Interview by Kirt Griffin for Examiner.com: South African astrophysicist Dr. Hilton Ratcliffe on the Sun and how it drives our Climate
Interview by Kirt Griffin for Examiner.com: South African astrophysicist Dr. Hilton Ratcliffe on the Sun and how it drives our Climate
A few years ago I was introduced to Hilton Ratcliffe by a mutual friend. He had published a book, “The Virtue of Heresy: Confessions of a Dissident Astronomer”. The book held me fascinated as it debunked many of the dogma that infiltrated the scientific lexicon. He disassembled each so-called theory, actually unproven hypotheses, in a calm scientific manner. He now has a new book and I can’t wait to read it. The video attached was taken in Durban South Africa and the responses by the local dog population to the animals in the African bush were a nuisance. It didn’t stop him from making his point in a very professional manner. The segment was broadcasted on African TV. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FZZxzB9-Qg
I hope you enjoy it. Dr. Ratcliffe has agreed to an interview and I have received the final responses today so without further ado, lets begin.
Kirt G: Were those dogs barking in the background or some wild African beast?
Hilton: That was a dog, but it was barking at a wild creature (vervet monkey). We had to stop and re-take several times because of wild animal sounds coming from the bush.
Kirt G: Could you tell us a little about yourself and maybe comment on your new book?
Hilton: Although I do research on the Sun, my work does not relate directly to terrestrial weather. I’m simply trying to establish a physical description of celestial phenomena and systems as far as physics can reach into space, and that’s not very far. My interest in the AGW debacle stems from a realization that it is the product of the same sociological and psychological factors as Big Bang Theory, with the caveat that AGW is easier to falsify scientifically. My hope therefore was that in helping to bring global dogma like AGW down, I would eventually, by analogy, provide some basis upon which to bring about freedom of astrophysics and astronomy from the grip of standard-model-mania.
My second book is entitled “The Static Universe - Exploding the Myth of Cosmic Expansion” and was written at the express suggestion of my patron, eminent British observational astronomer Sir Patrick Moore . The word “static” has a non-standard meaning in astrophysical usage, and refers specifically to non-expansion on the universal scale. The book is in the main a summary of observational evidence which is anomalous in terms of the expansion (LCDM) model, but includes also a chapter on the mathematical origin of the notion of systematic expansion and non-Euclidean curvature. The work assumes some familiarity with physical science and astronomy, but avoids rigorous mathematics altogether. It is available from Amazon.com
Kirt G: You mentioned in the interview that the effect of the Sun on our planet’s climate is well established. The IPCC, Al Gore and others are adamant that it can’t be the Sun simply because the solar irradiance, also known as the solar constant, does not vary more than .1% over the 11 year solar cycle. Aren’t they missing some key points regarding this solar parameter?
Hilton: They are. Solar irradiance, measured as photon flux, has indeed remained 99.9% constant since we had the technology to measure it accurately. But the flow of light between Sun and Earth is only part of the picture. There are electricity, magnetism, Solar Wind, low energy cosmic rays, and gravitation flowing variably between the two bodies (actually, between all baryonic bodies as far as I can tell). These all have an influence on ambient conditions on Earth, and also, more importantly, on how the Earth utilizes the photon flux. All of this is expressed locally at the surface of the Earth as weather, and generally, as climate.
Kirt G: There has been much discussion about magnetic intensity on the Sun, and relative to the sunspots which are normally highly magnetic. Throw in the changing polarity every solar cycle and the relationship to the Earth’s magnetic polarity and you have a fairly complex system. How do you see this as it relates to our climate?
Hilton: Yes, magnetism is a big player, but I’m not sure exactly how or how much. We have a technique (the Zeeman Effect) to measure magnetic field strength remotely, but it doesn’t really map the magnetic connection very usefully. The flipping of magnetic polarity on both Sun and Earth doesn’t appear to be very influential. Bear in mind that the Sun has several magnetic poles simultaneously, so it’s quite different in that respect from Earth. I would say that magnetism channels electricity, and we can see the effects of that. Beyond that, as far as I know, we are into conjecture.
