Barry Brill OBE JP LL.M (Hons) M. ComLaw. He is the chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, and was a Minister of Science in the 1978-1981 National Government.
A recent article in The Gisborne Herald said “warming has been accelerating over the past 20 years”, and there is “a runaway greenhouse effect”, and “rising sea levels”, but none of these things are real.
It is disturbing so many people involved in the ongoing debate don’t know what the actual observations of the Earth’s temperature show.
Below are the missing scientific facts based on official data, which don’t depend on theories or opinions or ideology, and the hard facts of global warming may surprise you.
There are many peer-reviewed scientific studies indicating that we should blame the 1980-98 warming blip on natural cycles, clouds, oceanic cooling, cosmic rays, sunspots and other solar influences.
It may turn out that there is no world climate, only many local climates — and, like the weather, they may prove to be forever chaotic and unpredictable.
Meantime, let’s not do anything stupid.
MISSING FACT 1: The major part of the world’s warming in the past century occurred before 1940, and is entirely natural.
Between 1940 - 1980 the world cooled. In the 1970s, both world-wide and New Zealand media ran cover stories about the threat of famine and disease resulting from global cooling, and the pending return of ice ages.
It was around 1980 that the current slight warming began. By 1990 it was two-tenths of a degree C above average and scientists were not sure if that was significant. But then it dropped for a few years until a super-strong El Nino intervened and probably made 1998 the warmest year of the century.
MISSING FACT 2: The whole issue of global warming rests on less than 20 years of the world getting warmer. Then the warming stopped.
This was the subject of argument for several years, but recently, the journal “Science” accepted that the pause in global temperatures is real. Dr Phil Jones, the man at the centre of the “Climategate” storm, recently told the BBC that “there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995”.
MISSING FACT 3: The world hasn’t got any warmer this century. Although we live in a relatively warm decade, this is all a follow-on from the 1980-98 jump. There is no upward trend, just a plateau.
Leading IPCC modellers have gone on record as predicting that this temperature pause will last for 30 years. Others contend a new warming trend might emerge as early as 2014. We can all agree on one thing – nobody knows.
MISSING FACT 4: IPPC projections of large temperature increases over the next 100 years assume a world population of 15 billion or more. But official UN predictions are that population will peak at less than 9 billion in about 2050, and then decline.
The IPCC rightly says it can’t predict the future; it can only model the effect of “scenarios” and average the results. The IPCC uses controversial scenarios dependent on poor countries becoming super-rich, and zero shortages of oil and gas. These are the sole basis of all the scary predictions used by climate activists and by the media.
MISSING FACT 5: Human-caused carbon dioxide, even when added to methane and other greenhouse gases, is not capable of raising future global temperatures by more than 1 degC. The real argument is about water vapour.
This is accepted by all climate scientists and derives from basic laws of physics. Everybody also agrees any global warming (however caused) will mean more evaporation from the seas. While the IPCC assumes extra water vapour will create a “second round greenhouse effect”, many other scientists believe the evaporation process has a cooling effect, and that the extra clouds keep the earth’s surface cool by dimming the sunlight.
MISSING FACT 6: Since CO2 measurements began 60 years ago there have been less than 20 years when both CO2 and temperature were increasing together. The correlation is very weak.
CO2 is a trace gas in the earth’s atmosphere, rising from 0.0028 percent to 0.0038 percent over the 20th century. The IPCC argues that this must be the reason for the small warming trend, because they haven’t yet been able to model any other satisfactory explanation. This is a poor case, and rather circular, because it depends on being confident that the IPCC has a perfect grasp of all the factors which drive all the world’s climates.
Computer models shouldn’t drive our future.