You'll have heard of it, COP-21, the latest United Nation conference on all things climate, coming to Paris (France) in December. Wouldn't you know it, just in time for that "cataclysmic" event, nature does not want to play according to the organizers' script.
Rather than the polar ice caps having shrivelled to mere remnants by now, forecast for many years by all climate modelling enthusiasts, the polar ice shields have been growing by leaps and bounds. For example, according to a recent report by NASA scientists HJ Zwally et al., the
Antarctic ice shield has been growing for 15 years already, even at an alarming rate. Then we learn that near the earth's opposite pole, in
Greenland, the rate of ice accumulation is breaking new records too; see the figure below (source:
Danish Met. Inst., Nov. 7, 2015) and, last not least, the seasonal growth of the
sea ice extent in the Arctic is not far behind.
Consternation
It must come as total consternation to all those people who have claimed for years now that "climate change" or "global warming" as it used to be termed is about ready to "incinerate" all life on earth. For example, "climate modellers" like S. Rahmstorf at Germany's
PIK have claimed for years that the polar regions would be most sensitive to any warming and that the
polar ice masses were going to recede in a great hurry and that the ocean levels would rise fast. In reality, none of that is the case.
In fact, the polar ice masses continue to grow, some reaching new all-time records in both ice extent and accumulated mass. Also ocean levels are NOT rising as previously predicted.
If you feel somewhat confused, please don't shoot the messenger. As the late
Alan Caruba has claimed for years, the climate fear-mongering is nothing but an elaborate hoax. The fact that even Pope Francis subscribes to the climate gospel now does not cause the ice masses to shrink. Perhaps his Holiness' recent encyclical letter "
Laudato Si, on care for our common home" may sway some folks' views but even the Pontiff cannot dictate nature's course. Just as an aside, the Vatican has never signed on to the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 that was to limit carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
If the now two-decade long lack of lack of the prophesized warming and actually increasing ice masses at the earth's poles are not enough to worry about, there are even more dire facts that may jolt you back to reality.
Cooling--Straight Ahead
The sun's radiation is of vital importance to the well-being of all life on earth, not a new recognition at all. What's (relatively) new is the recent
lack of sunspots and what that means for the climate. Rather than "global warming" a lengthy period of "global cooling" could be in the offing.
For some time already, NASA scientists (and others) have predicted the arrival of prolonged periods of low sunspot activity. Their predictions seem to be coming true. With some exaggeration, one could say that "sunspots are nowhere to be seen." The current 11-year cycle, termed SC-24, is certainly quite reminiscent of those prevalent in the "
Maunder Minimum" that are widely thought to have caused the medieval "Little Ice Age" with its mass starvations and general misery throughout Europe.
Perhaps with such facts in mind, the Mathematical Calculation Society (Société de Calcul Mathématique SA) of France has recently published a lengthy review with the title
The battle against global warming: an absurd, costly and pointless crusade."It is available also in
English at their web site and, apart from the title, contains some other fascinating statements like, for example, the following excerpt in the chapter on "rising" sea levels:
"The level of dishonesty is rising much faster than the sea level. It has totally swept scientific literature, where a good many writers endeavor to produce models showing something worrying. The press disregards all the others and its various organs vie to bring them to public attention."
and
"Models are useful when attempting to review our knowledge, but they should not be used as an aid to decision-making until they have been validated."
Surely, the current state of "climate" mis- and mal-information could hardly be expressed more clearly. Perhaps then a total rethink of current "climate change" ideas may be opportune. So, let's get back to the city on the River Seine.
Back to Paris
Back to Paris then. The number of delegates to the COP-21 event is likely to be well above 10,000; some reports even estimate the number to be
near 40,000. Among the dignitaries said to show up are Pope Francis, U.S. President Obama, and many other world leaders, together with their entourages, media reps and all others. One may actually wonder as to who will NOT be there?
At COP-21, the representatives of many developing nations and non-governmental organisations are hoping to get a binding agreement on massive climate "reparation" funds to flow to them from western societies.
India alone appears to angle for $2,500,000,000,000 (over a few years). So far, however, the commitments (or promises) by "donor" nations are falling far short of the (initial) UN goal of $100 billion per year. "Carbon" taxes and other fiscal monstrosities are supposed to pay for all the shenanigans. As mentioned recently by P. Driessen, this UN "
wealth redistribution scheme" may only benefit the ruling elites in poor countries and do next to nothing for the people who are in dire need of reliable, cheap, and plentiful energy.
Underlying all that effort to create a "new world order" is the claim that CO2 produces a runaway global warming. That hypothesis is the (faulty) lynchpin for the entire CO2-catastrophy story. Not only is that story easy to disprove, it is even easy to demonstrate that the opposite is the case.
Without CO2 in the air, there wouldn't be any plants on earth; none at all, period. All land would be barren and inhospitable places, like the
Gobi Desert (picture below, from Wikipedia) but without the camel, or the Sahara, or Death Valley.
All such deserts have larger daily temperature ranges than areas at similar latitudes with abundant trees in foliage. The reason is that the trees' transpiration of water consumes a large amount of energy that moderates the day/night temperature fluctuations and hence provide warmer nights and cooler days than would be found there without them. This has absolutely nothing to do with any greenhouse gas effect that CO2 may have; it's solely a function of evaporative cooling. However, as the maligned carbon dioxide is absolutely vital to plant growth, it is also the ultimate cause of moderate temperature fluctuations.
Therefore, CO2 is not just vital to all life on earth but is also a great climate stabilizer.
That message is unlikely to be heard at COP-21. Instead, you're likely to hear the same faulty claims as to the CO2 effects you've heard for years already. Just remember, as written in a book by
R. Manheim (translated from the original publication):
"The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan."
There, you have an explanation for all the ballyhoo. Is nature listening?
Nature
I don't think so. As always, nature has her own will and her own ideas when it comes to the weather and climate--and we should be thankful for that.
Without nature's steady effort to supply the atmosphere with sufficient CO2 from volcanoes and other fissures in the earth's crust to sustain all life on earth, we would not even exist. Though highly unlikely, a sudden cessation of nature's CO2 emissions would lead to a rapid decline in the atmospheric CO2 from the current 0.04% to about 0.02% or less. At that level, all plant growth on earth would be slowing to a crawl. Food production would dwindle with mass starvations to quickly follow. Trying as hard as it might then, mankind's contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere could not make up for nature's shortfall.
In any event, regardless of who agrees to what at COP-21 in Paris, nature doesn't care, the polar ice sheets will be waxing and waning as per her dictate alone.
