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The Greenhouse Delusion
by Vincent Gray
The following is a text version of a speech delivered by Dr. Vincent Gray at the ISIL
World Liberty Summit in Rotorua, New Zealand (July 2004).
Scare Me To Death
Not a day goes by without a new scare. What is it
today, a security alert, pesticides, chemicals, another oil crisis, mobile phones, fat, sugar,
species extinction; you name it. Or is it global warming, "linked" to carbon dioxide,
hurricanes, drought, floods, heat waves.
People are so overwhelmed with scares, perhaps they
need them, or even like them. It is therefore with some temerity that I try to convince you that
the global warming scare is a delusion. That carbon dioxide is a welcome organic fertiliser,
and that a full understanding of what changes our climate is very far from having been
achieved.. Perhaps this proposition is even more scary than its opposite?
Who Am I?
But who am I to make such outrageous statements?
Well, I am not a Nobel prize-winner, a film star or a government-financed expert. I am just an
old-fashioned scientist, originally with a Cambridge PhD and a long career in research in
Britain, France, Canada, China, and, since 1970, in New Zealand. I have published widely
(well over 100 papers), many on climate science, and a book called The Greenhouse
Delusion which is available from Multi-science Publishers UK.
 The Environment Gospel
A new religion has swept the world:
environmentalism. Its basic article of faith is that humans are destroying the world, or as they
prefer it, "the planet". Like most religious faith there does not need to be any evidence for this
belief.
The great religious conclave of environmentalism
was the Rio conference of 1992, where the decision was taken that the climate is damaged by
human activity. Many nations, including our own, signed the "Framework Convention on
Climate Change" which defined "climate change", legally, as "change of climate attributed
directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere".
Note here the use of the phrase "attributed to". This does not mean that there needs to be
evidence, or proof, merely that it is enough that people are prepared to believe, and therefore
"attribute" "climate change" to human activity.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was
set up by the World Meteorological Organisation and the United Nations Environment
Programme in 1988. The word "Climate Change" in the title indicates that its job is to
assemble, distort, and if necessary, fabricate evidence to support the "Climate Change"
concept; that humans are damaging the climate. The scientists don't really like this task, so
they also assess "natural" changes in the climate. The IPCC has reviewed the work of many
scientists, and has published many reports. The third major scientific report was "Climate
Change 2001" and the 4th report is now being prepared.
Each report is divided into chapters which are written
by "Lead Authors" and "Contributors", The whole report goes through three drafts, two of
which are circulated for comment to "expert" reviewers all over the world for comment. I
have been an "expert reviewer" for the most of the past reports and I have contributed a large
number of comments. I sent in 97 pages of comments on one draft. Some of my comments
have been accepted, but most are ignored. My greatest success was with a chapter on
"Validation of Models" where, after I pointed out that no model has ever been "validated",
they changed "validated" to "evaluated" no less than fifty times.
Most scientists have been trained to study facts and
evidence, and to draw honest conclusions, so many of us object strongly to the political
pressure, now widespread, to provide predetermined "outcomes". The IPCC scientists cannot
be trusted to provide the results required by the politicians, so every report has to have what is
called a "Summary for Policymakers" at the beginning. This is actually a Summary by
Policymakers. It is agreed line-by-line by government representatives (often senior scientists.
chosen for their political reliability). These "Summaries for Policymakers" are true examples
of CONSENSUS, which was so memorably defined by Margaret Thatcher (in The Downing
Street Years) as follows:
"Consensus is the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of
something in which no-one believes, but to which no-one objects, the process of avoiding the very
issues that have to be solved because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead."
The Scientists Found No Evidence!
Politicians and environmentalist zealots believe that
the IPCC scientists have established a relationship between greenhouse gas increases and
"global warming". For example, the New Zealand Government has stated:
"There is strong evidence that most of the warming of the past 50 years is a result of greenhouse gas
emissions caused by human activity"
This statement is not supported by the IPCC reports,
which, instead, make the following pronouncements:
"The balance of the evidence suggests a discernible human influence on the global climate"
No mention of greenhouse gases here, or emissions
from fossil fuels. The "balance" of the evidence does not "support" the idea of a "discernible"
human influence; it merely "suggests" it. Since we all know that humans influence the
climate by pollution, energy usage, buildings, and such farming techniques as shelter belts,
there is nothing in this statement that is new, or that supports the idea of a damaging
greenhouse effect.
