Ed Diery in his letter to Southern Free Times (14/7) pointed out that I did not provide corroborating data for my claim that there has been a slight global cooling over the past 10 years (Southern Free Times 7/7). There is much information about this on the internet but the advocates for each side of the debate (“sceptics” and “warmists”) find ways to present data in such a way as to “prove” their side of the argument. Suffice to say that the warmists are now so worried about the lack of warming in recent years that they are trying to find ways to explain it that don’t make them look silly.
For example a recent peer reviewed paper by Dr Robert Kaufman of Boston University (a warmist) claims that the global temperature downturn during the last decade is being caused by China emitting sunlight-reflecting aerosols from its burgeoning coal-fired power stations. So apparently we’ve done the full circle.
Global cooling in the 1970s caused by manmade pollution, global warming in the 1980s and 90s caused by manmade carbon dioxide (now also called pollution) and global cooling in the 2000s caused by manmade pollution again!
To back their claims the “respectable” IPCC and the rest of the money hungry climate change industry have nothing but a stack of computer models that will show anything they want them to.
It is difficult for the average person to know who to believe in the debate about current global temperature trends, but we can look at our own local temperatures for ourselves. For example the BOM Applethorpe weather station shows no increase in temperatures for the past 15 years. This is a good station to look at because it is an automatic station that was installed in 1997 in a paddock and is therefore not affected by urban heat effect. The trend line over this period is flat and the large peaks and troughs (interestingly) reflect the El Nino and La Nina years. Of course even if temperatures were still going up there is no proof whatsoever that it is being caused by manmade carbon dioxide emissions.
Tony Hassall, Ballandean
