methane and ozone, or even solar energy are still not really understood, and therefore the
predictions that we make using them cannot always be relied on.
Dr James Hansen, in 19BH, was predicting that the likely effects of global warming would be a
raising of the world temperature which would have disastrous consequences for mankind: “a
strong cause arid effect relationship between the current climate and human alteration of the
atmosphere”. He has now gone on record as stating that using artificial models of climate as a
way of predicting change is all but impossible. In fact, he now believes that, rather than getting
hotter, our planet is getting greener as a result of the carbon dioxide increase, with the
prospect of increasing vegetation in areas which in recent history have been frozen wastelands.
D.
In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that as our computer-based weather models have
become more sophisticated, the predicted rises In temperature have been cut back. In addition,
if we look at the much-reported rise in global temperature over the last century, a close analysis
reveals that the lion’s share of that increase, almost three quarters in total, occurred before man
began to “poison” his world with industrial processes and the accompanying greenhouse gas
emissions in the second half of the twentieth century.
E.
So should we pay any attention to those stories that scream out at us from billboards and
television news headlines, claiming that man, with his inexhaustible dependence on oil-based
machinery and ever more sophisticated forms of transport is creating a nightmare level of
greenhouse gas emissions, poisoning his environment and ripping open the ozone layer?
Doubters point to scientific evidence, which can prove that, of all the greenhouse gases, only
two per cent come from man-made sources, the rest resulting from natural emissions. Who,
then, to believe: the environmentalist exhorting us to leave the car at home, to buy re-usable
products packaged in recycled paper and to plant trees in our back yard? Or the sceptics,
including, of course, a lot of big businesses who have most to lose, when they tell us that we
are making a mountain out of a molehill? And my own opinion? The jury’s still out as for as I am
concerned!
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