The United Nations panel on the environment is currently discussing world climatic changes in Bonn, but are its premisses appropriate?
comment
Tim Patterson and Tom Harris
Apocalyptic visions of the future are nothing new. For centuries, many of the world’s leading thinkers have predicted imminent catastrophe unless we radically changed our ways. Although most of these forecasts were later proven false, such setbacks have never discouraged subsequent generations of alarmists.
Plato and Euripides can be forgiven for their worries that population growth would cause widespread famine.
We can also excuse Thomas Malthus who, in 1798, predicted disaster for humankind if we continued to expand.
However, the United Nations, and other modern day eco-catastrophisers, should know better than to continue to issue such grim climate forecasts. Recent events have shown that even late 20th century-predictions are already hopelessly out of date.
For example, in 1969 the secretary general of the UN, U Thant, warned that humanity had “perhaps 10 years left” in which to solve our global environmental and other problems or these challenges “will have reached such staggering proportions that they will be beyond our capacity to control”.
Earth Day 1970 provoked a torrent of irresponsible predictions. “We have about five more years at the outside to do something,” ecologist Kenneth Watt declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be … 11 colder in 2000 … about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age!”
Thirty-one years later, the world hasn’t come to an end. In many ways, the state of the environment has improved significantly. Yet, the endless stream of reports coming out of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) continues the tradition of forecasting apocalypse and completely ignores extensive scientific evidence that human-induced climate change is insignificant and, at this point, simply one of several possible theories.
Dr Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the world’s foremost atmospheric scientists, said last month, “Major media outlets announced, incorrectly, as early as 1988 that the issue of global warming was scientifically settled, and the IPCC has been spending over a decade trying desperately to make their reports conform to this belief.”
In a recently published paper in Climate Research magazine, Dr Willie Soon of Harvard concludes that today’s computer “models are not sufficiently robust to provide an understanding of the potential effects of carbon dioxide on climate necessary for public discussion.”
Dr Philip Stott, Professor of Biogeography at the University of London sums up the situation well: “It is surely time … for a more adult scientific openness about the limitations of our current knowledge.”
So then, what is the real objective of the alarmists?
First, climate science has become big business. Governments regularly award millions of dollars in climate change research grants and thousands of scientists, environmentalists and graduate students make their living exploring this issue.
The last thing that some of these groups want to hear is that climate change is natural and beyond human control.
But there is more to it than that. According to Sir John Houghton, the UN panel’s long-time chief scientist, climate change is a “moral issue”.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions will, he says, “contribute powerfully to the material salvation of the planet from mankind’s greed and indifference.”
Canada’s former minister of the environment, Christine Stewart, gave us a hint of what may be another strong motivation behind environmental agreements when she said: “No matter if the science [of global warming] is all phoney … climate change [provides] the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world”.
While generous and effective foreign aid is important, it should be discussed for what it is, not hidden as an underlying rationale for environmental treaties. The recycling magazine, Garbage, said it best: “Deceit for a good cause is deceit nonetheless.”
There is no question that climate change should continue to be a well-funded topic of scientific research. However, this is a highly complex field and no amount of UN propaganda should hide the fact that no one really knows the future of our planet’s climate.
Lindzen explains: “The aura of certainty with which the IPCC’s conclusions are being reported is clearly more a matter of politics than science.”
Later in his life, Malthus had the humility to completely rescind his forecasts of humanity’s demise. Let’s hope the UN panel will eventually come to their senses as well.
Tim Patterson is professor of earth sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Tom Harris is an Ottawa-based freelance writer and speaker