Kirt G: The late Drs. Fairbridge and Landscheidt as well as Richard Mackey, who is a member of our “It’s the Sun” solar discussion forum, have made much of the planetary influence on the variations between solar cycles. Mackey refers to the solar orbit as epitrochoid shaped. According to one of his latest papers we are heading into a small loop, characterized by a cooling period. How do you see this as it relates to our climate?
Hilton: Thanks to Richard Mackey, I am familiar with Fairbridge’s work, and have long known about Landscheidt. As far as measurable results are concerned, the most important, strongest interaction in baryonic macro systems is gravitation. Unfortunately, classical mechanics views gravitation as a 2-body interaction, with the fuzz coming from “perturbations”. Non-trivial 3rd party influences are not properly taken into account, resulting in omissions incorrectly described as anomalies. In this respect, the formalism of General Relativity (tensors - collections of vectors with a unified output – in a scalar field) is far superior to the Newtonian system. However, GRT can get the right answer for the wrong reasons, for example the precession of Mercury’s perihelion. I mention this because finding the effect of gravitational fluctuations on any system is going to some degree depend, under current scientific constraints, upon how we actually measure gravitation. We are further confounded by the fact that epitrochoid orbits are intrinsically random. As far as climate is concerned (I use the word “climate” with reservation) we are, in my opinion, not so much influenced by gravitational wobbles as by the angle of the rotational axis, which is what gives us our seasons. The orbital path of Earth is understood to be a mean constant ellipse over geologic time. As long as the axis inclination remains fairly fixed, our “climate” (represented by smoothed global temperatures) won’t vary much as a result of relatively small gravitational wobbles. I’m just not comfortable taking a purely statistical approach to climate change, although I do believe Dr Mackey gives us a compelling and novel approach to unravelling the mechanics of the Solar System. Unfortunately, Dr Landscheidt was, despite his wonderful grasp of physics, also an astrologer, and that needs to be borne in mind when evaluating his ideas on planetary influences. Having said that, caution is needed: We would be well advised not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Like Tom Van Flandern and the “face” on Mars (about which we argued many long hours), sometimes we just need to accept that many brilliant scientists have mental glitches, and we are better advised to step back and look at the bigger picture. Dr Landscheidt’s prediction of the Landscheidt Minimum circa 2030 is given credibility by his accurate prediction of sunspot minima commencing 1990. The problem is, we don’t know what sunspots are in any detail, or their connection to energy production within the Sun. There is some evidence that sunspots are caused externally, by incoming cosmic rays falling on the Sun, much as cosmic rays appear to influence the formation of temperature and precipitation bowls on Earth.
Kirt G: One of the great debates in solar investigation is whether the Galactic Cosmic Rays or the Solar wind is having the majority of the effect on the Earth’s climate. Piers Corbyn says it is the solar wind. What do you think?
Hilton: Quite honestly, I don’t know. There are also (low energy) solar cosmic rays in the mix. A detector in the vicinity of Earth will measure all the stuff flying through it, regardless of source. We can of course deduce a lot from angle of attack but much of our classification is model-dependent. There is an overlap between the two as far as components are concerned. The Solar Wind is charged particles (electrons and protons), accelerated outwards by electro-magnetic fields in the corona. Cosmic rays are also just streams of particles, which despite the various names are mostly just protons, alpha particles, and electrons resulting from ionization. Photoionisation and spallation in interstellar space change the form and type of the particles passing through, and charged particles are accelerated to higher energies by plasma. It’s very difficult to determine what’s happening at source by examining only the destination end of a process.
Kirt G: Given the relative inactivity of the Sun in the small loops, not to mention traveling at ½ speed, of the epitrochoid orbit and the high activity in the large radius loops, some see this as evidence the Sun is not a homogeneous ball of hydrogen. Do you have a position?
