Global Warming Raises Political Temperature

The National Party convention at Tweed Heads a few weeks ago made clear its opposition to Australia ratifying the 1997 Kyoto treaty’s protocol on greenhouse gas emissions. This stand places it at odds with Environment Minister Senator Robert Hill. He plans to veto projects emitting more than 500,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year, as a step towards meeting the treaty’s requirements. It therefore looks as though the global warming issue and Australia’s position on the Kyoto treaty will be one of the critical political and economic issues for the coming year.

Australia’s economic future would be adversely affected if we were to reduce significantly our use of hydrocarbons for energy production, or methane emissions by grazing animals. However, if we do not reduce hydrocarbon use and emissions, the European Union may impose trade sanctions on us. So the international and domestic politics of global warming and greenhouse gas emissions are delicate. Moreover, emerging scientific facts may prove pivotal in determining the economic and political outcomes, both domestically and internationally.

Global warming is not new. The fossil records, evidence from tree rings, ice cores and ocean sediments, and other indirect measures of earth temperatures, reveal significant variations over tens of thousands of years. Temperature fluctuations quite independent of human activity are normal.

'Australia's economic future would be adversely affected if we were to
reduce significantly our use of hydrocarbons'

The immediate question for the world is whether the recent climatic record reveals significant temperature changes. Within the last 50 years we have experienced major increases in the release into the atmosphere of the so-called greenhouse gases which some climatologists and environmentalists have argued are causing global warming and raising the possibility of catastrophic climatic changes. The climatic models accepted as a basis for the Kyoto treaty predicted that measurements would show that atmospheric temperatures have risen over the last twenty years. This prediction allows a crucial test for the global warming hypothesis. If the prediction is not fulfilled the hypothesis must be discarded, and with it the case for emission controls under the Kyoto protocols collapses.

As Australian scientist John Daly points out, the record of these surface temperatures a warming of 0.4 C from 1975 to the present.

It is this portion of the warming phase which is of particular interest, especially when compared with the measurements of atmospheric temperature over the same period.

These atmospheric measurements were made by satellites using highly sophisticated and accurate measuring devices. There is confirmation of the accuracy of the satellite records from quite independent recordings by a different method. Helium balloons are sent aloft using radiosondes, as they are called, to measure exactly the same part of the atmosphere measured by satellites. These measures proved to be highly consistent with each other.

The results from both sets of atmospheric measurements showed a trend at odds with that shown by the surface measurements. Atmospheric temperatures showed a warming of less than 0.1 C, due to the El Nino of 1997-98. Prior to then the satellites were showing a slight global cooling, which persisted in the Southern Hemisphere, with the Northern Hemisphere showing only the slight warming over the 21 year period.

'The best data and eminent scientific opinion can find no real evidence of global warming'

How, then, can we reconcile a surface warming of 0.4 C over the 21 years with this atmospheric record of virtually no change? To add to the puzzle, the surface records taken in North America, Australia, and Western Europe are in close agreement with the atmospheric recordings.

The answer seems to be that in these countries the records have been better collected and maintained than elsewhere, especially in those countries racked by warfare and upheaval, where the records showed rising surface temperature. Further evidence has been adduced to throw doubt upon the reliability of the surface measures in various locations, especially the local distortions caused by heat-producing activities in urban and airport areas. A significant proportion of the surface measurements are therefore suspect, while the atmospheric measurements are above suspicion and reliable.

The upshot is that the climatic model predictions which formed the basis of the Kyoto recommendations have been invalidated. This is the conclusion reached in January this year by an expert panel of scientific specialists in temperature measurements commissioned by the United States Academy of Sciences. The best data and eminent scientific opinion find no real evidence of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. With so much of economic and social importance at stake, it would be the height of scientific, economic and political irrationality for Australia to ratify the Kyoto treaty or to take any steps to reduce emissions.

 

About the Author:
Barry Maley is Senior Fellow and Director of the Taking Children Seriously research programme at The Centre for Independent Studies.