Whatever the experts say about the howling gales, thunder and
lightning weÕve had over the past two days, of one thing we can be certain.
Someone, somewhere - and there is every chance it will be a politician or an
environmentalist - will blame the weather on global warming.
But they will be 100 per cent wrong. Global warming - at least the
modern nightmare version - is a myth. I am sure of it and so are a growing
number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the worldÕs
politicians and policy makers are not.
Instead, they have been unshakeable in what has, unfortunately,
become one of the central credos of the environmental movement. Humans burn
fossil fuels, which release increased levels of carbon dioxide - the principal
so-called greenhouse gas - into the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to heat
up.
They say this is global warming: I say this is poppycock.
Unfortunately, for the time being, it is their view that prevails.
As a result of their ignorance, the worldÕs economy may be about
to divert billions, nay trillions of pounds, dollars and rubles into solving a
problem that actually doesnÕt exist. The waste of economic resources is
incalculable and tragic.
To explain why I believe that global warming is largely a natural
phenomenon that has been with us for 13,000 years and probably isnÕt causing us
any harm anyway, we need to take heed of some basic facts of botanical science.
For a start, carbon dioxide is not the dreaded killer
greenhouse gas that the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and the subsequent
Kyoto Protocol five years later cracked it up to be. It is, in fact, the most
important airborne fertilizer in the world, and without it there would be no
green plants at all.
That is because, as any schoolchild will tell you, plants take in
carbon dioxide and water and, with the help of a little sunshine, convert them
into complex carbon compounds - that we either eat, build with or just admire -
and oxygen, which just happens to keep the rest of the planet alive.
Increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, double it
even, and this would produce a rise in plant productivity. Call me a biased old
plant lover but that doesnÕt sound like much of a killer gas to me. Hooray for
global warming is what I say, and so do a lot of my fellow scientists.
Let me quote from a petition produced by the Oregon Institute of
Science and Medicine, which has been signed by over 18,000 scientists who are
totally opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, which committed the worldÕs leading
industrial nations to cut their production of greenhouse gasses from fossil
fuels.
They say: ÔPredictions of harmful climatic effects due to future
increases in minor greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide are in error and do
not conform to experimental knowledge.Õ
You couldnÕt get much plainer than that. And yet we still have
public figures such as Sir David King, scientific adviser to Her MajestyÕs
Government, making preposterous statements such as Ôby the end of this century,
the only continent we will be able to live on is Antarctica.Õ
At the same time, heÕs joined the bandwagon that blames just about
everything on global warming, regardless of the scientific evidence. For
example, take the alarm about rising sea levels around the south coast of England and subsequent
flooding along the regionÕs rivers. According to Sir David, global warming
is largely to blame.
But it isnÕt at all - itÕs down to bad management of water
catchments, building on flood plains and the incontestable fact that the south
of England is
gradually sinking below the waves.
And that sinking is nothing to do with rising sea levels caused by
ice-caps melting. Instead, it is purely related to an entirely natural warping
of the EarthÕs crust, which could only be reversed by sticking one of the
enormously heavy ice-caps from past ice ages back on top of Scotland.
Ah, ice ages... those absolutely massive changes in global climate
that environmentalists donÕt like to talk about because they provide such
strong evidence that climate change is an entirely natural phenomenon.
It was round about the end of the last ice age, some 13,000 years
ago, that a global warming process did undoubtedly begin.
Not because of all those Stone age folk roasting mammoth meat on
fossil fuel camp fires but because of something called the ÔMilankovitch
Cycles,Õ an entirely natural fact of planetary life that depends on the tilt of
the EarthÕs axis and its orbit around the sun.
The glaciers melted, the ice cap retreated and Stone Age man could
begin hunting again. But a couple of millennia later, it got very cold again
and everyone headed south. Then it warmed up so much that water from melted ice
filled the English
Channel and we became an island.
The truth is that the climate has been yo-yo-ing up and down ever
since. Whereas it was warm enough for Romans to produce good wine in York, on the other hand, King
Canute had to dig up peat to warm his people. And then it started getting warm
again.
Up and down, up and down - that is how temperature and climate
have always gone in the past and there is no proof they are not still doing
exactly the same thing now. In other words, climate change is an entirely
natural phenomenon, nothing to do with the burning of fossil fuels.
In fact, a recent scientific paper, rather unenticingly titled
ÔAtmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentrations over the Last Glacial Termination,Õ
proved it.
It showed that increases in temperature are responsible for
increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, not the other way around.
But this sort of evidence is ignored; either by those who believe
the Kyoto Protocol is environmental gospel or by those who know 25 years of
hard work went into securing the agreement and simply canÕt admit that the
science it is based on is wrong.
The real truth is that the main greenhouse gas - the one that has
the most direct effect on land temperature - is water vapour, 99 per cent of
which is entirely natural.
If all the water vapour was removed from the atmosphere, the
temperature would fall by 33 degrees Celsius. But, remove all the carbon
dioxide and the temperature might fall by just 0.3 per cent.
Although we wouldnÕt be around, because without it there would be
no green plants, no herbivorous farm animals and no food for us to eat.
It has been estimated that the cost of cutting fossil fuel
emissions in line with the Kyoto Protocol would be £76trillion. Little wonder,
then, that world leaders are worried. So should we all be.
If we signed up to these scaremongers, we could be about to waste
a gargantuan amount of money on a problem that doesnÕt exist - money that could
be used in umpteen better ways: fighting world hunger, providing clean water,
developing alternative energy sources, improving our environment, creating
jobs.
The link between the burning of fossil fuels and global warming is
a myth. It is time the worldÕs leaders, their scientific advisers and many
environmental pressure groups woke up to the fact.