Some really curious things have been happening recently on the climate change front.
By and large, a strange silence has descended. Perhaps its just that the media is fed up with it.
But that belies what is actually taking place. The first thing is that carbon dioxide levels are continuing to rise. Far from wringing your hands with worry, however, note the next thing global temperatures are not going the same way.
Between 1995 and last year carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rose 10%, but global temperatures not at all. It is now abundantly plain that there has been no global warming that is statistically different from zero for nearly two decades.
This new data drives a huge hole in the conventional wisdom that rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide is the cause of a global warming crisis. I hope those jokers over at the Treasury, always seeking every opportunity to raise new forms of tax to feed that insatiable monster called the state, take note of this. The facts now imperil their faulty reasoning that a carbon tax is essential to help safeguard the planet.
We do not need nor should we be obliged to suffer a quite useless carbon tax, as useless as that toll on plastic bags from which the initial money disappeared, never to be explained and the surcharge on new motor vehicles according to their power output. These amount to blatant trickery.
In fact, such global warming as took place since the 1970s can be laid at the feet of chlorofluorocarbons and not carbon dioxide. Thats the research evidence derived by the University of Waterloo and published on May 30 in the International Journal of Modern Physics.
It was chlorofluorocarbons that caused the hole in the ozone layer and in-depth statistical analysis shows that chlorofluorocarbons are the guilty party in driving global climate change, not carbon dioxide.
Conventional thinking, driven by greenie activists and bent scientists, is that global temperatures will rise as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases. But since 2002 global temperatures have actually declined and cooling is set to continue for the next 50-70 years as chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere decline and the hole in the ozone layer closes.
While all this is going on and the Arctic sea ice shrinks, the Antarctic sea ice is growing consistently, now larger than ever before recorded.
The Antarctic sea ice has been expanding ever since satellites began measuring it 33 years ago. The difference in behaviour of the two is explained by their contrasting geographies, with the Arctic a sea surrounded by land mass while the Antarctic is a continent encircled by open seas.
Meanwhile, Forbes magazine reports that global warming alarmists have been caught doctoring claims that there is a 97% consensus among scientists agreeing that global warming is caused by humans. Journalists discovered that papers by vigorous sceptics were being deliberately misinterpreted. There is no end to the manipulations by those determined that their invalid views shall prevail.
Also of consuming interest is that this superfluity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is resulting in a greening of arid areas. Between 1982 and 2010 leaf cover on plants rose 11% in arid areas in the US, the Australian outback and some parts of Africa and the Middle East.
The carbon dioxide fertilisation effect is encouraging trees to invade grasslands, and it is thought trees are likely to benefit more than grasses from this increase. Whether thats good will provide academics with something else to rush off to get grant money for research.
The sum total of the most recent scientific deliberations is fairly simple. We have all been brainwashed by alarmist greenies who castigate everyone who doesnt share their beliefs and categorise those among us who have been sceptical from the beginning as being flat-earthers and denialists.
That science is demonstrating the reverse underlines the poverty of attempts by our Treasury to impose a carbon tax. If it persists with this, business has to organise a vigorous campaign to stop it.