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Prof.
David Bellamy, OBE.,
BSc., PhD.,
Hon;
FLS,. DSC., DUniv., C.Biol., FIBiol., FRIN.
Hon:
Professor Adult and Continuing Education-University of Durham.
Special Professor of Geography University of Nottingham. Hon
Professor of the University of Central Queensland.
President
of
The Conservation Foundation, Durham. Surrey and Birmingham
Wildlife Trusts, Coral Cay Conservation, National Association
for Environmental Education. British Naturalists Association,
Conservation Volunteers of Ireland, British Institute of
Cleaning Science, British Home and Holiday Parks Association,
Camping and Caravanning Club Of Great Britain.
Vice
President
British Trust for Conservation Volunteers, Fauna and
Flora
International, Marine Conservation Society, Australian Marine
Conservation Society, Wild Trout Trust, Countrywide Holidays
Association.
Trustee
of the Living Landscape Trust, Hon Fellow Chartered Institute of
Water and Environmental Management. Honourary Member of the
Emirates Environment Group.
International
consultant, Author of 44 books, Writer and presenter of some 400
television progammes on Botany, Ecology and Environment.
Recipient
of The Dutch Order of the Golden Ark, the U.N.E.P. Global
500
Award;
The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award for Underwater Research;
BAFTA.,
Richard Dimbleby Award., BSAC Diver of The Year Award, RGS Busk
Medal
Founder
Chair of the International committee for the Tourism for
Tomorrow Awards. 1995- 93.
Originator
along with David Shreeve of The Conservation Foundation and the
Ford European Conservation Awards.
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Opinion piece by Prof. David Bellamy
19 January 2008
Greetings
from up over 2008! |
A
happy and a prosperous new year based, one hopes, on the
commonsense of resource efficiency not sleazy carbon trading.
Just
take a look around the world: everything is growing, from
housing, shopping centres, highways, airport expansion,
hotels, sports stadia and of course grid-lock.
Little
wonder then, that after all their carbon heavy pre-Christmas
shopping in Bali, the global warmers needed
a final late night session cobbling together a statement that
in effect awarded them another 2 years on full pay with
expenses to plan
a road map to their next talk-fest in Poznan.
This
Bali Bash brought me a rash of enquiries about why I was still
a global warming sceptic when the world knows that:
1.
Carbon Dioxide is the main green house gas.
2.
Records
show that global temperature is closely linked to the amount
of CO2 in the atmosphere.
3.
Over
the past 100 years the amount of carbon dioxide has increased
and the global temperature is also increasing.
4.
Reducing
the amount of insulating gases we put into the atmosphere is
key to reducing the impacts of climate change.
All
I have to do is point out the following convenient truths:
1.
Water vapour is the main greenhouse gas providing 97% of the
greenhouse effect without which there would be little or no
life on earth. Even the IPCC owns up to the fact that of
the 200 billion tonnes of CO2- carbon circulated every year,
less than 8 billion comes from human causes thus only 3% of
the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is due to human
activities.
2.
As you celebrate the dubious success of the Bali Bash please
take notice of the carbon dioxide in your champagne, when cold
it bucks the fizz - when warm, out comes the CO2 into the
atmosphere.
This
is exactly what happens when the oceans warm up. Records in
multiple ice cores, stomata, ocean sediments and other
research reported in peer-reviewed journals back this up.
Why
do the warmers continue to ignore this evidence?
Whether
you like it or not the link between CO2 and warmth is the
opposite of all that the global warmers claim, which is that
increased temperature is caused by the rise in the
concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The
historical record shows temperatures go up, followed by the
rise in carbon dioxide concentration. So how can carbon
dioxide be to blame? And what, we ask, caused these repeated
reversals in any case?
3.
The claim that CO2 has increased in the last 100 years is only
true if we ignore 90,000 CO2 measurements taken by Nobel Award
winning scientists. These show that levels of CO2 in the
recent past were much higher than the IPCC are willing to
admit. Add to that global temperatures fell from 1940 through
the early seventies causing some of the now global warmers to
scaremonger that we were heading for a catastrophic ice age.
Throughout that time the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was
rising.
4.
“The global temperature record has not been exceeded since
1998.” Although the doomsters screamed that this high was
proof of global warming they now claim that 1998 was anomalous
due to a strong El Nino. Of course they never tell Joe public
that El Nino is not a source of heat it can only redistribute
what is there already.
I
could go on and on; however a recent court case in Britain
found that Al Gore's, 'An Inconvenient Truth' should not
be shown to school children without warning them that his
“shockumentary” contained many errors and cherry
picked its science.
It
is a shocking indictment of science as it is now presented by
the media, (including some of the worlds leading national
broadcast channels, like the ABC and the BBC) that pupils are
forced to base their future hopes and fears on what are no
more than a pack of computer driven scenarios.
There is no scientific evidence that rising levels of
atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause all the catastrophes
they talk about.
Even
worse for in a recent survey 41% of children questioned said
they were losing sleep due to the man-made global warming
scare. Is that acceptable given the entire scare is based
solely on politically funded computer models which can be
programmed to suggest whatever politicians require?
Mind
you those same politicians are so worried that the truth will
out that they are doing everything in their power and a lot
that isn’t, to erode the roots and the routes of democracy
before their term of office comes to an end.
My
last two points.
Many
genuine climate scientists who do their best to enlighten the
world that our climate is governed by solar variation and
orbital changes - the well known Milankovitch Cycles - are
vilified as “deniers” and “flat-earthists”. This is
surely the conduct of gutter politics not scientific debate.
These
include the Russian Academy of Science who tell us they expect
a mini ice age to begin in 2012 and as I put computer to paper
the first sun spots have appeared heralding what promises to
be a weak 24th sun spot cycle. We await its impact
with interest.
New
Zealander’s in the light of this information are you still
sitting comfortably in your second real cool summer on the
trot, while 16.2 million squared kilometres of sea ice has set
a new Antarctic record, a new absolute record high since the
measurements started in 1979?
I
also hope that your farmers, foresters and gardeners are
benefiting from the “free lunch” fertiliser application
that has been working its wonders across the world. It falls
from the sky and is called carbon dioxide - a real cool gas!
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