It’s time for some realism regarding climate change

Last week 700 scientists, economists and public policy experts from 20 countries met in New York City. They concluded that global warming, if it is occurring at all, is probably natural rather than man-made, something very different from Al Gore’s message. Gore claims a calamity is occurring, and in 10 years the atmosphere may suffer irreversible harm. Both Gore and President Obama offer their solution: cap the production of energy from fossil fuels, tax carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, create a “cap and tax” bureaucracy, make most forms of energy very expensive, and transfer our personal wealth to government wealth — all to perform an absolutely worthless and unnecessary task.

The Gore-Obama plan is to collect CO2 from the atmosphere and store it underground forever. In return, we get little, except for the $645 billion in additional taxes, something that all Americans will pay every time they buy a product or fill up the tank of their car or truck.

Global warming alarmists want us to believe the temperature of Earth would stay the same year after year, century after century, if not for “the human presence.” This is scientifically false. Huge climate changes have occurred before humans could possibly have played a role. More recently, global temperatures rose from 1900 to 1940 (1934 was the century’s warmest year), fell from 1940 to 1975, rose again from 1975 to 1998, and declined from 1998 to 2008. How does “the human presence” account for this variation? It can’t.

Al Gore says “soaring global temperatures will bring human civilization to a screeching halt.”

“Global warmers” also predict no more agriculture in California and in 10 years the oceans will be toxic and all life could die. And yet, we’re halfway to the much-feared “doubling of CO2” in the atmosphere, and none of these disasters has even begun to appear.

Global warming’s true believers say trains carrying coal and other fuel to cities are really death trains carrying poisonous fuel to “coal-fired factories of death.” Whew, Hollywood horror films couldn’t top this stuff. But there’s more: hurricanes, melting polar ice caps, polar bear extinctions, dust bowls and anything else about the weather than you can imagine.

Let’s look at the facts.

Nearly 85 percent of U.S. energy consumption is carbon-based, and reducing that figure by using wind, solar and other renewable sources will take a long time, be very expensive and may not be technically possible. Scientists (and farmers) know carbon dioxide is not a “pollutant.” The vast majority of it is produced from natural sources, not human activities, and plants and forests use CO2 to grow and produce oxygen for all living things.

Ordinary air contains roughly 78.08 percent nitrogen, 20.95 percent oxygen, 0.93 percent argon and a paltry 0.038 percent carbon dioxide. Scientists — including several who presented at the New York conference — are quite unsure that a tiny increase in that tiny amount of CO2 is having any effect on climate. Many scientists believe negative feedbacks more than offset whatever warming the CO2 might be capable of causing.

Our whole solar system is showing climate changes, including the climates of Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and even lonely Pluto. What all the planets have in common, though, is that they receive heat from the sun and they are affected by cosmic rays and other galaxy-wide processes. Nothing we do can compare to changes in sun-spot activity and brightness when it comes to changing our climate.

Our climate appears to be once again reversing course and cooling, repeating a cycle that has repeated itself thousands of times in the past. Glaciers advance when the earth cools, then make up for all that work by retreating when the earth re-warms. Human activities may have a little impact, but is it good or bad? Worth preventing? No one knows.

So for the time being, let’s accept that the earth’s climate has been wide-ranging for 5 billion years. That’s our planet’s history, and we are here in spite of (or maybe because of) all those changes.

Thank God for that.

Carl Gatto of Palmer represents the 13th District in the Alaska Legislature. He can be reached at Representative_Carl_Gatto@legis.state.ak.us.