Around the world, controversy over climate change continues to grow. Contrary to what the politicians tell us, there is no consensus of scientific thought on whether there is a man-made component to global warming. The science is certainly not settled.

As alarmists continue to push government policies to restrict energy use and the burning of fossil fuels in order to prevent “catastrophic” warming, the world continues to cool. That is leading to increasing suspicion that the call to sacrifice living standards in order to “save the planet” is just political spin designed to persuade the public to accept green taxes and regulations.

Ego Boost

David Evans, Ph.D. understands the controversy over global warming better than most. As a scientist working for the Australian Greenhouse Office, he developed the carbon accounting model that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol.

“When I started that job in 1999, the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good,” Evans wrote in an article on the New Zealand Center for Political Research Web site. “The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly?

“Soon government and the scientific community were working together, and lots of science research jobs were created,” Evans wrote. “We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful. It was great. We were working to save the planet!”

Evans continued, “But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon plays only a minor role and is not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’”

Suppressed Truths

Because there has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming, Evans notes, most people are not aware of some of the most basic accepted facts.

• The greenhouse signature—which would prove the greenhouse effect—is missing.
• There is no evidence that carbon emissions cause significant global warming.
• Satellite data show the warming trend ended in 2001 and the world is now cooling.
• Ice core data show global temperatures rise around 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

No Evidence for Warming

There is now greater urgency to get answers, Evans explained in his article. “Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming. Don’t you think some evidence is required before wrecking the economy? Someone simply has to demand to see evidence. You will find that there is none.”

The complete absence of evidence that man is causing global warming was one of the key messages presented in the British documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, broadcast in New Zealand in June. The documentary argues the theory that man-made greenhouse gases are causing global warming is a scam.

Following its screening in the United Kingdom in 2007, more than 260 complaints against it were lodged with the British Office of Communications, known as Ofcom.

This July, Ofcom released its long-awaited ruling, which included finding the program did “not materially mislead viewers so as to cause harm or offence” by arguing man-made global warming is the biggest scam of modern times.

By contrast, the British High Court ruled Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, contained 11 serious inaccuracies that must be pointed out to children if the film is to be shown in schools.

Change in Public’s Mood

With growing numbers of people now questioning the basis of the man-made global warming theory, there is increasing speculation that the defeat of the British Labor Party in the local body elections, and more recently in the by-election for the party’s former safe seat of Glasgow East, indicates a change in the mood of the British public against the government’s climate change agenda.

A recent survey suggests more than 70 percent of British voters are no longer willing to pay higher taxes to fund climate change initiatives, with two-thirds of those surveyed believing the green agenda has been exploited in order to increase taxes.

Grave Political Implications

In his article “A Green Miscalculation,” published in the Financial Post, the editor of the international science policy network CCNet, Benny Peiser, states, “For many years, Labor has chanted the green mantra that in order to prevent disastrous climate change caused by excessive energy consumption, Britons must make personal sacrifices in their lifestyle and behavior. No other government in the world has employed the specter of climate catastrophe as forcefully as Britain; no other administration has saddled taxpayers with a heavier burden of green taxation.”

This is not only scientifically ignorant, it’s a political mistake, Peiser noted. “Labor’s fundamental miscalculation has been to bank on the strength of the environmental movement and climate change anxiety in an attempt to ‘modernize’ its agenda. Labor’s climate policy, however, is now backfiring, turning into one of its biggest political liabilities,” he wrote.

With the 2008 general election fast approaching in both New Zealand and the United States, our politicians might like to learn from the U.K. experience. That experience suggests politicians who ignore public sentiment on the climate change issue might just feel voter backlash at the polls.

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