trend...drops markedly by about one third. Other scientists argue that land temperature measurements and records are equally flawed, reflecting primarily the process of urbanisation and the well-documented 'urban heat island' effect rather than any significant rise in global temperatures.
"Climate is governed by a billion variables and it is intrinsically chaotic. These variables range from the flip of a butterfly's wing, through the changing albeldo of the earth's surface, erupting volcanoes, shifting ocean currents, waves and salinity, the dynamic geometry and cycles of the earth and the sun, the ever-changing mix of gases 'natural' and 'man-made', to planetary dust and meteors. The grand narrative that we can ultimately affect or 'control' climate change in any meaningfully predictive way simply by playing about with one or two politically selected variables has to be challenged publicly.
"Even if all 180 countries ratfied the protocol and then actually met their targets - a highly unlikely scenario - we still might only affect temperature by between 0.07 and 0.2 degC, and even this could be thrown out by a couple of erupting volcanoes or altering landscape albedos.
"According to recent models, implementing Kyoto will cost anywhere between $100bn and $1000bn, with a mean around $350bn. Now that amount of money could pay off the debt of the 49 poorest countries of the world and provide clean drinking water for all."
In a letter in the following edition of The Chemical Engineer, a reader quoted Kirchhoff's Law:
"At a given temperature the ratio of the emissivity to the absorptivity for a given wavelength is the same for all gases and is equal to the emissivity of an ideal black body at that temperature and wavelength. Or in layman's terms, there is no such thing as a greenhouse gas."
Discuss!
