For those FWers who, like me, are still prepared to be sceptical about the
findings of the IPCC report, here's an extract from an article in today's
Sunday Times by Melanie Phillips.
<<<<
[it is said that] there are no more than 10 active scientists in the world
who disagree with the notion of human-induced climate change.
But there are thousands of scientists who disagree with the prediction of
climatic catastrophe caused by human agency and who are utterly dismayed by
what they see as the falsehoods of Kyoto and the IPCC report. Many have
signed statements saying so; these are never reported. and some on the
sceptic side are very eminent indeed.
Dr Richard Lindzen of the Masachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the
foremost experts on atmospheric science, says there is no evidence that
greenhouse gases could dispupt the climate. In a withering put-down of the
"absurd" Kyoto Protocol, he describes it as "very much a children's
exercise of what might possibly happen" prepared by a "peculiar group" in
the IPCC, almost all of whom have "no technical competence".
Dr Jan Veizer, the renowned geologist, has produced a definitive
reconstruction of the world's climate history, which says there is no
correlation between cold and warm periods and low and high levels of CO2.
Indeed, there were long periods when rises in CO2 were accompanied by a
drop in the average temperature. Some scientists say this report alone
sounds the death knell for the man-made global warming theory.
. . . Climate change is made up of a vast number of contributory factors,
to which CO2 is but one minute player. The IPCC report is a product of
computer modelling . . . which then produces a guesstimate which merely
replicates a premise, however flawed. . . . The IPCC report admits admits
that, of the 12 factors thought to influence climate cahnge, 9 are very
poorly understood. It also admits that certain key changes indicating
global warming have not yet occurred.
>>>>
So I repeat what I wrote before: "The jury is still out".
Whether the IPCC report will turn out to be plausible or not as the
evidence accumulates over the next decade or so, there is no doubt
whatsoever that it has been captured by a bunch of politicians (starting
with Margaret Thatcher) and senior bureaucrats who have little else to do
with their time. The European Commissioners, who have dismally failed in
almost every key policy of the EEC are presently junketing themselves
around the world's capitals trying to persuade other politicians to become
equally hysterical.
Keith Hudson
___________________________________________________________________
Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
________________________________________________________________________