Hilton: Definitely. How could it possibly be a ball of hydrogen? How would a diffuse cloud of gas, dust, and rocks settle gravitationally so that the very lightest element on the periodic table settles exclusively to form the nucleus? The planetary bodies we have examined fairly thoroughly so far give us the basis upon which to make an educated guess about how it works. A physical body that settles to hydrostatic equilibrium sorts itself by mass, with the heaviest elements tending to the centre of the sphere. The highest density is at the middle. Galaxies are a good example. If the heavy elements accumulate sufficiently, they can in some cases hold a gaseous atmosphere around their periphery, and this is obviously the case with the Sun. Although it presents as a light fluid (plasma) it is reasonable to suppose that beneath the photosphere (H + He mostly) we would find heavier elements arranged by increasingly turbid viscosity towards the centre. This idea is strongly supported by Oliver Manuel’s nuclide analysis of material found traveling around in the Solar System, which suggests that the system acts as a mass fractionator, and that in turn also gives a good explanation for the protons and electrons in the Solar Wind - they would result from the fissioning of neutrons in the fractionation process. We should not overlook the fact that in addition to anything else going on there, there is ionisation of atmospheric H and He, as well as electromagnetic plasma activity and nuclear fusion at the footpoints of coronal arches. It’s a broad mix of effects. Whatever it was that seeded the gravitational accretion of 98% of the Solar System’s mass into a single, central orb - I favour a fragment of neutron star from the progenitor supernova - it is no doubt still there, being slung around in a thick liquid by the complex m1 - m2 interactions of all the orbiting bodies. The shifting barycentre of the Sun would indeed cause the kind of behaviour we observe.
Kirt G: Another point on the epitrochoid orbit is that one small loop and one section of a large radius loop encompass approximately 60 years which many see as the period of a warming and cooling cycle on Earth. Piers Corbyn has found a cycle of the same length in the activity of the Sun “beat” against the lunar cycle as he presented at the 2009 Heartland Climate Conference. Others in our forum have also cited the 60 year period defined in this way. Paul Vaughn, commented that I should be careful in discounting the effect of the Moon on our climate. Any thoughts on which it is and the relative merits of each position? Certainly the Moon doesn’t affect the orbit of the Sun!
Hilton: As I understand gravitation, the Moon does affect the orbit of the Sun but only trivially so. The interaction between the Moon and the Earth is profound and so synergistic that I should be very surprised if it does not have a significant effect on the weather. However, I have not personally investigated either phenomenon quantitatively, so I cannot really comment on relative merits. What I can say is that these causal influences are not mutually exclusive. We have a cocktail of influences and we should not ignore any of them. Of course, there is also electricity, the Orphan Annie of celestial physics. I am a physicist with a one-plus-one-equals-two approach to physical science and try not to get too far ahead of the factual base. If I may, I’d like to recommend the book “Evolution of the Solar System” by Hannes Alfven and Gustaf Arrhenius (University Press of the Pacific, 2005).
Kirt G: I spent some time one evening talking to John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, at the first Heartland climate conference. The discussion was relative to the lorry (bus) driver in the UK who led a high court to find there were 9 errors in the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” that was being shown to English schoolchildren. If Al Gore is being “naughty” do you feel he should be prosecuted as Lord Monckton suggested in the interview with Mark Gillar recently on Global Cooling Radio?
Hilton: Without trying too hard, I found 35 fundamental “errors” in An Inconvenient Truth. The word “errors” is in quotation marks because it is inconceivable to me that these falsehoods could all have been inadvertent. Some or possibly all were put there to deceive the viewer. There appears to have been money gained by Mann, Gore and Pachauri as a consequence of this deception, so it’s fraud. If proven in a court of law, they should be heavily punished and their ill-gotten assets confiscated and put to the benefit of mankind. (One should not exclude Strong and Hansen on this. Hansen was the technical guy on AIT - KCG)
I would like to thank Dr. Ratcliffe for taking the time to answer my questions. I really hope that these explanations can convince some out there who have been taken in by all the hype that there are reasoned people out there with the knowledge to know the truth and are not intimidated. It has been through my associations with people like Hilton Ratcliffe that I have been able to learn about the Sun, how it works and its effect on our climate. I am sure that Hilton would be willing to answer reasonable questions posted in the comments section. I haven’t cleared that with him, but I suspect he won’t mind.
Response to Malcolm Keeping’s letter in Ndaba, February 2010.
