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De Peckvillchen: Gëlle Fra géi nit a China

German TV cashes in on tax scandal

German TV cashes in on tax scandal

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Global Warming: Could you please explain the science again?

Any candidate for Miss America knows: World Peace, that's good, Global Warming, that's really bad. We know about Peace, but could anyone familiar with the science behind Global Warming explain it to Miss America? We all want to listen in.

At the latest since the December 2009 "World Conference on Climate Change" in Copenhagen, by the way held through bitterly cold weather, we do know that the plan is, that you and I have to pay for something. We really don't know for what, so we need an explanation, and we need to approve.

The underlying facts for the climate concerns

Average world temperatures have risen over the last 100 years by 0.6° C. There are reports that show that most glaciers and polar ice are shrinking. Over the same period, presence of CO₂ and other hydrocarbon compounds in the atmosphere have increased. CO₂ is known to retain heat. Is there a link between the increase in CO₂ and the increase in average temperatures and shrinking glaciers? We know that "scientists" say there is.

The scientific interpretation

So we are told about the only credible hypothesis, that CO₂ and other gases in the atmosphere have increased due to human industrial activity and the use of fossil fuels. As CO₂ is a heat trapping gas released into the atmosphere by human activity, mostly in the rich, developed Northern hemisphere, the warming is global and it is manmade. That must be bad, according to Miss America.

The political conclusion

Consensus has built over the years that manmade GW will be disastrous. Expect more and stronger hurricanes, more extreme weather, flooding and desertification, rising sea levels, plagues, huge human migrations, famines and yes extreme cold, which is another unexpected effect of GW. To prepare for the announced disaster, Governments worldwide have found a way. They have created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC.

IPCC is a body of the United Nations. It indeed predicts increasing global warming, and it says that it will indeed be disastrous. It will financially and socially affect mostly poor countries that themselves do not contribute to the pollutants in the atmosphere. Humanity has to get together and work out a system to compensate poor countries and to curb CO₂ emissions. Polluters have to pay for the irreparable damage done to developing countries who claim for "climate justice". IPCC warns time is running out. The science is settled, they say. The cost of their solutions is tremendous. Cap and trade, where the polluter is paying for CO₂ pollution, could reach $1.9 trillion over six years right now for the US alone, a significant percentage of GDP of about 2.6% annually. Numbers of course vary according to the source.

IPCC, the check please

Of course, the check has a double meaning. While you at IPCC see $$ signs, I want to check on you, because my intuition tells me something is wrong. I want you to revisit your science.

Don't get me wrong, I'll defend your findings to the extreme, if only you can convince me. I know that we do not inherit the world from our parents, but that we borrowed it from our children. I will gladly follow this saying borne out of the wisdom of the Haida Indian Nation in Northwestern Canada, and show my commitment to save my planet. And I practice what I'm advocating, separating paper, glass and plastic into different bins. I also drive a hybrid car, I eat organic food and I renounced my participation at the major meeting in Copenhagen to reduce my carbon footprint. I am an environmentalist's role model, and yet, I'd like to have your help to get me out of a dreadful doubt. I got suspicions.

• Suspicion #1: Manmade Global Warming is counter-intuitive.

There's first that odd intuition, rooted in my childhood years. Formerly, when it was sunny and warm, we knew that it was the sun that warmed the earth and at the same time warmed our hearts. Today you say, it is irresponsible human behavior that warms the earth, and simultaneously heats our tempers. Formerly, heat came for free, from the sun. Today you say, we must pay, because we wrongfully overheat the planet. My intuition tells me that there must be some mistake.

Can you remember the absurd jokes of our childhood: The elephant and the mouse walk through the desert. And the mouse says: "Watch behind us, Jumbo, all that dust we both raise!" Transposed to the case of global warming, I should tell my friend the sun: "Sun, did you notice how much we both warm up the Earth?" It is indeed counter-intuitive to think that I am making any difference to the heat count that the sun provides to the Earth.

