S. Fred Singer
2007-03-22 10:00:00.0
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SAN FRANCISCO -

Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” has met its match: a devastating documentary recently shown on British television, which has also been viewed by millions of people on the Internet. In spite of its flamboyant title, “The Great Global Warming Swindle” is based on sound science by recording the statements of real climate scientists, including me. “An Inconvenient Truth” mainly records a politician.

The scientific arguments presented in TGGWS can be stated quite briefly:

1. There is no proof at all that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from human activities. Observations in ice cores show that temperature increases have preceded — not resulted from — increases in CO2, by hundreds of years, suggesting that the warming of the oceans is an important source of the rise in atmospheric CO2. As the dominant greenhouse gas, water vapor is far more important than CO2, yet not well handled by climate models — and, in any case, not within our control. Greenhouse models cannot account for the observed cooling of much of the last century (1940–75), nor for the observed patterns of warming — what we call the “fingerprints.” For example, the Antarctic is cooling while models predict warming. And where the models call for the middle atmosphere to warm faster than the surface, the observations show the exact opposite.

But the best evidence we have supports natural causes — changes in cloudiness linked to regular variations in solar activity. Thus, the current warming is likely part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that’s been traced back almost a million years. It accounts for the Medieval Warm Period around 1100 A.D., when the Vikings were able to settle Greenland and grow crops, and the Little Ice Age, from about 1400 to 1850 A.D., which brought severe winters and cold summers to Europe, with failed harvests, starvation, disease and general misery.

2. If the cause of warming is mostly natural, then there is little we can do about it. We cannot influence the inconstant sun, the likely origin of most climate variability. None of the schemes of mitigation bandied about will do any good; they are all irrelevant, useless and wildly expensive:

» Control of CO2 emissions, whether by rationing or by elaborate cap–and–trade schemes

» Uneconomic “alternative” energy, such as ethanol and the impractical “hydrogen economy”

» Massive installations of wind turbines and solar collectors

» Proposed projects for the sequestration of CO2 from smokestacks or even from the atmosphere

Ironically, all these schemes would be ineffective even if CO2 were responsible for the observed warming trend — unless we can somehow persuade every nation, including China, to cut fuel use by 80 percent!

3. Finally, there is no evidence that a warmer climate would produce negative impacts overall. The much–feared rise in sea level does not seem to depend on short–term temperature changes. (Since the peak of the last ice age, 18,000 years ago, sea level has risen 400 feet; its rate of rise has been steady for the last century or more.) In fact, many economists argue that the opposite is more likely — that warming produces a net benefit, that it increases incomes and standards of living. All agree that a colder climate would be bad. So why would the present climate just happen to be the optimum?

But the main message of “The Great Global Warming Swindle” is much broader. Why should we devote scarce resources to a nonproblem, and ignore real world problems: hunger, disease, denial of human rights — not to mention the threats of terrorism and nuclear wars? Yet politicians throughout much of the world prefer to toy with fashionable issues rather than concentrate on real ones. Just consider the scary predictions emanating from supposedly responsible world figures: Britain’s chief scientist tells us that unless we insulate our houses and use more efficient light bulbs, the Antarctic will be the only habitable continent by 2100. Seriously!

I imagine that in the not–too–distant future, all of the hype will have died down, particularly if the climate should decide to cool — as it did during much of the last century; we should take note here that it has not warmed since 1998. Future generations will look back on the current madness and wonder what it was all about. They will have movies like “An Inconvenient Truth” and documentaries like “The Great Global Warming Swindle” to remind them.

S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a research fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland. He served as the founding director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service and was vice chairman of the U.S. National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere. He is the author of “Hot Talk, Cold Science,” and his most recent book, “Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years,” is on the New York Times best-seller list.