Dear Malcolm,
Thank you most sincerely for your response last month to my April 2009 Breaking News column in Ndaba. I wish more of our readers would express their views and exchange ideas. I fear though that objectivity may be on thin ice here (pun unintended) because we both, by our own admission, engage for ethical reasons in what is clearly an emotionally-charged conflict of ideals. We clearly have some common purpose at the outset: We are both greatly concerned about progressive harm to ecology and species; and we agree that global warming and dynamic climate change are real. Let’s take it from there. What I say is that there is nothing historically unusual about current global temperatures. Global warming and global cooling are periodic. They are perfectly natural peaks and valleys in cycles driven primarily by the Sun. There are no data to support the hypothesis that greenhouse gases, whether human-related or not, drive climate fluctuations. This is a story of how an unsubstantiated theory of climate, a model, became political ideology.
To clarify, AGW stands for Anthropogenic Global Warming (meaning, increase in the mean temperature of Earth as a result primarily of human activities), CO2 is carbon dioxide, and IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In view of the constraints of this forum, my initial response won’t attempt to address in detail the main points in your letter, although I must admit to being completely baffled by your statement that my argument “fails totally on one salient point: only a tiny minority – 1 in 1000 – of scientific publications on global warming dispute the influence of human activities in affecting climate change.” Even if Dr Schultze’s figures were correct, and notwithstanding that I dispute them, how would that invalidate my general argument? Science is not about consensus, and I mentioned the fact that those against the motion appeared for once to be in the majority only as a sociological curiosity. Certainly, history shows that opposition to ruling paradigms consists invariably of extremely small minorities with limited chance for expression, and the reasons for this I should think are fairly obvious. That we in this case find numerically more substantial opposition than previously is borne out by even the most cursory scan of the broader literature (journals are notoriously standard-model-biased). In my view, the best single reference on the quality of opposition to AGW is The Deniers—the world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud by Lawrence Solomon (2008).
Be that as it may, global temperature patterns; the demise of polar bears; the effect of greenhouse gases; the proportion of publications expressing doubt about carbon-driven AGW; that “the end justifies the means”; and the personal culpability of Al Gore in misleading the public and governments, could all be exhaustively debated with copious references to the literature on both sides. We simply don’t have the space to do that here. In your letter you invoke the authority of respected scientists, so I prefer in my response to let other prominent role-players in the AGW saga express it in their own words. What I suggest is that we let the facts fall where they will, irrespective of any model or ideology. That way we can avoid a preconceived outcome.
In my view, before we even start to make predictions for the planet, we need good data to base them on. A crucial misrepresentation on plots of climate data is the selective positioning of the trend line and base line for plots (your illustration falls into this trap). If the curve commences from the previous low point for temperature (the Little Ice Age), for example, then the trend is obviously upwards. If, by comparison, the plot commences from say the peak of the Medieval Warm Period, when temperatures were considerably warmer than they are now, then the trend is equally obviously downwards. A recent paper by two eminent climatologists details the inaccuracies and massaging of IPCC’s global temperature measurements, like those supporting the graph in your letter and conclusions drawn from it. I urge you to look at it:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/surface_temp.pdf
There are many complex issues that might sidetrack us, so let’s tackle the fundamental principle of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) movement first. The rest can follow in due time. The question I seek to answer here is “What do these particular experts in the field of climatology feel about the hypothesis that human production of atmospheric carbon or greenhouse gases in general measurably leads to increases in global temperatures and influences weather patterns to the extent that we are experiencing or are about to experience catastrophic overheating?”I believe this question correctly addresses the philosophy behind the IPCC-driven mission, and the essence of the Kyoto protocol and Copenhagen road map.
Arno Arrak, author of the book What Warming? Satellite view of global climate change; he was a nuclear chemist on NASA’s Apollo programme: “In 2007 we got some serious cooling while climate models using carbon dioxide theory insisted on relentless warming at the same time. If a theory predicts warming and we get cooling that theory as a scientific theory has failed and must be abandoned.”
Professor John Christy, lead author, IPCC; awarded NASA’s medal for exceptional scientific achievement in 1991; received a special award from the American Meteorological Society for fundamentally advancing our ability to measure climate: “I’ve often heard it said that there is consensus of thousands of scientists on the global warming issue, and that humans are causing a catastrophic change to the climate system. Well, I am one scientist—and there are many—who thinks that this is simply not true.”
