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Is global warming is due to the sun:
not industrial CO2?
James Irvine
Teviot Scientific, Cultybraggan Farm, Comrie,
Perthshire
Filed 15 Mar 07
©www.land-care.org.uk
What an excellent and refreshing TV programme
it was. I refer to
The great global warming swindle
Channel 4, Thursday 8th March 2007.
We have been consistently brainwashed by propaganda
from the so-called "environmental conservationists", backed
by scientists keen to get hitched to lucrative research funding,
while key scientific facts would appear to have been neglected.
The programme informed that we have been seriously
misled by those who have been over-selective in the data they present,
while omitting the evidence that directly contradicts the message
they would have us believe. The greenhouse gas concept, as the cause
of global warming, has now become a major political issue through
the enormous lobbying power of "the environment" movement.
But sadly, the "environmental conservationists" in the
pursuit of their political agenda have conveniently omitted to mention
facts that undermine their basic thesis - that global warming is
mainly due to man's activities. The programme provided convincing
evidence that this might well not be so.
An impressive array of scientists from around
the world featured in the programme. What was impressive about them
was that they came across as genuine scientists, and not as "environmentalists"
with a mission seeking to exploit their access to media coverage
and hence to huge amounts of funding.
As sincere scientists, they were brave enough
to counter the politicising of science, whereby to speak against
politically driven organisations is to risk professional isolation,
no funding and personal abuse.
The much proclaimed International Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) was convincingly debunked as a United Nations political
organisation. Claims that the IPCC spoke for thousands of the world's
leading scientists was revealed for what it was - bunkum. Genuine
scientists will always listen to the research findings of others
who may not agree with their thesis. Political scientists don't,
but prefer to use political pressures to get their way and to suppress
contrary views. With their political expertise, they grab the media
and so alarm the public. Politicians then see it as their role to
alter their manifestos, with the expenditure of huge amounts of
public money and plans to radically change our style of living.
That is why the programme was appropriately titled
"The great global warming swindle"
The programme asserted that global warming is
nothing new. Global temperatures have been considerably higher in
the past, and large parts of the Antarctic ice cap have previously
broken off and melted. But the polar bears have survived. They are
still there. Massive flooding of land did not occur. Indeed, history
has shown that earlier times of global warming were associated with
prosperity, not poverty and famine.
CO2 is not a pollutant as the "environmentalists"
would have us believe, but a very common and essential ingredient
of life on earth and in the atmosphere that surrounds it. CO2 is
present in only tiny quantities among the greenhouse gases, but
is essential in such fundamentally important mechanisms as photosynthesis.
We breathe it out with every breath.
Rather, what is important is the variable activity
of the sun, whose behaviour was likened in the programme to that
of a ferocious tiger. Sunspots can be regarded as indicators of
the sun's activity. From time to time there are more, and at other
times less, sun spots: as the ferocious tiger in the sky changes
its mood - or more specifically - the amount of heat and other forms
of radiation that it emits. Changes in the sun's activities have
a great effect on global temperature. Over the ages they always
have. It would be illogical to expect otherwise. The sun is part
of a dynamic system that is hardly likely to perform in a constant
manner.
The programme also pointed out that the oceans
play a key role in whether global temperatures rise or fall, and
the timescale in which they do so. Their function, as a massive
heat buffer, goes a long way to explain the prolonged time lag that
occurs between changes in the sun's activity and changes in global
temperatures. When the oceans warm up they expand and let off masses
of CO2, and they shrink and absorb CO2 when they cool. Water vapour
rising from the oceans interacts with cosmic radiation particles
from the sun, to produce the clouds that keep the earth's heat from
escaping too rapidly.
What the "environmentalists" omit to
mention is the 800 year time lag between global warming and the
ice core data for CO2. That 800 years or so is the time scale for
the oceans of our planet to heat up and expand, or to cool down
and to shrink. There is a tight correlation between ice core data
for CO2 and global warming, but with an 800 year time delay that
the "environmentalists" omit to mention. The correlation,
taken along with the time delay, indicates that the changes in the
CO2 of greenhouse gases are secondary to changes in the oceans.
The programme argued that the increased amounts of CO2 created by
man, through industrial activity, is not a primary cause of global
warming.
Active volcanoes spew out more CO2 into the atmosphere
that any amount of industry, cars or aeroplanes that exist, or ever
likely to exist, on earth. In comparison, carbon emissions through
industry have an infinitesimally small effect on global warming.
The programme attacked the "precautionary
principle" so beloved of the "greens", and only deployed
by them when it suits their cause. It was pointed out most clearly
that to deny the developing countries the opportunity to use their
oil is to condemn them to persistent poverty and disease. It is
the poorest countries who will be the losers in a misguided agenda
based on a carbon imprint policy.
What the programme alleged was that the "greens"
were not primarily interested in global warming, or the validity
of the science that they selected to use in their promotional programmes.
Rather, their main agenda is anti-capitalism.
The media is for ever looking for even more dramatic
predictions of doom, while attracting scientists - who should know
better - to ignore inconvenient scientific facts. This enables such
scientists to feature prominently on the political bandwagon of
pseudo-scientific hype. Hype that has now taken on major political
importance, with an ex-filmstar and an unsuccessful presidential
candidate joining in for their own greater glory. Do they really
understand the science, or just the political opportunity?
Impressive wildlife TV programmes can demonstrate
superbly the effects of global warming. But they do not logically
contribute to what is causing the global warming, but just add to
the hype that it is largely man made.
The programme ended with a perfect parting shot.
It ridiculed the doomsday statement of the UK government's chief
scientist that, if global warming caused by CO2 emissions from industrial
and domestic activities was not immediately addressed, life on earth
as we presently know it would be changed within the next 50 years,
with catastrophic consequences for all.
From titme to time periods of global warming certainly
occur. That has been our planet's record over millennia. The programme
presented convincing evidence that this was not due - to any significant
extent - to greenhouse gases, such as CO2 produced by industry,
cars, aeroplanes or any such thing. It is a variable, natural occurrence
which is primarily caused by changes in the activity of that great
orange circle in the sky - the sun. And there ain't much we can
do about that, even if we needed to.
Unsurprisingly, there has to my knowledge been
very little media comment since the programme was shown. Gordon
Brown, with his ambition to be the next prime minister, wants the
UK to lead the world on correcting global warming. His political
competitor, David Cameron, vies with him in the race. Taxes on this
and banning of that - from air travel to standby switches, and the
kind of light bulbs we can use. But is it all based on a fundamental
fallacy?
But there was one UK scientist who said on TV
that schoolchildren should not be indoctrinated by the agenda of
"the environmentalists". Rather, both sides of the argument
on global warming should be presented, so that children are encouraged
to make up their own minds. After all, we are told repeatedly that
there is a serious need to encourage an interest in genuine science
in the young, and that our future depends upon it. The topic of
global warming, and its cause, would make an admirable start.
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