Oil and Gas in the Capitals

	Vol. 231 No. 11
DR. ROGER BEZDEK, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, WASHINGTON

Climate change: Maybe, but in which direction?

Global warming may be questionable, but climate change may nevertheless produce worrisome impacts in the coming decades.

Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory hypothesizes that the climate is getting warmer and that humans are responsible. However, the hypotheses on which AGW rest are widely contested by scientists. These hypotheses are based on complex computer models projecting climate impacts a century into the future—models that have been notably inaccurate in forecasting climate trends of the past decade.

Many studies have found the scientific evidence for AGW lacking, one of the more compelling of these being a paper by University of Pennsylvania law professor Jason Johnston, “Global warming advocacy science: A cross examination,” published in May of this year. It analyzed the major tenets of AGW theory and found them to be questionable. The paper concluded that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and AGW scientists concealed fundamental scientific uncertainties and disagreements and created widespread misimpressions that have serious policy consequences.

Examining some of the major “proofs” of AGW indicates their tenuousness:

Global temperatures. Temperatures have been flat or declining over the past decade, but that was not supposed to happen because CO2 concentrations have increased. AGW proponents now contend that this is within the bounds of model expectations, although they did not make that claim earlier. Further, temperatures during the Medieval Warm period were significantly warmer than currently. Finally, global temperatures declined from 1940 to the late 1970s—and by then many of today’s AGW experts were warning of global cooling.

Ice caps. AGW proponents contend that rapid melting is occurring. However, ice coverage data are only available back to the late 1970s, and the Northwest Passage has been open before. They stated that observed cooling in Antarctica was consistent with global climate models—until recent studies found that it wasn’t.

Hurricanes. Hurricane Katrina is cited as an example of what AGW portends. However, Katrina made landfall as a category 3 storm in a city built below sea level with faulty levees. Stronger storms have stuck before, and the most destructive hurricane to strike the US was the 1927 Miami hurricane, well before AGW. Since the 1990s, hurricane activity has been decreasing, which contradicts AGW theory.

The sun. The late 20th century experienced a major solar activity maximum period, which is now ending, and the correlation between solar activity and earth temperatures is remarkably strong.

Religious intolerance. AGW advocates contend that we should not question the “settled science” due to the moral imperative of saving the planet, and the AGW establishment has attempted to silence critics by withholding funding and preventing their publication in peer-reviewed journals. This behavior is more indicative of religious fervor than scientific debate.

In the 1990s when US temperatures rose, it was blamed on AGW. Last winter, the US experienced record-breaking snow and cold, and the past decade saw flat or declining global temperatures. AGW believers contend that these contradictory phenomena are manifestations of global warming. Some even now contend that any type of weather is proof of global warming. AGW advocates have even changed the nomenclature: “Global warming” has been replaced by “global climate disruption.” Thus, any weather event is “proof” of their claims.

AGW advocates contend that there is 100% agreement among scientists, but this is not true. In 1999, a petition was circulated criticizing AGW theory. The cover letter was prepared by Dr. Frederick Seitz, past president of the US National Academy of Sciences and Nobel Prize winner in physics, and the petition was signed by more than 31,000 scientists—12 times the number of scientific reviewers in the IPCC.

Climate change to worry about. Evidence indicates that the climate may be cooling over the next several decades, rather than warming. This has worrisome implications. The last time the world faced this, centuries ago, the impacts were devastating.

Global cooling would delay the start of the planting season in the spring and produce early frosts in the fall, limiting food production. The cold during the Little Ice Age brought massive crop failures, food riots, famine and disease, and was one of the causal factors of the French Revolution. Global cooling could disrupt the major grain producing areas of the Northern Hemisphere. Agriculture is highly petrochemical intensive, and to maintain or expand harvests in the face of global cooling would require more oil, natural gas and other energy resources.

More generally, constraints on fossil fuel production would be much more serious in an era of global cooling than in one of global warming. Colder, longer winters would require greater quantities of energy to ensure livability, and  transportation—by vehicle, train, boat, or airplane—in a colder climate is more difficult and energy intensive.

If we are facing the onset of a global cooling cycle, the implications are serious. The danger is not a science fiction fantasy of giant glaciers burying New York and London, but rather relatively minor temperature declines that can have devastating economic, agricultural and health effects. It is impossible to assign probabilities and I am not recommending—as do AGW advocates—expenditures of hundreds of trillions of dollars on dubious remedial programs. Rather, I here raise the issue and recommend that research be devoted to it. If global cooling is a potentially serious future threat, then much of the resources devoted to AGW may have been wasted.  WO