"There is new and stronger evidence that most of the
warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities"
Again, no mention of greenhouse gases, and human
activities such as the growth of cities affect temperature. Also, note the use of "attributable"
which does not mean that there is any actual evidence, merely that people want to believe it.
and then ...
"Most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gases"
Here. "warming" has only been "observed" by a biased system based on
cities. Other observations find no evidence of "warming". Then "likely to have been" is not exactly
"firm evidence". No mention at all of "humans". After all, the chief greenhouse gas, water vapour,
might have changed without human influence.
The true opinion of the IPCC scientists, and the
actual truth of the matter, is to be found in Chapter 1 of "Climate Change 2001"(2)
"The fact that the global mean temperature has
increased since the late 19th Century and that other trends have been observed does not
necessarily mean that an anthropogenic effect on the climate system has been identified.
Climate has always varied on all time-scales, so the observed change may be natural."
The Climate System
Support for environmentalist dogma has depended on
the low level of scientific knowledge in the public, and the ease with which phoney science
can appear convincing. I therefore make no excuse for surveying a few of the "scientific"
arguments which are provided by the IPCC and presented to the public as genuine evidence
for the greenhouse hypothesis.
First of all, there are various factors which affect
our climate – including:
- Changes in Solar Input
- Volcanic activity
- Terrestrial radiation
- Changes in the Hydrological Cycle
- And many other factors.
The complexity is obvious. The IPCC reports make it
plain that our understanding of most of these influences is extremely limited. It can, perhaps
be illustrated by the current situation of weather forecasting, which is a lot better than it used
to be, but still only reliable over a short period. It is surely ridiculous to claim that we could
predict climate even a few years ahead, and certainly not 100 years ahead; yet this is
repeatedly done by the greenhouse lobby.
Radiative Forcing
The trick carried out by the IPCC is to ignore all the
factors except one, the influence of greenhouse gases. These are claimed to be the
only influence on "radiative forcing", the change of radiation from the upper atmosphere to
the earth.
Everyone agrees that the greenhouse effect has
increased the temperature at the earth's surface, but without them there would be no life,
anyway. The most important greenhouse gas is water vapour. If you were serious about
studying "radiative forcing", the first priority would be to study changes in water vapour.
However, its concentration is so variable that there are no figures for its average value in the
atmosphere either now or in the past. There is not even an authoritative scientific estimate of
how important water vapour is. The best I could find is that it provides about 92% of the total
greenhouse effect.
So, you would think, the scientists, and the
environmentalists, could not possibly prove that there are harmful changes in radiative forcing
if they do not know whether the chief greenhouse gas has changed. Not so. Since water
vapour cannot be measured it is called a "feedback" and assumed (without evidence) to be a
definite fraction of average surface temperature. On top of this, they also regard clouds,
another important contributor to "radiative forcing", as a "feedback", since they cannot
measure their effects, either.
So then you can go down the list and take the gas
responsible for 3% of the greenhouse effect, carbon dioxide, because you can actually
measure it, and because you can blame its increase on humans. It is like the man who lost his
wallet on a dark night and looked for it under the lamp post, because that is where the light
was.
Carbon dioxide has only been measured reliably
since 1955, and it has increased at a linear rate of 0.04% a year since 1975. This does not
correspond at all to the increase in emissions of carbon dioxide by fossil fuels which has been
about 0.18% a year, 4½ times as great, over the same period. It seems to be assumed the two
quantities are related, but there is no actual evidence that reducing emissions will have any
effect on carbon dioxide concentrations.
