31 May 2008
Distinguishing Reality from Fantasy
In spite of not being able to accurately forecast next week’s weather, New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has just released climate predictions for 2090.
It says that by the turn of the century our temperatures will be two degrees warmer than they are today; in other words Wellington in 2090 will be as warm as Auckland is now. These new projections have been incorporated into the “Climate Change Effects and Impacts Assessment” report for local government, so that councils are better able to spend ratepayers’ money planning for climate conditions in a hundred years time! [1]
Incredibly, NIWA’s predictions have been calculated using the climate models of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – models that have been comprehensively discredited by the scientific community.
In their 2001 Third Assessment Report, the IPCC published an infamous temperature chart, commonly referred to as the “hockey stick”, which reconstructed climate history. This chart eliminated the Medieval Warm Period, when the earth’s climate was much warmer than it is today, and the Little Ice Age, when it was much colder, and showed that human-induced global warming had escalated dangerously in the latter part of the 20th century. That chart was a dramatic feature in Al Gore’s Film An Inconvenient Truth.
Such was the concern about the IPCC charts that in 2006 the US Congress instigated an independent analysis of the IPCC’s climate models. The panel of statisticians headed by Professor Edward Wegman found significant problems both with the methods of statistical analysis used by the IPCC and with their peer review process. In particular they found that the researchers who created the “hockey stick” used the wrong time scale, but because they failed to consult statisticians, the error was not discovered. As a result of their investigation, the review team concluded that the IPCC’s predictions that the planet is experiencing unprecedented global warming “cannot be supported”. [2]
Others have come to similar conclusions. Last year, following the dire climate predictions in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, the National Centre for Policy Analysis reported on an audit of their climate forecasts – the forecasts on which NIWA’s climate predictions are based – by forecasting experts Dr Kesten Green and Professor Scott Armstrong. The audit found that the IPCC forecasting procedures violated many important scientific forecasting principles, and as a result they concluded that the forecasts in the IPCC’s report are invalid: There is no scientific forecast supporting the widespread belief in dangerous human-caused global warming. In fact, it has yet to be demonstrated that long-term forecasting of climate is possible at all.[3]
This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator, renowned climatologist, Dr Tim Ball, puts it this way:
“Imagine basing global or national energy and economic policy on a false theory; pursuing that policy even if clear evidence shows it is wrong; continuing even though the devastating effects of such actions are already manifest; putting your economy in competitive disadvantage when other major economies are not taking the same action.
“Sadly, many politicians in developed nations don’t understand climate science and are eager to appear ‘green’. They and the people are being driven by exploitation of their fears and lack of knowledge. A brief review of the science is essential to assuage those fears. If the difference between what the public are told and what science knows was small I would not write this article. However, the difference is vast and what is amazing is how much the public have been misled”. To find out how we have been misread, read Dr Ball’s article by clicking here .
Global warming supporters like to claim that there is an overwhelming “consensus” of scientists who support the hypothesis of human-induced global warming. They clearly want to put an end to any further examination of the IPCC’s analysis and methodologies. But just last week the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine presented a petition to the National Press Club that had been signed by more than 31,000 scientists who reject this consensus claim. The petition urges the government to reject the Kyoto Protocol and similar proposals on the basis that “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate”. [4]
British journalist and author Melanie Phillips, in a Spectator article “The Climate Cools for Reality Deniers”, explains that many of the scientists who initially supported the work of the IPCC, walked away once they realised they were dealing with politics not science. She says, “not only is the fabled climate change ‘consensus’ itself a sham but the so-called man-made global warming ‘deniers’ are by far the more accomplished and distinguished scientists than those pushing the theory as a settled and incontrovertible truth. A number of them indeed, are so eminent they were used as experts by the IPCC – but then came to realise that this was an innately corrupted process and that even some of their own work was being abused and distorted in order to promulgate the false doctrine of man-made global warming”. (The article includes a list of the scientists and experts who turned their back on the IPCC – including two of our former NZCPR Guests, Professor Bob Carter and Dr Vincent Gray)[5]
Without a doubt, one of the greatest influences on the public’s understanding of global warming has been Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth. It is a masterful piece of propaganda that has been used around the world to scare people into thinking that man-made greenhouse gases are causing catastrophic global warming. The errors in the film are so serious that a British High Court Judge ruled that the film cannot be shown to British schoolchildren unless the teacher explains what the errors are and then corrects them.
