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UNITE! Info #165en: 2/4 The big "greenhouse" hoax (1)
[Posted: 22.02.02]

[Continued from part 1/4]


III. BRIEFLY ON A DEBATE IN SWEDISH, AND: IS "GREEN-
HOUSE" AN ARGUMENT FOR NUCLEAR ENERGY?


In the recent debate in Swedish mentioned in the Intro note
in part 1/4, Thomas Palm <thomas.palm@chello.se>, who has
earlier written several postings which in my opinion are very
sound, i.a. pointing to the obvious superiority of nuclear
energy, but who has been smitten by the "greenhouse" bug, made
the following comments (in translation) concerning in particu-
lar the criticism of the IPCC by John Daly, which I had poin-
ted to:

"Well, John Daly is a merry amateur.
...
The closest comparison I can think of are those merry
amateurs who are devoting great efforts to demonstra-
ting, with elegant reasoning, how Einstein[! - RM] and
Planck[!] were wrong, and that it's Newton's mechanics
that really applies; none of quantum mechanics or re-
lativity."

So, to Thomas P. (who does have a solid scientific background
in matters pertaining to climate), it's the leading persons
of the IPCC who are the "Einsteins" on the question of "man-
made global warming"!

I promised him a somewhat detailed reply on this. And part of
it comes in the article under IV. below, where some dealings,
over the years, of those "Einsteins" (among others), are de-
scribed quite well, and no doubt truthfully, I think.

Some other (later) activities of the IPCC's are recounted in
one article on John Daly's website, "IPCC's 'TAR-2000' - A
Discernible Political Influence", which I have already re-
commended to Thomas, and some more in the article "The
'Hockey Stick: A New Low in Climate Science".

This refers to a most flagrant falsification, by the IPCC,
of the actual record of the changes in the mean surface tempe-
rature on earth in the last 1,000 years, which it had earlier
rendered approximtely correctly itself. Basing itself only
on the flimsiest "new evidence" (in fact, obviously a pre-
text), the IPCC made two well-documented warmer respectively
cooler periods, the "Medieval Warm Period", of the years 700
too 1300 approximately, and the "Little Ice Age", between 1560
and 1830 or so, just disappear from the temperature record,
whose graph then got to look like a hockey stick, with "con-
stant" temperature during 900 years and then, in the last 100
years, a "marked warming", making that period stand out from
all earlier ones.

Unfortunately, precisely in this "hockey stick" manner is the
temperature record (still) presented at the homepage of one
international organization (based in France) of which I'm
one of some 4,000 members: Environmentalists For Nuclear
Energy (EFN), at www.ecolo.org.

Like certain other advocates of nuclear energy, the EFN is
chiming in in the "greenhouse" propaganda, as supposedly con-
stituting "one further argument" in favour of nuclear energy.

Since that "argument" is just as fraudulent however as were
ever the many infamous reactionary inventions brought as "ar-
guments" against that - for several *real* reasons - quite
superior energy source, the nuclear fission one, it of course
is damaging for our organization's just cause to advance it.

Some capitalist companies owning nuclear power plants might
be "happy about" that *false* "greenhouse" propaganda, and
some such are - not surprisingly - beating the drums for it
too. But for any organization attempting to advocate what's
in the common interests of the vast majority of people on
such questions, it of course is a bad thing to do so. Friends
of nuclear energy have no reason to become "oil enemies".

I've written to the leadership of the EFN about this, but so
far, our joint propaganda has not been corrected on this
point, where it's wrong.


Here follows (in parts 2/4-4/4) the article by Robert E. Ste-
venson, which describes much of the history of the conflict on
so-called "global warming", and not least some of the activi-
ties of those "Einsteins", the leaders of the IPCC.



IV.

The below article is reproduced from the magazine 21st Century
Science & Technology, Winter 1996-1997, pp. 51-59.

Photos and diagrams included cannot be reproduced here, but
some diagram texts will be quoted.

On the author, the magazine says on p. 59:

"Robert E. Stevenson, an oceanography consultant based in Del
Mar, California, trains the NASA astronauts in oceanography
and marine meteorology. He was Secretary General of the Inter-
national Association for the Physical Sciences of the Oceans
from 1987 to 1995, and worked as an oceanographer for the U.S.
Office of Naval Research for 20 years. He is the author of
more than 100 articles and several books, including the most
widely used textbook on the natural sciences."



A N O C E A N O G R A P H E R L O O K S

A T T H E N O N - S C I E N C E O F

G L O B A L W A R M I N G


By Robert E. Stevenson, Ph.D.


*The science of climate has been buried alive by
an avalanche of ideology-based computer models.*


Not so long ago, in the early 1970s, climate scientists
thought in 100,000-year cycles, or at least 10,000-year cyc-
les, and were talking about global cooling.

