phill Parsons
IN his introduction, author of Nine Facts about Global Warming from and published by the Lavoisier group, Ray Evans attempts to demolish the scientific argument behind global warming.
He puts the proposition that those proposing action to avoid climate change and the projected consequences as involved in a plot. This may sound familiar to those on the other side who think that his views are also part of a conspiracy with dangerous outcomes.
It would seem this plot involves self seeking politicians such as Tony Blair UK PM, scientists with their importance and careers at stake such as James Hansen of GISS, a part of NASA and wannabe businessmen hoping to grow rich on carbon trading.
And of course there is a moral dimension.
On the one hand there are those who have grown up in a millenarian tradition, such as Al Gore, and who are seen as now preaching a new religion, where nature has replaced another single diety adhered to in this country.
An older church is brought into play with this Paul Collins sourced quote from George Pell, Roman Catholic Cardinal of Australia “pagan emptiness and fears about nature have led to hysteric and extreme claims about global warming. In the past, pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods.
Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.’
[Sacrifices in some pagan cultures have been shown to relate to ensuring that the climate continues its beneficent pattern. Nature, because of its observed power, was seen as a deity[ies]. Capricity and cruelness of the god[s] were the seasonal and climate variability we observe today. Organized human activity has collapsed in many regions in the past due to climate patterns changing. Modern communications and transport have, in recent times, addressed lesser degrees of variability.
It is a leap to conclude that because one has a view about C02 emissions they are pagan let alone the question that any believer in a particular deity has moral authority over any other belief. If the argument about global warming is to be based on fact then Pell must speak from measurable observation not dogma. pP]
And then an amorphous group, consisting of the upper classes of the West, has special privileges when it comes to finding the civil servants to work at the UN.
Even worse, environmentalists are heading the environment NGO’s and lobbying the unelected UN representatives, and by implication bypassing the elected governments.
Stating the obvious, Evans sites the UK and Sweden for meeting their Kyoto Protocol targets and that China and India are emitting carbon in a race to match the West.
And then the science. The whole global warming theory will fall because “Implicit in the climate models used by the anthropogenists as the foundation of their claims of warming catastrophe is the rapidly diminishing impact of carbon dioxide on the radiation balance at the edge of the stratosphere. On their own assumptions [speaking of the IPCC scientists] a doubling of atmospheric CO 2 will yield only a 0.8 °C change in global temperature.
Finally, he hops into the Howard government for spending on projects to research power alternatives, so radical are his views he nips at old partners as they succumb to the pressure of the evidence.
Here are the startling ‘facts’:
Fact 1 Climate change is a constant.
Yes, we must agree with Mr. Evans the climate has changed over the period of the Earth’s existence and that variability can be measured for certain periods and conclusions drawn from the data.
“Despite the significant natural increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas concentrations during the warming periods there has been a recurring upper bound to earth ’s temperature over the past million years. Earth reached that upper bound about 8,000 years ago and the long-term projection is for a cooling trend.”
This notably observation conforms with Lovelock’s Gaia theory. However Evans and he fail to agree on the conclusion about the self correcting nature of the system [The book The Revenge of Gaia gives Lovelock’s millennial view, atmospheric carbon being the causative factor]
“Past fluctuations of climate provide a benchmark against which to assess the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC ’s) high-end projections of global warming. The IPCC ’s computer projections grossly violate earth ’s historical experience. That the relatively minor increase in the magnitude of radiative forcing from doubling carbon dioxide concentration could produce such amplification in the global temperature response as the computer models (GCMs) predict, is not credible.”
Well whilst the idea of exceeding past events based on the parameters of past events is a good argument for taking a conservative approach the magnitude of the event the impacts of such changes during the geological past would indicate that a precautionary approach is warranted and some action taken.
Stern, dealt a telling blow in the introduction because he supposedly told his master, Blair, what Blair supposedly wanted to believe [a part of the plot] has put a figure on spending to address impacts and move away from a dependence on fossil fuels and their carbon emissions, 1% of GDP.
