Climate showdown looms
2010-03-04 07:54
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Cape Town - As climate sceptics question global warming because of errors in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, a UCT climate scientist has insisted on the validity of global warming.
"That report is 3 000 pages long in dense text with small font and I'm surprised there weren't more errors," Professor Bruce Hewitson told News24.
"The point is that these things are trivial and don't undermine the message of climate change," he added.
In response to the arguments of those who dispute global warming, Hewitson said that climate is complex and, while the established scientific community doesn't know everything about climate, they are "90%" sure.
Climate sceptics have particularly attacked the IPCC after the admission by Professor Phil Jones of the panel that he lacked organisational skills; that his record keeping is "not as good as it should be".
Hype
Jones has been thrust into the centre of the debate, dubbed "Climategate" as he refused Freedom of Information requests for the raw data used to produce the famous hockey stick graph that depicts global warming.
He has also recanted his position that the earth has been warming
consistently, saying that there has been "no statistically significant
warming" since 1995.
There has been hype in the media as a result of the revelations and climate sceptics have accused the established community of defrauding the public with regard to climate change.
Hewitson dismissed the hype around climate change.
"I'm a very pedantic person and hype by its nature means that something has been overblown. I do think there has been too little balanced communication of climate change, and too much inflammatory rhetoric," he said.
"The point is that people don't like uncomfortable messages and all these arguments against climate change are naïve and display a lack of understanding of how the climate works."
He added that scientist were modifying the system to better understand climate change, but argued that it was happening "whether we like it or not".
"Climate change is not democratic. Somebody who lives in Cape Town will experience a hotter average summer - we think by about 2°C by 2050. So what we think is hot today will become normal," he said.
Tenacious voices
Even though climate activists say the earth has only warming about 0.8°C since the 19th century, Hewitson said this wasn't as benign as it seemed.
"You must imagine a boiling kettle: There's lots of energy and things become more vigorous in that environment. In fact, the increased snow in the US is consistent with more variability." said Hewitson.
But there are tenacious voices that oppose climate change
In 2007, 100 scientists, including William JR Alexander from SA, signed an open letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, in which they argued that climate change was a man-made phenomenon and that carbon dioxide is a "non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis".
"My problem is water resources and I have a professional duty to look at the scare stories," Alexander, Professor Emeritus of the University of Pretoria told News24.
"I've been searching backward and forward and I have not found anything," he added.
Alexander said that the IPCC had suppressed data that showed their position of global warming was not unique in the 20th century.
Warmer
"They (IPCC) found that temperature from the past - in the middle ages - was warmer than today. They were farming in Greenland - and then they did a stupid thing: They cooked the books, chopping off the warming data.
"In fact (Professor Phil) Jones and co refused to supply the raw data because they knew they had cooked it," he added.
Alexander said that the errors the IPCC has admitted to were worrying because it gave the appearance of deliberate manipulation of data.
"They said the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, but the paper, written by a Russian scientist actually said 2350. They just transposed the numbers to make it fit with their scare mongering.
"I've been saying for a long time: 'Guys I can't find the consequences that you're predicting because it's not there,'" said Alexander.