Climate Change Revisited

I have always tried to keep an open mind on the climate change debate as it has become increasingly politicized and seized upon as the cause célèbre of our times by those that advocate global redistribution of wealth. The story line thus far is that man is the primary cause of climate change and we need to act with great urgency to reduce carbon dioxide emissions thus reversing the primary causes of global warming. The greatest evil in this story book is coal that produces more energy at a lower cost than any other fuel in the United States, China and India. This is followed by oil and to a much lesser extent natural gas. The bottom line is that all hydrocarbon based fuel should be avoided to save the planet.

From the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 to the planned Climate Change Conference in Panama this coming October there has been a series of conferences and a plethora of solutions to reverse man’s impact on the global climate. Many of these solutions call for the developed world to provide funding in one way or another for the developing world to reduce carbon emissions or to save rain forests and encourage reforestation to absorb CO2 emissions.

There is much at stake in the global climate change business. Many have hitched their wagon to this train for either political gain or economic enrichment or both. The science supporting climate change theories and the empirical evidence has been patchy and in some instances contradictory. In extreme cases some of the data has been distorted to prove a predetermined conclusion. All of this has created a cacophony of competing opinions about the reality of both climate change and its causes.

In an effort to keep up with the issue I have read countless books and articles on the subject and engaged in long discussions with petroleum industry experts, oceanographers and climatologists who have long been engaged in research and analysis of climate change data. As a result I had concluded that the problem was so large and complex that we were just nibbling at the edge of the pie of knowledge and reaching conclusions with insufficient data. Having done so, we are in the process of applying corrective action that could be truly counterproductive and play havoc with the global economy.

Most recently, NASA has released conclusions of a study utilizing data collected by NASA’s Terra satellite between the years 2000 and 2011 and supported with data collected since 1985 from other satellites. It now appears that far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric CO2 trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed. This is a triumph of real world data over that of computer modeled assumptions that have led to alarmist conclusions on which governments around the world have relied on to shape their policy decisions.


It will be interesting to see how the recent conclusions of NASA based on the actual evidence from multiple satellite sources over 25 years will affect the discussions in Panama and later on in the year in South Africa. But as Galileo discovered some time ago theological positions trumps real world evidence.

phillip.goddard@braggadax.com