Dear Editor,
A few weeks ago, a member of our community dared to state on your pages that she was not convinced by the largely politically motivated climate warming orthodoxy portrayed by many as the only “belief” about climate status that is permissible. NO INDEPENDENT QUESTIONS, PLEASE. She was treated to a flood of negative reaction, ranging from calling her a “denialist”, through to suggesting she is a dupe of the nefarious oil companies. You know – the awful people who fuel your car, heat your home, and provide raw materials for a myriad of modern products. Oh, I forgot the importance of fossil products in food production and transportation. Right. Those guys.
I’m not going to participate in the overheated and emotional harangues and yelling match which followed the aforementioned person’s expression of opinion. While I do not have an advanced qualification in atmospheric physics, or another area which might directly relate to climate dynamics, I can read at an advanced level and do research in English, German and French.
Below is a brief summary of a recent article by a person who IS eminently qualified to comment in a telling way on the apparently orthodox climate theories which threaten to overturn our economic and political system. My question is, and has always been: If diverse interpretations of climate phenomena exist among the pre-eminently qualified, should we not think twice and well before we commit ourselves to societal upheaval in the name of so-called climate change reversal? Should we not know exactly what the climate situation really is, before we set about solving it? If people like Dr. Grayson are dissenting on the science, the science is not settled! Science, of course, is never settled. I leave the reader with my questions.
The last few weeks have shown, once again, that some of us hate such an interrogative attitude. Of course, the problem for those intolerant of questions is that, if highly qualified dissent exists, there is a problem with the orthodoxy.
See the article summary which follows:
The Physical Flaws of the Global Warming Theory and Deep Ocean Circulation Changes as the Primary Climate Driver by William M. Gray, Professor Emeritus, Department of Atmospheric Science , Colorado State University.
“Increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gases will not be able to bring about significant climate disruption in the next 75-100 years. The main problem with the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory is the false treatment of the global hydrologic cycle which is not adequately understood by any of the AGW advocates. The water vapor, cloud, and condensation-evaporation assumptions within the conventional AGW theory and the (GCM) simulations are incorrectly designed to block too much infrared (IR) radiation to space. They also do not reflect-scatter enough short wave (albedo) energy to space. These two misrepresentations result in a large artificial warming that is not realistic. A realistic treatment of the hydrologic cycle would show that the influence of a doubling of CO2 should lead to a global surface warming of only about 0.3°C – not the 3°C warming as indicated by the climate simulations. The global surface warming of about 0.7°C that has been experienced over the last 150 years and the multi-decadal up-and-down global temperature changes of 0.3-0.4°C that have been observed over this period are hypothesized to be driven by a combination of multi-century and multi-decadal ocean circulation changes. These ocean changes are due to naturally occurring upper ocean salinity variations. Changes in CO2 play little role in these salinity driven ocean climate forcings. ”
Jim Bertram,
B.A., B.Ed., B.A.(Hons), Cert. études sup.en linguistique (FSL),M.Ed., M.A.(in progress)
Former Councillor
