I attended Professor Bob Carter's talk tonight in Christchurch. He presents a pretty compelling argument that the global warming scam is a scam. I hope the City Council will fund a talk in the square soon - after all they played Al Gore's movie.
Professor Carter presented the hypothesis that man-caused CO2 emissions are causing catastrophic global warming. He then demolished this pretty convincingly in about 30 clear and attractive slides.
Some of the points I learned were:
- Satellite data shows a warming trend and there is a graph for that. This data range only exists from about 1979. The ground temperature stations show the same warming trend, but also a cooling trend from 1940 to the mid 70s. Guess which graph the environmentalists show?
- CO2's effect on the climate is logarithmic. The first 20ppm of CO2 produced a warming of about 1.5 degrees, but the second 20ppm (to produce a total of 40ppm) only increased temperature by 0.4 degrees. This continues on until we see that adding 20ppm of CO2 at this stage will have no measurable effect on temperature. In fact, doubling atmospheric CO2 from today's levels might produce a temperature rise of < 0.5 degrees
- None of the computer modules agree with the warming patterns seen today (in terms of the temperatures at different latitudes and altitudes). Therefore either the models are wrong, or there is no global warming. Which is it, I wonder?
- We have benefited from increased CO2 - Professor Carter showed a list of crops and the yield increases for each compared to pre-industrial CO2 levels. The numbers were significant - like 30-50% increases for things like wheat and pine. He mentioned that greenhouses maintain a 1000ppm CO2 level for growing tomatoes for example, and I found this paper. What is truly scary is the prospect of a little ice age, for which we are due.
There were lots of good bits, but this graph was one of my favourites. It shows that the current period isn't even the warmest, and in fact there have been 4-5 times in the past 4000 years where temperatures were higher.
I asked Professor Carter why he does these talks, and what motivates him to provide material which (he admits) makes him unpopular with many colleagues. His answer was that he sees the damage done to science over the past decades and feels it is his duty to provide a counterbalance. It sounds like he rails against the presentation of opinion rather than fact.
A rather chilling note he sounded was about the possibility that we are tipping into an ice age. The temperatures have dropped sharply in the last few years. It is too early to say if this is just a one-off, or the start of a trend. The point he makes is that warming is far better than cooling.
The audience was mostly very receptive. The first question was asked by an environmentalist, who was pretty skeptical. He was pretty long winded though and I'm not sure what point he was making.
All in all it was a very interesting way to spend 90 minutes. No doubt when the environmentalists are finally defeated on this issue, we will owe Professor Carter a bouquet.
UPDATE: An environmentalists blog (Hot Topic) has pointed out that Professor Carter was on National Radio this morning. Here is an audio link (4th from bottom). What's amusing is that Hot Topic berates the presenter for noting being enough in favour of the global warming scam, and gave Professor Carter too much of an easy ride. No doubt National Radio will try harder next time. Perhaps shouting him down would work.
Plunket doesn’t call him on that - which is not surprising, given that he’s a radio journalist rather than a climate specialist - and so Carter achieves his main aim: sowing seeds of doubt in the minds of the radio audience, creating the illusion of substantive scientific debate, and thus providing cover for those who want to do nothing.
How awful. Common sense might prevail? We had better schedule another 20 interviews from the environmentalists for next week to redress the balance. There we go...everyone safely bamboozled? Good, you can relax, Hot Topic. Your secret is safe with National Radio.
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