Then the next greenhouse gas is methane, perhaps
1% of the influence. The New Zealand Government wants to tax sheep and cattle for emitting
this gas. Its concentration in the atmosphere is actually falling but this information is kept
quiet, even by the scientists, who have not updated their figures since May 2002.
The IPCC summary of its findings on "radiative forcing" from 1750 to
2000 is regarded by them as the most important "evidence" they have for greenhouse warming. Their
findings were repeated three times in "Climate Change 2001". In it they included several other
contributors to "forcing" besides the greenhouse gases themselves, but left out water vapour and clouds
which are the most important.
Global Warming
So, is "the globe" warming? How could you tell? An
understanding of the concept "temperature" and the invention of the thermometer is less than
two centuries old. If you wanted a fair average of surface temperature, you would need
thermometers distributed randomly over the earth's surface, including 71% over the ocean,
and important numbers over forests, mountains, deserts and pastures. This information does
not exist. Local weather stations have been measuring temperature since around 1850, but
their distribution is utterly non-random. They are predominantly near cities. Sea temperatures
are unreliable as well.
The familiar compilation from weather stations and ships is the sole
evidence for "global warming". It is claimed to have been "corrected" for urban bias, but a recent
statistical study has demolished this claim, as the results are significantly influenced by local
increases in population, energy usage, prosperity, and even literacy
Other temperature measurements do not support the surface compilation.
A compilation of temperature measurements in the lower atmosphere from weather balloons and, since 1979,
NASA satellites show no evidence of any "warming" since 1958. Of course, there is warming within and
around cities, and probably also from cleared agricultural land. But, on average, the "warming" seems
not to have happened at all.
Forecasting The Future
Much has been made of the "forecasts" of
temperature rise by the year 2100 which are presented by the IPCC in "Climate Change 2001,"
but there has been little exposure of the outright dishonesty that is associated with these
"forecasts".
To begin with, the IPCC insists that they are not
"forecasts" at all, merely "projections", based on particular assumptions. So we should all
ignore them? Then, they refuse to carry out the normal practice of all "projections", a regime
of continuous testing against actual happenings in the climate, and adjustment if they prove to
be wrong. They simply do not care that their "projections" are wrong. The figures they give
for the year 2000 are all exaggerated, so they cannot even predict the past.
The "projections" are based on a set of "scenarios"
compiled by teams which seemed to have included raving environmentalists. One scenario
assumes that the average incomes in Rwanda and Mali will be higher than in the USA by the
year 2100. Another assumes coal production will increase 11 times. Almost all assume
methane levels will rise when they are currently falling. These scenarios were foisted on the
scientists without an opportunity to comment.
On top of this, the scenarios were converted into
projected temperatures in 2100 by a range of computer models, none of which had ever been
shown to be capable of prediction. The final form of these "projections" is the ultimate in false
deduction. The first part, which purports to give the temperature anomalies from the year 1000 to
1880 covers a period when there were no thermometers, but using "proxy" measurements from such things
such as tree rings and corals. The observations are so few that there is no justification for a global
average. What is more, the calculations, from their own data, have been shown to be wrong,
and if corrected, show that temperatures used to be much higher than they are today during the
"Medieval warm period".
The second section from 1880 to 2000 is the
amalgamated weather station record. The rise in temperature must obviously be due to the fact
that these measurements were close to human habitation, but the previous ones were not. You
are not allowed to say so; it has to be due to greenhouse gases. They do not mention that if
you use the same kind of "proxy" data as in the previous section you do not get a rise at all.
The third section is the IPCC "projections" which the politicians and press think are
predictions and which are subject to the above mentioned absurdities.
The Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol seeks to stabilise the climate by
reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is a non-solution to a non-problem. It is a non-solution
because there is no evidence that reducing carbon dioxide emissions will influence the
atmospheric concentration, and, if you believe the computer models, the reductions proposed
will be so small as to be unmeasurable.
It is a non-problem because there is no evidence that
recent increases in carbon dioxide concentration are harmful; indeed they are valuable
enhancements for plant growth. There is no evidence that the earth is warming, and even if it
is, it has happened before; why worry.
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