My view of the proposal that the earth is experiencing serious climate change -by Rob Morley-Smith

21st September 2013   

by Rob Morley-Smith

 
Almost every form of mass media have, over the past three decades entered into emotional comment upon the subject of 'global warming' yet once analysed, there seems to be little if any hard evidence to back up the colourful rhetoric! Almost all the data being promulgated is sourced not from physical measurements taken at various locations around the globe, but extrapolations conjured up from 'computer models'. Simply this is, presently known and confirmed information fed into a computer program, the protagonists then program the computer with various 'what if' questions. The computer then makes 'say' a 25 years into the future prediction based upon the weather boffins extreme 'what if' prognosis - He/she then proclaims the result of their choice, as 'fact'! Why, you may ask, would a scientist take such an irresponsible position - the answer is actually typically human - money - One organisation in the UK alone has a grant of 11 million pounds (over 30 million dollars) a year of British taxpayers' money - not about to say there is no problem after spending that every year!
If on the other hand, we are pragmatic and accept that history confirms the weather has, and continues, to constantly change and we use conventional methods of measurement and recording we actually reveal a very different story than what we now seem to be  bombarded daily with!
The debate should not be whether the climate is changing, but whether man is causing those changes!
 
The world's oldest established record of the weather is 'The central England temperature record' which was established in 1659 (nearly 350 years of records) The hottest day in recent history was on the 29th July 1948 and historically the coldest day in Britain was on the 20th January 1838 (the three coldest winters  were 1740-1947 and 1963)
 
The climate has changed over the twentieth century in a linear trend by 0.67 degrees  centigrade. Using the past recorded information, it is not unreasonable to expect the trend to continue through the 21st century and in similar fashion, some individual years will experience quite large  increase fluctuations and some, like 1996, will record temperatures well below average.
 
Over the last fifteen years the mean average temperature has been the hottest since the 1840's and calculations made via ice core drillings confirm that it is at least 400 years since a warmer decade was experienced.
 
The conclusion based upon factual records shows that the climate is continually changing and that the world experienced a very warm period in the seventeenth century - the question is if man is responsible for the present average increase of 0.67 of a degree, was he also responsible for the 17th century increase?
 
My opinion is, that those who on behalf of their fellowman, make the claim of man being responsible for these changes in climate are simply exposing their arrogance. Fact - the earth is not in a 'holding' state - it is constantly changing and will continue to do so whether man is here or not! For example, how many would know that Mt Everest is increasing in height by around 1 centimetre every year - not melting away as many 'authors of doom' would have you believe, and how many would know that the Antarctic has continued to get colder over the past fifty years of official temperature recording - not melting away and raising sea levels as the emotive media keep irresponsibly reporting! 
 
The results of the recent Tsunami should surely demonstrate that any of man's achievements pale into insignificance compared to the awesome power of nature. Scientists calculated that the eruption of Mt St Helens threw more contamination into our atmosphere than all the combined pollution that man has put into the atmosphere since his total tenure on earth.
There are many theories about what causes the extremes of weather, some of these theories have subsequently been reasonably well substantiated, however much is still 'just' theory. 
 
History reveals that man has always been obsessed with the weather - an early writing states: 'increased numbers of arrows being shot is causing problems in the air resulting in extremes of weather'! Then later when gunpowder became the power behind battle it came in for  a huge share of blame for the extremes of weather. In my own lifetime the A-bomb and H-bomb tests took a real hiding from those who stated the damage to the atmosphere with the resultant unheard of weather extremes was far more dangerous to man than the local damage a bomb could cause! Now today it's fossil fuels and CFCs that are to blame - so nothing changes - it would seem that man has always had the arrogance to think that his puny input is more powerful than those aspects of nature that enlightened scientists consider are really responsible for the ever changing weather on this earth.
 
So what are the important energies that power our weather systems? The first and most important is the Sun. It was discovered that bad radio reception coincided with observable activity emanating from the Sun. Solar flares and sunspots caused massive interference to radio transmissions. It was also noted that unusual weather conditions went hand in hand with this activity. Interesting to note that the recent extremes of weather have coincided with the largest sunspots recorded since the 1940s. The Sun is our major source of energy and it is the heat from the Sun that warms the surface of the earth and in particular the oceans which cover 70% of the earth's surface area. Water is evaporated into the atmosphere by the heat of the Sun's rays and then various sources of energy work on the clouds of water vapour to ultimately stimulate precipitation which falls to earth as rain or snow. The forces that are involved cannot be put down to one simple controlling factor.
 
The Moon is approximately 1/3 of the size of our earth and has a huge influence upon earth - to most this is observed by the low tides we see as the influence of the moon's gravity pulls at the surface of the earth. The Moon's gravitation influence also affects all things on and below the earth's surface. There is extremely good anecdotal evidence tying many events ranging from 'moon madness' to earthquake and volcanic activity to the proximity of the Moon to the earth.
 
