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27
July 2008
Where
is the Evidence?
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Earlier
this month the Royal Society of New Zealand issued a special
statement designed to clear up the “controversy over climate
change” and “possible confusion among the public”. The
statement from the Society’s Climate Committee asserts
that “The
globe is warming because of increasing greenhouse gas
emissions” and that “human activities” are to blame.1.
This statement reinforces the governments’ position that in
order to prevent climate disaster, legislation must be passed
to force the public to make personal sacrifices and reduce
their consumption of energy.
According
to their website, the
Royal Society is an independent, national academy of sciences,
representing nearly 20,000 scientists, technologists and
technicians. They administer science and technology funds
worth $40 to $50 million for the government, publish science
journals, offer advice to Government, and promote science and
technology. The
Society operates on a budget of over $5 million.
In response
to the Climate Committee’s statement, a long-standing member
of the Royal Society, Dr Vincent Gray, resigned. Dr Gray, a
climate consultant and expert reviewer of all four of the
United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) Assessment Reports, claimed that his resignation was in
protest at the major inaccuracies contained in the Society’s
climate statement. His concerns include the fact that the
globe is now cooling, not warming, and that there is “no
evidence whatsoever for a human contribution to the climate”.
2.
The
Society’s climate change statement also drew strong
criticism from the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. The
Coalition was founded in 2006 by a
group of climate experts (including the late Augie Auer) who
had become increasingly alarmed about the misleading
information being disseminated about climate change and
so-called anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. In their
detailed response to the Royal Society they stated:
“It beggars the imagination that
an expert committee can launch a public statement about
climate change that is so partial in its arguments and so out
of date in its science”.
They claim
that the Society has a major conflict of interest: “Six of
the eight members of the expert committee carry the conflict
of interest that they work for institutions that garner
research funds to investigate the human influence on global
warming. …five members are employed by NIWA, one member
works within a global change research institute and one is
associated with ‘carboNZero’ - which is a ‘greenhouse
gas emissions management and reduction scheme offering carbon
credits’. Incredibly, the committee contains not a single
person drawn from research agencies other than NIWA, nor any
independent climate scientist rationalists. The Chairman of
the committee – through senior positions that he holds at
NIWA and within the IPCC - also advises government on climate
change… In view of such manifest conflicts, it is not
surprising to discover that the RSNZ statement on climate
change is both biased and inadequate”. 3.
Around
the world, as controversy over climate change continues to
grow, it remains very clear that contrary to what the
politicians tell us, not only is there is no consensus of
scientific thought on this matter, but the science is
certainly not settled.
In
fact, in a bizarre twist of fate, at a time when advocates of
man-made global warming continue to push government policies
to restrict energy use and the burning of fossil fuels in
order to prevent ‘catastrophic’ warming, the world
continues to cool. That is leading to increasing scepticism
that the call to sacrifice living standards in order to
“save the planet” is just political spin designed to
persuade the public to accept green taxes.
Dr
David Evans, this week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator,
understands the controversy over global warming better than
most. As a scientist working for the Australian Greenhouse
Office, he developed the carbon accounting model that measures
Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol:
“When
I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions
caused global warming seemed pretty good. The evidence was not
conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it
appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the
scientific community were working together, and lots of
science research jobs were created. We scientists had
political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we
felt fairly important and useful. It was great. We were
working to save the planet!
“But
since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that
carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by
2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon plays only
a minor role and is not the main cause of the recent global warming.
As Lord Keynes famously said, When
the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
Dr
Evans explains that because there has not been a public debate
about the causes of
global warming, people are not aware of the most basic
accepted facts:
1) The greenhouse signature -which would prove
the greenhouse effect - is missing
2) There is no evidence that carbon emissions cause
significant global warming
3) Satellite data shows the warming trend ended in 2001 and
the world is now cooling
4) Ice core data shows global temperatures rise around 800
years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric
carbon.
He
explains that there is now greater urgency to get answers:
“Until now the global warming debate has merely been an
academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we
should debate the causes of global warming. Don’t you think
some evidence is required before wrecking the economy? Someone
simply has to demand to see evidence. You will find that there
is none”. To read the article Show
us the Evidence! by Dr Evans along with some research
material he has provided, click
here >>>
That
there is no evidence that man is causing global warming was
one of the key messages presented in the British documentary The
Great Global Warming Swindle, which was broadcast in New
Zealand in June by Prime TV. The documentary essentially claimed that the theory that
man-made greenhouse gases are causing global warming is a
scam. Following its screening in the UK in 2007, more than 260
complaints were lodged with the regulator Ofcom, the British
Office of Communications. Just last week, Ofcom released its
long-awaited ruling, which included the finding that the
programme did “not materially mislead viewers so as to cause
harm or offence” by claiming that man-made
global warming is the biggest scam of modern times. 4.
This
is in contrast to the finding of the British High Court that
Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth contained 11 serious
inaccuracies which must be pointed out to children if it is to
be shown in schools. 5.
With
growing numbers of people now questioning the whole basis of
the man-made global warming theory, there is increasing
speculation that the defeat of the British Labour Party in the
local body elections and more recently in the by-election in
their former safe seat of Glasgow East is indicative of a
change in the mood of the British public against the
government’s climate change agenda. A
recent survey suggests that more than 70% of British voters
are no longer willing to pay higher taxes to fund climate
change initiatives, with two-thirds of those surveyed
believing that the green agenda has been exploited in order to
increase taxes.
In
an article “A Green Miscalculation”, published in the
Financial Post, the editor of the international science policy
network CCNet, Benny Peiser, states:
“For many years, Labour has
chanted the green mantra that in order to prevent disastrous
climate change caused by excessive energy consumption, Britons
must make
personal sacrifices in their lifestyle and behaviour. No other
government in the world has employed the spectre of climate
catastrophe as forcefully as Britain; no other administration
has saddled taxpayers with a heavier burden of green
taxation…
Labour's fundamental miscalculation
has been to bank on the strength of the environmental movement
and climate change anxiety in an attempt to ‘modernize’
its agenda. Labour's climate policy, however, is now
backfiring, turning into one of its biggest political
liabilities”.6.
With
the 2008 general election fast approaching our local
politicians might like to learn from the UK experience. That
experience suggests that politicians who ignore public
sentiment on the climate change issue might just feel voter
backlash at the polls.
If you
would like to comment on this issue please click
>>>
This
week’s poll
asks: you believe there is sufficient
“evidence” to justify the passing of the government’s
emissions trading bill?7.
Go
to Poll >>>
FOOTNOTES:
1.
Royal Society of New Zealand, Climate Change Statement
http://www.rsnz.org/news/releases/clim0708.php
2. Vincent
Grey, Climate
Statement "An Orchestrated Litany Of Lies"
http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=312&Itemid=1
3. NZ
Climate Science Coalition, Coalition Challenges Royal
Society 'Climate Report'
http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=309&Itemid=32
4. Ofcom Ruling
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/obb/prog_cb/obb114/issue114.pdf
To
watch The Great Global Warming Swindle
http://www.nzcpr.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=7
5. Dr Muriel
Newman, Politics in School on Trial
http://www.nzcpr.com/weekly102.htm
6. Benny
Peiser, A Green Miscalculation
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/05/27/a-green-miscalculation.aspx
7.
Select Committee Report, Climate Change (Emissions Trading and
Renewable Preference) Bill
http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/Legislation/Bills/c/0/4/00DBHOH_BILL8368_1-
Climate-Change-Emissions-Trading-and-Renewable.htm
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