To the Editor:
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Chairman Rajendra Pachauri was right to advocate an "agreement to finally reverse course on climate change" when he spoke to delegates tasked with approving the IPCC Synthesis Report, released on Sunday. The new direction governments should follow must be one in which the known needs of people suffering in the present are given priority over possible future problems.
Today, exactly the opposite is happening. Of the roughly one billion U.S. dollars spent every day across the world on climate finance, only 6 per cent of it is devoted to helping vulnerable societies adapt to climate change that they are experiencing now.
The rest is dedicated to trying to stop future climatic events that Pachauri and the IPCC say are coming. Commentators from across the political spectrum are beginning to regard this approach as immoral.
The valuing of people yet to be born more than those suffering today has come about because of several factors: leaders who use the issue to frighten the electorate into giving them more political power, the quest for greater revenue by environmental groups, alternative energy companies, and corporations bidding for mitigation contracts, and of course, an over confidence about the role of human activity in global climate change.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon exemplified the last of these motivations when he told reporters at this week's launch of the Synthesis Report, "Human influence on the climate system is clear - and clearly growing The atmosphere and oceans have warmed... science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in their message."
This is totally wrong.
Professor Bob Carter, former Head of the Department of Earth Sciences at James Cook University in Australia, explained, "Science has yet to provide unambiguous evidence that problematic, or even measurable, human-caused global warming is occurring. The hypothesis of dangerous man-made climate change is based solely on computerized models that have repeatedly failed in practice in the real world."
In their November 29, 2012 open letter to the Secretary-General, 134 climate experts from across the world asserted, "The U.K. Met Office recently released data showing that there has been no statistically significant global warming for almost 16 [now 18] years. During this period carbon dioxide concentrations rose by nearly 9 per cent The NOAA "State of the Climate in 2008" report asserted that 15 years or more without any statistically-significant warming would indicate a discrepancy between observation and prediction. Sixteen years without warming have therefore now proven that the models are wrong by their creators' own criterion."
Mr. Ban never responded to the scientists' letter and his statements on Sunday demonstrated that he may not have even read it. The Secretary-General said, "This global system of our earth is having really a high temperature That requires some massive and urgent and immediate action. We have to mobilize all financial resources."
Carter responds, "Spending billions of dollars on expensive and ineffectual carbon dioxide controls in a futile attempt to stop natural climate change impoverishes societies and reduces our capacity to address these and other real world problems."
Citing thousands of scientific references in leading peer-reviewed journals, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change demonstrates that the global warming scare is over from a scientific perspective.
But, with billions of dollars still pouring into perpetuating alarm, and with the careers of thousands of bureaucrats and climate researchers at stake, the global warming zombie will undoubtedly stagger on for years to come.
Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition.
