I’ve been away a while and got out of the blogging habit, but like a rising tide, I’ve been building up a store of energy, anger and  frustration, however you wish to term it, at so many of the modern day obsessions, that I’ve come back to blogging to vent my spleen, and also to share with you a few things on the Technical, User Group and other fronts that I feel you might like to read about.

I guess my first blog entry for nearly a year has to be about … Global Warming.

If you read any of my earlier blog posts you know that I fall firmly into the ‘sceptics’ as far as the causes of Global Warming.  I have always acknowledged the existence of such a phenomena, since the last ice age was only about 20,000 years ago, it makes perfect sense to me that the world is warming up.  I was even prepared to accept that mankind may have some influence on the proceedings, albeit fairly insignificant in the overall scheme of things.  What do I mean by insignificant?  Reading the popular media and even the so-called intelligent media, you could get the impression that we are drowning in a sea of Carbon Dioxide (CO2), the simple fact of the matter is that the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere is 370 parts per million, that is a shade under 0.04% of the total make up of the atmosphere.  At times in the past it has been much higher and it has at times been a somewhat lower, but the key fact is that it is variable.  It has always been a source of annoyance to me, that the media, politicians and activists, ignore this natural variation as though it is irrelevant. 

It is as though the politically correct and zealots view is that there is a ‘correct’ level of CO2 which needs to be achieved. Quotes such as ‘The Science is Settled’ (aka Al Gore) are not only annoying but dangerous to our scientific endeavours and our own personal freedom.  Who says the science is settled?  Science is NEVER settled! Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is still today being tested, Quantum Theory likewise.  It is the job of science to constantly challenge accepted wisdom and theories to subject them to ever more intense scrutiny.  It is also the job of the media to subject political and public figures to the same intense scrutiny.  Political control of science and media alignment with politicians is, in my humble opinion, THE greatest threat to the Western world.  Religious extremists are no threat in comparison.  Just like computer hacking it is the internal threat that is far more prevalent and insidious than any external danger.  What price freedom? Winston Churchill said it best; constant vigilance.

What has this to do with Global Warming?  Everything. Global Warming is not just a subject of scientific debate, it is one of the most grotesquely abused political weapons available to today’s ill-informed, media craving, self-interested politicians and to their associated advisors and media followers.  Notice I do not say ill-informed about the advisors and media followers, they simply choose to take certain announcements from the scientific world which suits their cause and ignore those which don’t and feed it to their political masters/puppets.

Whilst scanning around the news and blog-sphere, I don’t particularly follow any one blog, I came across this article from the Australian Online News site in which NASA’s Aqua satellite is discussed.  This satellite has shown that, to date, the small amount of warming which occurred from the 1980’s until the turn of the 21st century has been cancelled out to all intents and purposes by other processes and has resulted in no net warming of the planet for nearly 8 years, and over 10 years a net cooling.   One of the most significant points in the interview is when the biologist Jennifer Marohesy says “So (it’s) very unexpected, not something that’s being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it’s very significant.", Michael Duffy’s response is I think, significant:

"It’s not only that it’s not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there’s any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it’s put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."

Notice Marohesy says the fact that Global Warming has effectively halted at least for the time being is unexpected, a point which disturbs many people.  I see this as justification of a far more optimistic outlook.  In out hi-tech world of computers, TV, Internet we have quickly become insensitive to the wonders around us, and this it yet more proof that we are not as all-knowing as we think, that nature still has some curved-balls to throw at us. 

So I plead with you all, don’t accept the media picture or the politician’s picture of the doom and gloom and the existence of Global Warming due to mankind as being the only reality.  Maybe Global Warming will restart, maybe Global Cooling will continue, the point is that you, me, the politicians, the media and above all the scientists too just don’t know what will happen.  There is only one certainty: we are not in control.  This amazing planet we live upon has had, and always will have the last word on our existance.  We are not and have never been in the business of “saving the planet”, though we might try to fool ourselves through such slogans that that is what we are trying to do.  It is ourselves we need to save, most of all from our own stupidity and ignorance.