Global Warming - What Are the Facts?
letter published in The Australian, 2 Dec 2008
[square bracketted deleted by Editor]
Your editorial ("Unthinking Dogma", 29 November) raises valid questions about whether the community has been given all "the facts" necessary to assessing claims that, unless action is taken to reduce CO2 emissions, the world faces increasing temperatures [threatening our environment and lifestyle].
At two well-attended (but unreported) functions in Melbourne in the last two weeks major questions raised by highly qualified sceptics (and others) were not answered by "experts" and most were left seriously concerned that the Government is unnecessarily rushing into a scheme to reduce emissions that might harm the economy [ will likely have severe adverse effects on the economy].
Questions about the facts included those going to the heart of the science, including why the warming effects from increased concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere apparently diminish progressively as concentrations grow; why the cooling effects from evaporation seem vastly understated in the models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to project temperature increases; why the modelling of the various influences on temperatures by the IPCC produces such a wide range of possible outcomes thereby creating enormous uncertainty about the validity of projections; why there is no satisfactory explanation of the three periods of falling temperatures since 1880 despite continued growth of emissions; and why scientists (and others) who support the IPCC analysis so arrogantly dismiss the views of the many highly qualified dissenters.
[There is a long history of wrong analyses by scientists of alleged problems facing the world. It is astonishing that no independent inquiry has been made into the science used by the IPCC. The time has come for such an inquiry before the Government proceeds with any emission reduction scheme].
Des Moore
Director, Institute for Private Enterprise
Melbourne, Vic
For further discussion of the facts or lack thereof, see Christopher Booker's article in the UK Telegraph