Klimaatsceptici roeren zich nu ook in Brazilië
Aan de vooravond van RIO+20-conferentie (over duurzame ontwikkeling) schreven zij een open brief aan president Dilma, waarvan de inhoud op verschillende websites werd geplaatst.
Het is een uiterst krachtige brief geworden, waarin de auteurs er geen doekjes om winden waar zij staan.
Een ietwat gebrekkige Engelse vertaling van de brief werd hier gepubliceerd door het 'Centro Cientitífico Universal para o Progresso da Humanidade. Conschiência na Terra'.
Dilma Vana Rousseff
President of the Federal Republic of Brazil
Madam President,
In a recent meeting of the Brazilian Forum on Climate Change, a lady said that fantasy has no place in discussions about a new growth paradigm - which humanity urgently needs to extend the benefits of knowledge to all societies of the world. At the same time, the lady pointed out that the debate on sustainable development must be guided by the right of peoples to progress, with due scientific foundation.
Therefore, let us supplement these remarks, highlighting the fact that discussions about the theme of the environmental agenda, climate change, have been dominated by ideological, political, academic and economic considerations. They have become dissociated, not only from the basic principles of scientific practice, but also from the interests of major societies worldwide, including Brazil. Therefore, we offer the following thoughts.
1) There is no physical evidence of human influence on global climate.
Despite all the hype, there is no physical evidence observed in the real world to show that global climate changes that occurred since the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century are anomalous compared to those occurring earlier in the geological history anomalies which could be attributed to human influence.
All forecasts which indicate exaggerated increases in temperatures and sea levels in coming decades, as well as other negative effects attributed to the release of carbon compounds of human origin (anthropogenic) into the atmosphere, are based on projections of mathematical models, which are simplifications of the climate system and, therefore, should not be used to support long-term public policies and strategies which have large socioeconomic impacts of global scope.
The human impact on climate is limited to cities and their immediate surroundings in specific situations of quiet weather. These effects are well known, but have no influence on a planetary scale. In order to demonstrate the impact of human activity on global climate, temperature levels over the past two centuries, should have been unusually high, whereas sea levels, and especially their rates of change, should have been higher than previously. This is not the case.
The 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that in the period 1850-2000, temperatures increased 0.74° C, and that, between 1870 and 2000, sea levels rose by 0.2 m. However, throughout the Holocene, the geological epoch corresponding to the last 12,000 years in which civilization has existed, there were several periods with higher temperatures than the current ones. In the Middle Holocene, 5000-6000 years ago, average temperatures were even 2-3° C higher than today, while sea levels reached up to 3 meters higher than today. Likewise, in the warm periods known as the Minoan (1500-1200 BC), Roman (BC VI-V century AD) and Medieval (X-XIII century AD), the temperatures reached more than 1° C above the current level.
The rates of change of these indicators do not show any abnormal acceleration over the last two centuries. Unlike in the past 20,000 years, since the beginning of melting of the last glaciation, there were periods in which the variations of temperatures and sea levels were even one order of magnitude faster than those recorded since the nineteenth century.
Between 12,900 and 11,600 years ago in the cold period called the Younger Dryas, temperatures fell by about 8° C in less than 50 years, at the end of it, rose again at the same rate, in little more than half a century.
As regards sea level, it rose about 120 meters, between 18,000 and 6,000 years ago, which equates to an average rate of 1 meter per century, enough to have a visual impact on successive generations of populations inhabiting the continental borders. Between 14,650 and 14,300 years ago, the increase was even faster, reaching about 14 meters in just 350 years - equivalent to 4 m per century.
The variations observed during the rise of industrialization fall within the range of natural oscillations. Therefore, they can noot be attributed to the use of fossil fuels or to any other type of activity linked to human development.
These data represent only a tiny fraction of the evidence offered by literally thousands of studies from all continents, by scientists from dozens of countries, duly published in international scientific literature. Unfortunately, these studies rarely get media attention, since the media are often more inclined to promote sensational scaremongering and deception.
2) The hypothesis of "anthropogenic global warming" is a disservice to science
Good scientific practice requires the ongoing search for a convergence between hypotheses and evidence. As the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is not based on physical evidence, the insistence on its preservation represents a great disservice to science and the role it could play in the service of human progress.
History records many examples of the adverse effects of the subordination of science to ideologies and special interests. In the countries of former USSR, the biological sciences and agriculture still labour under the consequences of decades of delay, caused by their subordination to the dictates and the truculence of Trofim D. Lysenko, supported by dictator Josef Stalin and his immediate successors, rejecting genetics, despite the advances made by scientists around the world, including the USSR itself. They branded it as anti-revolutionary bourgeois science. Imposition of AGW, without proper evidence, is equivalent to a current version of "Lysenkoism," which has cost humanity dearly, in terms of human, technical and economic resources, wasted on a non-existent problem.
