Who Invited Moderation?

By Floy Lilley, J.D.
December 10, 2004

Opinion columnist Miguel Grinberg stridently gives his solemn pronouncement that "carbon gases emitted by the burning of fossil fuels are accelerating a global eco-catastrophe of apocalyptical magnitude."

Fact or fear?

Side events at UN conferences tend to be selectively supportive of the mandate for central command and control of the world. Generally, if you do not go along, you will not be invited, just as we of the carbon mafia have pointedly been not invited to some NGO parties. At this, this author's twentieth international conference, hyperbolic hysteria is still standard operating procedure, but was absent, surprisingly absent, in a discussion on climate research.

Peter Backlund, scientist from University Corporation for Atmospheric Research www.ucar.edu stressed time after time in yesterday's side event on new climate research that: "We have NO idea if variability will increase or decrease anywhere in the world."

Pointedly Backlund stressed, also, that he "did NOT believe the uncertainty of the uncertainties is being narrowed."

Hardly apocalyptic.

Backlund's stated positions would place him beside the many other climate researchers who have discovered that climate change is pretty normal behaviour for earth. That would make resilience and adaptation the optimal responses of humans. That would make wealth creation the path to human health.

The audience seemed put out with Backlund's moderate stance. One attendee hurled at Backlund a question about "the obvious catastrophe of sea level rise."

Backlund's response was that sea level was "the largest uncertainty. It is the Hummer of the climate system."

A question bounced back about the catastrophic effect of increased aviation contrails. Backlund disappointed again, saying "Contrails are so minor as to be beyond modelling ability, but at any rate, their effects would seem small."

Another question pinged back, "But haven't regional observations disproved the climate sceptics about regional models?" Backlund ponged, "That's an area called detection and attribution. We normally only do that on a global area, not a region. We are not good at regions."

As if Backlund could tell he had disappointed his audience, he concluded the session with assurances that he had "a fifty percent confidence that a doubling of CO2 would result in an increase of from 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius warming." He was "sure temperature would get twice as warm as it has been in the past one hundred years." He additionally felt that "a sea level rise over the next one hundred years of between 15cm and 1m was still a good projection."

All of which put this scientist's assessments decidedly in the non-apocalyptic column.

The United States' position to continue to expand science research on how Earth responds to natural and human-induced changes is the rare sane response. Federal funding of science is still intervention to producers and theft from taxpayers, but it beats filling the coffers of the known corrupt crooks housed in the U.N.