For those who think I have taken quite a bit of time before picking up on the subject, let me reply to you that it’s been a very hectic twelve days. But since I was able muster up some free time to blog again this afternoon, here’s what I’ve been waiting to say on the matter:

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So, according to Bob Carter, a geologist and paleoclimate researcher at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, global warming might have stopped in 1998.

You know, I’ve been waiting quite a bit of time for some serious-minded scientists and researchers to actually set both feet down and decry the environmentalist-fueled all out craze we’re going through right now where the only thing considered in debates is "dogmatic ideology" instead of the more credible "science".

From Carter’s own words:

"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."

Well, at least we can be sure that that much is right. Like we "non-ecolo-wackos" haven’t known that for years. It’s just too big for it all to be true. They’re trying too hard, putting too much emphasis on things. It almost sounds like the whole friggin’ planet is going to blow up! That’s what fueled my skepticism on human activities being linked to climate change at first. That, and the fact that environmental doomsayers in the past have always been proven wrong. Why would they be more accurately predicting the end of the world today?

"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."

That’s exactly what I’m killing myself over and over trying to explain to ecolo-followers; but I just can’t seem to get through to them: SOME PLACES are warming up, (so yeah, it’s possible your Greenpeace freaks extracting ice cores up there in the Arctic may be right) and SOME PLACES are cooling down. I’m no expert here, but when you put everything in perspective, you will be able to witness that all temperature variations recorded on the Earth during a given time pratically always balance each other out. When there are more places warming up, there is "global warming", and when there are less, there is "global cooling". Which led some ecolo-freaks in the seventies to predict we were heading straight into a new Ice Age. You know what? They turned out to be wrong. Exactly like the enviro-freaks who are predicting we’ll warm up the temperature so much we’ll die from it (or something like that, I have better to do than to listen to their inane rhetoric…) It’ll take much more than our mere "human activities" to offset a climate pattern that’s been here and working for millions of years. It’s all natural and naturally-triggered climate variation, people.

"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."

Now that is so true. We are not changing anything here. And enviro-freaks use short periods of time to explain "global warming" too, while they say the periods of time studied by scientists to refute "global warming or its "man-made" status will always be too short…

"Since the early 1990s, the columns of many leading newspapers and magazines, worldwide, have carried an increasing stream of alarmist letters and articles on hypothetical, human-caused climate change. Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as "if", "might", "could", "probably", "perhaps", "expected", "projected" or "modelled" - and many involve such deep dreaming, or ignorance of scientific facts and principles, that they are akin to nonsense."

The words used to describe a seemingly plausible phenomenon in the media can play a determining role in whether it’s taken seriously or not by the public. Can’t agree more with the guy. Anti-tobacco lobbyists also are very good in spinning and formatting their data so it appears more "imminent" or "real" to the reader. And while you can use statistics to prove anything, overblown statistics are all the more dangerous.

"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. Governments generally choose not to receive policy advice on climate from independent scientists. Rather, they seek guidance from their own self-interested science bureaucracies and senior advisers, or from the IPCC itself. No matter how accurate it may be, cautious and politically non-correct science advice is not welcomed in Westminster, and nor is it widely reported."

Bang! Carter hit the nail on the head. Politicians are afraid of wandering away from the environmentalist dogma, because it seems right, plausible, and is believed by the people who elect them. If they started doing their own reasearch instead of asking Environment, Inc. to tell them what to say, they’d unfortunately be committing political suicide. The most apparent example I can give you right now is Stephen Harper’s utmost care and word choice in deploying a new non-Kyoto environmental initiative. He certainly doesn’t want to look like he "turns his back" on the environment, simply because he would like to take Canada out of the dreaded Kyoto Protocol. That, unfortunately, won’t happen, but maybe if we act like it isn’t there…

"Marketed under the imprimatur of the IPCC, the bladder-trembling and now infamous hockey-stick diagram that shows accelerating warming during the 20th century - a statistical construct by scientist Michael Mann and co-workers from mostly tree ring records - has been a seminal image of the climate scaremongering campaign. Thanks to the work of a Canadian statistician, Stephen McIntyre, and others, this graph is now known to be deeply flawed."

Yeah, I remember when I heard about this. Come to think of it, I’ve only read this in one newspaper: the National Post. I don’t think it got out in others, and at the time, the Liberal federal government, under Environment minister Stéphane Dion’s leadership, WAS using the hockey stick as its prime justification for "climate change action". Pathetic.

"There are other reasons, too, why the public hears so little in detail from those scientists who approach climate change issues rationally, the so-called climate sceptics. Most are to do with intimidation against speaking out, which operates intensely on several parallel fronts.

First, most government scientists are gagged from making public comment on contentious issues, their employing organisations instead making use of public relations experts to craft carefully tailored, frisbee-science press releases. Second, scientists are under intense pressure to conform with the prevailing paradigm of climate alarmism if they wish to receive funding for their research. Third, members of the Establishment have spoken declamatory words on the issue, and the kingdom’s subjects are expected to listen.

On the alarmist campaign trail, the UK’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, is thus reported as saying that global warming is so bad that Antarctica is likely to be the world’s only habitable continent by the end of this century. Warming devotee and former Chairman of Shell, Lord [Ron] Oxburgh, reportedly agrees with another rash statement of King’s, that climate change is a bigger threat than terrorism. And goodly Archbishop Rowan Williams, who self-evidently understands little about the science, has warned of "millions, billions" of deaths as a result of global warming and threatened Mr Blair with the wrath of the climate God unless he acts. By betraying the public’s trust in their positions of influence, so do the great and good become the small and silly."

Outrageous. There’s no other word. Ideology tortures science and makes it say what it wants. That’s just painfully clear.

"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.

The British Government urgently needs to recast the sources from which it draws its climate advice. The shrill alarmism of its public advisers, and the often eco-fundamentalist policy initiatives that bubble up from the depths of the Civil Service, have all long since been detached from science reality. Internationally, the IPCC is a deeply flawed organisation, as acknowledged in a recent House of Lords report, and the Kyoto Protocol has proved a costly flop. Clearly, the wrong horses have been backed.

As mooted recently by Tony Blair, perhaps the time has come for Britain to join instead the new Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6), whose six member countries are committed to the development of new technologies to improve environmental outcomes. There, at least, some real solutions are likely to emerge for improving energy efficiency and reducing pollution."

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If you want to reduce pollution, research and new technologies are the answer. Not taxes, not rules, not government decrees, and DEFINITELY NOT protocols primarily and covertly designed to transfer wealth from "polluting" rich Western-world nations to "non-polluting" (or so they want us to believe) poor Third World nations. Hint hint: KYOTO.

That’ll be all, folks.

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Source:

There IS a problem with global warming… it stopped in 1998
By Bob Carter - The Telegraph (04/09/2006)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml