THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume IX, Issue # 24, February 5, 2007
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
SHOULD WE BELIEVE THE LATEST UN CLIMATE REPORT?
By Dennis T. Avery
POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM, THE UNITED NATIONS, & THE THEORY OF GLOBAL WARMING CAUSED BY HUMAN
ACTIVITY: THE MOST RECENT REPORT OF THE UN'S INTERNATIONAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CONTROL -- THE IPCC'S
ASSERTION THAT HUMANS ARE OVERHEATING THE PLANET, A CLAIM LACKING EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT IT -- THE DEMAND
THAT THE U.S.A. HELP STABILIZE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS BY REDUCING AMERICA'S ENERGY CONSUMPTION BY
EIGHTY PERCENT -- HOW SCIENCE & THE EARTH'S NATURAL HISTORY REFUTE THE IDEOLOGY & PROPAGANDA OF THE
POLITICAL ENVIROMENTALISTS & GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISTS -- WHY THE LATEST UN CLIMATE REPORT SHOULD BE
REJECTED
FULL STORY:
The United Nations Climate Control Panel is asserting — again — that humans are overheating the planet. Again, the
Panel members have no evidence to support their claim, but they want the U.S.A. to cut its energy use by perhaps 80
percent, just in case. Stabilizing greenhouse gases means no personal cars, no air-conditioning, no vacation travel.
Nancy Pelosi says one-third of the members of the U.S. Senate want this too.
It’s a remarkably sweeping demand, given that, over 150 years, the earth has warmed less than 1 degree Celsius. This on
a planet where the ice cores and seabed sediments tell us the climate has been either warming abruptly or cooling
suddenly for the past million years.
The first long ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica were brought up in the 1980s. The ice layers showed the earth
warming 1-2 degrees roughly every 1,500 years, usually suddenly. The natural warmings often gained half their total
strength in a few decades, then waffled erratically for centuries, rather like our planet’s temperature pattern since 1850.
History tells us the coolings, not the warmings, have been the bad part. After the Medieval Warming ended about 1300,
Europe was hit by huge storms, gigantic sea floods, crop failures, and plagues of disease.
My big gripe with the UN's International Panel on Climate Control (IPCC) is that the body is still keeping this climate
cycle a virtual secret from the public.
What does the IPCC say about hundreds of long-dead trees on California’s Whitewing Mountain that tell us the earth
was 3.2 degrees Celsius warmer in the year 1350 than today? In that year, seven different tree species were killed — while
growing above today’s tree line — by a volcanic explosion. The trees’ growth rings, species, and location confirm that
the climate was much warmer than that of today, says C. I. Millar of the U.S. Forest Service, reporting in Quaternary
Research, November 27, 2006.
The new IPCC report warns us it can’t explain the recent surge of warming from 1976-1998. Therefore, it claims the surge
must have been caused by human-emitted carbon dioxide. But the IPCC also can’t explain why more than half of the
current warming occurred before 1940, before the Industrial Revolution improved global living standards and increased
CO2 emissions.
Look at this interesting coincidence: The “inexplicable” l976-1998 surge in global temperature looks very much like the
warming surge from 1916-1940. After 1940, we had a 35-year cooling — which the IPCC also can’t explain. But, in 1996,
researchers discovered a 50-60 year Pacific-wide climate cycle they call the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). This cycle
caused the salmon decline in the Columbia River after 1977. It also causes shifts in sardine and anchovy catches all
around the Pacific.
The PDO shifted into a cool phase in 1940, with lots of salmon in the Columbia, until 1977. That’s almost exactly the
period of the 1940-1976 global cooling. Then the PDO turned warmer and the Columbia salmon declined — until about
1999. That closely matches the 1976-1998 surge in global temperatures.
Does the Pacific climate cycle explain the last two shortterm blips on the world’s temperature chart better than
humanity’s small contribution to the CO2 that makes up only 0.03 percent of the atmosphere? It is certainly worth
exploring more carefully before we make huge changes in our standards of living world-wide.
Past climate warmings haven’t correlated with CO2 changes. The Antarctic ice cores show that, after the last four Ice
Ages, the temperatures warmed 800 years before the CO2 levels increased in the atmosphere. The Warming produced
more CO2 in the atmosphere, not the other way around.
It’s worth noting that the environmentalist movement and the politicians also blamed human activity for the salmon
decline. Farming, fishing, and logging were reined in, sending the Pacific Northwest’s rural economies into despair.
Now we’ve found the PDO. Is a natural cycle also the answer for the UN Climate Control Panel?
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and is the Director of the Institute's Center for
Global Food Issues (www.cgfi.org). Formerly he was a senior analyst for the United States
Department of State. He is the co-author, with atmospheric physicist Fred Singer, of the book, Unstoppable Global Warming:
Every 1500 Years (Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). Readers may write Avery at Post Office
Box 202, Churchville, Virginia, 24421. Email: cgfi@rica.net
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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