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COMMENTARY
February 7, 2007
Global warning
For Sunday, I wrote metaphorically about the absurdity of last week’s global warming warning from the United Nations (“IPCC/2007”, as it will henceforth be known in bureaucratic legend). This was my own warning to my reader, never to take entirely seriously any proclamation that claims to be rocket science, and is endorsed by everyone in sight who has relevant credentials. A look back through history will quickly confirm that, while a mere majority may sometimes be right, the unanimous agreement of every available expert is a sure indication that they are wrong.That reader may nevertheless be nonplussed, by the sheer frenzied mass of hysterical media misreporting on the issue. “Global warming” is one thing. The question of whether human activity might be a significant cause, is quite another. But it is an indication of the amount of human vocal CO2 emission occasioned by environmentalist propaganda, that the general public are now largely convinced the two questions are the same. Just as we were convinced of “global winter” a generation ago. Note that the IPCC report’s conclusions were issued first, and the supporting research is now promised for several months from now. What does that tell you? The atmosphere may well be heating up, overall. It often is. And since it is always changing, and can move in only two thermal directions -- colder or hotter -- a global warming trend is worth the flip of a coin. That these temperature trends have corresponded, over time, with known solar activity, is one of those things it should not be necessary to explain, to a reader who has any acquaintance with the subject. It may well be that our carbon emissions have reached such a huge aggregate scale, that we are finally making a difference of our own. But that can’t be proved by computer modelling. If you want some real science, check out for instance the next issue of the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. An important article by Robert Erlich will expound the link between solar resonant thermal diffusion waves, and terrestrial climate change. They give a fairly precise overlay for climatic variations through the last 5.3 million years, and appear to explain the sudden emergence in time of the already-known 100,000-year “Milankovitch cycle”, while eliminating many of the problems previously associated with it. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Then why would you have an opinion on global climate change? Eliminate the entire human population and, for all we know, a cooling trend might result. But the idea of crimping Western economic activity by a few market-crashing percentage points, while China, India, Russia and the rest of the Third World are allowed to continue gunning up their carbon furnaces on a truly unprecedented scale -- which is to say, the basic idea of Kyoto -- would not be the solution. The solution, to this possibly non-existent problem, would be the positive introduction of more efficient energy sources that do not require oil, gas, coal, or firewood. Now, strange to say, global capitalism is working on this night and day, for there is big money to be had from a breakthrough. And nobody else is working on it. Killing the global capitalist goose will not lay the golden egg. Think for a moment: if these people had actually modelled global climate successfully, they’d be able to predict the weather seven days in advance. They can’t, and the assignment of ludicrous estimates of probabilities, for time periods extending through the coming century, must not be allowed to conceal the truth. This is scientism, not science, fuelled by billions in tax money that would dry up tomorrow if the people receiving it began admitting that computer modelling of oceans and atmosphere can give no assured predictive results. That they cannot account for trend reversals, even in retrospect, and never could. Or as my friend, Lee Harris, put it in an email to me: “No one in his right mind would pay attention to a convention of meteorologists who tried to claim so much unanimous certainty about the weather conditions a week from now. You really don't need to know a lot about science in order to sniff out quackery when it tries to pass under its guise. ... At best, as in the case of weather predictions on TV, we can take the summation of various guesses and hunches, and turn it into a make-believe probability, like a 70% chance of showers. The bogus use of numerical precision always lends a scientific air to chicanery.” Unanimity on Boyle’s Law is one thing, as Mr Harris added. Unanimity about global climate warming is the indication not of a scientific activity, but of a political activity. It is a lot of hot air, and the consequences of taking it too seriously will be like the consequences of every other unanimous political judgement. We will do catastrophic damage to ourselves, and to no good purpose. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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