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If the United Nations' climate change meeting
wraping up this weekend in Geneva is anything like previous sessions, the
developed world can expect to be harshly condemned for our alleged
contribution to global warming. Last month's Working Group I of the UN's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confidently asserted that human
activity is a major cause of climate change.
This month's Working Group II will focus on alerting us to the
destruction climate change will bring on humanity and the world around us.
Sea levels will rise and small island nations will be sub-merged. Droughts
will ravage the land and extreme weather and disease will threaten
millions in the developing world. Whole ecosystems will be at risk due to
the inexorable march of mass extinction of plants and animals. We must
drastically alter our economy or fossil fuel-produced greenhouse gases
will all but destroy the planet.
While all this makes good news copy and excites environmental groups,
it bears little resemblance with what climate science is really telling
us. WG I was seriously flawed in many ways, not the least of which was its
claim that the 1990S was likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the
warmest year, in the past 1,000 years. Although the data on which this is
based applies only to land in the Northern Hemisphere, the IPCC uses it to
imply a global trend.
This relatively new claim is based on a paper published in 1999
by Michael Mann of the University of Virginia. Besides the enormous
uncertainties inherent in his data, Mann completely ignored the Medieval
Warm Period and Little Ice Age, both of which are well documented in the
historical and scientific literature as being significant world-wide
climate events.
His research was primarily based on an analysis of tree rings, a
notoriously inaccurate indicator of climate trends. Tree rings are laid
only during the growing season, not the whole year, and they do not record
night temperatures since photosynthesis only occurs in the daytime. Tree
rings are influenced by numerous factors other than temperature, such as
rainfall, sunlight, cloudiness, pests, competition, forest fires, soil
nutrients, frosts and snow duration. And, of course, trees only grow on
land so tree rings tell us nothing about the maritime climate, the prime
determinant of climate conditions throughout the world.
Nevertheless, the IPCC chose to cite this sensationalist study while
ignoring the enormous amount of contradictory scientific literature, not
to mention the well-established historical record.
Watch for similar propaganda coming out of WG II. Dr. Abdullahi Majeed
of the Maldives is one of the six vice-chairs of the session so we can
expect to hear a plea to developed nations to stop destroying his country
through our reckless consumption of fossil fuels. He'll lament that the
melting of polar ice caused by climate change is raising sea levels and
submerging his island nation. The deterioration of coral reefs in the
Maldives, Barbados, etc., will be blamed on us as well, this time due to
ocean temperature rises caused by - you guessed it - climate change.
While this may be a good tactic for countries seeking billions of
dollars in compensation, it is certainly not good science. Just as the
melting of ice cubes in a glass of water does not cause the glass to
overflow, so too the melting of polar sea ice will not result in ocean
level changes. Even if the entire Antarctic ice pack melted there would be
no impact on sea level.
Only if massive quantities of inland Greenlandic and Antarctic glaciers
melted would we see sea-level rise of the order required to submerge
coastal settlements. This did not happen even when the Earth was more than
five degrees Fahrenheit warmer, 5,500 years ago, and that was the
warmest our planet had been in 120,000 years.
The Maldives and many small island-countries are built entirely on
coral and coral fragments. This coral is continually and quickly, growing
upward. Unless something very bad happens to the natural environment in a
region, no sea level rise is fast enough to get ahead of coral growth.
Oceanographer Klaus Schwarzer of Christian Albrechts University in
Germany explains that the problems in the Maldives are caused by two
factors - local pollution that is killing coral reefs (the same as in
Barbados) and inappropriate construction projects. Barriers built out into
the ocean to stop the drift of sediment away from the coast are disrupting
the circulation of nutrient-rich water to the reefs and thereby killing
them. As a result, the Maldives are sinking. This has nothing to do with
climate change and is clearly the fault of the Maldivian government which
selected a barrier design maladapted for a coral atoll.
The IPCC's propaganda machine excels in the production of news media
sound bites and sensationalist reports which exclude common sense and the
views of dissenting scientists. It is unfortunate that its climate
science, economics and intellectual honesty are not equally well
developed.
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