Anti-Kyoto science must have its day
globeandmail.com
By MICHAEL DEN TANDT
Friday, November 15, 2002 – Page B2
Should any hint of anti-Kyoto climate science rear its bestial head in your neighbourhood, don't waste a moment: Shut and lock all doors, procure holy water, and hang loops of garlic over the hearth. In this way, heresy can be avoided and evil spirits banished.
And yet, even that may not be enough. For despite the widely held assumption that the science of human-induced global warming is incontrovertible, it is not. And despite the equally common view that any scientists who oppose the Kyoto Protocol are either quacks, pawns of Big Oil, or figments of Ralph Klein's fevered imagination, they are not.
The dissenters live among us. Their academic pedigrees are impressive, their schools and research institutions among the best in the world. Like all scientists, they're sometimes wrong. In fact, they may all be wrong. For a layman, it's tough to judge.
But as individuals, they appear at least as credible as the pro-Kyoto majority lined up against them. They should not be dismissed simply because Ottawa, the Sierra Club and Dr. David Suzuki have decreed the scientific debate closed. They deserve a hearing.
There's Dr. Tim Patterson, professor of earth sciences (paleoclimatology) at Carleton University. Dr. Patterson's studies of the geologic record led him to conclude that climate change is constant, inevitable, and natural. Typical causes include continental drift, fluctuations in atmospheric and oceanic circulation, wobbles in the Earth's orbit, and variations in the intensity of the sun. He suggests the 0.7-degree warming that has occurred in the past 100 years is a blip; over all, temperatures have dropped two degrees in the past 5,000 years.
There's Dr. Fred Singer, a professor at George Mason University and professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia. He says the horror stories about melting ice caps, rising ocean levels, severe flooding in low-lying coastal areas are wrong. Sea level has risen about 120 metres since the end of the last ice age, and continues to rise at a rate of about 18 centimetres per century. There has been no appreciable change in the trend in the past century, including between 1900 and 1940, when there was a marked rise in global temperatures.
Or there's Dr. Madhav Kandekar, a meteorologist who put in 25 years at Environment Canada. His field is so-called "Extreme Weather Events" -- flash floods, freak storms, intense heat, tornadoes, all taken to be signs of man-made changes in the global climate. He says EWEs are not increasing in number anywhere in Canada. In fact, the incidence of such events has steadily declined over the past 40 years.
And there's Dr. Roger Pocklington, a former research scientist at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography. For three decades, he measured surface temperatures in the Atlantic, searching for signs of systematic climate change. He found evidence of cooling, not warming. Dr. Pocklington, incidentally, is a life member of the British Ornithologists Union and a past director of the Canadian Nature Federation.
And there are others. Students of climate who've raised dissenting opinions about the science of global warming include Dr. John Christy, professor and director of the Earth System Science Centre at the University of Alabama; Dr. Fred Seitz, past president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences; Dr. Chris de Freitas, a professor in the School of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Auckland, New Zealand; Dr. Ross McKitrick, a professor of environmental economics at the University of Guelph; and Dr. Petr Chylek, a professor of physics and atmospheric science at Dalhousie University. The list goes on.
Would Dr. Suzuki, the Sierra Club and others who like to insist that Kyoto science is fact, rather than theory, seriously have us believe that every one of these maverick researchers is misguided, or biased, and should simply be ignored? It doesn't seem fair, somehow. Nor would it be responsible.
The country faces wrenching change under the Kyoto Protocol. The federal government is duty-bound to make its case, in detail, and meet the dissenting science head-on. So far, it has not done so. A referendum would do the trick.
mdentandt@globeandmail.ca |
