No Consensus, No Party

[Stephen Edwards]

It's hard to know exactly where to stand on the vexed issue of "climate change" nee "global warming". If one accepts the evidence put out by most of the mainstream media then there is very little room for doubt. The planet is heating up and the heating is due to human activity. The polar ice is melting and the planet is faced with catastrophe. Further more, the mainstream media assures us, there is a worldwide scientific consensus to this effect.

Fairly typical of this consensus is a report that "Global warming worse than predicted, top scientist says" on the ABC News Australia website. Our own Met Office is very clear on the subject. It's website states - "It is now clear that man-made greenhouse gases are causing climate change". The debate, it might seem, is over.

However if one raises the level of scepticism, just a tad, and releases the information dissemination headlock, only a little, and seeks an alternative point of view what do we find? We find that there are apparently large numbers of scientists who dissent from the standard view put forward by both the IPCC and, more famously, by Al Gore. A U.S. senate minority report states that "More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims. Scientists continue to debunk “consensus” in 2008 and 2009".

The website "Global Climate Change Facts" is informative and presents the case for each side. There are links to articles that range from the scary "NOAA: Climate Change Irreversible" to the rather more reassuring "Antarctic ice 2% above average".

If you have a spare hour and a half to invest, (not really a lot in geological time), there is an entertaining and thought provoking YouTube video of a presentation by Lord Christopher Monckton in October 2009 at a climate skeptic event.

Unfortunately none of these differing views give us a definitive answer to the question - is unsustainable man made global warming real? Without training in climatology and earth sciences one cannot know who has the science right. Neither can one be sure where the hidden agendas lie and nor which vested interest is really behind any given piece of data or rhetoric. However what is clear is that, contrary to the mainstream media standard line, a consensus on this important issue there is not.

GranthamTech