Questions for global warming 'believers'....

Tom Harris and Ian Clark (both from Ottawa) ask some questions of 'believers'....

1.) What is your climate science-related background?

Most of those grabbing the spotlight have little or no post-secondary training in science or technology, let alone climate change. What do climate campaigners like Leonardo DiCaprio, Ted Turner and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., know about climate science? Once merely the rallying cry of environmentalist extremists, calls to "save the planet from climate catastrophe" has become de rigueur for celebrities, media commentators and Fortune 500 CEOs seeking to enhance their green credentials. That few of them have even the slightest idea what they are talking about doesn't make any difference. As Canadian Professors Chris Essex and Ross McKitrick explained in their award-winning book, Taken by Storm, "the stage is populated by many people whose desire to save the world is deemed an acceptable, even preferable, substitute for technical understanding."

2.) How do you know the "vast majority of scientists" agree with your viewpoint?

Despite the confident proclamations of Al Gore, the only place that a climate change science consensus exists is in what Essex and McKitrick call "official science." the collective voice of governments and so-called "science authorities." But this is not real science. Among qualified researchers, there is a debate raging about the causes of the past century's modest warming. Ignoring science, but sensing a massive shift in public awareness of the issue, politicians have jumped on the climate catastrophe bandwagon.

3.) If we delayed carbon dioxide, or CO2, reduction decisions by a few years to allow examination of the science, what would be the impact on climate?

Essentially none. Even its supporters admit that complete compliance with Kyoto by all nations held to limits would result in less than a 0.1° C difference to global climate a half century from now.

4.) How closely has climate tracked CO2 levels in the past?

About 440 million years ago, when CO2 levels are estimated to have been over 10 times today's, our planet was in the depths of the coldest period in the last half billion years. At other times, high CO2 levels coincided with warm periods. There is no meaningful correlation with temperature in the geological record.

Al Gore points out that, over the past half million years, the Antarctic ice core records show a link between temperature and CO2. What he neglects to mention is that these records consistently show that temperature rises some 800 years before CO2 rise, not after it. Even over the past century, the CO2 and global warming correlation is poor, with significant cooling taking place between 1940 and 1980 while human produced CO2 emissions were increasing rapidly.