Climate of Fear

by Pat Barrett

Are you concerned about climate change? Do you fear for the future of the planet? If you subscribe only to the mainstream media then this is no doubt your daily fare, and that of much of the rest of humanity. That’s right, ‘the-science-is-done’ on this issue.

Sorry, I think they missed something – science is never done on any issue, that is not in the nature of authentic empirical science, it is always discovering, self-correcting, and progressing.

There is now a growing body of evidence that disproves the anthropogenic [i.e. man made] climate change hypothesis and that any detrimental change is caused by CO2. Much study has been done on the climate issue in the past few decades and those scientists who are not swayed by political agendas and research budgets and have employed common sense, observation, and a huge amount of thorough research have revealed another generator of climate change altogether – Solar Cycles, those periods of intense magnetic activity in the sun that create sunspots and their prodigious outpourings of energy. Solar cycles have been studied for centuries and have been shown to powerfully affect earth’s climate over 10 to 14 year time spans. They also operate within a much longer time frame, the 210 year de Vries Cycle, and continue to affect climate on earth in a sometimes dramatic way depending on the length and power of each cycle.

But let’s digress a little and consider the ideology that drives the global warming promoters. Like all ideologies it will admit no dissent, the idea is truth, that is enough. This particular ideology is also profoundly anti-family, anti-Christian and has a zealousness akin to that found in some religious groupings. It has in fact become the religion of the green-movement.

Iceberg in Tasman LakeMackenzie Basin cloudscape

Some political groups, coupled with the radical environmental lobby have always sought for an imperative to drive home their pet fears – over population, resource scarcity, and the extinction of life on the planet, and now they have one that’s virtual reality – climate change aka global warming, supposedly precipitated by human activities. It’s a win-win for environmentalists, eugenicists, population controllers, and many governments. Not only can they now, with international support, limit infrastructure growth and self-sufficiency (roads, water supplies, industrialization, energy sources) in both first and third world nations, but they can greatly advance population control programmes. These programmes are what the likes of ‘civilised’ China, and to varying degrees much of the world, have adopted for generations – forced abortion, contraception, and sterilisation, not to mention infanticide, in an effort to reduce population growth and preserve resources.

Never mind that all such like-minded nations are rapidly destroying their only hope for the future – their children, and their trust in an omnipotent creator - God.

In an effort to create this global conservation park the UN and NGO’s have seized on the final solution – climate change.

I applaud those nations which have refused to ratify the UN’s mechanism for control of production and reduction in living standards, the draconian Kyoto Protocol.

Why should any nation be a signatory to such nonsense inspired by poorly conducted, and in some cases disingenuous science?  Why do I say that?

Well, unbeknown to most, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) removed from all their historical graphs the global temperature increase during the Mediaeval Warming Period (1000 to 1300 AD approx) and the global temperature decrease during the Little Ice Age  (1500 to 1900 AD approx ) so as to achieve a nice uniform increase in temperature throughout the past 1000 or so years to the present.

It is estimated that temperatures were, on average, 2 degrees C warmer and 2 degrees cooler, respectively, during these periods and possibly up to 4 degrees warmer at the higher latitudes. The temperature change for the 20th Century is estimated at just 0.7 degrees warmer.

The IPCC took these periods out, and fudged other data, because they could not explain them away using the carbon hysteria hypothesis and could then impose their ‘hockey-stick graph’ which shows a sudden increase in temperature in modern times.

Yet they expect us to believe, utterly, their predictions of doom and even their records from the past which have been ‘edited’ to remove any conflicting data. I would posit that the IPCC has a major and growing credibility problem and certainly cannot claim that the ‘science has been done’.

What about CO2? Well it has been falsely maligned, after all plants need it to survive and increased levels promote growth so we may even see a reversal in desertification in places like Africa and we know that Antarctica was once covered in forests and grapes grew in Greenland. (Mediaeval Warming Period)

Despite what we are told there is no linear correlation between increases in CO2 and temperature, and climate change. The reverse is in fact true; CO2 levels increase only slowly well after temperature increase. The reason for this is still not fully understood. In fact the effect of adding more CO2 is logarithmic not linear, which means that more CO2 in the atmosphere has a steadily decreasing effect - it’s a spent force.

Yet it has become the ‘sacred cow’ for climate change propagandists although it contributes an infinitesimal 0.038% to the composition of the earth’s atmospheric gases.

Fear is key in this issue. Fear drives out any doubt regarding the conclusions of the IPCC with regard to climate change so that all will rise to saving the world from imminent disaster while at the same time ignoring or actually forbidding developing nations from progressing on the road to prosperity and self-sufficiency. Why be concerned about local water quality, nutrition, and regional pollution when there is greater kudos in saving the planet?

Now that’s cool.

Pat Barrett is a Christchurch free-lance journalist and photographer who has published several books on nature walks in NZ.  He also manages Divine Mercy Publications.