GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE: SCIENCE AND POLITICS by Cliff Ollier - School of Earth and Environmental Studies, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia Department of Geoecology and Palaeogeography, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland Manuscript received: September 5, 2012 Revised version: February 2, 2013 Global warming and climate change have become dominant features in the way we run our lives, and in the often bizarre actions of governments. These dangerous beliefs are with us right now. People are still threatening us with the old line that Global Warming will bring Devastation! The Global Warming Scare keeps changing form and name, so we have to be quite clear that it all started with Global Warming. The question is: Is anthropogenic carbon dioxide causing dangerous rise in global temperature? The whole Climate Alarm is based on the assertions that: 1. The world is getting warmer; 2. The global warming is caused by human-produced CO2. All the rest – rising sea level, melting ice sheets, drowning polar bears, and hundreds more – are additional alarms based on the assumption of global warming. Warming has ceased! In a press release of April 2, 2012, it was announced that: New UK Met Office global temperature data show that there has been no global warming in the past 15 years – a timescale that challenges current models of global warming. On the long geological time scale there were major glaciations in the Quaternary, Permian, Eocambrian and at least five recambrian glaciations. We are living in an interglacial in the Quaternary Glaciation, which itself has minor maxima and minima: The main warming periods are: Egyptian (Old Kingdom), Minoan, Roman, Medieval 1000 to 1300, 20thcentury. The main cold periods are: Dark ages, Little Ice Age 1300 to 1850, including: – Maunder minimum 1645 to 1715 – Dalton Minimum 1790 to 1820 Carbon dioxide requires extra treatment, as it is the alleged cause of global warming, and the fundamental reason for a carbon tax and calls to cut the carbon footprint. The ultimate source of CO2 is volcanic eruption; the sink is limestone, where most of the world’s CO2 is stored. The CO2 content of the atmosphere has been much greater in the geological past, without catastrophe. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is a mere 0.04%, and it is indeed increasing, but the increase started long before 1945 when AGW is supposed to start. The ocean is a huge sink and holds much more CO2 than the atmosphere. There is an equilibrium between the CO2 in the ocean and the atmosphere, and if we were somehow able to remove it from the atmosphere the ocean would give out more CO2 to restore the equilibrium. Although many countries are attempting it, at great expense, the sequestering of CO2 is pointless. Cold seas hold more CO2 than warm seas. Milankovitch cycles result from changes in the distance to the sun, but more important are sun spots and solar cycles. There is a very good correlation of sunspots and climate. Periods of low sunspots go with colder climate. The probable mechanism was discovered by Svensmark et al.(2007). During periods of low solar activity (solar minima), more cosmic rays reach Earth, potentially creating ultra-small aerosol particles which are precursors to cloud condensation nuclei. This causes more low level cloud formation, more low level clouds means more sunlight reflected back into space, which in turn means less heating of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. Archibald (2007) pointed out that the longer a solar cycle lasts, the cooler the following solar cycle will be. Solar cycles are normally 11 years long, but solar cycle 23 lasted 12.5years. Solar Cycle 24 has started and we can expect serious cooling. Solar Cycle 23 seems to resemble most closely Solar Cycle 4, and if the trend continues we should be heading for a Dalton Minimum. Ken Schatten, the solar physicist with the best track record in predicting solar cycles, suggests we could be heading for a Maunder Minimum. There is also a De Vries cycle of 210 years, and the last one was 201 years ago, so the next one is due. If the two cycles are superimposed it will be even colder. Many think that the political decisions concerning climate are based on scientific predictions. This is quite untrue: what the politicians get are projections based on models. What is the difference, and why is it never made clear? The Australian CSIRO, for example, has legal disclaimers for their scary predictions: This report relates to climate change scenarios based on computer modelling. Models involve simplifications of the real processes that are not fully understood. Accordingly, no responsibility is accepted by the CSIRO for the accuracy of forecasts or predictions inferred from this report or for any person’s interpretations, deductions, conclusions or actions in reliance on this report. Any allegedly scientific document that needs a legal disclaimer is clearly not science. And if CSIRO is not giving advice for which it takes responsibility they may as well be disbanded. Australian government ministers (and their advisers) claim that their decisions are based on a scientific consensus but especially the advice of IPCC and CSIRO. But both of these organisations deny making predictions, and refuse to be responsible for their computer’s projections. Computers are still not clever enough to take responsibility, so presumably it is the government, through lack of due diligence, that is responsible for the expensive and ineffective actions it is now implementing to combat the alleged human-induced dangerous Global Warming. The argument can be extended to all the other governments in the world that are impoverishing their nations by imposing extravagant policies based on global warming. (Source: Ollier c., 2013. Global warming and climate change: science and politics. Quaestiones Geographicae 32(1), Bogucki Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Poznań, pp. 61–66. DOI 10.2478/quageo-2013-0008, ISSN 0137-477X.)
Posted on: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 15:47:43 +0000
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