CLIMATISM is the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth's climate. Some 22 years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations concluded that manmade greenhouse gas emissions were causing global warming. In so doing, IPCC launched the world on a renewable-energy crusade in a pointless effort to control Earth's climate.
Stefan Rabmstorf of the Potsdam Institute in Germany last year presented at the United Kingdom's Oxford University and discussed sea level rise: "The crux of the sea level issue is that it starts very slowly but once it gets going it is practically unstoppable .... There is no way I can see to stop this rise, even if we have gone to zero emissions."
When has mankind ever been able to stop the rise of the sea? When have we ever been able to control the weather at a single location on Earth? Yet, climatism now demands that we switch to renewable energy, forego economic growth and consumption, and accept thousands of regulations on energy use for our home, transportation, business, and recreation. If we do so, then we will be able to command the tides and control the weather. Climatism is a belief system--not science.
In September 2009, Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University, Germany, addressed 1,500 scientists at the UN's World Climate Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Latif is one of the world's leading climate modelers and a true believer in man-made global warming. However, Latif was surprised by the recent cooling in global temperatures: "... It may well happen that you enter a decade or maybe even two, when the temperature cools relative to the present level.... I'm definitely not one of the skeptics....However, we have to ask the nasty questions ourselves, or some other people will do it." In fact, not one of the 20 multimillion-dollar supercomputers the IPCC trusts predicted the global cooling that has taken place since 2002.
From a common sense point of view, one must question what all of the climate fuss is about. Global temperatures have increased a mere 1.3[degrees]F in the last century. The annual temperature variation in Chicago typically is 100[degrees], changing from about -5[degrees] to 95[degrees], so 1[degrees] is not much to a Chicagoan. Alarmists tell us global catastrophe will break loose with a 5.4[degrees] temperature rise by the year 2100, but these forecasts are based solely on model predictions, not experimental proof.
There is no scientific evidence that carbon dioxide is in control of Earth's temperatures. Science increasingly shows that cloud formation, precipitation, water vapor (the largest greenhouse gas), and ocean temperature cycles are much greater climatic forces than carbon dioxide. Isotope analysis demonstrates that a mere four percent of atmospheric C[O.sub.2] is due to man-made emissions (the rest is from natural causes), contrary to assertions by IPCC. The Climatist assumption that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide cause a positive feedback of heightened atmospheric water vapor is looking more and more unlikely. The General Circulation Models unanimously predict an atmospheric warming signature above the equator, but experimental data from satellites and weather balloons do not show this.
Earth's climate is driven by long-, medium-, and short-term cycles. Proxy and historical evidence shows that Earth's climate was at least as warm during the Medieval Warm Period as it is today. The late 20th century warning is much better explained by a combination of long-term temperature recovery from the Little Ice Age and the temperature variation of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation than by rising greenhouse gas emissions.
There is much evidence that the sun is the driver of Earth's climate. A combination of long-term alterations in solar radiation and short-term changes in low-level cloudiness driven by variation in sunspot activity correlates well with changes in Earth's temperatures. …