by Klaus Rohrich
January 24, 2005
I recently saw a newspaper ad that urged Canadians to take the "one-tonne challenge". Placed by the Government of Canada, the ad featured a picture of none other than Rick Mercer of the CBC’s metric hour (22 minutes) fame, holding up a booklet published by the government entitled The One-Tonne Challenge. The ad and the booklet exhorts Canadians to reduce personal emissions of so-called greenhouse gasses by 20 percent per year or one-tonne per person and to "take action on climate change".
I find it interesting that it’s no longer about "global warming" and that the newest bug-aboo is "climate change". I remember in the late 70s everyone was concerned about the coming ice age. Clearly no one has a real clue about what is happening to the earth’s climate, although the liberal left wants to turn whatever it is into a morality play. It gives me cause to be suspicious of the agenda of those who would impose restrictive compacts, such as the Kyoto accord on the world. No matter how I look at the treaty and no matter what the treaty purports to achieve, it still looks like a wealth redistribution scheme disguised as a plan to save us from ourselves.
There is so much confusing and contradictory information about climate change circulating today, that it is difficult to make sense of it. Quite frankly, the issue has become too politicized to be meaningful, with complex data being reduced to slogans such as the one currently being touted by the Government of Canada.
Both sides of the argument are claiming the other side is lying. Recently John Kerry chided the "non-scientific, pseudo-scientific, anti-scientific nonsense emanating from the right wing". When couched in terms such as these by people like John Kerry, I am given to wonder what the real agenda might be.
I have heard people that I believe are intelligent and whom I respect tell me with a straight face that the evidence of climate change and particularly mankind’s precipitation of it is irrefutable. However, no matter how hard one looks, it’s difficult to find definitive "evidence" in any form other than computer models. and while many of us rely on computers in our day to day endeavours, I can’t say that I would place a great deal of trust into a computer simulation, particularly in light of the fact that most such simulation-prediced outcomes have turned out to be incorrect.
In the 1980s the United Nations formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to act as a clearinghouse for climate research on a worldwide basis. The trouble with that is that the same wonderful group of bureaucrats that brought us the "Iraqi oil for food" scandal runs the IPCC. Except in this case, instead of money and oil disappearing, we’re finding that scientific research that contradicts the accepted orthodoxy about climate change somehow doesn’t find its way into the public eye, or if it does, it’s in a highly edited form to ensure it conforms.
The IPCC’s 1990 report, which was its first, acknowledged that there was a great deal of concern that human influence might be responsible for climate change; there was no concrete evidence that this was indeed the case. The 1995 report issued by the IPCC did announce that there was now evidence that there was "a discernible human difference" on the world’s climate. One problem: the scientists who worked on this report did not actually say that. What they did say was that they could not tell whether or not there was a discernible human influence on climate. The claim was added after the research was completed and the conclusions were changed by the bureaucrats at the IPCC to conform to their agenda.
all the accepted dogma regarding climate change appears to be flawed in some manner. In his excellent new book State of Fear, Michael Crichton explodes a lot of myths, which many of us tend to accept as gospel. For instance, the idea that ocean levels are rising at an unprecedented level is total hogwash. according to research quoted by Crichton sea levels are rising, but at no faster rate than they have been for the past six thousand years. The rise is miniscule, no more than six to eight inches every century. additionally, recent trends indicate that sea levels are increasing at a much slower level than they have in the past.
Some members of the scientific community have expressed concerns about glaciers melting. and while indeed there are a number of glaciers that appear to be melting, some are actually increasing in size. There are some 160,000 glaciers in the world today with about two-thirds of them inventoried (497 in California alone). The mass balance data from studies lasting more than 5 years available today only covers 79 glaciers. How can we infer from this small sample that all of them are melting and that man is responsible?
Much has been written about Mt. Kilimanjaro’s glaciers melting, with blame going, where else, but to global warming. The facts are that the most recent studies of that mountain have ascertained that the glaciers’ melting is actually due to the deforestation of the rainforest at Kilimanjaro’s base, which has been responsible for warm, moist air currents feeding the glaciers. With the forests gone the air now rushing up the mountain is hot and dry, hence melting glaciers.
Much has been made of this year’s hurricane season in the U.S. with claims that the storms were the biggest, most numerous and most powerful in history. But examination of available data covering the 20th Century’s decades paints a different picture. The largest number of hurricane strikes in the last century occurred during the 1940s. In fact, the IPCC’s own report issued in 1995 states "examination of meteorological data fails to support the perception" of an increase in the number and severity of storms or their relation to long-term global climate change.
We can all put on hair shirts and suffer for our affluence by participating in the Kyoto accord. Not that it would do any good, as the same projections generated from computer simulations that we rely on to predict the inevitability of severe climate change, predict a decrease in global temperature of only .04 degree Fahrenheit over the next decade, providing the Kyoto accord is fully implemented.
Yes, we can all do better in how we utilize energy and there certainly isn’t anything wrong with conserving non-renewable resources. But I have my doubts that hamstringing ourselves in the name of a nebulous treaty will have much of an effect at the end of the day. I’m also infinitely suspicious of anything advocated by the Canadian government. Looking at their track record in stimulating the economy, providing universal health care, managing a firearms registry or helping Canada’s aboriginal people. I shudder to think what harm they could do if they start fooling with the weather.
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