I am sceptical about the Kyoto Protocol and its accompanying fears of climate change.
Why am I so sceptical of the climate change fundamentalism?
It goes back to the 1960s when I came across a book on an early European explorer-missionary William Colenso.
He crossed the Ruahine Ranges from Hawkes Bay to preach in the Taihape area. Extracts from his diary showed there were dead trees, stream beds choked with shingle and tree trunks and large land slips. But somehow Colenso's graphic descriptions gathered dust.
The "Colenso Diaries" were picked up in the 1980s by a scientist in Hawkes Bay the late Dr Patrick Grant.
A botanist and hydrologist, Patrick Grant researched and found old tree skeletons in the Ruahine Range, attributed by government agencies and the Forest and Bird Society to a combination of deer and possums, were in fact, caused by climate change.
During a period 1909-1914, rainfall records revealed there were six successive droughts and then a big drought in 1915. The 1915 drought. aggravated by the six preceding dry years, stressed and killed giant forest trees. Marlborough's rainfall records show the same drought pattern.
If those several years of successive droughts happened today, would the global warming lobby have immediately blamed "climate change"? In 1909-15, there were virtually no automobiles and low farm stock numbers compared to today.
Dr Patrick Grant identified three periods of natural forest damage during climate change cycles, that were relatively recent in terms of geological time:-
* Matawhero Period (1530 to 1620)
* Wakarara Period (1770 to 1800)
* Waipawa Period (1950-present day)"
So climate change has been going on for centuries, indeed millions of years. After all aren't ice ages proof of natural climate change?
To use the phrase "climate change" in the context of any debate against global warming is either ignorant or dishonest. Don't tag normal climate change as global warming.
Frankly I can only conclude, the global warming debate is hyped up out of all proportion. Sure, we should be both aware and alert about global warming but not overreactive and hysterical.
Some people confuse climate change with global warming. Climate change has been here as long as the Planet Earth.
BUT the real question is, whether accelerated climate is happening beyond natural climate change cycles?
And my scepticism isn't alone. Indeed some very learned people think the same. Here are some I have come across.
Professor David Bellamy said mid-2007 - "Global Warming ---has become a political football that has lost its foundations in real science."
"The most reliable global, regional and local temperature records from around the world display no distinguishable trend up or down over the past century."
Professor Bellamy went on to point out during a world wide medieval warm period, the Romans grew grapes in York and Nordic settlers farmed Greenland, hence its name.
In August 2007, new scientific studies was reported to have prompted scientists to declare the fear of "catastrophic man-made global warming" was scare mongering. The announcement said the studies debunked the United Nations, former US president Al Gore and the media-engineered consensus on climate change.
Ironically Al Gore of the film "An Inconvenient Truth" won a Noble Peace Prize for his global warming hysterics. Another report suggests Al Gore might not be squeaky clean on the subject, being involved in a carbon trading company that will make millions out of the Kyoto Protocol.
Meanwhile back in New Zealand the late Augie Auer, meteorologist and TV weather presenter, described the global warming argument as a "combination of misinterpreted and misguided science, media hype and political spin that had created the current hysteria."
"It is time to attack the myth of global warming," he said.
Brian Leyland, an Auckland engineer specialising in electricity generation, said the government's "central focus is climate change and political expediency, not strategy and energy."
In an opinion piece published on a Political Research web site, Brian Leyland referred to "shonky climate models", "political expediency" and that energy debates were "about politics, not science."
Apparently overseas other scientists have tried to voice the scepticism.
For example, former Harvard physicist Dr Motl said man made climate fears were "playing the children's game to scare each other."
And what of the last Labour led government and indeed the National Party, both who endorse the Kyoto Protocol?
Well it's hypocrisy at its worst. The government trumpets the climate change catastrophe, yet floods New Zealand with gas-guzzling cheap car imports that are a major contributor to emissions. National is committed to the same environmentally disastrous free market policies too yet endorses Kyoto.
The government won't allow coal fired power stations because of alleged emissions but imports coal to China to let them emit CO2 into the atmosphere.
And don't expect National to cease coal imports either.
Footnote; Tony Orman is a conservationist, free lance journalist and former land resource planner.
