LET'S THINK ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE NB Rather than clutter the document with hyperlinks, I’ve given the sources in full to enable easy checking.

Norman Taylor, UKIP Ashford

Government plans to tackle ‘Global Warming’

All current plans, both at national and international levels, assume that the earth is warming (Climate Change) due to emissions of greenhouse gases, in particular carbon dioxide.

This may or may not be true.

In pursuit of the carbon belief, the National Adaptation Programme (NAP) sets the actions that government will take to adapt to the challenges they see facing the UK.

 This report forms part of the five-yearly cycle of requirements laid down in the updated Climate Change Act (2018). This commits the government to:

·         reduce emissions by at least 80% of 1990 levels by 2050

·         contribute to global emission reductions, to limit global temperature rise to as little as possible above 2°C

The current target was set in 2008 based on advice from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC). That advice considered that to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, the central expectation of global temperature rise should be limited “to, or close to, 2°C”, while the probability of crossing “the extreme danger threshold of 4°C” should be reduced to an extremely low level. They claim that global emissions need to be halved by 2050.

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) launched a new Call for Evidence in October 2018 to support its forthcoming advice to the UK Government on long-term targets for greenhouse gas emissions and the UK’s transition to a net zero-carbon economy.

Five practical steps to remove greenhouse gases

The government has commissioned experts from the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering to look at what could be done in the UK to remove enough greenhouse gas to achieve the goal of cutting carbon emissions by 2050. They claim that their proposals would be difficult and hugely expensive - but feasible within the time frame.

Their recommendations are to:

·         Increase forest cover by about 40% of the current UK total

·         Plant around 2.5 million acres for energy crops - these can be burned for electricity and the CO² stored underground permanently

·         Restore wetlands and salty marshes

·         Crush silicate rocks and spread them on farmland to absorb CO²

·         Build more houses with timber

The authors believe that farmers will need financial incentives from government to switch to energy crops. Building infrastructure to remove, transport and store CO² will require a strong price for carbon. However right now that price in the UK is around $25 per tonne, very far off the level needed to make this plan work. “At something around $50-100 dollars a tonne, many of these technologies become workable," said Prof Henderson.

What would it all cost?

There are no reliable estimates of the costs of cutting emissions. Prof Simon Dietz of the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, has said: "The evidence we have simply does not give us a clear answer on whether the benefits of limiting warming to 1.5ºC exceed the costs. But if we want to keep the option open to limit warming to 1.5ºC, then unless we discover a much cheaper way to remove carbon dioxide from the air, and if we want to avoid risky methods of blocking out sunlight, we have to pursue the goal of 1.5ºC now."

All such analyses ignore the possibility that earth will cool rather than warm-up. If this is the case, current plans may accelerate cooling and drive us quicker into a New Ice Age. Not a good idea!

Conclusions on the costs & benefits of current government plans are, therefore, useless.

Could it be Global Cooling?

To evaluate the risk of extreme climate change, researchers from the Environnements et Paléoenvironnements Océaniques et Continentaux laboratory (CNRS/University of Bordeaux, France), and the University of Southampton developed an algorithm to analyse the 40 climate models considered by the UN’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Fifth Assessment Report.

The findings by the British and French team, published in the Nature Communications journal, disagree strongly with the IPCC about global warming.  These independent experts put the probability of rapid North Atlantic cooling during this century at nearly 50%.

This suggests that a prudent government needs to plan for both warming and cooling as they are equally likely.

The case for Global Cooling

Most of us assume that Africa has always been hot. Is it true? No.

Climatologists now assume that Africa was ‘cold and arid’ during the Marine Isotope Stage 6 that lasted until, roughly, 123,000 years ago. Much of the landmass was uninhabitable as a result; a cold planet is not good for life. While earth was in the grip of this icy regime, Africa’s population plunged from more than 10,000 breeding individuals to just hundreds. It is highly likely that similar population declines were experienced in Asia and Europe. With so few people on the planet, there's no way humans could have influenced the climate, especially not by producing excessive carbon dioxide.

The lucky survivors in Africa were those who lived close to the sea and could feed on seafood and the carbo-hydrate plants which enjoyed the higher temperatures caused by the sea.

But the climate is ever-changing. Studies published in Scientific American in autumn 2016, quote stalagmite records to show that Africa’s climate has varied considerably over the past three million years. It is clear that Africa has alternated between long periods of wet forest land to equally long and dry periods of grasslands areas like the modern savannah.

It has been shown that these periods have a 23,000 year cycle, matching the earth’s orbital wobble. This causes changes in the amount of sunlight hitting the planet, resulting in colder and wetter periods alternating with hotter and dryer ages. It is highly likely that natural variations like this continue to influence the planet far more than any human action.  

The earth’s 23,000 wobble is not the only cycle to affect our climate. Others include:

Sunspots – 11 years

Sun’s electro-magnetic radiation – 70 years

Solar energy output – 1,500 years

Earth’s axial tilting – 41,000 years

Earth’s orbital path – 100,000 years

It is a matter for conjecture as to why so many scientists and politicians focus on the carbon-driven global warming scenario while ignoring the effects of these natural cycles. Could it be their answer to the age-old question: “What’s in it for me?”

Other, distinguished scientists like Dr David Evans say: “We now know it is not CO².”

Perhaps the answer comes from the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which defined "climate change" as that due to human activity. It thus required the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to focus on anthropogenic change rather than to comment on or prepare for natural variations in the climate system itself. Large grants are paid to scientists who 'prove' that global warming is caused by mankind. As far as I know, there are no grants for scientists who challenge the 'consensus'.

It’s hard for a sceptic to avoid the conclusion that this set the scene for supporting bureaucrats and hangers-on with our money. But I could be wrong.

As stated above, the evidence suggests that a prudent government needs to plan for both warming and cooling as they are equally likely.