Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

I am very sorry, but your facts are not correct. The IPCC report is written by scientists only. The executive summary (a very brief synopsis of the IPCC report) is also written by scientists, and commented on by politicians from all countries that have contributed to the report. No one is saying that there may be no warming for the next five-ten years. That is simply incorrect. I urge you to actually look at the data, rather than listening to someone summarizing it.

New Zealand is not deliberating whether to join Kyoto, they are already members, and plan on taxing carbon. Average temperatures are on the rise since 1998, if you take 1998 out of the lineup (it was an anomalous year, due to a strong El Nino event) temperatures are clearly climbing. Please familiarize yourself with the facts.

Yes, NZ is a signatory to the Kyoto protocol, unfortunately, and is now in a difficult position, especially taking into account the current financial crisis. The question is what to do about it. The new government is a coalition (under the MMP system) of National, Act and the Maori party. Act campaigned on only three issues, one of which was to dump the ETS and pull out of Kyoto. They are now part of the government, and National is wisely re-opening the debate, which was firmly closed by the previous Labour/Green coalition. The interesting thing is that the debate encompasses not just the carbon tax/ETS issues, but the actual science behind the Kyoto assumptions.

It is noteworthy that Rodney Hide, the head of the Act party, is the only qualified environmental scientist in parliament (which includes, interestingly, the Greens). In itself that proves nothing, but he is certainly able to assess the scientific value of the IPCC assertions and assumptions better than your average politician. And he is staking his political future on the fact that those asserstions and assumptions are wrong.

Regarding the future, the head of the Chamber of Commerce, Charles Finny, said recently:
"But the chances of there being a successor treaty to Kyoto in place when it expires at the end of 2012 are close to nil in the current environment."

My point was though, that the US is NOT the only country in the world that is still debating the issue of man-made global warming. Even an environmentally aware country like NZ is debating it daily.

Regarding the 1998 El Nino effect, you are right that it was an anomaly, but nevertheless my statement is correct: since 1998 temperatures have dropped. The important point here is that they dropped in spite of a 5% rise in CO2 over the same period. (I notice, going back, that many of the graphs used by the alarmists, including the infamous "hockey-stick" graph, shamelessly used the intial rising part of the 1998 effect as "proof" that global temperatures were getting out of control due to CO2 increases, even well after the El Nino effect had ended.) My main point here was that the IPCC temperature projections have been proven flat out wrong. According to them, the temperature would always rise steeply from whatever year they were on, and continue rising. The actual measured temperature plots have consistently been well below the 'lowest-bound' predicted values in each case. At no stage did they ever have projections that included cooling or even static temperatures in the event that CO2 levels increased. Why not, if their models are so accurate? The actual measured temperatures, whether rising or falling (and they do both) are well within normal climate levels for good old planet Earth. The whole thing is a non-event, but unfortunately a very costly one for all concerned, especially the genuine environmental scientists who are trying to improve living conditions for the many impoverished nations around the world, and have had funding diverted to global-warming research. They will also be tarred with the same brush when the whole debacle blows up and environmental scientists are discredited worldwide.

At the end of it all, the IPCC has yet to predict ANYTHING accurately, and yet Kyoto and other damaging protocols are all based on these predictions. The debate is DEFINITELY not over.

Originally posted by

Ralph Bernstein

There is a significant difference between scientific reasoning and analysis, and simple opinions and assertions. Trust the experts, who use mathematical modeling and atmosheric physics, and ignore the people who think they know something, but do not have the scientific education, interlect, and tools to really understand the processes. Global warming is happening due to man's activities, and denying that is foolish and dangerous.

Perhaps if you had a scientific background,and read the reports and graphs presented, you would see that most of the scientists say that man does not cause global warming, even if it were to occur. They only do not deny that global warming, may or may not be occuring.