Читать книгу Global Warming and Other Bollocks - Stanley Feldman - Страница 32

The evidence in the IPCC report (4AR WG I) is detailed and written in an authoritative style. It is presented as the bible of climate-change science. Readers should bear in mind that the working party that drew up the conclusions included those whose own opinions and papers are widely quoted in the compilation of the report. In effect, the report gives only their side of the story. The working party did ask some of those attending (many as representatives of governments that had approved the Kyoto Protocol) for comments on the draft Protocol. The most consistent comments were that it implied a degree of certainty that was not supported by evidence. Special criticism was made of the panel’s reliance on predictions from mathematical models whose accuracy was disputed, even by the modellers.

The late Fred Seitz, a physicist at Oregon University Department of Science and Medicine, organised an online petition questioning the link between global warming and CO₂. The petition received 33,000 signatures from American scientists, of whom over 9,000 held PhD degrees.

In 2007, some four hundred climate scientists and astrophysicists from around the world, some of whom were on this or other IPCC panels (four times the number of those who drew up the IPCC report), produced a separate document (US Senate Report: ‘400 Prominent Scientists Dispute Man-Made Global Warming Claims’) condemning the conclusions of the report as unproven, alarmist and wrong.

They believe that there is no evidence that the warming of the past hundred years is outside the parameter of natural temperature variability and they conclude that it is unlikely that there will be any significant warming driven by anthropogenic CO₂. They believe the scare story presented in the report is without scientific justification.

In spite of these massive petitions from scientists who do not believe that manmade CO₂ will cause a dramatic global warming, we are told that ‘all scientists agree with the IPCC’ and that hypothesis is proven. Clearly it is not.

Many scientists point out that there are very few institutions that can obtain funding for research that runs counter to the prevailing views of the IPCC, as a result one is left with an impression that there is no other story. It is difficult for those that question the anthropogenic global-catastrophe story to make their voice heard. The Compiler of Programmes for the BBC has said that she considers the case proven and that alternative views should not be given air time. The British peer Lord Lawson tells of the difficulty his agent had in finding an English publisher willing to promote a book that concludes that global-warming predictions are alarmist. The voice of respected scientists from outside their club of true believers is denigrated and they are frequently accused, by the green lobby, of being in the pay of the oil industry. The statement made by the chairman of the IPCC that there is a ‘consensus in this science’ is not based on fact: it results in insufficient attention being given to the views of the very large body, the silent majority, of dissenters. Good science is not served by promoting a false ‘consensus’.

These chapters have been reviewed by five eminent scientists involved in energy science, climate physics and mathematical modelling. Two have asked for their names not to be revealed for fear of losing research funding or advancement.

I am grateful for the advice of H O Pritchard, professor of gas kinetics and combustion, York University, Toronto, Canada; Professor B Gray (emeritus), Sydney, Australia, at present combustion and scientific consultant, Turramurra, NSW, Australia; and Michael Arthur, geophysicist. They have all have given permission for their assistance to be recognised.