Climate change a farce, columnist is ignorant

Peter Jackson’s column attacking my position on the global warming debate demonstrates a level of ignorance that is surprising coming from someone who I am sure counts himself as one of the bien-pensant class (“Andy Wells still beating the denial drum,” April 1).

There has been no temperature rise for at least the last 1718 years. More on that in a bit.

I first want to deal with “the hockey stick” of 20th century temperatures so beloved by the IPCC when it was first published in 1999. It was the “poster boy” for the IPCC’s third assessment report, proof conclusive that global warming was happening and becoming extreme because of fossil fuel use.

The only problem was that the data that Mr. Mann used and his statistical analysis were corrupt, erroneous, false. A couple of Canadian researchers exposed the errors in Mann’s methodology. In fact his computer program was so bad that no matter what data was processed through it, a hockey stick was produced 99 per cent of the time.

However, because of its centrality in the AGW debate, the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce appointed a committee composed of eminent statisticians to review the matter. The committee, for the record, was headed by a former member of the U.S. Statistical Society, and concluded that the critics were right. The hockey stick was a statistical abomination. It was dropped by IPCC in its next assessment report of 2007. And now to temperatures. As I said above, there has been no increase in the Earth’s temperature for almost two decades in spite of rising CO2 emissions. Ironically, even Mr. Mann has acknowledged the pause, although he explains that it is a “false pause,” that will run its course resulting in a great acceleration in warming at some undetermined time in the future.

There are now available some 52 scientific theories attempting to explain this pause with Mann providing the 53rd. All quite Mad Max.

On the CO2 issue, there is no encouraging news for the warming brigade. Freeman Dyson, Princeton University’s pre-eminent physicist, said recently: “As measured from space, the whole world is getting greener as a result of carbon dioxide, so it’s increasing agricultural yields, it’s increasing the forests and it’s increasing growth in the biological world and that’s more important and more certain than the effects on climate.”

He acknowledges that human activity has an effect on climate, but claims it is much less than is claimed and the non-climate benefits of carbon are overwhelmingly favourable. He was probably referring to a 10-year-long study that analyzed two decades of satellite data completed by Australian researchers which found that the amount of carbon sequestered in plants has risen by almost four billion tonnes since 2003, reflecting a surge in the biomass of global flora — possibly the first such increase since the Industrial Revolution.

Here is a random selection of some recent headlines, stories, etc. on global warming, or climate change as it is now called:

• 18 years of flat global average temperatures.

• Polar bear population doing fine if not thriving.

• The earth is actually going green.

• China and India building coal plants faster than western countries are closing them.

• Waiting 20 years before tak- ing action would result in a .2 degree C increase in temperature over 100 years.

• Current data sets indicate no significant observed trends in global cyclone frequency over the past century.

• The world’s glacial ice growing.

• Destructive storms are not growing in number.

• A review of ocean temperatures measured by satellites shows a cooling trend.

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• Cold temperature records are being set, globally.

• Many scientists say a new cold climate is coming.

I conclude on a personal note. I do not fancy myself a historian, no more than Jackson fancies himself a journalist. I learned to read at an early age and have some curiosity about events. It is that simple.