Rising tempers not rising temperatures are threatening our wellbeing:
The theory of global warming goes like this:
1. Around about 1750 mankind started to industrialise and emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in a process which has been accelerating ever since.
2. Carbon dioxide is one of a number of gases which prevent the sun’s energy from leaving the earth and therefore has a warming effect.
3. Since 1750 there has been a rise in average global temperatures.
Most accept this, the problem comes with the next part of the story which is that the global temperature increase is the fault of man, and unless we take drastic steps immediately then we will face floods, droughts, disease, rising seas, and all other manner of biblical catastrophes.
Those who question this idea are pilloried and even compared to holocaust deniers.
But in light of the vast increases in energy bills which we face as a result of an energy policy based on fears about global warming, we do have a right to raise some questions.
Firstly the rise in temperature which has taken place in last 200 years is about 0.8 °C. Actually even this is questionable, but for now let us accept it.
Throughout its 4.5 billion year history the Earth’s average temperatures have always gone up and down. Over the last 2000 years we saw a warm period during the time of the Roman Empire, followed by a cold period, then another warm period during the medieval era, then the so called “little ice age” during the 1600s which we started to come out of at about the time we began to industrialise.
It is therefore reasonable to assume that some of the 0.8°C rise is due to the warming that would have taken place anyway as a result of the Earth coming out of a cool period. I think we should be told how much, but nobody, not even the environmental experts in the House of Commons research library, seems to know.
The next question is over the way that temperatures have failed to rise in line with carbon emissions over the last 250 years. There was an overall rise in temperatures until the 1940s. Then as war ended, with massive rebuilding, an explosion in the use of engines in cars and factories across the world, and carbon being pumped out at record rates, temperatures started falling.
By 1960 average global temperatures were about the same as they had been a century earlier. By the 1970s, the greens, assorted scientists, the BBC and “intelligent” commentators were all predicting a new ice age.
Inconveniently for them, in the mid 1970s it started getting warmer again and with this came the current fears of global warming. It is a scientific fact that carbon dioxide is a warming gas; it is possible we have emitted enough to have had some effect on temperatures. However, given that temperatures were falling for 30 years at a time when carbon dioxide levels were rising, it must surely be clear that other factors play a big role in determining those temperatures.
In the light of fears of man-made runaway global warming the UK has embarked on a set of policies which will see energy costs rise for householders and businesses in order to cut carbon emissions. So far most of the rest of the world are not following so although the impact on the budgets of householders will be substantial, the impact on global warming will be negligible.
Furthermore, as they struggle to meet rising energy costs many people are stumbling across a very inconvenient truth indeed. Average global temperatures have stopped rising. Yes that is a fact.
I found it out by going through the Met Office website and looking closely at the graphs. It takes a while to find the relevant one, but persist and you will be rewarded. The figures used by the Met Office come straight from the Hadley Centre whose employees are so committed to the theory of global warming that they tried to suppress evidence which contradicted their view.
Of course you won’t hear much about this from the environmental movement. Instead, having succeeded in their demands for generous subsidies for renewable energy, paid for by higher fuel bills, they have now launched a campaign against “fuel poverty” which will increase as a direct result of the policies they wanted.
Politicians take note - you will never make the greens happy. But we could cheer up a lot of hard pressed businesses and householders by promising to keep current environmental and energy polices under review, and to amend them if other countries continue to refuse to follow our noble example - or if Mother Earth continues to cock a snook at the predictions of the scientific establishment, as she has been doing for the last 40 years.
At the moment it is rising tempers caused by rising bills, not rising temperatures that we need to be wary of.