A cold, inconvenient fact

The Arctic ice shield is not melting as the Greens’ predictions want us all to believe, writes Keith Bryer.

The Arctic ice shield is not melting as the Greens’ predictions want us all to believe, writes Keith Bryer.

Nature has bowled a googly at the scientific “consensus” that says catastrophic climate change is inevitable, unless we all wear hair shirts. The Arctic ice sheet is not melting according to the doom-laden prediction that the climate change industry has assiduously promoted for decades.

Instead of shrinking, raising sea levels, flooding coastal cities, and reversing the Gulf Stream, the Arctic ice cap has grown.

This news, coming almost on the eve of the Paris Conference on Climate Change, might dampen the enthusiasm of the expected 50 000 participants, half of them government delegates. The rest are from intergovernmental organisations (bureaucrats), and UN agencies (more bureaucrats). These astounding numbers come from the conference website.

What should spoil this gigantic Green Festival of planet savers is that the Arctic ice cap has not expanded a little bit. A small increase could be brushed aside as an anomaly, a small fault of measurement. Instead, it has expanded by a whopping 30 percent.

It should spoil the Paris bun fight, but it probably will not. If the last conference (this will be the 21st) is an indication, it will attract 900 journalists, hold 140 press conferences, and provide photo opportunities where politicians and green celebrities can pose. It will be a media feeding frenzy.

Meanwhile, believers will do any amount of mental gymnastics to retain their convictions. Even the researchers who measured the ice cap expansion surrounded the Arctic discovery with “ifs” and “buts”, possibly to avoid being thrown out of the Green church.

Various factors

Rachel Tilling, from University College London, told the BBC: “We looked at various climate forcing factors, we looked at the snow loading, we looked at wind convergence, and the melt season length of the previous summer.

“We found that the highest correlation by far was with the melt season length – and over the summer of 2013, it was the coolest of the five years we have seen, and we believe that’s why there was more multi-year ice left at the end of summer.”

The conclusion of this cold inconvenient fact: “The long-term trend of the ice volume is downwards, the long-term trend of the temperatures in the Arctic is upwards, and this finding does not give us any reason to disbelieve that – as far as we can tell – it is just one anomalous year”.

Of course, it is an anomaly. It must be. Everyone says so. Well, not everyone. Some would say it is a brave conclusion after only a five-year study.

Apply common sense to this equivocation and it means that northern summers are occasionally cold and wet and that is why there is more ice at the end of them, and therefore even more after the winter. Who would have thought it?

So the expanding Arctic ice cap does not challenge global warming theory. Surprise. The Paris delegates can fly to France, burn fossil fuel all the way, and have a wonderful time celebrating the signing of a binding international treaty that will make everyone obey. Well, that is the idea. Will such a treaty be signed? Will it be kept? Do we know what this Green future will be like?

Here then is a scenario. It is a suggestion. It is not a fact. Future historians (UK historian Niall Ferguson, or his clone, would be ideal) will judge its veracity. It could be wrong, in other words.

“We will all have to pay more tax. More for electricity, as and when the wind blows hard enough, and the sun shines brightly enough to provide it. All our food will be organic and there will be less of it. No petroleum-based products, so all 9 billion of us will wear wool.

There will not be enough sheep to provide it for everyone – especially the poor. Attempts to raise sheep in cages will be punishable by hanging. Wearing cotton is out of the question – it needs fertiliser.

There will not be enough dung to provide it, all domestic animals break wind that is methane rich, and a very bad greenhouse gas.

Opencast mining will be banned because it disturbs nature. Air travel will be restricted to the very rich and only allowed occasionally to get to Green conferences in tough places such as Paris. Modern medicine will be hit too, especially the use of nuclear isotopes to combat cancer. End of scenario.

Ridiculous

There are more implications of the Green agenda, but not the space here to list them. Some Green hopes are so ridiculous there is little chance of them happening. China and India will not obey, for one thing.

The agenda will be applied, if at all, in the wealthier parts of the world where the elites are overcome with guilt for being rich. Emotion, not logic, lies behind the climate change theory. Even if it is proven to be flawed when the predicted doomsday scenarios fail to materialise, believers will still think that they are right, because they are on the side of the angels. They wish to bring back an imagined Golden Age – a Garden of Eden before the Fall – as believers throughout history have done.

Using computer models to bolster Green belief is not infallible. Even Paul Ehrlich, who was one of the first doomsayers, thought so when he said: “To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer”.

He is a believer today, so that window to his common sense is now bolted shut.

But what will most likely kibosh the millennium cult of Gaia is the implosion of the Middle East and the security threat it poses to the developed world. Green issues will become not so important after all.

In some ways, it is a pity. Flying off to exotic places for giant conferences followed by partying should be every climate scientist’s right.

The world owes each one at least this small perquisite for urging us all to give up our wicked ways, save the planet (and keep the research funds flowing).

* Keith Bryer is a retired communications consultant

** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media.

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