Conference was like expensive Xmas party (From Bucks Free Press)

Conference was like expensive Xmas party

9:01am Friday 5th February 2010 in

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AS predicted in my earlier letter, the Copenhagen Global Warming Conference was little more than a very expensive Xmas party at the taxpayers’ expense. In addition, Gordon Brown, who is always very generous with taxpayers’ money, donated £1.5billion to the European climate fund as an extra Xmas present.

It was ironical that the start of the conference coincided with the arrival of probably the harshest winter in northern Europe for nearly 50 years. It was also noticeable that, whereas in previous years the IPCC has been making alarmist forecasts of uncontrolled global warming they are now faced with a global climate which is starting to show a distinct cooling trend which is likely to continue for another 30 years.

There were some winners from the conference. World leaders got yet another photo opportunity. Hoteliers were charging £650 per room per night, 1200 cars were hired to transport the delegates, the carbon trading hedge funds would have made good profits and the Copenhagen prostitute’s trade union (it’s legal in Denmark) advised members to provide free services to any of the 1200 registered delegates at the conference.

All forecasts of future climate change is crystal ball gazing euphemistically called computer modelling. So climate predictions of the kind made by James Cracknell, Oxfam’s campaigner for Bucks, in his letters have been discredited by the Met Office because the associated mathematical theory is unacceptable.

Rather than trying to forecast the future we should look at how the global climate has changed over the 20th century because this will give us a better understanding of how the climate of the 21st century may perform.

Atmospheric CO2 increased from 310ppm in 1900 to 375ppm by 1999. The increase in the average global temperature over the 100 years was a modest 0.7 degrees C.

The climate warmed from 1900 to 1940. Then cooled from 1940 to 1977 and then warmed until 1998.

In total it warmed by 1.2 degrees C and cooled by 0.5 degrees C giving a net warming of 0.7 degrees C. Now it is cooling again. There was no increase in hurricane activity. It is questionable if sea levels rose because in many parts of the planet the ground is sinking and the worst tornado in the UK was in May 1950. Not exactly a doomsday scenario.

Let me close by quoting Professor Richard Lindzen the world’s leading atmospheric physicist: “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree and, on the basis of gross exaggeration of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”

Anthony Weeden, Bockmer End, Nr Marlow.