• Suspicion #2: Science is never settled

NCPA, the National Center for Policy Analysis, a think tank favoring private initiative over public regulation, shows the impact of human activity on CO₂ in the atmosphere. The tiny part of human made CO₂ "pollution" is only 3.4% of all of CO₂ in the atmosphere, which is only 3.62% of all green house gases in the atmosphere, which represent only 2% of the atmosphere. So human made CO₂ is 0.00246% of the atmosphere!

Chantecler the rooster claimed to his hens, that his morning chanting made the sun rise every morning. Your claim that mankind's production of CO₂ makes global temperatures rise sounds similar. But having dared to utter these things already makes me an outlaw in the eyes of IPCC's guardians of the temple. They'll come all over me for a therapy session, where I'll learn: The science is settled! We must act now!

• Suspicion #3: IPCC predicts the end of the world

Fear is a powerful sales pitch and you abused it. The Arctic Sea will be ice-free during summer 5 years from now, said former Vice President Al Gore, Nobel Prize winner with IPCC. You said that by 2035 the Himalayan glaciers will have ceased to exist. CO₂ the gas we exhale at every breath we take, is now the enemy of the human race. So we humans are our own worst enemy. We shouldn't be so numerous. One child per woman is enough now! Imagine, after each generation the world's population would be cut down by half! Our great grand kids, pardon the plural, our great grand kid, could finally indulge in exhaling all the CO₂ it ever wants on a very lonely and empty planet Earth.

The Chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri (upper left), who is a vegetarian, just reiterated that we should stop eating hamburgers. Because in order to get a hamburger you need to have cows, so you need meadows, so you are clearing forests which breathe in and store away CO₂. That's not all: these cows chew their cud and have those memorable flatulencies to blow your head off and contribute 20% (!) of the atmosphere's methane, CH₄, another greenhouse gas. We shall all perish under a sky filled with hot air.

And I shall never again eat a hamburger ............................. without having a thought for the IPCC Chair.

• Suspicion #4: Why isn't there anything good about GW?

Remembering the long cold winters of my childhood, another question is bothering me. It seems according to you that the ideal average global temperature for our planet is 14 degrees C. Why not 17? You only talk about catastrophic consequences. Why isn't any out there that would be good? What is wrong with the image of palm trees in Chicago, cherry trees in Greenland or a blooming Sahara? I know, catastrophes sell. But it is strange that you don't find a single positive outcome. Hollywood too sells catastrophes well, but from time to time with a happy ending.

• Suspicion #5: IPCC has become the prophet of a new religion, and war on CO₂ is its jihad

There are voices that rise up to challenge you at IPCC. You seem to practice a science that is increasingly militant. The empirical data you collected recently, were they manipulated to justify your earlier forecasts? I wonder why you insist so much that science is final. I want to remind you that Galileo wanted to question the well settled science, that the sun is gravitating around the Earth. But the religious "consensus" around settled science of the time was stronger. To be sure show me, why your science is settled.

It would be folly to deny that global temperatures change. That is, they go up and they go down. That there are solar cycles is a well established historic fact. However it takes a good demonstration to show that the present cycle is different and is manmade. I'm the last one to deny the obvious. But what we witness now is excess, a collective hysteria, which takes on the form of a new religion, complete with the fear of the end of the world, an original sin committed by man in the Northern hemisphere who must redress Southern climate injustice and must repent by paying hundreds of billions of dollars. Even two thousand years old religions jump on the bandwagon and put on IPCC's alarmist coat.

It is clear that there is a certain arrogance and obfuscation about the scientific work of your group regarding the public's education. The dogmas and fatwas issued by the IPCC do not serve to reassure me. And activists who support you, too often just use slogans, logos, prayers, slingshots and arson. That activism is 100% emotional and 0% science. Your glossary is militant and catastrophe-heavy: GHG for green house gases, GW for global warming, "manmade disaster" and "climate justice". That hysteria hurts your movement.