Unfortunately that is not the case in New Zealand schools. Here, the film is shown without any attempt to explain to the children that many of the claims made in the movie are blatant untruths. Pacific Islands are not sinking and nor have the inhabitants been evacuated to New Zealand; polar bear populations are increasing not dying out; rising seas are not predicted to flood huge areas of the world’s landmass; and viewers are not told the dramatic shot of the Antarctic ice shelves collapsing into the sea is fake – it is in fact sculptured Styrofoam used in the blockbuster movie “The Day After Tomorrow”!
Lord Christopher Monckton, a former advisor to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, has identified 35 errors in Al Gore’s film. In a memorandum entitled “35 Inconvenient Truths”, he concludes, “As many as 35 serious scientific errors or exaggerations, all pointing towards invention of a threat that does not exist at all, or exaggerations of phenomena that do exist, do not reflect credit on the presenter of the movie or on those who advised him. The movie is unsuitable for showing to children, and provides no basis for taking policy decisions”. [6]
Unfortunately in New Zealand there are no safeguards to protect children against political propaganda in our schools, which is why the NZCPR is running a petition to Parliament calling for children to be protected from such indoctrination in the same way that they are in Britain – to support our petition, click here
In March 2007 a documentary countering man-made global warming scaremongering – claiming that it is the biggest con in modern history – was screened on British TV. The Great Global Warming Swindle, which uses scientific evidence and the testimony of many impressive scientists – including NZCPR Guest Commentators Dr Tim Ball, Professor Fred Singer, and Lord Nigel Lawson – screens on Prime TV this Sunday June 1st at 8.40pm. It will be followed by a panel discussion between representatives of both sides of the debate.
I would urge anyone concerned about global warming to watch this movie. It draws together powerful arguments that you may not have seen in the media before, that you certainly will not have heard from our government, nor from any of the political parties in Parliament.
If you have already watched An Inconvenient Truth you owe it to yourself to watch The Great Global Warming Swindle so that you can make up your own mind. And please don’t forget that a double DVD pack containing both of these films is being offered as the prize in an NZCPR draw – for details click here
I will finish this newsletter with some food for thought from the celebrated author of the great global warming novel, “State of Fear”, Dr Michael Crichton. In a speech entitled “Environmentalism as Religion” he explains, “the greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.
“We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we’re told exist are in fact real problems, or non-problems. Every one of us has a sense of the world, and we all know that this sense is in part given to us by what other people and society tell us; in part generated by our emotional state, which we project outward; and in part by our genuine perceptions of reality. In short, our struggle to determine what is true is the struggle to decide which of our perceptions are genuine, and which are false because they are handed down, or sold to us, or generated by our own hopes and fears”. [7]
With the government’s proposed climate change policies threatening the very future prosperity of New Zealanders, the ability of the voting public to distinguish truth from propaganda over global warming has never been more important.
If you find these research-based newsletters from the NZCPR are of value to you, then please support our work – and receive the outstanding electronic book by Professor Fred Singer (who featured in The Great Global Warming Swindle), which proves that nature, not humans, causes climate change… for details click here
This week’s poll asks: Go to Poll
FOOTNOTES:
1, Ministry for the Environment, Climate Change Effects and Impacts Assessment http://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/climate/climate-change-effect-impacts-assessments-may08/
climate-change-effect-impacts-assessment-may08.pdf
2..H. Sterling Burnett, Climate Panel on the Hot Seat http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/mar/14/climate-panel-on-the-hot-seat/
Dr Edward J Wegman, Ad Hoc Committee Report on the ‘Hockey Stick’ Global Climate Reconstruction
http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/others/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf
See also Testimony to the Senate Committee by Michael Crichton
http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-senatetestimony.html and subsequent Senate Report
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport
3..NCPA, UN Global Warming Forecast Violates Accepted Principles
http://eteam.ncpa.org/news/study-un-global-warming-forecast-violates-accepted-principles
Dr Kesten Green and Prof Scott Armstrong, Global Warming: Experts’ Opinions versus Scientific Forecasts, http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st308/st308.pdf
4. OISM, Petition Project
http://www.oism.org/pproject/
5. Melanie Phillips, Brr! The climate cools for reality-deniers
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/719126/brr-the-climate-cools-
6. Lord Christopher Monckton, 35 Inconvenient Truths http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/press_releases/monckton-response-to-gore-errors.pdf
7. Dr Michael Crichton, Environmentalism as a Religion
http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speech-environmentalismaseligion.html
Reader’s comments will be posted on the NZCPR Forum page click to view .