In their normal state things are very cold and the only natural way that these rise to a liveable temperature is by heat from the sun's rays and by heat from the molten centre of earth's core. In many places around the globe the earth's crust has great cracks in it, many of these are under the oceans of the world. Billions of units of heat are belched out of these undersea vents at temperatures in excess of 400 degrees C thus creating great convective currents in the oceans. Land masses get heated by the sun's rays. The temperature contradictions produced between the hot parts of the earth and the cold parts of the earth all contribute towards global streams of 'heat' substantially carried by water both in the oceans and in the atmosphere which result in developing the high and low pressure weather systems which in turn transport water and develop the winds and general weather patterns we experience day to day.
 
As far as the present weather trends are concerned, we not only have the huge coincidence of record sunspot activity but also recently the planet Mars was the closest it has been to earth for at least 5,000 years and it is estimated that it will not be as close again for 60,000 years. I would not be so presumptuous as to suggest that Mars is totally responsible for a slight change in our climate however I would rail against any who would be so arrogant as to dismiss the possibility that it may be responsible for having some influence!
 
Climate change has always been with us and will continue to make new challenges upon mans ingenuity to deal with new situations.
The question is  why has the  earth seemingly experienced such horrendous damage recently  and what if any has been man's role in it?
 
There is no argument that the results of recent weather extremes have taken a huge toll on various parts of our planet. Middle Europe, South America and I suppose the most publicised, Gulf of Mexico (Katrina) and the East Coast of the USA which have all suffered immeasurably! Add to these the other natural disasters of the Indian Ocean Tsunami and the Pakistan Earth quake and those who peddle doom could be excused for proclaiming that the end of the world is nigh!
 
There is nothing man can do to stop this planet's activity, which manifests itself with volcanoes and earthquakes, but what of the subsequent result in loss of life and property? Far be it for me to criticise the Pakistan building codes, however those with good memories will still remember the horror of Agidar where so many lives were lost because the majority of buildings were mud brick, which simply fell to pieces when shaken by that  quake in the sixties! Likewise most of the buildings in Pakistan would never measure up to the NZ building codes. An NZ earthquake expert commented that although NZ would suffer damage given the same strength of quake, because of our building codes we would certainly be spared the terrible loss of life experienced in Pakistan.
 
So it was in Christchurch where the shortcomings in design and structure were most evident where there had been the greatest loss of life. It could also be commented that in this day and age in areas of the world where Earthquake and Tsunami are prevalent that early warning systems and organised evacuation plans would be in place - unfortunately it generally takes a major event before the powers that be take preventive action!
 
New Orleans is almost sacred to the lovers of Western music since it is the birth place of almost all the jazz and pop music which has become an integral part of Western life. Being a musician who has been lucky enough to perform in New Orleans, my sense of loss is very real.
 
New Orleans was originally founded by the Spanish. They set up house on the banks of the Mississippi river delta and when seasonal floods threatened, they built earth embankments to protect their village. As time passed, the French moved in to the area and soon took it over, erecting more buildings and strengthening the embankments of not only the Mississippi river but also the neighbouring lake Pontchartrain. New Orleans was, and continues to be a very important transport link and as such over subsequent years, the American government had engineers embark upon a continuing project of both drainage and embankment (levy's - Levee's) improvement.
The Mississippi river was very like the river Nile in that seasonally, huge volumes of water carrying huge volumes of silt would flow from the river mouth into a huge delta. Off the coast were a myriad of small islands which not only absorbed the power of this natural flood water, but also accepted the build up of millions of tonnes of silt. History shows that the Gulf of Mexico has always been the recipient of massive storms working their way up through the Caribbean and making landfall along the gulf coast. In the old days the Mississippi river delta formed a natural barrier to these storms, absorbing the velocity of the storm before it reached habitation. With all the drainage and levy building which has gone on for a couple of hundred years, the delta and its islands have disappeared, with the high discharge flows of the river squirting right out into the Gulf, carrying with it any silt out into open water. Over all these years, the geography of the area has been slowly changed by man. The levees have been getting higher and the land upon which NO sits has been getting relatively lower. For me, it was a real wake up call, to be standing on a French quarter street and looking up at the ships that were sitting many metres above me!
 
New Orleans was an accident just waiting to happen and in my view, those who would want to blame man for the subsequent loss of life and infrastructure are right on the button.
 
Space does not permit full debate of other areas of the world that have suffered but right here in NZ there is plenty of evidence as to how Man has drained natural flood plains and stripped bush from hill country in his greedy quest for arable land resulting in very recent years seeing us reaping the results of such actions.
I do not believe that man is responsible for climate change, however I do believe that man must take some responsibility for his short sighted development of areas which nature already had planned as flood plains, buffers against extremes of weather and especially valleys which were originally formed by water erosion and should have been left free to cope with any future natural drainage requirement. In many respects we are the authors of our own doom!
 
When I first became interested in analysing what I call 'emotion' news - that is subjects such as the Y2K fiasco where the doom merchants threatened that life as we know it would end on the stroke of midnight 1999, or, the 'Ebola' epidemic that was to see all life on earth slowly eaten away or, the SARs epidemic which would wipe man from the face of the earth, I found that the reporting was full of emotion, extremely high on opinion and almost totally devoid of any factual evidence!
 