Lord Lawson of Blaby, former British Chancellor of the Exchequer and Secretary for Energy: “We had a very thorough enquiry and took evidence from a whole lot of people expert in this area. What surprised me was how weak and uncertain the science was. In fact there are more and more thoughtful people…some of them openly saying, ‘hang on, wait a minute, this simply doesn’t add up.’”
Canadian environmentalist Patrick Moore , co-founder of Greenpeace: “I don’t even like to call it the environmental movement any more because it really is a political activist movement, and they have become hugely influential at a global level… These days if you are sceptical of the litany around climate change, you’re suddenly as if you’re like a holocaust denier.”
Nigel Calder, author and former editor of New Scientist: “They (the IPCC) came out with the first big report which predicted climatic disaster as a result of global warming. I remember…the total disregard of all climate science up till that time, including, incidentally, the role of the Sun, which had been discussed at a conference of the Royal Society just a few months previously.”
Professor Patrick Michaels, Department of Environmental Science, University of Virginia: “Anyone who says that CO2 is responsible for most of the warming of the 20th century hasn’t looked at the basic numbers.”
Dr Tim Ball, professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg: “The analogy I use is that my car is not running very well, so I ignore the engine, which is the Sun, and I’m going to ignore the transmission, which is water vapour, and I’m going to be looking at one nut on the right rear wheel, which is the human-produced CO2. The science is that bad. When people say you don’t believe in global warming, I say no, I believe in global warming, but I don’t believe that human CO2 is causing that warming. In the post-war years, when industry and the economies of the world really got going and human production of CO2 just soared, the global temperature was going down. In other words, the facts don’t fit the theory.”
Professor Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Director, International Arctic Research Centre, Alaska: “CO2 began to rise exponentially in about 1940, but temperature began to decrease (in) 1940 and continued to about 1975. So this is the opposite relation, when CO2 is increasing rapidly, but yet temperature is decreasing— then we cannot say the CO2 and the temperature go together.”
Professor Tim Ball, University of Winnipeg: “If you take CO2 as a percentage of all the gases in the atmosphere…it’s about 0.054%. It’s an incredibly small portion. And then you take the percentage that humans are supposedly adding, which is the focus of all the concern, and it gets even smaller. The atmosphere is made up of a multitude of gases, a small percentage of them we call greenhouse gases, and of that very small percentage, 95% is water vapour, the most important greenhouse gas.”
Professor Richard Lindzen, M.I.T.: “Every textbook on meteorology is telling you the main source of weather disturbances is the temperature differences between tropics and the poles. And we’re told, in a warmer world, this difference gets less. Now that would tell you, you will have less storminess, less variability…”
Professor Frederick Singer, First Director, US National Weather Satellite Service. “All the models, every one of them, calculate that the warming should be faster as you go up from the surface into the atmosphere. In fact, the maximum warming over the equator should take place at an altitude of about 10km.”
Professor John Christy, lead author, IPCC: “What we found consistently was that in a great part of the planet, the bulk of the atmosphere was not warming as much as the surface…that’s a real head-scratcher for us…the theory says that if the surface warms, the upper atmosphere should warm rapidly. The rise in temperature of that part of the atmosphere is really not very dramatic and really does not match the theory that climate models are expressing.”
Professor Richard Lindzen, IPCC; Massachusetts Institute of Technology: “If it’s greenhouse warming, you get more warming in the middle of the troposphere, the first 10 to 12 km of the Earth’s atmosphere, than you do at the surface…having to do with how the greenhouse works. That data gives you a handle on the fact that what we’re seeing is warming that is probably not due to greenhouse gases.”
Professor Frederick Singer: “The observations do not show an increase with altitude. So in a sense you can say the hypothesis of man-made global warming is falsified by the evidence.”
