From: "Rich Gauszka" 

Ball does have a point when he states that "universities are the most
dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively
worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a
particular viewpoint"

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/global-warming020507.htm
Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide Global
Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts? By Timothy Ball

Monday, February 5, 2007

Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the
only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But
few listen, despite the fact that I was the first Canadian Ph.D. in
Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially
the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on
human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a
Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a
climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason
(actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.


What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is
flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media
and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who
have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are
not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor
has no clothes on?

Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of
Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history
of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while
creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no
scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about
spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change
almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific
position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to
meet legislated pollution targets.

No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we
don't pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That
is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could
ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice
President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come
to believe that something is wrong?

Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling
was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. "It is a cold fact: the
Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social,
political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand
years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate
importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species,"
wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.

I was as opposed to the threats of impending doom global cooling engendered
as I am to the threats made about Global Warming. Let me stress I am not
denying the phenomenon has occurred. The world has warmed since 1680, the
nadir of a cool period called the Little Ice Age (LIA) that has generally
continued to the present. These climate changes are well within natural
variability and explained quite easily by changes in the sun. But there is
nothing unusual going on.

Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London,
Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles.
Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global
cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a
scientific fact. By the 1990's temperatures appeared to have reversed and
Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I'll witness another cycle
before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends
now indicate a cooling.

No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal attacks and
makes career progress easier. What I have experienced in my personal life
during the last years makes me understand why most people choose not to
speak out; job security and fear of reprisals. Even in University, where
free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged,
academics remain silent.

I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as libellous,
from an academic colleague, saying I had no right to say what I was saying,
especially in public lectures. Sadly, my experience is that universities
are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes
progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments
that demand a particular viewpoint.

In another instance, I was accused by Canadian environmentalist David
Suzuki of being paid by oil companies. That is a lie. Apparently he thinks
if the fossil fuel companies pay you have an agenda. So if Greenpeace,
Sierra Club or governments pay there is no agenda and only truth and
enlightenment?

Personal attacks are difficult and shouldn't occur in a debate in a
civilized society. I can only consider them from what they imply. They
usually indicate a person or group is losing the debate. In this case, they
also indicate how political the entire Global Warming debate has become.
Both underline the lack of or even contradictory nature of the evidence.

I am not alone in this journey against the prevalent myth. Several
well-known names have also raised their voices. Michael Crichton, the
scientist, writer and filmmaker is one of them. In his latest book,
"State of Fear" he takes time to explain, often in surprising
detail, the flawed science behind Global Warming and other imagined
environmental crises.

Another cry in the wildenerness is Richard Lindzen's. He is an atmospheric
physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT, renowned for his research
in dynamic meteorology - especially atmospheric waves. He is also a member
of the National Academy of Sciences and has held positions at the
University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. Linzen frequently speaks
out against the notion that significant Global Warming is caused by humans.
Yet nobody seems to listen.

I think it may be because most people don't understand the scientific
method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book
"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." A scientist makes
certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as
the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an
atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was
then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the
temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing
had started, and effectively became a law.

As Lindzen said many years ago: "the consensus was reached before the
research had even begun." Now, any scientist who dares to question the
prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they
are simply being good scientists. This has reached frightening levels with
these scientists now being called climate change denier with all the
holocaust connotations of that word. The normal scientific method is
effectively being thwarted.

Meanwhile, politicians are being listened to, even though most of them have
no knowledge or understanding of science, especially the science of climate
and climate change. Hence, they are in no position to question a policy on
climate change when it threatens the entire planet. Moreover, using fear
and creating hysteria makes it very difficult to make calm rational
decisions about issues needing attention.

Until you have challenged the prevailing wisdom you have no idea how nasty
people can be. Until you have re-examined any issue in an attempt to find
out all the information, you cannot know how much misinformation exists in
the supposed age of information.

I was greatly influenced several years ago by Aaron Wildavsky's book
"Yes, but is it true?" The author taught political science at a
New York University and realized how science was being influenced by and
apparently misused by politics. He gave his graduate students an assignment
to pursue the science behind a policy generated by a highly publicised
environmental concern. To his and their surprise they found there was
little scientific evidence, consensus and justification for the policy. You
only realize the extent to which Wildavsky's findings occur when you ask
the question he posed. Wildavsky's students did it in the safety of
academia and with the excuse that it was an assignment. I have learned it
is a difficult question to ask in the real world, however I firmly believe
it is the most important question to ask if we are to advance in the right
direction.



"Geo."  wrote in message
news:45c65d8d$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=156df7e6-d490-41c9-8b1f-106f
ef8763c6&k=0
>
> Astrophysicist Nir Shariv, one of Israel's top young scientists, describes
> the logic that led him -- and most everyone else -- to conclude that SUVs,
> coal plants and other things man-made cause global warming.
>
> Step One Scientists for decades have postulated that increases in carbon
> dioxide and other gases could lead to a greenhouse effect.
>
> Step Two As if on cue, the temperature rose over the course of the 20th
> century while greenhouse gases proliferated due to human activities.
>
> Dr. Shariv, a prolific researcher who has made a name for himself
> assessing the movements of two-billion-year-old meteorites, no longer
> accepts this logic, or subscribes to these views. He has recanted: "Like
> many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the
> story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I
> realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by
> many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media.
>
> "In fact, there is much more than meets the eye."
>
> Dr. Shariv's digging led him to the surprising discovery that there is no
> concrete evidence -- only speculation -- that man-made greenhouse gases
> cause global warming. Even research from the Intergovernmental Panel on
> Climate Change-- the United Nations agency that heads the worldwide effort
> to combat global warming -- is bereft of anything here inspiring
> confidence. In fact, according to the IPCC's own findings, man's role is
> so uncertain that there is a strong possibility that we have been cooling,
> not warming, the Earth. Unfortunately, our tools are too crude to reveal
> what man's effect has been in the past, let alone predict how much warming
> or cooling we might cause in the future.
>
> All we have on which to pin the blame on greenhouse gases, says Dr.
> Shaviv, is "incriminating circumstantial evidence," which explains why
> climate scientists speak in terms of finding "evidence of
fingerprints."
> Circumstantial evidence might be a fine basis on which to justify reducing
> greenhouse gases, he adds, "without other 'suspects.' " However, Dr.
> Shaviv not only believes there are credible "other
suspects," he believes
> that at least one provides a superior explanation for the 20th century's
> warming.
>
> "Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global
> warming," he states, particularly because of the evidence that has been
> accumulating over the past decade of the strong relationship that cosmic-
> ray flux has on our atmosphere. So much evidence has by now been amassed,
> in fact, that "it is unlikely that [the solar climate link] does not
> exist."
>
> The sun's strong role indicates that greenhouse gases can't have much of
> an influence on the climate -- that C02 et al. don't dominate through some
> kind of leveraging effect that makes them especially potent drivers of
> climate change. The upshot of the Earth not being unduly sensitive to
> greenhouse gases is that neither increases nor cutbacks in future C02
> emissions will matter much in terms of the climate.
>
> Even doubling the amount of CO2 by 2100, for example, "will not
> dramatically increase the global temperature," Dr. Shaviv states. Put
> another way: "Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by
> 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled
> amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global temperature would be
> less than 0.5C. This is not significant."
>
> The evidence from astrophysicists and cosmologists in laboratories around
> the world, on the other hand, could well be significant. In his study of
> meteorites, published in the prestigious journal, Physical Review Letters,
> Dr. Shaviv found that the meteorites that Earth collected during its
> passage through the arms of the Milky Way sustained up to 10% more cosmic
> ray damage than others. That kind of cosmic ray variation, Dr. Shaviv
> believes, could alter global temperatures by as much as 15% --sufficient
> to turn the ice ages on or off and evidence of the extent to which cosmic
> forces influence Earth's climate.
>
> In another study, directly relevant to today's climate controversy, Dr.
> Shaviv reconstructed the temperature on Earth over the past 550 million
> years to find that cosmic ray flux variations explain more than two-thirds
> of Earth's temperature variance, making it the most dominant climate
> driver over geological time scales. The study also found that an upper
> limit can be placed on the relative role of CO2 as a climate driver,
> meaning that a large fraction of the global warming witnessed over the
> past century could not be due to CO2 -- instead it is attributable to the
> increased solar activity.
>
> CO2 does play a role in climate, Dr. Shaviv believes, but a secondary
> role, one too small to preoccupy policymakers. Yet Dr. Shaviv also
> believes fossil fuels should be controlled, not because of their adverse
> affects on climate but to curb pollution.
>
> "I am therefore in favour of developing cheap alternatives such as solar
> power, wind, and of course fusion reactors (converting Deuterium into
> Helium), which we should have in a few decades, but this is an altogether
> different issue." His conclusion: "I am quite sure Kyoto is
not the right
> way to go."

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