Climate is always changing
...Howard Curnow
Recent news on energy

This piece appeared in the Methodist Recorder, 9 Dec 16, and is republished here by permission of the editor and Howard Curnow.

The statement from the President and Vice-President of the Conference, regarding the US elections included the paragraph: "The Churches view climate change as one of the greatest challenges facing mankind. Our brothers and sisters in Pacific Islands are already experiencing its consequences. We know, even with the plans agreed at the Paris COP21 last year, many people and species will be threatened. It is of profound concern that Mr. Trump has indicated that he wishes to ignore the world's scientists and leaders, dismiss the threat of climate change and refuse to implement the Paris targets.

Implicit in the statement are assumptions that many would dispute; above all the assumption that climate change is largely the result of human activity. I am not sure if this is the official view of the Methodist Church, but there are some (perhaps many) Methodists who would take a different view. It perhaps needs saying again that over the last 100 years there have been periods of warming, periods of cooling and periods with no rapid change, and throughout that period the amount of carbon dioxide has steadily increased - facts that do not sit easily with the theory that climate change is carbon dioxide driven.

Another implicit assumption is that there is a "normal" climate from which the climate has deviated because of human activities; but in reality the climate has changed in many ways over the centuries. There have been times when the earth as a whole has been colder than it is at present and times when it has been warmer, which does lead many to question the certainty with which some declare that we are on the edge of total disater.

It is often claimed that 97 percent of scientists agree that the climate change (or global warming) of recent decades is largely the result of human activity, but the 97 percent figure came from a study which was far from scientific, and the suggestion that failure to recognize human beings means 'ignoring the world's scientists and leaders' shows a lack of awareness of the fact that many climate scientists strongly duspute the IPCC consensus on the subject.

Recent research seems to have shown that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice there is getting thicker; this does not fit easily with the view that the world is getting warmer.

Add to this the fact that computer model predictions have been higher than reality and it seems to me that the simple "anthropogenic global warming theory" looks decidedly shaky - and it follows that the reasons for thinking the 'cure' worked out in Paris will be effective rest on rather unreliable ground.

HC.

Comment from habitat21:

The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Contrary to its own propaganda, it is not a scientific body. It is a political United Nations body. It does not do science. It cherry picks science which meets its agenda, then IPCC policymakers write their reports to promote their political agenda.

The following scientists have worked for the IPCC but resigned from it because of the way their work was being misrepresented: Christopher Landsea, Paul Reiter, Richard Lindzen, John Everett, Tom Segalstad, Hans von Storch, Roger Pielke sr.

More details - click the link.

....and here is a quote from one of the IPCC officials, Ottmar Edenhoffer:
"We redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy...Basically it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization...One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore."

habitat21

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