Dr Ian Clark, Arctic paleoclimatologist, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa: “If we look at climate in the geological timeframe, we would never suspect CO2 as a major climate driver. We can’t say CO2 will drive climate. It never did in the past. When we look at climate on long scales, we’re looking for geological material that actually records climate. If we take an ice sample for example, we use isotopes to reconstruct temperature, but the atmosphere that’s imprisoned in the ice we liberate and then we look at the CO2 content. … So, here we are looking at the ice core record from Vostok … we see temperature going up from early time to later time at a very key interval when we came out of a-glaciation … and then we see CO2 coming up. CO2 lags behind that increase, it’s got about an 800 year lag, so temperature is leading CO2 by about 800 years. CO2 cannot be causing temperature changes. It’s a product of temperature, it is following temperature changes.”
Professor Frederick Singer: “So obviously CO2 is not the cause of that warming, in fact we can say that the warming produced the CO2.”
Professor Tim Ball: “The ice core record goes to the very heart of the problem we have here. They said that if CO2 increases in the atmosphere…then the temperature will go up. But the ice core record shows exactly the opposite. So the fundamental assumption of the whole theory of climate change due to humans is shown to be wrong.”
Dr Ian Clark, University of Ottawa: “Solar activity over the last … several hundred years correlates very nicely on a decadal basis with sea ice and arctic temperatures.”
Professor Phillip Stott, University of London: “As every school child knows from their geography textbooks, the oceans and the atmosphere exchange carbon dioxide. When the oceans warm up, they release CO2 into the atmosphere, and when they cool down again, they take in the CO2 and they store it.”
Professor Nir Shaviv, Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem: “A few years ago, if you would ask me, I would tell you it’s CO2. Why? Because like everyone else in the public, I listened to what the media had to say. There were periods in the Earth’s history when we had … ten times as much CO2 as we have today, and if CO2 has an effect on climate, then you should see it in the temperature reconstruction. There’s no direct evidence that links 20th century global warming to anthropogenic greenhouse gases.”
To conclude this first exchange of thoughts, I emphasise that the ice core records show that temperature leads CO2, effectively ruling out anthropogenic carbon emissions as a driver of global temperature. In addition, measurements of temperatures in the troposphere by both satellite and weather balloon contradict the notion of a runaway greenhouse effect. Despite the elegance of the climate models, they are rendered useless by cumulative and ongoing measurements of actual conditions in the terrestrial environment, and by the exposing of unethical manipulation of those data to contrive a fit. At the very least, the claim by Gore and others that “the science is settled” is blatantly misleading and totally unsubstantiated by the facts. Does the end justify the means? I hope this dialogue survives to provide an answer.
Sincerely,
Hilton
Email: hilton@hiltonratcliffe.com
The quotes in this letter were taken from the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, produced by Martin Durkin (2008), and the books What Warming? Satellite view of global climate change by Arno Arrak (2009); A primer on CO2 and Climate by Howard Hayden (2008); Global Warming False Alarm by Ralph Alexander (2009); The Deniers—the world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud by Lawrence Solomon (2008); Red Hot Lies by Christopher Horner; Climate Confusion by Roy Spencer (2008), and Air Con by Ian Wishart (2009).
A Review of “The Age of Stupid”
Well, I have after trial and tribulation managed to watch all of “The Age of Stupid”. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a free download site that offered the entire movie in one chunk, so ultimately I resorted to YouTube and watched it in 9 episodes. Given the emotional style of the production, which requires uninterrupted flow to carry the feelings in the intended way, this was not ideal, but perhaps, in a way, it gives me an objective advantage - the fragmentation breaks the subjective grip, and lets one more freely examine the facts without syrupy emotional overhead. The Great Global Warming Swindle is by contrast produced entirely differently, and is much more satisfying to the objective investigator, regardless of ideological persuasion. Of course, both movies strongly express a particular point of view, that’s given, but by and large, one of them relies on tears and the other on data.
Honestly, I had mixed feelings about this production. There is no question that it is technically excellent as a movie, and makes its point with both vigour and subtlety, but as a scientist seeking the truth, I don’t like the style of presentation at all - “Methinks they protesteth too much!” It definitely doesn’t let the facts stand in the way of a good cry.