In Australia its $6.3B, or about half the Federal Governments recent surpluses. And that is what the whole nation spends to address this, not just the government portion. This is not unaffordable insurance against what the majority scientific opinion predicts?.
One expenditure that did not come in for criticism was the Murray Darling funding but this is aimed at adapting to the CSIRO predicted and the observed outcomes of climate change in that region. Such an expenditure is not seen as a waste, especially by water users in that region. Expenditure such as this can address our commitment in the early stages of adaptation and mitigation.
Another example will be the cost of phasing out incandescent light globes. Manufacturing plan will have to be built and recycled and those wanting electric light will have to pay the additional cost of the new globes.
Fact 2. Carbon dioxide is necessary for all life on earth and increasing atmospheric concentrations are beneficial to plant growth, particularly in arid conditions. Because the radiation properties of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are already saturated, increasing atmospheric concentrations beyond current levels will have no discernible effect on global temperatures.
Its true that CO2, when added in a greenhouse can stimulate growth, provided the other limiting factors such as available food temperature and water are balanced accordingly.
Plants can also suffer from too much carbon and in trials it has been shown that a carbon rich and hotter atmosphere floods plants capacity to absorb carbon and you see this natural method of storing carbon demonstrate a reduced capacity to do so.
In talking about carbon cycles and carbon emissions from fossil fuel why does the author fail to mention how long before carbon is removed form the atmosphere by the natural systems and the vulnerability of those systems to changes in climate.
According to Evans human activity is adding 7Gigatons to the atmosphere each year. He also describes the balance in the cycles between land, ocean and atmosphere.
In his paper we see that carbon in the atmosphere is increasing [Fig5.] and in Figure 12 he correlates the trend that both sides of the argument agree is a variable but rising temperature with increasing fossil fuel use.
So he agrees that CO2 is accumulating but claims that the little bit [1%] added each year is too little to impact even though it is accumulating year on year as his own paper shows.
Dismissing this accumulation because of a supposed recent discovery that there is a maximum to the temperature change that additional CO2 can cause, determined by the radiation balance in the stratosphere.
Note for Evans, we live are in the biosphere.
This correlation between CO2 accumulation and the additional temperature gained from this and other warming gases
It cannot escape to the voids of space.
That is the function that the layers of the atmosphere perform for us so we avoid looking like the moon or Mars.
Fact 3. The twentieth century was almost as warm as the centuries of the Mediaeval Warm Period, an era of great achievement in European civilisation. The recent warm period, 1976 –2000, appears to have come to an end and astro-physicists who study sunspot behavior predict that the next 25 –50 years could be a cool period similar to the Dalton Minimum of the 1790s-1820s.
One cannot argue with facts, these periods and events are not imaginings, although the value placed on human activity in Europe is subjective.
However, concluding there is a plot from changes in the way data is presented is a great leap worthy of any conspiracy theorist.
Figure 10 is used to support the argument that a new cooling period coming up, albeit a weak one. Er so. It is generally agreed that these cycles occur and along with the impact of air pollution [global dimming] are affecting the degree of warming.
Looking at Figure 10, I see a constant emerging from the 27 years of data and it appears to be a consistent warming toward the current end of data set, as the global climate models predict.
The danger of depending on the masking of solar cycles, or indeed air pollution, is that when or if they pass the planet is exposed to more rapid changes that they masked leaving us impacted more greatly and if we are inactive with greater costs to address such warming.
Another Minimum holding temperature down combined with global action to reduce carbon emissions may be a very fortuitous window. But if it taken as evidence for denying carbon accumulation is driving a warming at the end of that Minimum period we will have a rapid heating effect as norms reappear and will have lost a lot of time taking precautionary action.
This seems like high risk behavior, not what you would expect of the author.
Of course the trouble with effective precautionary action is that it may delay the onset of the predicted result thus making it harder to defend your precautionary actions.
On the other hand waiting until a pattern is clear can leave us all exposed to runaway climate change, events that have occurred in the past, such as the end of the Permian period.
