The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says: "...the balance of evidence suggests human influence on global climate." After 10 years and millions of dollars spent on research, this is the strongest statement that the UN has made. This statement appears in the seven-page Executive Summary, prepared by policy makers, of a 2000-page IPCC report. Chapter 8 of the scientists' report was heavily edited by the policy makers to remove several statements by scientists who were skeptical of a "human influence on global climate."
It is widely known that global climate changes in historic cycles for reasons that science has not yet been able to explain. Greenland was green when the Vikings discovered it during what scientists call "the global optimum." Then the planet began to cool. Between about 1250 and 1850, the planet endured a cooling period that turned Greenland white with snow and ice. Human production of carbon dioxide did not cause that global climate change.
For about one hundred years after 1850, global temperatures began to rise. In 1896, a Swedish scientist discovered that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was increasing. There is no debate in the scientific community that carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has increased from about 270 ppm at the beginning of the century, to about 350 ppm at the end of the century.
In
the 1970s, Dr. Stephen Schneider, and a few other scientists, predicted that the
increase of carbon dioxide would cause a new ice age - a period of global
cooling. Their fears, however, were not supported by the actual temperature data
collected from ground and ocean weather stations. The actual global temperature
remained relatively static.
An argument was advanced that said the reason the ground measuring stations
were not reporting global cooling was due
to the "urban sink effect" (surface and satellite temperatures are compared in
the adjacent graph). Weather stations, usually located at airports and near
cities, were said to be reporting temperatures distorted by the heat build-up in
pavement and concrete buildings around the weather stations.
To overcome this problem, the United States launched weather satellites in
1979 to measure temperatures from the earth's surface through the troposphere.
The satellite data clearly demonstrates that the actual global temperature has
declined slightly since 1979 (statistically insignificant).
Why, then, do the United Nations and the U.S. government insist that human-induced global warming is occurring?
The speculation that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause global warming is the result of projections based on computer models. The first projections, released just before the Climate Change Treaty was presented, predicted very rapid increases in global temperature, as much as 8.5 degrees by 2050. Those projections created an atmosphere of urgency at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and the treaty was quickly ratified by nearly every nation.
Since then, the modelers have produced two downward revisions of their projected global warming. The most recent prediction is an increase of between 1 and 2.5 degrees by the year 2100. Many of the modelers say publicly that it will be several years before their computers will be able to make reliable predictions.
The policy makers have seized the statement in the IPCC Executive Summary as all the justification necessary to implement a Protocol to the original Climate Change Treaty that will impose legally binding requirements that 34 developed nations reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, while 137 nations -- China, Mexico, Brazil, Korea, and others -- are not required to reduce their emissions at all. The science is no longer debated at the UN or at the White House. The science issue is closed as far as the policy makers are concerned. But climate scientists feel differently.
In 1995, a group of climatologists, astrophysicists, and meteorologists assembled in Liepzig, Germany to discuss climate change. They produced the Liepzig Declaration which says: "The policies to implement the Treaty are, as of now, based solely on unproven scientific theories, imperfect computer models, and unsupported assumptions.... Actual observations from weather satellites show no global warming whatsoever...." The document has now been signed by most of the world's climatologists.
The questions that every person should answer are: (1) Why is the international community insisting that 34 developed nations reduce their fossil fuel consumption while allowing the rest of the world to expand their use of fossil fuel? And (2) Why is the White House promoting this policy?
We hope the information we're providing will help you find satisfactory
answers to both of these questions.