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Dear Sir,
Lovelock says,
"Compared with the imaginary dangers of nuclear power, the threat from the
intensifying greenhouse effect seems all too real. I wholly support the Green
wish to see all energy eventually come from renewable
sources but I do not think that we have the time to wait until this
happens."
He's right about the virtues of nuclear energy, but a bit hysterical about
greenhouse gases, which he obviously knows little about, in common of course
with most of the public. I don't know which threat he's referring to, but if
it's the supposed global warming effect, then there is good news. It's trivial,
and the contribution of greenhouse gases to the effect appears, so far, to be
nil. The 20th Century's global warming took place prior to 1950, and
the greenhouse gases came afterward. If anything, it appears that the greenhouse
effect is stabilising the earth's temperature, not raising it.
I give you one excerpt from a recent talk by Professor Michaels: "All
scientists know that the greenhouse-only models have produced way too much
warming to date in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. The one that
supports the Rio climate treaty more than any of the others, the Princeton
model, has a warming of 2.5 degrees, poleward of 60 degrees latitude, between
1950 and now. The net warming observed between 60 degrees north and the pole is
zero in the last 45 years. There isn't any. It looks like this model makes the
same error." The whole paper is at http://www.gcrio.org/USGCRP/sustain/michaels.html
Sincerely yours,
Jan Narveson (Professor) Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo;
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3G1
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