The cherry-picking of weather events

Scientists predict that the earth's average temperature will rise by 1.5°C to 4.5°C by 2100. Such a change in temperature will have severe effects upon our climate, health, and world economy.

This scenario has produced reactions all over the world, ranging from alarm among environmentalists to continuous policy debates both at national and international levels. But the contrasts between the two competing sides on the issue of global warming are so stark and the political statements made by governments in support of this thesis are so divorced from reality, that informed persons are left shaking their heads in disbelief.

It is claimed that global warming is the result of human activities that are releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, creating the "enhanced" greenhouse effect and an increase in the earth's average temperature (carbon dioxide being blamed as the major contributor to global warming effect by 60 per cent).

The Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, is an agreement between 84 countries to slow down global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. While all parties signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, each country must still ratify it at home. The Protocol will enter into force 90 days after it has been ratified by at least 55 members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Control, including developed countries, representing 55 per cent of the total 1990 carbon dioxide emissions. To date, this threshold has not been met.

The Protocol was intended to provide for a new approach to international cooperation and environmental regulation. But the major premise on which the protocol was formed, which is that humans played a significant role in heating up the earth during the 20th century, is open to much criticism and strong counter arguments.

The United States did not join in this global effort that was set in motion by the Kyoto agreement, by not ratifying it. However, now that the war in Iraq has ended, there is a renewed clamour for the United States to back harsh restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions.

The reasons are obvious. Environmentalists, politicians and editorialists in the US will complain that, if only the Bush administration had been more "multilateral" and had backed the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, more Europeans would have joined the military campaign against Saddam Hussein.

On the one hand we have world politicians (mainly Europeans) stating categorically: "The science is settled!" While on the other hand, one can dig up a half a dozen scientific reports from the recent years that argue that not only is the science not settled but that scientists are operating in almost complete ignorance on many of the most basic and key assumptions behind the theory.

This is precisely the point the Bush administration has been making for the past two years in the face of withering criticism from Europeans. They argue, and rightly so, that more research is needed before hundreds of billions of dollars are committed toward the kind of solutions demanded by the Kyoto Protocol.

A very recent study, funded in part by Nasa and announced in a Harvard University press release, provides a wealth of empirical information that should help those who are still confused on which side to jump in this controversy.

The study emphasises and concludes that, contrary to popular belief, "Many records reveal that the 20th century is likely not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium". This conclusion comes from a review of more than 200 climate studies led by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in the US.

In fact, in the report that was distributed by Harvard, clear patterns did emerge showing that regions worldwide experienced the highs of the Mediaeval Warm Period and lows of the Little Ice Age, and that 20th century temperatures are generally cooler than during the mediaeval warmth.

These findings are vital to the debate over the Kyoto agreement since the premise for cutting back on greenhouse-gas emissions is that humans played a significant role in heating up the earth during the 20th century. It was confirmed that a warm epoch appeared in various parts of the world from about 900 to 1000 AD through about 1200 to 1300 AD, during which temperatures were greater than those of the 20th century. It makes sense, then, to view with scepticism the claims that we have caused major changes in climate.

Another twist to the debate on global warming comes from observers such as Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish statistician and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, who start their critique by accepting the notion that the earth is warming and that humans play a key role. Lomborg argues that trying to fix the problem with huge expenditures or cutbacks that will reduce economic growth is far too costly for the meagre benefits that will ensue from Kyoto's strictures.

Despite claims to the contrary, reports produced to support the theory of global warming do not show that human activities threaten to disrupt the earth's climate. Most scientists believe that there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the earth's atmosphere and disruption of the earth's climate.

Our most reliable sources of temperature data show no global warming trend. Satellite readings of temperatures in the lower troposphere (an area scientists predict would immediately reflect any global warming) show no warming since readings began 23 years ago. These readings are accurate to within 0.01°C, and are consistent with data from weather balloons. Only land-based temperature stations show a warming trend, and these stations do not cover the entire globe, are often contaminated by heat generated by nearby urban development, and are subject to human error.

It has also been argued that all predictions of global warming are based on computer models, not historical data. The predictions of these models are criticised for being too close to their designers' expectations.

We are continuously being told that the world is warming up, leading to inevitable catastrophic consequences if we do not act now, but then we look around and see that the weather reports from around the world are in sharp contrast with these claims. The entire northern hemisphere was recently hit by a cold snap that had many people longing for the good old days of global warming.

China, for example, experienced unusually high amounts of snowfall. Beijing, the capital, received heavy snowfall for six consecutive days, the longest consecutive snowfall in that city in 128 years. China's largest desert, Taklimakan, received 14 inches of snow, and a 700-mile stretch of the Yellow River froze over.

This is certainly not what one would expect in a world being warmed by the build-up of greenhouse gases. Of course, one must be careful before inferring long-term climate trends from the current weather.

Another important aspect that environmentalists normally ignore is that a modest amount of global warming, should it occur, would be beneficial to the natural world and to human civilisation. Temperatures during the Mediaeval Warm Period (roughly 800 to 1200 AD), which allowed the Vikings to settle presently inhospitable Greenland, were higher than even the worst-case scenario reported by global climate computer models.

The period from about 5000-3000 BC, known as the "climatic optimum", was even warmer and marked "a time when mankind began to build its first civilisations", observe James Plummer and Frances B. Smith in a study for Consumer Alert. "There is good reason to believe that a warmer climate would have a similar effect on the health and welfare of our own far more advanced and adaptable civilisation today."

So one would finally ask, was the cherry-picking of weather events over the past years justified in frightening the public? And why would European governments support the Kyoto Protocol when there is such strong evidence that dilutes the threat?

The answer could be that there is more to it than just an environmental issue. To quote Margot Wallstrom, the European Union's commissioner for the environment, global warming "is not a simple environmental issue where you can say it is an issue where scientists are not unanimous. This is about international relations, this is about economy, about trying to create a level playing field for big businesses throughout the world. You have to understand what is at stake and that is why it is serious".

We must remember that it costs Europe nothing, or very little, to meet the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol, since they did so when they switched from high-sulphur coal to North Sea natural gas, and Germany shut down many highly polluting East German factories.

But it would cost the US a great deal. So could it be that all this debating about the future of our planet is merely a struggle to secure competitive advantage over the US?

Next time you hear politicians and environmentalist groups drone on and on about scientific opinion on global warming and the need to expend the taxpayer's money to stop it, keep in mind two things: the science is becoming less settled each day and the energy system may well take us where we want to go long before they have figured out what is going on.

The author is in her second year of a B.Communication course at the University of Malta