Scientist: The ''Cure'' is Worse than Any Warming !

Professor G. Cornelis van Kooten holds a chair in Environmental Studies and Climate at Canada's University of Victoria and has written this in the past week:

Chart Showing 16 Years Without Significant Warming

          I was a reluctant contributing author of the IPCC's Forth Assessment Report, reluctant because, after having been a reviewer of the Third Report, putting in quite a bit of time and then totally ignored, I reviewed the process as nothing more than a SHAM!

I have worked on climate problems related to forestry, both in terms of adaptation and mitigation.  However, I first looked at the broader problem of climate change when, about five years ago, I was asked to teach climate economics in a new Climate studies minor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at my university. It opened my eyes!

I have now encountered a significant number of scientists and others who have been personally attacked and even threatened with violence for their contrary views but now keep such views to themselves.  Indeed, I would even dare say that there are likely as many on my own university campus who are skeptical about the human origins of supposed global warming as there are those who support the so-called consensus and my university is noted for for its climate scientists and pro-anthropogenic origins of global warming.

So here is what I found....  The climate models have never been validated and are simply unreliable. To add insult to injury, the climate models were also used to make claims about the increasing intensity of storms, rainfall events, etc., when all the empirical evidence indicates that storm events have been on the decline. After reading large amounts of literature by astrophysicists, I am more convinced that changes in solar activities (whether sunspots, various types of cycles, etc) are a better explanation of changing temperature and possible global warming than CO2.

The highest temperature projections are based on affecting the poorest people in world. But it will be not be from rising temperatures (which are not) but from the increased Carbon Dioxide that will see  yields of all leading crops rising dramatically. So per capita income of the poorest people will see them earning 15 times more than now. There are huge benefits to health and every other measure one cares to choose when one becomes rich. These more than outweigh any damage from climate change. So you can appreciate that rising CO2 emissions are, for the most part, a side effect of alleviating global poverty. To mitigate climate change one needs to force the vast majority of humankind to continue living in abject poverty. I would welcome 3 degrees of warming, or even more. Warm weather is much better for one's health than cold weather.

The Way I See It....preventing climate change does not help the poor, it dooms them! Poverty simply kills more people than climate ever will. In my view, the only real threat to humanity comes from the eco-fascist environmental movement. The threats to polar bears, ecosystems, ice caps, glaciers and agriculture are vastly overstated and in many cases, non-existent. I have yet to see convincing evidence that the threats are going to be catastrophic. It was 3 degrees warmer in 950AD when the Vikings were running around in shorts and boots raping and pillaging and found a green land they named Greenland.

Economists, as well as myself, have warned and continue to warn against the use of emissions trading. They worry about additionality, leakages, transaction costs, and of course corruption, that are associated with emissions trading. The Europeans are addicted to it and Australia has followed blindly to instigate it and now Obama seems to be imbued with this stupidity. All the while Canada, Japan Russia and China have walked away from the idea. In conclusion, perhaps, massive subsidies to support wind and solar developments on the basis of job creation might be a more insane policy.