Fact 4 The evidence linking anthropogenic (man-made) carbon dioxide emissions and current warming is limited to a correlation which holds only for the period 1976 to 2000. Attempts to construct an holistic theory in which atmospheric carbon dioxide controls the radiation balance of the earth, and thus determines average global temperatures, have failed.
Now in Fact 1 Evans claimed that the climate is variable and then because it shows change he now uses this to in an attempt to disprove the idea that there is a correlation between CO2 and warming.
The climatologists studying the Vostock and other ice cores argue they show a strong correlation between increases in CO2 and CH4 and temperature.
Others claim that CO2 rises follow temperature increases driven by other sources.
Evans own work admits we add 7Gt of CO2 to the atmosphere and that it is accumulating due to its longevity. He even admits it has a warming effect, albeit limited.
If this is a failed theory why are the predicted outcomes presenting.
Fact 5 The anthropogenists claim that the overwhelming majority of scientists are agreed on the anthropogenic carbon dioxide theory of climate control; that the science is settled and the debate is over; and that scientific sceptics are in the pay of the fossil fuel industries and their arguments are thus fatally compromised. These claims are an expression of hope, not of reality.
Starting with the defense of Galileo against persecution for his then unaccepted views we move to Lysenko to show how powerful organization can suppress argument among scientists.
Both sides of the global heating debate now claim there is wealth and power behind the competing views.
Whilst we can still hear them, the minority view about the causes of climate change have lost the argument in the community, of that there is no doubt.
They remain able to speak and if they prove correct they can try all the fraudsters, they will have almost all the ears with such a collapse of the warming model.
Fact 6 Anthropogenists such as former US Vice President Al Gore blame anthropogenic emissions of CO 2 for high temperatures, droughts, melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels and retreating glaciers, and a decline in the polar bear population. They also blame anthropogenic CO 2 for blizzards, unseasonable snow, freezing weather generally and for hurricanes, cyclones and other extreme weather events. There is no evidence at all to justify these assertions.
That the Gulf Stream could not shutdown because it would stop ocean circulation belies the evidence that it has changed its temperature regulating role in the past. Evans refers to those changes in his Introduction to show climate variability.
The results of such changes brought on the end of the Mediaeval Warming Period he refers to in his Fact 3.
I won’t go on about the South Atlantic’s first known cyclone, or the recent predictive work on cyclone behavior. Suffice to say this occurred with the highest measured concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and experts are of the view cyclone intensity will increase with the following rise in temperature. Thus I would draw the opposite conclusion.
To argue the impacts on insurance have changed due to changes in population and its distribution comes as a so what moment. We also had better prediction so that evacuation was possible. Earlier cyclones of a similar intensity where they have impacted on populated areas with less warning have killed more and also a greater % of the populations impacted.
Surely re-insurance companies are only right to be precautionary, they are paying out for global events and they are, on the records of payouts, increasing.
The question should be how many times can the US afford to rebuild from a Katrina sized event and if it cannot do so repeatedly then some precautionary actions are needed if storm event intensity is likely to increase with temperature.
To argue about places far away is disingenuous. The residents of the Arctic have to deal with environmental changes and the measured temperature in the region is trending up.
The event of finding starved drowned adult polar bear floating in an ice free sea appears to have risen in frequency. Will they outbreed the cause of this as Evans postulates?.
Hadn’t we better ask why the subduction rates of the crustal plates have speeded up before we dismiss the drowning of sea level communities and islands, if this is the cause.
However the geological community is not dashing about claiming such an event is presenting and nor is there apparent an increase in the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions associated with plate realignment
I have read different data on the question of the behavior of the ice sheets. Thinning, melting and movement are being recorded.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is apparently being held in check by a wall of undersea gravel otherwise more movement would be apparent. The British Antarctic Survey has noted a thinning of the ice shelf and more rapid movement of ice into the ocean.
