Editorial: Another hypefest on global warming

Another United Nations conference began Monday in Bali to contrive another worldwide governmental “solution” for global warming. Beware when the government wants to help. Be frightened when it’s a bunch of governments.

Most who are there will assume as true the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scary story that human-induced global warming is a certainty and poses catastrophic consequences — unless governments do something.

Never mind that the IPCC watered down its even scarier previous report from 2001. Instead of computer predictions of 35-inch sea-level rises, the latest report says only 17 inches. Rather than 2.5- to 10.4-degree temperature increases, computers now say 3.2 to 7.2 degrees.

Never mind that the report is compiled by government-appointed editors. Never mind that, as IPCC predictions have gotten less scary, rhetoric has gotten more so. And never mind that draconian Kyoto Protocol Treaty mandates to drastically reduce greenhouse gases have failed. In fact, expect more stringent, economy-retarding mandates from Bali.

There are opposing views — and solid evidence. Consider that the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change, 41 organizations from 33 nations “independent of political parties and governments,” says “the economic and social consequences of a Kyoto 2 Treaty could be devastating.” The group says that government subsidies, taxes and regulations undermining economic growth should be eliminated instead, or else billions of poor people will be harmed by making energy and clean water more expensive, perpetuating poverty.

Consider IPCC contributor Dr. Benjamin Santer, who has said: “... it’s unfortunate that many people read the media hype before they read the (IPCC) chapter” on detecting greenhouse gases. “I think the caveats are there. We say quite clearly that few scientists would say the attribution (of global warming to human industrial activity) was a done deal.”

Consider soaring temperatures exist only in computer predictions. The one-degree Centigrade increase during the past century is entirely within the normal range. Satellite measurements, the most accurate, show no Southern Hemisphere warming since 1979 and a decline in the north since 2001, despite rising greenhouse gas levels.

Despite IPCC assumptions, increasing atmospheric CO2 doesn’t appear to increase temperatures, which historically increase before CO2 increases. Temperatures are no warmer than today when CO2 concentrations were 18 times higher during the Cambrian Period and 12 times higher during the Late Ordovician Period — an ice age yet.

“The scientific evidence on global warming is not yet settled sufficiently to provide a basis for potentially very costly and major policy initiatives,” says Wolfgang Kasper, emeritus professor of economics at the University of New South Wales.

Expect the U.N. conference to end Dec. 14 after producing move overheated rhetoric than reasoned ideas about global warming.