Right at the beginning, we meet the alpine climber who, in his 80s, laments global warming. Pretty soon his eyes glisten with tears, and the scene of barren rock where the Chamonix ski slope should have been is overlaid with “Here at Chamonix, it’s December and there’s no snow at all. It’s a glimpse into the future.” I don’t know when that scene was shot, but in 2008 and 2009 there was record snowfall at Chamonix, so heavy in fact that for most of December both years skiing was considered dangerous. The bias is painful.
Then we have the chap who was overwhelmed by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. He too had tears in his eyes as he told of rescuing a baby from the rising waters. Then we have a TV presenter laying the blame: “Intensity of hurricanes is related to surface sea temperatures. So increased intensity of hurricanes is associated with global warming.” What utter nonsense! There is no connection whatsoever. Hurricane intensity as far as we know is most likely related to polarity, both of the electromagnetic sheath vortex, and of the differential in temperature between the basin beneath the axis of spin (warm) and surrounding water (cold). Another factor is wind shear above warm spots, which actually weakens hurricanes. It has nothing to do with global warming. Also, the catastrophe in New Orleans was not the result of an abnormally fierce hurricane, but because of that city’s below-sea-level vulnerability and dependence on poorly constructed and maintained levees. The incidence and strength of hurricanes in 2006, as well as their landfall percentage, were well below average. The figures are freely available. Was that caused by global warming?
So I didn’t get off to a good start with this movie, but heck, I stuck it out. Well, it didn’t get better. The images of poverty and disease, corruption and barbarism, of millions struggling for food are emotionally deeply compelling. It certainly makes me sad to see evidence of the human and environmental conditions that result from the greed and megalomania of individuals who exert physical dominance over their tribes. But how on Earth is human nature a consequence of man-made climate change? Where does global warming fit in? And how will carbon caps alleviate mass hunger and endemic disease; how could massive industrial rollbacks possibly increase production so the hungry can eat? The Niger Delta scenes are such a mixed message. Corrupt, power-mad people will opportunistically use whatever currency is to hand—witness Gore’s use of AGW—whether it is opium poppies in Afghanistan or oil in Nigeria, it’s just what the Earth offers up in a particular region. We have to deal with human population pressure. We can’t just say “It’s their fault for having children so let them suffer.” It’s energy consumption versus output productivity. The granaries of the world use more energy and produce more food. It seems to me the Age of Stupid belongs to a school of thought and an ideology that is really just anti-capitalist when you boil it down, and we’ve seen how well those schemes have worked in the past. What we really need to do is let pragmatism rein in this rampant idealism. We have a job to do.
The aim of this movie as I understand it, its central message, is that we are corrupting the environment by our misuse of resources. I am wholeheartedly in support of that ethic. What I cannot tolerate is that blatantly false evidence is raised to create the popular impression that human activities control global temperatures, and that all environmental (and even many sociological) evils stem from this. The entire moral effort of a generation has been cunningly steered in a particular direction, and it has been infused with a self-satisfying moralistic anger that defies logic. While this is going on, Gore, Pachauri, and their henchmen are pocketing personal profits amounting to many millions of dollars. Our environmental conscience has been hijacked by greed of another persuasion, but greed it certainly is. This has been achieved by superbly crafted propaganda, and The Age of Stupid is perhaps the best of the lot.
By the time I reached the credits at the end of The Age of Stupid, I was as despondent as I would imagine most people are who are exposed to this sort of message. In my case though, I was most saddened by the power and effect of carefully constructed propaganda in determining, or at least reinforcing what people want to believe. It has nothing to do with the data or the measurements. An Inconvenient Truth presents 35 main scientific arguments to support Anthropogenic Global Warming. Guess how many were falsified by comparison with the measurements? 35! But pathetically few people who carry Gore’s banner ever bother to check his facts, and indeed, when faced with them, simply write them off as “denialism”. If we create a human desert in years to come—and we might—it will be because we put all our ecological effort into uselessly fighting carbon when all the while the real environmental issues, the ones that can really make a difference, are ignored. With our conscience appeased, we will go to sleep thinking we have done the right thing, and we may never wake up.
So I guess we are both depressed by what is going on. I just don’t see the moral justification in lying about it. I look forward to hearing your reaction to The Great Global Warming Swindle. I have the DVD if you’d like to organise a viewing.
Best wishes
Hilton
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