Roy Spencer
May 13, 2008
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTUzNWUzYTA4ZTkwMTVhZmM3M2NkZDc5NDhmOTRkMzA
John McCain's global-warming speech on Monday made it clear that there
will be no presidential candidate this year willing to question the
assertion that global warming (a.k.a. "climate change") is manmade, or
the assertion that we can fix global warming by passing a few laws.
Along with Clinton and Obama, McCain's proposal to attack global warming
now gives voters three choices for a car color - as long as it is black.
Like Clinton and Obama, McCain's proposal involves a "cap and trade"
mechanism to legislatively limit CO2 emissions in the coming years, with
the free market minimizing the economic damage by allowing a trading of
emission credits between companies. He also includes an allowance for
carbon offsets, although everyone (except Al Gore) believes this to be
more smoke-and-mirrors than a real-world strategy for reducing carbon
emissions.
What worries me is the widespread misperception that we can do anything
substantial about carbon emissions without seriously compromising
economic growth. To be sure, forcing a reduction in CO2 emissions will
help spur investment in new energy technologies. But so does a price tag
of $126 for a barrel of oil. Finding a replacement for carbon-based
energy will require a huge investment of wealth, and destroying wealth
is not a very good first step toward that goal.
When the public finds out how much any legislation that punishes energy
use is going to cost them, with no guarantee that anything we do will
have a measurable impact on future climate, there will be a revolt just
like the one now materializing in the U.K. and the EU. At some point, as
they are faced with the stark reality that mankind's requirement for an
abundant source of energy cannot simply be legislated out of existence,
the public will begin asking, "Just how sure are we that humans are
causing global warming?"
And this is where the science establishment has, in my view, betrayed
the public's trust.
Even though there has never been a single scientific paper published
that has ruled out natural variability for most of the warming we've
seen since 1850, Big Science has managed to convince politicians and
much of the public that the science is settled. Apparently, our addition
of nine molecules of carbon dioxide to each 100,000 molecules of air
over the last 150 years can now be blamed for anything and everything we
choose. Hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, floods, glaciers flowing
toward the sea.. all of these used to happen naturally, but no more.
The warming that allowed the Vikings to farm in Greenland 1,000 years
ago was surely natural. But we are now told that warming in Greenland
today is surely manmade. Glaciers retreating in western Canada have
revealed evidence of previous forests, showing that warming and cooling
cycles do indeed occur, even without SUVs. Yet the SUV is now the
scapegoat for retreating glaciers.
McCain pointed to shrinking Arctic sea ice and collapsing Antarctic ice
shelves as obvious evidence that humans are to blame, even though the
sea ice did the same thing in the 1920s and 1930s, and those ice shelves
must break off eventually, as new glacial ice flows toward the sea to
take their place.
But McCain has made it clear that the science really does not matter
anyway because, even if humans are not to blame for global warming,
stopping carbon-dioxide emissions is the right thing to do. And if we
had another choice for most of our energy needs, I might be willing to
accept such a claim as harmless enough.
But carbon dioxide is necessary for life on Earth, and I have a
difficult time calling something so fundamentally im****tant a
"pollutant." Maybe the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher now
than it has been in hundreds of thousands of years. So what? I am
increasingly convinced that its influence on climate pales in comparison
to the influence that natural climate events like El Niņo and the
Pacific Decadal Oscillation have on regional climate. Indeed, most of
the warming we've seen in the last century might well be due to these
natural modes of climate variability alone.
The trouble is that no one has been funded by the government to
investigate such a possibility, and the mandate for the U.N.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to address manmade
climate change - not natural climate change.
So, here we are with bad science ready to sup****t bad policy decisions
that will lead to bad economic times ahead, and no presidential
candidate who is willing to ask the hard questions. While we hate to be
pandered to by politicians, in this case I can only hope that they
really are pandering - that this is hot air and not prospective policy.
- Dr. Roy W. Spencer is a principal research scientist at the University
of Alabama in Huntsville. He is author of the new book, Climate
Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering
Politicians, and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor.
--
Regards
Bonzo
"A lot of environmental messages are simply not accurate. But that's the
way we sell messages in this society. We use hype. And we use those
pieces of information that sustain our position." Professor Jerry
Franklin, Ecologist, University of Wa****ngton
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