Moreover, by attributing to carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases produced by human activities, the role of major forcings in climate dynamics, the AGW hypothesis simplifies and distorts the understanding of an extremely complex process, in which astrophysical, atmospheric, geological, geomorphological, oceanic and biological factors interact. Science is just beginning to understand its complexity.
As an example of the dangers of this simplification there is the real possibility that the period until the early 2030s will bring significant cooling rather than heating, due to the combined effect of a period of low solar activity and a cooling phase of the Pacific (Pacific Decadel Oscillation, PDO), in a scenario similar to that seen between 1947 1976. It is worth noting that in that interval, Brazil experienced a 10 30% reduction in rainfall, leading to problems of water supply and electricity generation, and an increase in extreme frosts, which greatly contributed to destroy coffee in Paraná. If such conditions are repeated, the country may have serious problems, including in the areas of agricultural expansion of the Midwest and North and hydroelectric generation (especially considering the proliferation of micro hydroelectric facilities, which are subject to environmental constraints).
Incidentally, the internationally adopted limit of 2° C rise in temperatures, which supposedly should not be exceeded and which has justified all restrictions proposed for fossil fuels, has no scientific basis either. It is a creation of "politics" of the physicist Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, science adviser to the German government, as admitted by himself, in an interview with Der Spiegel (17/10/2010).
3) Climate alarmism is counterproductive.
The scaremongering that has characterized the discussions on climate change is extremely detrimental to the proper attitude which is required to approach this issue in a rational way. It should be guided by common sense and the concept of resilience rather than submitting society to technological and economic restrictions which are absolutely useless.
In this case, resilience means the flexibility of the physical conditions of survival and functioning of societies, and the capacity to respond to emergencies, allowing them to reduce their vulnerability to fluctuations in climate and other potentially dangerous natural phenomena.
Such requirements include, for example, the availability of food resources (including the availability of genetically modified seeds for all weather conditions), food storage capacity, transportation infrastructure, energy and communications etc.
Therefore, the most rational and efficient way to increase the resilience of humanity in the face of inevitable climate change, is the general increase of of development and progress to the levels allowed by science and modern technology.
In addition, alarmism diverts attention from real emergencies and priorities. An example is the lack of sanitation systems for more than half the world population, the consequences of which are by far the biggest environmental problem. Another is the lack of access to electricity, which concerns more than 1.5 billion people, mainly in Asia, Africa and Latin America. .
4) The decarbonization of the economy is unnecessary and economically harmful.
Since anthropogenic carbon emissions have no detectable impact on global climate, the entire agenda of decarbonization of the economy, or low carbon economy, becomes unnecessary and counterproductive and, indeed, a pseudosolution to a nonexistent problem. The insistence on the continuation, by force of inertia, of the status quo, does not have any effect on climate, but will tend to deepen kits numerous negative impacts.
The main one is the unnecessary rise of energy prices and those of a series of economic activities, due to: a) the heavy subsidies for the operation of lowefficiency energy sources like wind and solar moreover, unsuited to provide baseload power generation (and already in decline in the European Union, which has invested heavily in them), b) the imposition of quotas and fees linked to carbon emissions, as did Australia, despite massive popular protests, and the European Union, which created a market for carbon credits; c) the imposition of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) to various activities.
The main beneficiaries of such measures have been suppliers of equipment and services for CCS and the participants of intrinsically worthless carbon markets, which have no real economic basis and are sustained solely on an artificial demand to satisfy a nonexistent need. One should add that these markets are prone to all sorts of fraudulent activities ...
5) It takes a turn for the future.
For the first time in history, mankind possesses a body of knowledge, as well as human, physical and technical resources, to satisfy the virtual totality of the material needs of a population even larger than today. There is a real prospect that the overall levels of well-being enjoyed by more advanced countries, in terms of infrastructure, sanitation, energy, transport, communications, health services, as well as education and other achievements of modern civilized life, may become universal in an entirely sustainable way. Despite the fallacious arguments against this perspective, the main obstacles to its accomplishment in less than two generations, are mental and political, not physical and environmental.
Both environmental alarmism in general and climate alarmism in particular, should be removed from their current pedestal of undeserved privileges and replaced by a strategy that is based on scientific principles, the common good as well as common sense.
The Rio +20 conference may be an appropriate platform for the required reorientation.
Aldus de open brief aan de Braziliaanse president.
Voor de ondertekenaars zie hier.
Zal er op de RIO+20 conferentie ruimte zijn om aandacht aan dit soort opvattingen te schenken?
Het zou mij sterk verbazen als dat het geval zou zijn. Immers, de ervaring leert dat de koene redders van onze planeet alles in het werk zullen stellen om dat te verhinderen. Twijfel aan het AGW-dogma is taboe!
Lees ook