This week's AGU conference is an ideal chance to educate people about the real causes of extreme weatherOttawa, Canada: “We invite the American Geophysical Union [AGU] to join with us in helping educate the public about extreme weather and climate change,” said Tom Harris, executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition. “For too long, the public, media, and government have been misled into believing that climate change is causing increased extreme weather. At their massive Fall Meeting now taking place in San Francisco, the AGU should start a public education campaign aimed at revealing what science really says about this topic.”
Dr. Madhav Khandekar, former Environment Canada Research Scientist and author of the new report, “The Global Warming-Extreme Weather Link,” said, “In spite of what the United Nations bureaucracy claim, their own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] said in 2012 that a relationship between global warming and hurricanes has not been demonstrated. They had only ‘low confidence’ in any observed long-term trend in tropical cyclone activity [typhoons and hurricanes], tornadoes, and hail, and admitted to an ‘incomplete understanding of the physical mechanisms linking tropical cyclone metrics to climate change.’ In their September 2013 assessment report, they had ‘low confidence’ that damaging increases will occur in tropical cyclones and drought due to global warming."
Dr. Khandekar continued, “Our Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change report states that there is no convincing evidence supporting a relationship between warming over the past 100 years and increases in extreme events. When the earth was cooling between 1945 and 1977, there were as many extreme weather events as there are now. The link between global warming and extreme weather is more perception than reality. Earth’s climate is robust and there is no evidence that it is being destabilized by human-added carbon dioxide [CO2].”
Professor Bob Carter, ICSC Chief Science Advisor and former head of the School of Earth Sciences at James Cook University in Australia said, “Although today’s climate and extreme weather are well within the bounds of natural variability and the intensity and magnitude of extreme events is not increasing, there is, most definitely, a climate problem. Natural climate change brings with it very real human and environmental costs. Therefore, we must carefully prepare for and adapt to climate hazards as and when they happen. Spending billions of dollars on expensive and ineffectual CO2 controls in a futile attempt to stop natural climate change impoverishes societies and reduces our capacity to address these and other real world problems.”
New Zealand-based Terry Dunleavy, ICSC’s founding chairman and strategic advisor, gives another reason why the AGU should embark on this education campaign: “U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon often makes unjustified statements about climate change and extreme weather, most recently blaming Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines on human-caused global warming. However, in their yet unanswered November 29, 2012 open letter to the Secretary General, 134 scientists from across the world said, ‘The incidence and severity of extreme weather has not increased. There is little evidence that dangerous weather-related events will occur more often in the future. We ask that you desist from exploiting the misery of the families of those who lost their lives or properties in tropical storm Sandy by making unsupportable claims that human influences caused that storm. They did not.’"
Mr. Dunleavy concluded, “If the AGU were to make a definitive statement at their Fall Meeting explaining the mistakes in fashionable thinking about climate change and extreme weather, the Secretary General would be hard pressed to continue to ignore what real science says about this important issue.”
The ICSC is a non-partisan group of scientists, economists and energy and policy experts who are working to promote better understanding of climate science and related policy worldwide. We aim to help create an environment in which a more rational, open discussion about climate issues emerges, thereby moving the debate away from implementation of costly and ineffectual “climate control” measures. Instead, ICSC encourages effective planning for, and adaptation to, inevitable natural climate variability, and continuing scientific research into the causes and impacts of climate change. ICSC also focuses on publicizing the repercussions of misguided plans to “solve the climate crisis”. This includes, but is not limited to, “carbon” sequestration as well as the dangerous impacts of attempts to replace conventional energy supplies with wind turbines, solar power, most biofuels and other ineffective and expensive energy sources.
For more information about this announcement or ICSC in general, visit http://climatescienceinternational.org/