Scientifically speaking, the evidence indicated that the Earth
was coming out of a 10,000-year interglacial period, on the
way to a new Ice Age. Some scientists thought that this might
happen in perhaps hundreds or thousands of years, while others
thought it might take only 100 years.

A lecture at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla,
Calif., by Prof. John Isaacs in 1972, for example, startled
the entire staff by promoting the latter fast track.

The National Science Foundation and the National Academy of
Sciences both began looking at the Ice Age concept, and bea-
ting the bushes to look for scientists who would research cli-
mate. The emphasis seemed to be not so much one of science,
but of devising scenarios to explain how climate change might
be very rapid - and might adversely and drastically affect
human behavior, for example, forcing entire populations to
move south.

[Note: At that time, there since some years back was
a quite strong left-wing mass movement both in Europe
and in the USA, for instance. Devising some scenarios
of rather imminent disaster, as the author no doubt
correctly describes it, was of interest to the ruling
people to provide some diversion. - RM]

To give you the flavor of this: At the time (1974), the dis-
aster-is-coming atmosphere was so thick, that I submitted,
tongue-in-cheek, a proposal to the National Science Foundation
(NSF) asking funds to study the Polynesians.

My alleged rationale was that it would be useful to look at a
population, which, for some reason, possibly environmental,
had packed up all its members and possessions, and traveled
via canoe thousands of miles to set up a new civilization on
a faraway island. I requested funds for a three-year project
that would outfit a large sailing ship, fully equipped, inclu-
ding medical specialists, in order to sail to the less popu-
lated islands and try to find out from the present residents,
what events prompted their ancestors to move. (The idea of the
doctors and dentists was to offer islanders some services in
exchange for their history.)

To my great surprise, the NSF was ready to fund this proposal;
the funders were crushed to find out that it was a joke! The
science funding agencies, in this period, also gave birth to
computer climate modeling. That action buried the actual sci-
ence of climate, based on study of the solar-astronomical cy-
cles and their correlation with long-term changes.

It was then, in the early 1970s, that ideology, and not sci-
ence, began to drive so-called climate science. If a disaster
scenario for global cooling might promote the use of more fos-
sil fuels, and hence more industrialization and population,
another scenario would have to be found - equally scary but
more directly blamable on human activity.

The driving force, it seemed, was to get people to blame sci-
ence for environmental disasters, to use fewer resources, and
to shrink the world population, particularly its brown, black
and yellow parts.

And so the climate science funding proliferated, climate mo-
deling proliferated, global warming and "greenhouse effect"
propaganda proliferated - and climate science, based on study
of solar astronomical cycles, oceanography, geology, and so
on, was relegated to the closet.


ENTER THE GREENHOUSE

That there is a "greenhouse effect" in the atmosphere has been
known and studied for more than 100 years. That there are cer-
tain obvious gases that make up the "greenhouse" has also been
known: gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide,
ozone, and water vapor.

The residual "natural" greenhouse effect (without the supposed
anthropogenic input in the last 150 years) has been sufficient
in the past 12,000 years to raise the Earth's atmospheric tem-
perature by about 15º C, mainly as a result of the presence of
water vapor and carbon dioxide.

Considering the temperature at the beginning of this rise
(about 5º C), with glaciers extending across all of North Ame-
rica to Cairo, Illinios, and in northwestern Europe, that in-
crease in temperature has been rather beneficial to the well-
being of humankind - to say the least.

It was as early as 1896 when Svent Arrhenius [known in Sweden
as Svante Arrhenius - RM], at the University of Oslo in Nor-
way, wondered, to himself and to his colleagues, whether or
not the expanding use of fossil fuels would lead to a shift in
the climate by the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Professor Arrhenius was bringing to the surface an issue first
commented on decades earlier by Jean-Bapitste Fourier and John
Tyndall, both significant scientists in those days.

It was just 60 years later when Svent's son, Gustav, convinced
the director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jol-
la, Calif., Roger Revelle, that it was time to begin measuring
regularly the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide. Revell
agreed and hired a young post-doc out of Cal Tech, Dave Kee-
ling, to set up a CO2 laboratory atop Mauna Loa, on the big
island of Hawaii. At that height, it would be above the marine
inversion layer and, therefore, represent a basic, "pristine",
Earth atmosphere.

By 1970, Keeling had enough useful measurements that Revell
considered it safe to announce that CO2 in the atmosphere was
increasing. Furthermore, because there were yet no carbon-12/
carbon-13 microchemical analyses, the assumption seemed logi-
cal that the increase was from CO2 produced by the burning of
fossil fuels.

By the early 1980s, other carbon dioxide measuring stations
had been established, in Bermuda and Antarctica especially.
Furthermore, it was becoming possible to obtain useful samples
from aircraft and high-altitude balloons. By 1990, the in-
crease, as measured by all stations, indicated that the CO2
content of the Earth's atmosphere was about 23 percent higher
than it had been in 1840. This 23 percent is an estimate, in
reality, because in 1840 there were no reliable measurements
of atmospheric CO2.

