When Maurice Strong opened Globe 2000, an environmental conference held last March in Vancouver, B.C., he urged delegates to “ignore the fear-mongers” who argue against “growing evidence and scientific urgings” in the global warming debate. “Environmentalists are no longer the doomsayers,” he said. “Instead, the doomsayers are industry, which predicted disastrous consequences to complying with environmental laws and treaties signed by governments.”
Strong was speaking of his beloved Kyoto Protocol, a United Nations document that calls for industrialized nations (but not developing nations) to slash emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to combat climate change. He had reasons to rally the troops. No developed nation had ratified it, the science was under attack, and there was no rule book on implementation. And, weeks earlier, Norway’s prime minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik, lost a vote of confidence over his government’s attempts to limit GHGs by forgoing construction of several gas-fired power plants. The opposition argued that there was no alternative to meet the demand for electricity, apart from letting citizens freeze in the dark. It was the first government in the world to fall as a result of Kyoto.
Instead of ignoring skeptics, Strong’s supporters stepped up their attacks, labeling economic critics as “hired guns” of industry. But they hit a wall when they tried to attack credible scientists, particularly in the U.S. The global warming debate there has been vigorous, helped by a skeptical Congress and balanced media reporting, and spurred on by a still growing petition of 17,000 scientists, who, in 1998, expressed “grave concerns” about the integrity of the reports prepared by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), upon which the Kyoto Protocol is based.
Last June, for example, 14 international experts, brought to Capitol Hill to review the IPCC reports, unanimously agreed that they contained “systematic errors and omissions bordering on scientific fraud.” Some Republican politicians called for Kyoto to be abandoned, with one describing it as “an exercise in futility in the worst case, and an exercise in fantasy in the best case.”
The controversy prompted Greenpeace to take the unusual step of preparing a report titled Countering the Sceptics, which begins predictability enough by dismissing the skeptics as “a handful of scientists” mainly subsidized by the fossil fuel lobby. “Most have neither the credibility nor the science to mount a plausible challenge to the consensus of 2,500 scientists who comprise the IPCC.”
Bad start. IPCC is not a scientific body. It is a U.N. agency that assesses available scientific information on climate change, examines environmental and socio-economic impacts, and formulates response strategies. And there never was “a consensus of 2,500 scientists” endorsing the IPCC’s summary finding of “discernible human influence” on climate change; even Greenpeace’s report confirms that it was crafted by 28 lead authors, primarily policy-makers, and that it was “a product of political negotiation.” Some 400 contributing authors submitted draft text to the lead authors and more than 500 reviewers submitted suggestions during the review process. However, many scientists later complained that the lead authors “ignored valid comments” or “failed to reflect dissenting views.” Furthermore, the final decision on whether to accept review comments rested with the lead authors. The policy-makers were reviewing the scientists, not the other way around, and cherry-picking information that suited their purposes.
The main criticism of IPCC’s findings is that the models used to predict climate change (all based on the premise that increased CO2 in the atmosphere would “force” warming) have failed consistently since they were first unveiled at U.N.-sponsored conferences in the late 1980s. In 1988, a 0.8C-per-decade rate of warming was predicted. It was downgraded to 0.3C per decade in 1990, and then to 0.18C per decade in 1995, ostensibly because, for the first time, the cooling effect of aerosol pollution was included in the models.
Scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) upset the apple cart in 1997 when they reported that reliable satellite data had revealed no discernible warming trend over almost 20 years. Global warming advocates denounced the data as flawed (owing to “orbital drift” and “measurement biases”), prompting NASA to counter that balloon measurements agreed with the satellite data, and that disagreements between satellite and surface-based thermometers were primarily over oceans.
“There isn’t a problem with the measurements,” one NASA scientist said. “Instead, we believe that the problem resides in the computer models.” Other scientists agreed, pointing out that the models do not properly account for important factors, such as clouds. It was a valid criticism, as water vapour is the largest contributor (98%) to greenhouse effect.
Despite the criticism, IPCC continues to rely only on surface measurements, which supposedly show a slight warming trend of about 0.3-0.6C since 1860. But most of this warming took place between 1910 and 1940, before the noted increase in atmospheric CO2. Some critics say this warming reflects a natural rebound from the Little Ice Age (1450 to between 1850 and 1900); others point out that measurements before 1950 are spotty, and that recent surface data showing a warming trend are skewed by the “heat-island effect” of land stations with strong urban warming influences.
That’s the big fight over the little picture. Critics also charge that IPCC’s findings are not supported by geological evidence that provide the big picture. Greenpeace suggests that because there are “many differences” between the past and present, “these past eras [are] illegitimate analogies for current global warming.” Geologists might beg to differ, but IPCC seems content not to emphasize Earth’s turbulent geological history, with its pesky Ice Ages, including the particularly pesky one that makes up our present chapter of geological time.
