Save The Lemmings Campaign – How To Talk To A Kyoto Supporter…If You Must

Back in January, I wrote this blog but since then I have renamed the title and fixed the links that were broken. I am reprinting it below in light of the tip that Minister Ambrose will be releasing the Tory Green Plan II this October. (hopefully on a frigid day for effect)

Save The Lemmings Campaign – How To Wake Up Blind Followers Of Kyoto

All the major parties except the Tories agree Kyoto is the way to go. Global warming and all that. In an effort to help save some of these lemmings who are jumping off the Kyoto cliff, I am putting together a multipart blog article outlining why the Tories are right and the lemmings are wrong.

In this part, we will address the environmental myths about Kyoto.

Below are the myths, as listed by Envirotruth.org. In an effort to save space, I just link to the myth for most of these, but highlight a quote or some major points I think are quite worth the read.

Myth 1: Humanity is the Primary Cause of Global Climate Change

Dr. Tim Patterson, professor of earth sciences at Ottawa’s Carleton University, says this is very unlikely. The geologic record reveals that the only constant about climate is change. Long before our species inhabited the Earth, there were far more extreme changes in climate than what we see now. In the past million years, the Earth has been subjected to at least 33 ice ages and interglacial warm periods where temperatures soared far above that ever recorded in humanity’s short history. Patterson and others show that, even in the past thousand years, there were periods much warmer and colder than today.

Myth 1a: Computer Models Show Catastrophic Warming in the Future

Myth 1b: The Consensus of World Scientists, as Revealed by the UN’s IPCC, Agree – Humanity is Causing Significant Climate Change

Myth 1c: Climate Change is Occurring at an Unprecedented Rate

Myth 2: Recent Global Temperature Rise Has Been Dramatic

Myth 3: The Buildup of Human Induced Greenhouse Gases, and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in Particular, Will Cause a Catastrophic Planetary Warming This one is important and points out that 97% of green house gases are, in fact, simply water vapour. Aren’t you glad that we only have control over less than 3% of green house gases?

Myth 4: If the Earth Warms, It Will Be Disastrous for the Environment and Human Society

Myth 5: Extreme Weather Events are Expected to be More Common if the World Warms. This Has Already Started – Drought, Floods, Forest Fires, etc. are on the Rise as a Result of Our Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Myth 6: Sea-level is rising quickly and it will get worse if the polar ice caps melt due to global warming. Coastal settlements and low-lying islands will be submerged – This one is a critical read. Since most lemmings just spew out quotes without looking at the science, you can sound highly intelligent by quoting some of this material.

According to Dr. Fred Singer, [omitted his long list of credentials] ongoing sea level rise is due to the slow melting of Antarctic ice sheets that have been gradually disappearing for about 18,000 years, the date of the last glacial maximum. As far as we can tell from geological data, only temperature variations on a millennial time scale can affect this rate. Climate fluctuations lasting decades or even centuries are too short to affect this rate of melting appreciably. Our best estimate is that these ice sheets will continue to melt for another 5,000 to 7,000 years until they disappear. So unless another ice age commences in the meantime, sea level is bound to keep on rising and there is probably nothing that humans can do about this.

It is also important to understand that, just as the melting of ice cubes in a glass of water does not cause the glass to overflow, the melting of polar sea ice will not result in ocean level changes. Only if massive quantities of inland Antarctic and Greenland glaciers melted would sea levels raise enough to submerge coastal settlements. Dr. Patterson and University of Hawaii Professor of Earth Science Dr. Charles Fletcher maintain that this did not happen 5,500 years ago, when the Earth was three degrees warmer. They also explain that sea level was only two meters higher 120,000 years ago, when temperatures were almost six degrees warmer than now.

Ordinarily, small island-nations like the Maldives and Barbados are not threatened by such a rise. This is because these countries are built entirely on coral and coral fragments. This coral is continually, and quickly, growing upward and, unless something very bad happens to the natural environment in a region, no sea level rise is fast enough to get ahead of coral growth. The Maldivian reefs have been coping with increasing sea level for the past few thousand years and were even able to keep up when the ocean was rising ten times faster than it is now, 10,000 years ago.

Myth 7: Humanity is Causing Earth’s Polar Regions to Warm Quickly Resulting in Unusual Rates of Ice Melting – Something to think about.

It is also important to remember that a thousand years ago conditions were so warm that the Vikings were sailing in Arctic waters that are now permanent pack ice.[…]

The mammoth west Antarctic ice sheet, which contains enough water to lift the world’s sea levels by about 6 metres, isn’t melting. Instead, its thickening and Antarctica is getting cooler. A new study by researchers from the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California at Santa Cruz, published in the respected journal Science, found that the ice sheets of Antarctica are expanding by some 26.8 billion tons of ice a year.

Myth 8: Kyoto will save thousands of lives by cutting air pollution – This one is critical to note.

Many people support the Kyoto Accord because they believe it is a clean air treaty that will reduce pollution. It is not. Kyoto is a treaty designed to reduce human production of so-called ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG), the recent increase of which has been associated with unnatural global warming by some scientists. Greenhouse gases include water vapor (99% of all the GHG in the atmosphere), methane, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, ozone, chlorofluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons. Only about 2% of all GHG are produced by human activity; the rest is produced by nature.

Myth 9: Solar and wind power can soon be significant contributors to the base load energy needs of Canada – This one really woke me up. Ever since I saw the Frontiers of Construction episode on a windfarm built on a shoal 7 miles off the coast of Denmark, I have been a strong proponent of wind power. This mythbuster made me realize that wind and solar will never be able to provide all the power we need and, at most, only be a small supplement to other sources such as hydroelectric and/or nuclear.