Fact 7. Increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide will have negligible impact on the earth ’s radiation balance and will promote plant growth everywhere. There is no need to sequester CO 2 in the ground or to subsidize nuclear or other non-carbon based methods of energy production .
Well it’s neat. Quote global climate model critics and then dismiss the need for action because we cannot be 100% sure about the predictions.
Neither can we be 100% sure that the skeptics are right.
Logical action, take a no regrets course.
Rational action, avoid the predicted impacts of the majority supported case.
Action for skeptics, produce evidence better than the weight of the carbon induced warming supporters and stop looking like apologists for coal, money can be made from nuclear power too.
Fact 8 ‘Tropical ’ diseases such as malaria and dengue fever are not related to temperature but to poverty, lack of sanitation and the absence
of mosquito control practices .
Yes its so.
Mussolini drained the Pontine Marshes last century and removed malaria from that area in Italy.
However the West Nile Virus has spread to colder areas than found in its natural distribution. We do not face one disease changing its patterns.
Further his argument fails to mention the between 23,000 and 35,000 additional deaths in Europe during the last heat wave that most notably affected France.
Fact 9 The decarbonisation of the world ’s economy would, if attempted, cause huge economic dislocation. Any democratic government which seriously sought to full decarbonisation commitments would lose office. Shutting down coal fired power stations and replacing them with renewable energy sources such as windmills or solar panels will cause unemployment and economic deprivation.
Yes, they are big changes.
Sweden is attempting a low carbon economy so that course will be interesting to watch to see if it goes out because it is also closing it nuclear power supply down
Suzuki will put into the market hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles in 2008. Japan and the US, where fuel is available at the pump, will be the first market. GM will run out electric vehicle version 2 in 2010.
What fools the other manufacturers will look if we need such a power source and they have to pay a royalty to Suzuki for the power train.
Howard is hoping to geosequester carbon. Having to take the advice government is given and act may be Hobson’s choice given the electorates view on global warming. However, I am sure if the skeptics had managed a reasoned and evidenced argument Howard would still be with them in body as he remains in spirit.
The first solar thermal power station was successfully trialed in NSW and a full scale model was to be built. The scientist who ran the business has relocated to a more positive environment for such investment, California, the world’s 7th largest economy with a program to decarbon.
The industry bodies in the US are demanding legislation to give surety about investment in coal and gas, giving up on trying convincing themselves it isn’t happening.
AL Gore, defeated Presidential candidate from 6 years ago, makes one movie and the world is swept up in a fervor for change after all the work of the skeptics. What did they do wrong in the period between the 1992 Rio Conference on the Environment and 2006, before the most recent Fourth Assessment of the IPCC, for such a reaction to occur?.
And back around to the persecuted Galileo, proved right in the end, but we still have people who, although they are able to access the data, believe the earth is like the horizon at sea appears, because of the imperceptibility of the curve, flat.
It may not take as long as the time between Jules Verne’s idea of going to the moon and the first landing to develop low carbon economies, but on the majority evidence before us we need to move in that direction with some alacrity.
The Secretary of the Australian climate sceptic Lavoisier group, Ray Evans, has failed to produce a convincing argument for not taking a rational and thus precautionary approach.
He must also feel somewhat deflated that Hugh Morgan has moved toward the other side, trying to take a buck from the matter by exploiting an opportunity through the more expensive than coal energy source, nuclear power.
For one person to put an argument using the work of others to dismiss the peer reviewed work of a large body of scientists including the argument that they have been panicked, are being manipulated and have missed crucial data is too big an ask.
Climate skeptics are isolated and such individual comments, whilst they may make noise in the debate, remain unconvincing, hinging on a single point in defiance of the measurable.
Trials or even no penalty truth and reconciliation commissions will not resolve this. If the position Evans takes was correct, the worst that moving toward a low carbon economy whilst the majority view of the climate scientists failed to come to pass would be to clean the atmosphere, lengthen the time we could use fossil fuels and stimulate the economy as have other pollution abatement measures.
With this quality of argument I will be giving the book a miss so as not to strain my one eyed view and blood pressure.
