Anti-Kyoto Science Must Have Its Day

Michael den Tandt is skeptical of the global warming push

I haven't read Bjørn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist, but the furor that arose after it was published means one of two things. It is either so outrageously incorrect and wrong that it deserved the widespread environmentalist condemnation it recieved...or it contained enough truth that the environmentalists had to raise enough hell to cover up the questions it gave birth to.

In this article, den Tandt wonders why the dissenters who object to the pro-Kyoto conclusions are being ignored.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

I'll do a quick post on their findings tomorrow and see what I can come up with.

Posted by Drizzten at November 18, 2002 11:25 PM