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Capitalism Magazine
Environmental Myth Report
by Fred Singer (February 6, 1999)
Summary: Lots of environmental scares exist without any scientific foundation,
but catastrophic global warming must take the cake when it comes to hype.
[CAPITALISM MAGAZINE.COM] El Nino and global warming: What connection?
It's been a hot year, thanks to El Nino. (According to weather satellite data, the first
half of 1998 ranked well above the average of the last two decades; 1999 though is
likely to be quite cold.) Much to the frustration of environmental activists, however,
responsible climate scientists have steadfastly refused to blame the unusually strong
El Nino on manmade greenhouse gases. They have also denied any relationship
between global warming and hurricanes, putting the lie to politicians who were quick
to blame Hurricane Mitch and other weather disasters on the greenhouse effect.
Lots of environmental scares exist without any scientific foundation, but catastrophic
global warming must take the cake when it comes to hype. The late Aaron Wildavsky
referred to it as the "mother of all environmental scares." It certainly is the most
expensive -- potentially. If the Kyoto Protocol for cutting CO2 emissions and energy
use were ever ratified by the U.S. Senate and enforced by the United Nations, there
go jobs and prosperity -- all because of the feverish imagination of environmental
activists and some computer printouts that don't relate to what's really happening in
the atmosphere.
The climate-aerosol debacle: The U.N. science advisory group, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has a big credibility
problem. Its 1996 report, the basis for Kyoto, had to admit that the rapid warming
predicted by computer models was not occurring. So they hit on an explanation to
account for the discrepancy: Sulfate aerosols, particles created from the burning of
coal and other sulfur-containing substances, were supposed to reflect incident
sunlight and create an offsetting cooling -- forcing an agreement with the
observations that show no warming trend. Unfortunately for the IPCC, the details
don't match. The Southern Hemisphere, containing fewer aerosols, should be
warming more rapidly-but it isn't.
The final blow has just been dealt to the IPCC house-of-cards by NASA climate
scientist Dr. James Hansen, an IPCC stalwart (who revived the global warming scare
a decade ago when he blamed the 1988 U.S. drought on the greenhouse effect.)
Now, he's back, writing in the Proceedings of the august National Academy of
Sciences: "The forcings that drive long-term climate change [aerosols, clouds, landuse patterns] are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate
change." Why then should one trust the predictions of climate models?
The carbon dioxide-warming connection: cause and effect?
It has become an article of faith that CO2 increases are the cause of the warmings
marking the end of the ice ages observed in the climate record in the past million
years. Now comes news from precise Antarctic ice-core data that while warmings
and CO2 increases are indeed correlated, the CO2 increases lag the warmings by
about 1,000 years. So much for the cause-effect relationship so dear to the hearts of
global-warming promoters.
Sea level Rise from global warming?
Don't believe it: First of all, sea level has been rising at average rate of about 7
inches per century for several centuries, and nobody quite knows why. But it is
certainly not due to climate changes or any human influences.
The climate did warm sharply between 1900 and 1940, recovering from the previous
cold centuries of the "Little Ice Age"; can we trace the effect of this warming on sea
level? Many glaciers are still melting as a result of the higher temperatures
compared to 100 years ago. Also, ocean water expanded, as most substances do
when their temperature is raised. But the sea-level data taken during this period
suggest that both of these effects were overcome by an increased evaporation from
the ocean surface, followed by more rain -- which turned to ice over the polar
regions and increased ice accumulation there. The net result: a transfer of water
from the ocean to the polar ice caps, and a slowing down of the ongoing sea level
rise.
There is a lesson to be learned here. Should the climate warm again for any reason - it is likely to further depress sea-level rise.
The bugs are coming: Really?
Activists allege that climate warming promotes the spread of mosquitoes carrying
frightful tropical diseases; but rapid and widespread air travel is a likely dominating
factor. Now they've been trumped by Professor Peter McEwen of the University of
Wales who predicts an invasion of cockroaches and other pasties that will inundate
Great Britain, "steal our food and suck our blood."
At the Kyoto conference (December 1997) everything bad was blamed on global
warming -- even though it is not happening. The prize goes to the Japan
Environmental Times ("All the Earth News Without Fear or Favor") report that deadly
Australian "red-back" spiders were found by a factory worker in Osaka (which boasts
an international airport). "Scientists attribute the first discovery of the species in
Japan to the warmer climate." (Comment: Maybe the little beasts swim faster when
the ocean is warmer. It's a thought.)
Health effects from pollutants: The good news
Some good news for a change: Judge Samuel C. Poynter of the U.S. District Court in
Alabama appointed a panel of independent scientists to investigate and report on the
health effects of breast implants; they found none worth mentioning. In North
Carolina, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Osteen threw out the EPA claim
"secondhand" cigarette smoke causes lung cancer. Smoke may be irritating and
obnoxious, but that's not quite the same as evidence for lung cancer: the correlation
is "not statistically significant." Meanwhile, the American Council on Science and
Health has published Facts vs. Fears, a review of the greatest unfounded health
scares of recent times they range from the 1959 "Cranberry Scare" to DDT, Love
Canal, asbestos in schools, and cellular phones causing brain tumors.
Other good news: There finally may be a detection technique to measure directly the
damage to DNA, the genetic material in human cells, from minute quantities of
chemicals or radiation. The first experiments, published in Science in 1998, indicate
the existence of a "threshold," below which any damage is repaired by the cell's own
repair mechanism. Too bad that this result didn't appear earlier; a lot of laboratory
rats had to die after being exposed to megadoses of suspected carcinogens.
The ozone layer revisited: Where are the casualties?
And some more good news -- sort of: The 1987 Montreal Protocol that led to the ban
on chlorofluorocarbons ("Freons") was based on studies that predicted dire health
consequences (to the tune of $32 trillion(!)), according to the EPA -- from even a 5
percent depletion in the stratospheric ozone layer. Well, the ozone layer has now
thinned by about that amount, but where are the feared consequences -- the
millions of skin cancers, cataracts and impaired immune systems leading to
uncontrollable epidemics? Could it be that the: Environmental Protection Agency
exaggerated just a tiny little bit in order to promote the CFC ban? Far be it for me to
suggest that EPA would engage in such a dastardly scheme or even intimate that
AIDS is spread by ozone depletion.
There's so much more to tell; but there is no space left. Better explore the web at
http://www.sepp.org/.
About the Author: S. Fred Singer is the founder and president of the Science &
Environmental Policy Project.