Kyoto seems to me to fall right into that description and I am grateful to others who have provided corroborated information to me from various sources, which to me show Kyoto as the sham I believe it to be.
 
Amidst the talk about the benefits that Kyoto Protocol is supposed to promote, it is perhaps forgotten (or more likely never known) especially amongst  the Greenies that Kyoto was born in the corridors of big business.
 
About 20 years ago, the discredited company Enron was an owner/operator of a US interstate network of natural gas pipelines. Just before it went down in flames in 2001, Enron had transformed itself into a billion dollar a day commodity trader, buying and selling contracts to deliver natural gas, electricity, internet bandwidth, etc. The 1990 US Clean Air Act authorised the Environmental Protection Agency to put a cap on how much pollutant the operator of a fossil-fuelled plant was allowed to emit. In the early 1990s, therefore, Enron had helped establish the market for  (and became the major trader in)  EPA's $20 billion-per-year sulphur dioxide cap and trade  program.  What next? How about a carbon dioxide cap and trade program? The only problem was CO2 is not a pollutant, and therefore the EPA had no authority to cap its emission. But in 1993, the Clinton-Gore administration set up a U.S. initiative to review new projects around the world and issue "credits" of so many tons of annual CO2 emission reduction. Enron vigourously lobbied Clinton and Congress, seeking EPA regulatory authority over CO2. Leaping in, Enron lavished almost $1.5 million on environmental groups that support international energy controls to reduce so-called global warming. From 1994 to 1996, the Enron Foundation contributed nearly $1 million to the Nature Conservancy, whose "Climate Change" project promotes global warming theories. In the meanwhile, Enron had also bought the world's biggest wind power company, GE Wind, from General Electric. They also owned the biggest solar power company in the world, in society with Amoco (now belonging to British Petroleum  BP). Enron then started to finance everything related to the global warming hype, including grants to scientists - but asking for statements that humans were responsible for the excessive emissions of CO2 through fossil fuel burning. 
They also wrote to President Clinton, asking him, in essence, to harm the reputations and credibility of scientists who argued that global warming was an overblown issue. They were standing in Enron's way. The letter, dated Sept. 1, asked the president to shut off the public scientific debate on global warming, which continues to this date, and nowhere more so than here in NZ where one of the world's leading climatologists, Dr Vincent Gray' has been rubbished by the establishment for his factual book 'The Greenhouse Delusion'.
 
Meanwhile Enron commissioned its own internal study of global warming science. It turned out to be largely in agreement with the same scientists Enron was trying to shut up. After considering all of the inconsistencies in climate science, the report concluded: "The very real possibility that the great climate alarm could be a false alarm. The anthropogenic warming could well be less than thought and favourably distributed." 
 
In NZ it may be said that the government has had its own eye on a potential windfall. It was initially forced to consider the Kyoto Protocol because when the Alliance Party self destructed and the Labour Party needed the Greens in a hurry for support in Confidence and Supply, the deal demanded by the Greens was an on-the-spot agreement to GE legislation and Kyoto. The NZ government could see that the GE debate was only trading in emotionalism and had no financial return, but the carbon credit trading game looked much more inviting and the smooth-talking promises of billions to be made from credit-trading with all our trees acting as CO2 sinks easily turned the NZ politicians' heads. Then 'Surprise' our Government experts suddenly found they had miscalculated and now NZ has to pay - question is- to whom? and to resolve what?
 
Helen Clark said in 2002 'Climate change is a global problem and a concerted international effort is required to combat it'.
 
I can put that a little differently: Climate change is a reality that has been with us since the dawn of civilisation. There are just so many proven facts about what the world's climate has done over the centuries. e.g. The Vikings used to farm areas of Greenland that nowadays are permanently frozen! This is not an opinion or a fairy tale, it's well documented history!
 
The proposition that big business can save the world by trading in billions of dollars' worth of carbon credits is a complete joke and if it had not been for our Government needing the Greens' support I doubt we would ever have signed up to Kyoto anymore than the G8 recognised the call from the international greenies to jump on the Global warming band wagon!
 
The Global warming claim was started in the late 1980s and was vigorously pursued by those who could profit from the concept. Today many hitherto reliable sources of information, including official Government agencies, have now jumped upon this directionless bandwagon and yearly hundreds of millions of dollars are pouring into their bottomless coffers - still as one intelligent observer noted - at least it keeps them off the streets!
 
I truly believe that with (fact) no increase in warming for 17 years, with arctic sea ice increasing back towards record levels, with arctic sea ice continuing to grow, with no measurable increase above historical sea levels having occurred, that at last a small measure of common sense is now taking hold and perhaps now we can start placing all the wasted resource to addressing the very real problems of the third world.
 
Please do not misunderstand my desire for our world to develop renewable clean energy supplies, especially for the third world - I believe that scientifically we are on the cusp - commercially/politically we may still have some barriers to cross.
 
I do not believe the earth is environmentally under threat, although we must be ever vigilant, however I do believe that the world is very definitely under politically motivated economic threat.
 
Thank you.