In July of 2009 the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EOEEA), in keeping with the 2008 Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) directives, released a document in pursuit of establishing statewide greenhouse gas emissions limits. From the outset, this EOEEA document makes clear the reasons why GWSA was passed into law. The primary reason is fear of the consequences of “…human-created emissions of greenhouse gases…” These fears, as revealed by a December 2010 EOEEA document, were generated from the 2007 IPCC report concerning global climate change.
In addition to it being the fount from which the GWSA sprung, the EOEEA cites the IPCC report in an attempt to convince itself, and others, that its actions and mandate are necessary because the science, and scientists, of global warming/climate change are settled. On the first page of its 2010 document the EOEEA states: “The international consensus on climate released in 2007…found that the ‘warming of the climate system is unequivocal’…there is scientific consensus that the changes are largely due to the combustion of fossil fuels and other human activities…”
Unfortunately for the EOEEA and the IPCC this statement is proven false by the fact that since at least 2008, a number of scientists have gone on record disagreeing with man-made global warming/climate change. In addition, a number of reputable news sources have reported on errors of fact and methodology in the IPCC report. Lastly, the EOEEA’s own figures and methodology calls into question the validity of its actions and mandate. Each of these points will be reported on in their own separate articles, the latter two to be published at a later date.
Beginning with the issue of scientific consensus, in November of 2008 the CATO Institute sponsored a petition signed by over one hundred scientists who believe that “…the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated.”
Furthermore, Dr. Heinz Lycklama (PhD Nuclear Physics) has been posting on-line reports since 2009 on the subject of global warming/climate change. In his most recent report, among the various conclusions made he finds “there is no scientific consensus on the cause(s) of GW, the views of dissenting climate scientists have not been adequately considered in the UN IPCC reports, and the assumption of GW due to human activity has much lower correlation with average temperature data than the assumption of GW due to natural causes.”
A 2003 article in the journal, Nature, provides one more example. Authors DeConto and Pollard, through their work on climate modeling, provide a possible link between plummeting atmospheric CO2 levels and rapid Antarctic ice-sheet build-up 34 million years ago! Obviously, human combustion of fossil fuels was nonexistent 34 million years ago. Instead, climate change came about because of a cataclysmic, natural occurrence.
These examples, and many others not listed here, should cause one to pause before attributing any possible climate change to human activity. What’s more, state government should certainly not embark on a massive environmental and economic overhaul that is based on a poorly supported ideology with little scientific consensus.
The next article in this series will explore reputable news source reporting concerning errors contained within the 2007 IPCC report, the driving force behind the passage of the Massachusetts GWSA.
