Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

In 2023, we became lost in Neverland on climate change

By Tom Harris - posted Wednesday, 27 December 2023


Rather than focus on preparing for the very real problems of a continually changing climate, our leaders are concentrated instead on the politically correct, but scientifically impossible, goal of 'stopping climate change.' The whole lot of them seem to have been transported to Neverland.

Peter Pan author J. M. Barrie tells us that Neverlands are found in the minds of children.

There, with the help of fairy dust, Peter Pan can fly, and he teaches others to overcome their common sense and soar as well. Peter claims greatness, is able to feel danger when it is near, and even has the ability to imagine things into existence. In fact, there is almost nothing the hero of Neverland cannot do -- yet in order to maintain such powers, Peter must stay childlike and forget everything he learns about what happens in the real world.

Advertisement

Today's climate alarmism could have come directly out of Barrie's book. The UN believes they can sense climate danger decades in advance, a power that requires forgetting that every prior prediction they made turned out to be wrong. They imagine that today's global climate models (GCM), simulations that utterly failed to forecast the recent extended "pause" in global warming, provide lawmakers with the "unequivocal" knowledge they need to enact trillion-dollar policies to limit planetary temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

To back up such extraordinary claims, they tell us that there is an "overwhelming consensus" of scientists who agree with their position. This statement requires that they imagine thousands of well-qualified skeptical scientists out of existence, or imagine that they constitute a tiny minority of the scientific community that isn't worth their time to listen to.

They apparently know nothing about the Climate Change Reconsidered series of reports of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). These are among the most comprehensive documents ever published about the current state of climate science. Citing thousands of peer-reviewed scientific references published in the world's leading science journals, the NIPCC reports show clearly that today's climate is not unusual and the evidence for future climate calamity is very weak. These documents conclude that we are not causing a climate crisis.

The most recent (December 2018) volume of the NIPCC reports concluded:

…fundamental uncertainties arising from insufficient observational evidence and disagreements over how to interpret data and set the parameters of models prevent science from determining whether human greenhouse gas emissions are having effects on Earth's atmosphere that could endanger life on the planet. There is no compelling scientific evidence of long-term trends in global mean temperatures or climate impacts that exceed the bounds of natural variability.

In other words, the modest changes we are now seeing in climate are almost certainly natural.

Advertisement

If they don't have time to read the CCR reports, the least they can do is study the short NIPCC booklet, "Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming." The report was authored by climatologist Dr. Craig Idso of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change in Arizona, geologist the late Dr. Robert Carter, former Head of the Department of Earth Sciences at James Cook University in Australia, and physicist the late Dr. S. Fred Singer, Emeritus Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and NIPCC founder.

The booklet refutes most of the alarmist proclamations. For example, it states:

  • "There is no survey or study showing "consensus" on the most important scientific issues in the climate change debate."
  • "Neither the rate nor the magnitude of the reported late twentieth century surface warming lay outside normal natural variability."
  • "No evidence exists that … [a future warming of 2°C] would be net harmful to the global environment or to human well-being."
  • "No close correlation exists between temperature variation over the past 150 years and human-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions."
  • "GCMs [Global Climate Models] systematically over-estimate the sensitivity of climate to CO2."
  • "Significant correlations exist between climate … and solar activity over the past few hundred years … Forward projections of solar cyclicity imply the next few decades may be marked by global cooling rather than warming, despite continuing CO2 emissions."
  • "Melting of Arctic sea ice and polar icecaps is not occurring at 'unnatural' rates."
  • "Sea-level rise is not accelerating."
  • "No convincing relationship has been established between warming over the past 100 years and increases in extreme weather events."
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. Page 2
  4. 3
  5. All


Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

16 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

Tom Harris is an Ottawa-based mechanical engineer and Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Tom Harris
Article Tools
Comment 16 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy