By Ian Bradford

It is important to distinguish between climate change and what the IPCC (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), accuse us of. That is: Humans are putting CO₂ into the air from a variety of sources and that is causing global warming and all sorts of weather events.  

Going way back in geological time climate has always changed

Climate has always changed for millions of years.  We have had ice ages long before humans had any effect. It must have been colder then. Then it must have warmed. We are in one of those warm interglacial periods now. It warmed from the last ice age without any influence from humans. 

Climate change is a natural process and we cannot do anything about it. 

We are still slowly warming from the little ice age which started to end about 1850. Sea level lowers dramatically in ice ages and then rises as the warming occurs: Humans didn’t cause the warming. At present, the sea level is increasing at just 1.8mm per year but that rate is decreasing. At a rate of 1.8mm rise per year, by 2100 the sea will have risen just 14 cm or a bit over 5 inches. But since the rate is decreasing, the rise in sea level by 2100 will be less than that – perhaps only 2-3 inches. Not enough to worry about. 

So what causes climate change?  Firstly, there are variations in the sun’s intensity. The sun’s intensity varies over an 11 year cycle. The variation is about 0.1%. Even this small fluctuation can affect the earth. The earth orbits the sun in paths approximately elliptical. The path can vary slightly. The earth wobbles on its axis as it spins around, and the tilt of the earth varies as well. 

These changes occur at regular intervals and these changes are called the Milankovich cycles. They affect the amount of solar radiation striking the earth. There is strong evidence that the ice ages are linked to the Milankovich cycles. The changes in the earth’s orbit occur over 100,000 years and this coincides with the glacial periods. 

Volcanoes can affect climate. A large cloud of ash can stop the sun’s radiation from reaching the earth and so cooling can occur. 

Then we have El Nino and La Nina. During normal conditions in the Pacific Ocean trade winds blow west along the equator taking warm water from South. America towards Asia. To replace the warm water, cold water rises from the depths. El Nino and La Nina are two opposing climate patterns which break these normal conditions. These are called the El Nino Southern Oscilllation (ENSO) cycle.  Both El Nino and La Nina can have global impacts on climate. They can lead to drought, heavy rains and flooding, wildfires, high temperatures, and strong winds. La Nina can also lead to a more severe hurricane season. Of course weather events, due entirely to El Nino and La Nina, can’t be blamed on humans putting more CO₂ into the air.  Both El Nino and La Nina are natural events. 

Recently, some Danish scientists, after five years of research, found that the Earth’s magnetic field may play a part in climate too.

Humans have a miniscule effect on climate  

Now let’s look at the second statement: Humans are putting CO₂ into the air and this is causing global warming and all sorts of weather events. 

CO₂ is approximately 0.04% of the atmosphere. It is generally accepted that the human contribution to the CO₂ in the atmosphere is no more than 4% of it. Physicist Piers Corban puts that into perspective. Imagine the whole atmosphere is represented by a rod the height of Big Ben in London (about 100 metres). The level of CO₂ in the atmosphere is about 38 mm on top and the human contribution is between 1 and 2 mm – a pigeon dropping on top. So the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and other alarmists are saying that humans’ 4% of the CO₂ in the atmosphere controls the rest of the CO₂ — 96%. 

Note: This is probably an exaggeration. The IPCC say humans contribute about 3.4% of all CO₂.  Then about half of this is absorbed by trees, and the ocean etc., so that makes it that only about 1.7% of all the CO₂ in the atmosphere, produced by humans, controls the rest; that is 97.3%.         

Did you know that termites produce substantial quantities of CO₂ and methane. Perhaps we should wage war on termites! 

Errors or deliberate fudging? 

In August 2007, NASA temperature data error discovery has led to 1934 – NOT the previously hyped 1998 being the hottest in history since records began. Four of the top ten hottest years in the US were in the 1930’s. NASA has yet to own up to its historic error in misinterpreting US surface temperatures. 

Furthermore, numerous US temperature collection data errors were exposed by a team of researchers led by Meteorologist Anthony Watts in 2007.  The US National Climate Data Centre is in the middle of a scandal. Urbanisation has placed many sites in unsuitable locations- on hot black asphalt, next to trash burn barrels, beside heat exhaust vents, even attached to hot chimneys and above outdoor grills.  The data and approach taken by many global warming alarmists is seriously flawed. If the global data were properly adjusted for urbanisation and station siting, and land use change issues were addressed what would emerge is a cyclical pattern of rises and falls with much less of any background trend. 

The climate alarmists hardly ever correct for the Urban Heat Island Effect. All readers are familiar with heat waves rising off a sealed road on a hot summer’s day.  In cities we have reflection of sunlight off buildings, much traffic, heat pumps, many sealed roads, many people and so on. Temperature collecting sites in cities usually give readings several degrees above what they should, so corrections for the Urban Heat Island effect must be made. When the alarmists come out and say such and such a day was the hottest this year, take it with a degree of scepticism. 

Many scientists say it is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of the earth. A temperature can only be defined for a homogeneous system.  Differences in temperature drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents and thunder etc. which make up the climate. 

Temperature comes first then CO₂ follows much later 

The climate alarmists state that pouring CO₂ into the atmosphere causes global warming. There is a good argument for stating that actually it is the other way around. If you take a can of beer or a can of Sprite out of the fridge and take the top off there is a brief outpouring of gas – CO₂.  This is because the can is under a small pressure and you have released the pressure. You pour the contents into a glass. You can see the bubbles of CO₂ coming off. Leave it for several hours and there are no more bubbles. The drink tastes horrible. All the CO2 has been released as the liquid warms up. As the liquid warms, the gas molecules acquire more kinetic energy and so are more able to escape from the surface of the liquid. So the warmer the liquid the less gas it holds. 

In the long run CO₂ levels are an effect not a cause of changes in climate (temperature). 

The oceans hold about 50 times more CO₂ than the atmosphere. If the sea warms CO₂ is released and if it cools it absorbs CO₂ from the air. On a long time scale CO₂ emitted from the sea surface in warm periods gets dissolved again into the cold deep oceans by currents off Greenland and emerges 500-800 years later in the air over the Pacific after a long deep sea trek. 

So the CO₂ lags behind the climate by about 500-800 years.  This is backed up by ice core data.  The current increase in CO₂ levels in the last 100 years is an after-effect of the Medieval Warm Period. This took place around 500-800 years ago and was warmer than our current period. The Medieval Warm Period was a period of economic boom for most of Europe where crops grew faster etc. Most importantly, it was the warming during that period which has been driving the rising CO₂ in the atmosphere over the last 100 years or so.

(That CO₂ follows temperature has been determined by some well qualified scientists: H. M. Fischer, et el, 1999, U. Siegenthaler, et el, 2005, N Callion, et el, 2003, Monnen et el, 2005, and Muddlesee, et el,  2001.)

A cooling and a hiatus we are not told about

Here’s another bit of information you are not told.  The IPCC 2007 report stated this: “The working Group 4^th Assessment concluded that most of the observed increase in the globally averaged temperatures since the mid 20^th Century (That’s since 1950), is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse concentrations.” (Anthropogenic means caused by humans.)

Now since 1944, for 33 years the observed temperature of the earth fell. So that’s to 1977. Then there was a warming. Then from 1995 to 2014 at least, the temperature of the earth stayed the same. There was a hiatus. So in that 57 years the IPCC talked about from 1950 to 2007 when the report came out, for 39 of those years the temperature of the earth actually fell or stayed the same. This statement then, by the IPCC is not correct. Similar statements were made in other reports.

Here is what Canadian Geophysicist Norm Kalmanovitch writes:  “Twentieth century global warming did not start until 1910. By that time CO₂ emissions had already risen by the expanded use of coal that had powered the Industrial Revolution, and emissions only increased slowly from 3.5 g tonnes in 1910 to 4 g tonnes by the end of the Second World War. 

It was the post war industrialisation that caused the rapid rise in CO₂ emissions but by 1945 when this began the earth was already in a cooling phase that started around 1942 and continued until 1975. With 32 years of rapidly increasing global temperatures and only a minor increase in global CO₂  emissions  followed by 33 years of slowly cooling global temperatures with rapid increases in global CO₂ emissions, it was deceitful for the IPCC to make any claim that CO₂ emissions were primarily responsible for 20^th Century global warming. “   

Ocean “acidification”

I have already talked about sea level changes let’s briefly look at “ocean acidification”. Everywhere, the IPCC and other climate alarmists talk about ocean acidification. That’s because they say CO₂ dissolves in the ocean to make it acidic. 

Let’s clear something up first. The oceans are NOT acidic and never have been. The pH of the oceans is about 8.2. The oceans are alkaline. If anything, the correct term is less alkaline, NOT more acidic. The pH scale goes from 0 to 14, with the mid-point 7 being neutral –the pH of pure water.  From 0 to 7 we have the acids, with those near 0 being the strong acids, and from 7 to 14 the alkalis with those near 14 the strong alkalis. 

The 5^th IPCC report from 2014 made these statements:  Firstly, “The ocean has absorbed 30% of the emitted anthropogenic CO₂ causing ocean acidification.” Now the IPCC itself says  humans are responsible for  just 3.4% of all the CO₂ in the atmosphere. The oceans absorb 30% of this according to the IPCC. That is about 1% of the human emitted CO₂. Since the oceans hold at least 30% of all CO₂, and that figure has recently thought to be low, it would seem that 1% is insignificant. Anthropogenic CO₂ is NOT causing ocean acidification or rather a lessoning of alkalinity. 

Final words from Ian Plimer and Bernie Lewin:

“Climate change catastrophism is the biggest scientific fraud that has ever occurred. Much climate ‘science’ is political ideology dressed up as science. These are times in history when the popular consensus is demonstrably wrong and we live in such a time.” 

“And so we have it. Starting with a handful of scientists in obscure fields sucked up into the save-the–world politics of UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme), we have now arrived, after only a few short decades, with corruption spread across our great institution of science. Whether knowingly or not, and whatever their motivation, these scientists opened a gap for huge political forces to overwhelm their principles and processes, and to empower those among them willing to participate in the corruption.”

References

IPCC reports for 1995, 2001, 2007, 2014, 2021. 

Moran, Alan Ed. Climate Change-The Facts. Stockade Books, 2015

Leighton Steward, H. Fire, Earth, Paradise. Author House, 2008           

Morano, Marc,  New Peer Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears. US Senate Committee, August 2007