A tsunami is rolling across the climate science establishment since the e-mails were leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. What climate warming skeptics have been saying for years is now being examined seriously for the first time and the results are making headlines in major newspapers.
Professor Phil Jones, head of CRU, has now stated the warming from 1975-1998 is no different than that of 1860-1880 and 1910-1940. That there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995 and the Medieval Warm Period could indeed have been global. They are comments for which he would have been labeled a “denier” or “flat earther” a scant three months ago.
Jones and Michael Mann of Penn State University were at the heart of the global warming “hockey team.” Mann was responsible for the infamous “hockey stick” graph, the poster child of former Vice President Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that together with the “independent confirmations,” have now been thoroughly discredited. You can read all about it in detail in the brilliantly written book “The Hockey Stick Illusion” by A.W. Montford. It reads like a detective story and gives breathtaking insight to the underhanded tricks and lies of the “team.”
Climate change is really not that complicated. That there is a correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature is not proof of causation: Changes in CO2 lag temperature change. There is a statistically stronger correlation between sunspots and temperature, but this does not prove causation either.
What is known, with some certainty, is the small amount of temperature increase through doubling CO2 (about 1 degree) providing nothing else changes. It is also known the effect of CO2 fast decreases as the level goes up and we have already passed the point where it has much effect. Further, CO2 will only have a marked effect where there is very low humidity, such as the two poles. Elsewhere, the effect of water vapor and clouds completely overwhelms CO2.
It is also known the world has been warming about a half of a degree celsius per century since the little ice age that ended in the mid-1800s. It is not increasing any faster now. The short-term temperature changes we see are due to some things we do know, such as El Nino and the various ocean current oscillations, and some things we don’t yet understand, such as clouds.
The CO2 forcing (multiplication) factors used in the climate models that forecast catastrophic warming are just a hypothesis, for which there is no proof. Proof must come from real-life measurements and not from computer models of chaotic systems. Furthermore, the recently reported rise in global temperature has been exaggerated, as the urban heat island effect has been underestimated in the major surface station data, used by the IPCC.
The temperature records at CRU, used by the other major climate organizations, are reportedly in a mess, with some lost. The CRU has so far refused to publish how they have modified the raw data — making it impossible to verify. Jones wrote in one leaked e-mail that he would rather destroy the data than make it public.
We need to start over and make all the data publicly available to prevent the science being hijacked by a handful of people with a cause. Peer review in climatology has been more like pal review.
Considering the billions spent on climate research it is time the temperature proxies, used in reconstruction of historic temperatures, were updated, as most of them ended before 1980. The surface temperature stations desperately need to be put in good order. Where this affects us is, how long it will take the government to get the message. This is a multi-billion dollar industry with powerful vested interests.
State Rep. Greg Vitali, D-166, of Haverford, believes in the last IPCC report and, rather than looking at the evidence, will only change his mind after a new consensus appears. It was reported that Mr. Mann was given a research grant of $2.4 million (our tax dollars) a few months ago. If true, why?
We shouldn’t waste money on uneconomic solutions like wind and solar power, but build new, safe nuclear power plants, both to clean the environment and reduce our reliance on foreign oil.
Thorium salt reactors produce 0.1 percent of the typical radwaste and can even burn up the radwaste from older plants.
The faster we convert to electric-powered vehicles the better. Solutions like cap and trade will have no effect on global temperature but simply take money from our pockets and give it to the Al Gores of this world.
ADRIAN ASHFIELD
Haverford
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