False Claims Require Abandonment of Emissions Reduction Policies
Press release: Des Moore, 24 February 2009
The endorsement by Australia’s major political parties that increasing emissions of CO2 threaten dangerously higher temperatures is based on claims that are being increasingly exposed as false or grossly exaggerated.
In addressing a function today on Global Warming: Who Are the Scaredy Cats?, Des Moore outlined many examples of such false claims, starting with the one that recent high temperatures in Melbourne and Victoria are evidence of more frequent extreme climatic events.
Other examples include the supposed direct link between increases in CO2 emissions and global temperature. This latter can longer be sustained given that the world has now experienced three periods covering 56 out of the last 128 years during which temperatures have fallen or not increased despite consistent increases in CO2 emissions; that natural fluctuations in weather are now being acknowledged as influences even by global warming believers; that recent research shows published “official” temperature data for recent years have a large warming bias because they include urban heating effects; that observed recent falls in global temperatures contradict claims the temperature outlook has worsened since the last IPCC report in 2007; and that global temperatures were higher over periods in the distant past than in recent years despite no fossil fuel use then.
Mr Moore said that, in similar vein, scares about dangerously rising sea levels are also incorrect. Satellite measurements of sea levels show a (non-threatening) rate of increase from 1994-2005 and falls since then; widely publicised meltings in the Arctic in 2007 (reflecting increased cloudlessness) have now reversed; with the sea ice area in the Southern Hemisphere reaching record levels in 2008, recently reported guesstimates of Antarctic warming are clearly wrong; and the official Dutch meteorological agency stated recently there is “no evidence for accelerated sea-level rise”.
Nor is there any correlation between global temperatures and rainfall in Australia. As the NE of Australia has become wetter since the 1950s, this indicates no global temperature increase effect; similar droughts to the current one occurred in the past when emissions were much lower; and rainfall was lower in the Murray-Darling basin in the late 1930s-40s than in the last decade.
The exposure of these and other false claims reflects the seriously defective science used by the IPCC to justify its recommendations, Mr Moore said. Although its reports recognise research showing that temperatures do not increase in line with CO2 emissions, the IPCC proposal for urgent action effectively ignores the reality that any possible warming from increased concentrations would be much less than its predictions to 2100.
Indeed, IPCC models used to project temperature increases produce much larger increases in surface temperatures than could actually occur because they fail to take adequate account of cooling from evaporation.
Mr Moore pointed out that there is a long history of wrong doom and gloom predictions by scientists and the global warming scare is now exposed as one of many identifiable false scares. It is highly irresponsible for Australia’s political parties to have emission reduction policies.
Des Moore
Director, Institute for Private Enterprise
South Yarra, Vic 3141