I would like to hear more about science and less about slogans. So please explain your science again. Unless you do, I remain skeptical. Throughout my career I have seen such complicated calculations as the formulas used in artillery, which are a combination of mathematics, chemistry, mechanics, physics and fluid dynamics. Here's a secret: even with these elaborate calculations, using many well known variables, it is virtually impossible to reach a target at a distance of only several miles away. One has to use a forward observer to correct the trajectory. I'd be very interested to know how you can be so sure that your science hits its targets, whereas your calculations have to be way more complex than the artillery formulas? Some variables even are probably not yet humanly recognizable and comprehended.

Living in Florida, I'm staring from time to time into the eye of a hurricane. A hurricane is a well studied phenomenon, with well known variables, and though it is powerful, it is limited in space and represents only a very small chunk of climate. But nobody can answer this crucial question just a few days ahead: where exactly and with what force will this storm make landfall? I guess you could, thanks to your monumental knowledge about the global climate?

• Suspicion #6: You have been wrong too often, you must rework your copy and show us.

IPCC considers a number of climate models, all with a large number of assumptions that are more or less arbitrary. What if only one assumption is wrong? It appears that one capital assumption is that a constant increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere, triggers a constant increase of global temperatures. But that assumption has been disproved by observation in the last decade, as revealed by an incident of "hacking" your computers and called "Climategate ". Could it be that the consensus around global warming is a "group-think"? Can it be that other assumptions and findings could be one man's erroneous thinking as it appears to be the case for the melting of arctic ice and Himalayan glaciers? Where was the peer review? Are you sure that over 100 years, your temperature records are taken the same way, in the same places with well working equipment, not gradually encroached by heat-trapping buildings? Remember this about computer models: garbage in, garbage out. And if within a generation or two empirical results show that our generation had produced climate forecasts that were absurd, costly and unfounded? Just like the fools who were Galileo's judges had to find out. Past announcements of the end of the world have often been exaggerated. It's one thing to be ridiculous, there is another one, worse: paying for it.

• Suspicion #7: Is it a beautiful story of dollars?

Some say that the scientific consensus is supported by this evidence: it pays well. The material comfort of many climate scientists, bureaucrats and activists is thus ensured, by well paying jobs. So their story must live on! What also comes to mind is that one other mechanism, which has been a bone of contention between North and South in Copenhagen: developed countries should pay for "climate justice". In Copenhagen, the alleged recipients who are the developing countries, were so upset by the slow pace of negotiations on "compensations", that they left the meeting under protest. It looked as if our children were boycotting Santa Claus. But developing countries too want the Santa Claus story to go on, and in the UN, they are a majority.

I had the privilege in 1991 to be the spokesman for the European Communities to the "Reconvened General Assembly of the United Nations". On the agenda was the reorganization of the UN in the economic and social fields. From this single vantage point, I concluded that aid to developing countries, which by the way have been "developing" for 50 years now, that aid was going into a bottomless pit. The only progress made was going from the politically oh so incorrect term "underdeveloped countries" to a more acceptable "third world countries" and finally to the triumphant "developing countries". And I concluded that for some the most ardent desire was to someday, in the framework of the UN, put their hands into the World Bank's cash register by a simple majority vote. Voting themselves some money. Twenty years later we are almost there with the climate justice payments.

Consider this situation: "Climate Justice" will be the fourth program of assistance to, in fact always the same group of countries, ruled by failed governments. The three other programs benefitting these same countries are the assistance they get through private nongovernmental organizations or NGOs, the huge assistance under the Millennium Development program of the UN (developed nations committed 1% of GDP in aid), and the UN peacekeeping operations. Yes, aid and peacekeeping go together. They are always the same customers. Meanwhile, over one billion people still lack basics like safe drinking water. When will those recipients be tested for results under a UN protectorate, with expectations and success criteria for key? And why pay in advance for climate events that might never happen? And if they were to happen, we'll adapt. You actually instituted the term "adaptation" in your glossary.

Conclusions

IPCC, if you want to win me over, forget about slogans, forget certainly about the one that science is settled, and be aware that you raise suspicions because you are overdoing it selling your story. You are not shy to assemble skeptics with big oil. I'm not big oil, but you should get big oil on your panel and let the scientific method rule your days. Not slogans, sweating polar bears and farting cows. When you have revised your copy, explain it to Miss America. I will be thrilled to listen in.