Speaking of ice, what about the melting polar ice so often cited by IPCC and green activists? It’s happening now, they argue. Look at the huge iceberg that just broke off from the Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Why, it’s four times bigger than the last large iceberg to calve in the region!
The British Antarctic Survey pointed out that regular calving of large icebergs is a natural part of the life-cycle, that the event was expected for some time, and that it was not believed to be associated with climate change.
But the dire predictions continued, prompting the Survey to issue a position statement on Antarctic climate change in the fall of 1999 (updated in November 2000). While acknowledging that computer models indicate relatively modest temperature rises over the next 50 years, “increased snowfall over the continent should more than compensate for increased melting of Antarctic ice and will thus partially offset the rise in sea level resulting from thermal expansion of oceans and melting of icecaps and glaciers elsewhere in the world.” It also cautioned that “many processes occurring in the polar regions are not well-represented in climate models at present, and [that] further research is needed to improve our confidence in those predictions.” It noted that few stations had climate records longer than 40 years, and that temperatures in the region are characterized by “a very high level of inter-annual variability, which makes the determination of trends from short records problematical.” The sea ice record also reflects a great deal of inter-annual variability “but shows no evidence for a systematic decline in Antarctic sea ice extent.”
But what about the Canadian Arctic, where, according to The Globe and Mail, the town of Sachs Harbour on Banks Island is “the first catalogued example of what global warming is unleashing on the world?” The story cited slumping permafrost and anecdotal sightings of robins, swallows, salmon and herring as “evidence,” based on a video released during recent Kyoto negotiations at The Hague. It didn’t mention that the video was partly funded by U.N. agencies pushing Kyoto. Nor was there any mention of Natural Resources Canada’s (NRCAN’s) glaciology group, which has been monitoring the High Arctic ice caps for more than 30 years, producing the longest polar glacier records in the world. According to NRCAN, “these records show that there is little evidence over this period of either cooling or warming, or of significant precipitation increase. This contradicts model predictions.”
Arctic ice cores have been studied extensively by the Geological Survey of Canada. A profile of core from Ellesmere Island shows that the region has been colder than today for about 80,000 of the past 100,000 years. A recent study stated that: “the most recent 10,000-year section of core shows a period of maximum warmth following close on from the dramatic emergence from ice-age conditions. The climate has been cooling ever since.
“We tend to view our current climate as normal,” the report continued. “However, it is far from normal when viewed in terms of 100,000 years of record. Using ocean core records, we might even say the planet’s climate is due to return to the ‘normal’ conditions of an ice-age.”
Of course, global warming advocates say increased CO2 will create a veritable hothouse before our interglacial respite ends. They dismiss suggestions that CO2 increases might follow, rather than lead, warmings. Canadian scientists view this as a possibility but say they do not have enough ice-core data to give a definitive answer. Greenpeace says the theory is “contrary to IPCC’s findings,” which is supposedly based on a review of extensive ice-core data.
Critics also point out that increased CO2 promotes growth and water use efficiency of plants, resulting in greenings, such as occurred after the last glacial retreat. IPCC acknowledges the benefits of CO2 fertilization, but says these could be outweighed by “extremes of water availability,” such as “waterloggings,” resulting in “dead forests.” Tell that to the rain forests!
All of this makes the Canadian government’s efforts to “inform” citizens of the effects of climate change seem curious indeed. Taxpayers helped fund the Sachs Harbour video shown at The Hague, as well as an “information kit” prepared by the Sierra Club. Environment Canada set up a Climate Change study for the Arctic, but it mostly examines impacts suggested by IPCC’s global models, rather than real data. Given the reported gravity of the situation, we’d prefer to see resources directed to NRCAN’s scientists for studies that measure what is happening in the real world. At least we’d have hard data to digest, rather than a computer game showing Earth trending toward spontaneous combustion.
The controversy is likely to accelerate now that the meeting in The Hague to work out a rule book for Kyoto ended in failure. The U.S. and Canada, which both wanted credit for maintaining forest cover as a “carbon sink,” were blamed for the collapse. Right on cue, some advocates warned that forests pollute! The more vegetation there is, the more CO2 gets released into the atmosphere (after trees become CO2-saturated), which makes it warmer, which grows more trees, which eventually cooks the planet. Enough already.
Lloyd Axworthy, Canada’s climate change negotiator, rejects suggestions that Kyoto is doomed. Media reports have “trivialized” events at The Hague, he says, “missing the real drama, which was to re-shape both national and international attitudes and practices of long-standing duration, in order to save the planet from human-induced disaster.” Get a grip, Lloyd.
As for Kyoto, put the mangled mess out of its misery, and move on with real problems in the real world. We should focus on the front-line fight against pollution of air, water and soil, at home and abroad, and direct our resources to scientists and technologists trying to solve these problems on a daily basis. Surely we have evolved beyond the primitive response of sacrificing virgins and fatted calves to the willful forces of nature to appease a handful of deluded mystics on the mountain.
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