Separating myth from fact on man-made global warming

Paris — Photo: Christian R Hamacher/Flickr

The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) is going full-bore in Paris. The conference held annually started November 30 and is scheduled to end December 11. It will be the UN’s 21st attempt to have countries commit to binding agreements to reduce CO2 emissions to stop man-made global warming.

Up to now, the UN has failed but they are hoping this year’s conference will be different. They are optimistic because of the recent change in the Canadian government, which has been one of the major opponents to a climate agreement. Recently elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is fully on board with reducing CO2 emissions.

It also appears the terrorist attacks that took place in Paris ten days earlier on November 20th killing 129 people was just too much of a temptation for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who is pushing for an agreement.

In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Ki-moon suggested there might be a connection between global warming and increased terrorism.

Apparently, the Paris attack has nothing to do with radicalized Muslim extremists.

In 1974, the US Central Intelligence Agency was predicting the same thing but for exactly the opposite reason. During the seventies, scientists were warning of a coming ice age and like today were blaming oil for the problem. According to its report the CIA predicted that global cooling would cause increased terrorism because of its potential affects on crops, etc.

It seems Ki-moon just dusted off the old CIA document, scratched out cooling and replaced it with warming, and the new game was on. It was a flavor of the day response.

Of course this is not he first time there have been inconsistencies in the global warming messaging and the facts. Below are a few others:

	Myth		Fact
1.	MYTH: In a March 20, 2000 interview with the English newspaper, The Independent, man-made global warming specialist Dr. David Viner said:“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” He added “snow will become ‘a very rare and exciting event’.” Dr. David Viner was a senior research scientist at England’s University of East Anglia’s climate research unit — the think tank behind the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change pushing the sponsors for the Paris climate conference.		FACT: They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I will let this one speak for itself. Stop global warming sign buried in snow: England/Source unknown
2.	MYTH: One of the major fear tactics being used by activists pushing for reductions in CO2 emissions is global warming will cause rising oceans that will eventually sink islands and wash away coastal cities. They blame this on the melting of the polar ice caps in both the Arctic and Antarctic.		FACT: But again the facts speak louder than the fairy tale. This fall NASA released a report stating the Antarctic ice cap has increased in size every year since 1992. During the very years it was supposedly shrinking, the polar ice cap was actually growing. In October 2015, NASA reported the Antarctic ice bed set a new maximum record size of 7.27 million square miles. This confirmed an earlier survey of the Antarctic ice by researchers from Woods Hole Oceangraphic Institution in Massachusetts who using an underwater drone discovered the Antarctic ice cap was twice as thick as their computer models predicted it would be.
3.	MYTH: With activists claiming man is pouring millions upon millions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year, most people are convinced our air is filled with CO2. How else could this greenhouse gas have such a profound impact on global temperatures?		FACT: Only .038% of the earth’s atmosphere is made up of CO2. (That’s .038% not 3.8%). This works out to 3.8 molecules of CO2 for every 10,000 molecules/atoms of air.
4.	MYTH: When activists are promoting their CO2 fear mongering they love to use pictures of factories pouring smoke into the atmosphere as evidence of how bad it really is. Sault Paper Mill: Billy Wilson/Flickr		FACT: Though no one disagrees that there is real pollution, if you can see it, it’s not CO2. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas. Activists have demonized CO2 as a pollutant about to destroy our world. In fact, CO2 is necessary for life on this planet, without it plants would not exist. And for the record, greenhouses actually pump in CO2 to increase crop production. If you want to end world hunger, you need more CO2 not less. At a climate conference held this past November in Texas, Princeton Physicist Dr. Will Happer had this to say about CO2: “Policies to slow CO2 emissions are really based on nonsense. They are all based on computer models that do not work. We are being led down a false path. “Our breath is not that different from a power plant. To call carbon dioxide a pollutant is really Orwellian. You are calling something a pollutant that we all produce. Where does that lead us eventually?” “Coal, formed from ancient CO2, is a benefit to the world. Coal is CO2 from ancient atmospheres. We are simply returning CO2 to the atmosphere from which it came when you burn coal. And it’s a good thing since it [C02] is at very low levels in the atmosphere. We are in a CO2 famine. It is very, very low.” “CO2 will be beneficial and crop yields will increase.” “More CO2 will be a very significant benefit to agriculture.”
5.	MYTH: When Al Gore was accepting his Nobel prize in 2007 for his work on the man-made global warming file, he said: “The [arctic] ice cap is falling off a cliff, it could be completely gone in summer in as little as 7 years from now.” He was predicting by 2014, there would be no ice left in the Arctic.		FACT: However, satellite images say exactly the opposite. Though there were a few years of melting, since 2012 the Arctic ice cap is roaring back. In 2014, the year Al Gore said the Arctic ice cap would be fully gone, it was nearly 30% larger than it was 2012. The image below compares the size of the Arctic ice cap in 2012 with the same day in 2014 based on satellite images from University of Illinois’ Cryosphere Project. People were so caught off guard with the return of the ice, sailors were forced to abandon their ships when they tried to sail through the northern passage thinking it would be ice-free.
6.	MYTH: In order for humans to be responsible for man-made global warming we must be producing the bulk of new CO2 entering the atmosphere.		FACT: Nothing could be further from the truth. 97% of the CO2 comes from natural sources with humans only producing between 1% to 3%. Since only 3.8 molecules/atoms in 10,000 are CO2, humans are only responsible for one tenth of one of those molecules.
7.	MYTH: Hasn’t the world been warming for the past 20 years?		FACT: While those claims are being thrown out by activists, our satellite Remote Sensing Systems have shown there has been no global warming for 18 years, 9 months. Even UN scientists are finally admitting to a pause in the warming. In an interview with the German newspaper, Der Spiegel, Hans von Storch lead author for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the organizers of the Paris climate conference) said: “So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break.” “… In fact, the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit)—a value very close to zero. “… This is a serious scientific problem that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will have to confront when it presents its next Assessment Report late next year. … “… If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models.” Have you ever wondered why environmental activists changed their rhetoric from “Global Warming” to “Climate Change?”
8.	MYTH: Didn’t NASA claim 2014 was the warmest year on record?	“	FACT: It’s true NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) sent out a news release in January blaring that 2014 was the warmest year on record. But when you read the math and fine print in its news release, a different story emerged. GISS stated there was only a 38% chance they were right, meaning there was a 62% probability that 2014 was not the warmest year on the record. Then when you read the fine print, GISS said it beat the previous record by two hundreds of a degree. Responding to this claim, MIT meteorology professor Dr. Richard Lindzen said: “Two-100ths of a degree is ludicrous. Anyone who starts crowing about those numbers shows that they’re putting spin on nothing.” Others laughed and bluntly stated nobody could measure the world-wide temperatures to hundreds of a degree.
9.	MYTH: Scientists are claiming they can predict what our climate will be like 20 or 50 years in the future if we don’t rein in CO2 emissions. It seems every year they warn this is the last year to make changes. Looking ahead to the Paris climate conference, UN Secretary General Ki-moon said 2015 was the tipping point for reducing CO2 emissions. Failure to do so now would be catastrophic.		FACT: Meanwhile most North Americans would be overjoyed if they could just get the weather prediction right for the weekend.