Well, so a 23 percent increase in CO2 isn't as reliable as we
might wish it to be. It is an increase, though, and it must be
the result of the burning of fossil fuels. What else could it
be? So, the presumption was born and grew under the careful
tutelage of the new, growing breed, the green "environmenta-
lists". They, in turn, found kindred souls in the computer mo-
delers who, finally, had computers with enough RAM memoriy and
disk storage to carry enough output to make their predictions
seem plausible.

As a result, a story began to emerge that seemed to be cre-
dible if we were to believe the "evidence". And, who among
the proletariat had any reason to doubt what "scientists say"
or what "researchers say"?

As the story goes, and it is familiar to us all, the increa-
sing amounts of CO2, methane, ozone, nitrogen oxides and the
family of freon compounds produced by man will enhance the
"greenhouse". As a result, more Earth-reflected solar radia-
tion will be "trapped" in this intensified "greenhouse", in
the form of heat, thus raising the mean temperature of the
globe.

The consequences, so the story continues, will be dire. Sea
levels will rise because of the melting of the polar ice,
large regions of forests and farmland will be destroyed, in-
creased evaporation will wipe out all irrigation systems, and
the changes in weather patterns will lead to droughts, or
floods, or worse.

During the last period the Earth was significantly warmer
than today, during the "climactic optimum", about 1200 to
1400, there were vineyards in England and in Greenland ("Vine-
land"). Even as late as 1800, oranges grew at Natchez, Miss.,
and the Sahel was a vast, grassy plain. Considering climate
change through the past 700 years, one can hardly say that to-
day's globe is warming.


SPECULATION ON TOP OF SPECULATION

There was, and is, of course, a disagreement about the reac-
tion to a warming atmosphere, if there was to be one. Certain-
ly, goes one argument, a warming ocean would result in in-
creased evaporation, thence clouds and precipitation. The
greater than normal cloud cover would decrease incoming radia-
tion, lowering temperatures at the Earth's surface. (V. Raman-
than of Scripps has verified this point.)

The increased precipitation would enlarge the continental gla-
ciers, in Antarctica and Greenland, thereby resulting in a
falling, rather than a rising, sea level. The greater-than-
normal rainfall would enhance the growth of vegetation, crops
and forests, decreasing, as a result, the area of arid regions
and improving the food supply worldwide.

So, we have speculation on top of speculation. Answers can
come only when we know better than we do now the interactions,
the fluxes, and the transports in the entire environmental
sytem of the Earth. And that's what research is all about.

The modelers would have none of this concept, however. Espe-
cially after James Hansen, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Cen-
ter, appeared before a Congressional committee in the summer
of 1988, during one of the hottest months on record, and de-
clared that there was no denying it, "Global warming is here!"
Considering the temperature in Washington, D.C., at the time,
it was simple for everyone to agree. The panic was on!

To scientists in federal laboratories, institutions funded by
federal agencies, to the non-governmental organization (NGO)
environmental advocacies (Worldwatch, World Wildlife Fund,
Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and so on), and to a number of inter-
national organizations seeking a *cause célèbre*, the announ-
cement and the political acceptance promised a bonanza. New
federal offices were created, such as the U.S. Office of Cli-
mate Change, operating in the National Academy of Sciences.
New international groups were created, such as the Internatio-
nal Geosphere-Biosphere Program.

The United Nations, where control is the operative word,
quickly organized the United Nations Environmental Program
(UNEP), with Dr. Noel Brown, a social scientist (now retired),
as the Director. UNEP immediately initiated the Intergovern-
mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), funded through the
World Meteorological Organization (WMO). In turn, WMO quickly
formed the World Climate Research Program (WCRP). And the mo-
ney flowed.

One of the first "products" of these claques was the prepara-
tion of a "treaty" to be signed by the world at an internatio-
nal "summit", so that the growing impact of humankind on the
Earth's environment could be slowed (maybe stopped) to avoid
the catastrophe unfolding from computer models. Humankind,
especially those who lived the "good life" in the so-called
Western world, were the unconscionable "bad guys" in this sce-
nario, and they would bear the brunt of any controls. Those in
the less affluent societies, who could not provide the resour-
ces to avert the "discernible human influence on the global
climate", would be covered by funds from the "bad guys" -
about $150 billion per year.

And so, the Rio Earth Summit took place in 1992, trumpeting
the greed of the "Western populations"; and all but a handful
of countries signed "treaties" giving the U.N. the authority
to control those human activities that the models claimed were
adversely impacting the global climate. Those nations that did
not sign the treaty include the United States, the former So-
viet Union, China, India, and the European Community.


[Continued in part 3/4]