The Way Back

Guest essay by Dr. Vincent Gray, Wellington, NZ

For over 30 years the world has been saturated with the environmental fallacy.

It has taken over the media; newspapers, radio, TV; the education system;, the schools, the universities.

It has led to a retreat from experimental and theoretical science.

My professional career began during the war when science made a substantial contribution to its outcome. We had vigorous scientific discussions both in public and in the media. We published them in the journals. We enjoyed prestige, attractive salaries and public confidence.

It declined immediately the war ended. R V Jones, in his “Most Secret War” recounts that as soon as the war ended the military were no longer interested in measures to improve conditions of survival of pilots.

I endured a steady decline of science. In industrial research the role of the scientist was to justify the decisions of the sales department, and now it is increasingly to justify the policies of the Government even in the universities.  

We have benefited from technical progress, based on scientific discoveries of the past. Chemistry, X-Ray diffraction have enabled molecules to be visualized. Combined with the genetic code it has led to modern medicine and our longer lives. Computers and solid state physics have changed our communications completely. The environmentalists accept these grudgingly, but they reject nuclear power, chemical pesticides, genetically engineered crops, and even (current National Geographic article) nitrogen based fertilizers. They have rubbished Darwin’s theories of evolution and replaced them by The Environment and Sustainability

There have not been any truly revolutionary scientific discoveries for 50 years

Scientists now live on short term contracts, interspersed with press announcements which either scare the public or claims to have made world shattering discoveries, all in the aid of receiving the next grant.

The climate models that have been foisted on the public would have been rejected by all the journals I knew in 1940. They can only gain credence in an atmosphere where science education has been replaced by dogmatic endorsements of the pioneers, and, increasingly, of the charlatans who have taken science over.

I have recently been revising my old NZClimate Truth Newsletters where I said it all years ago. There are no new publications worth answering. The latest IPCC Report merely repeats previous shibboleths.

They have confessed that they are frauds in the Climategate letters, and even, as I point out, in such items as Jim Hansen’s item on “The Elusive Surface Temperature”.

But, who cares? They still routinely promote the views of environmental activists on every excuse, Prince Charles and Al Gore keep up their worrying.

So, at last, to get to the point of this Newsletter, are we returning slowly to reality?

There are currently a number of indications that the worm is beginning to turn.

Fracking

This is a method developed in 1947 for improving oil production which has been the deliverer of the United States economy where they now export oil, instead of importing. It has had the effect of making coal so cheap that it has boosted cosl-fired powers stations and made up the energy shortfall in Japan that followed their unwise abandonment of nuclear energy. European environmentalists and anti-nuclear Japanese must now face the fact that gas prices in the USA are now $3.32 per million BTU in USA, $11.77 in Europe and $I6.66 in Japan

The New Zealand Government seems at last to be encouraging oil exploration. Discouraging damaging protest and even approving the ming of gold in its traditional region, Waihi.

Temperature

I have spent much effort pointing out that you cannot measure the average temperature of the earth’s surface and that the “Mean Global Surface Temperature Anomaly Record” is a very poor substitute. It is not a temperature record at all, but consists of a series of multiple averages each of which is based on a different mixture of measurements from unrepresentative weather stations. It is also, like all of the ”data” favoured by the IPCC, subtly biased to enable it to support the greenhouse theory. What is amazing is that they did not do a better job, and that the world could be made to cringe at the thought of an increased temperature of less than one degree in 100 years.

Yet it has now got stuck. It has stayed much the same for 17 years and Dr Pachauri is so worried that he thinks it might last another 15 years before his desired warming actually happens.

Apart from the infected Met Services, like the UK where they still keep predicting forthcoming warm winters and our own service which failed to predict the drought. Most ordinary meteorologists carry on with genuine science which does not depend on greenhouse gas concentrations

Windmills

The companies are going bust and the US is trying protectionism for its own dying manufacturers

Brian Leyland at

http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=5&Itemid=31

shows that windmills actually increase emissions of carbon dioxide because they have ti be backed up witgh inefficient powere stations that can be frequently turned on and off

Emissions

Only 15% of greenhouse gas emissions currently come from countries that signed the Kyoto Treaty. The New Zealand Minister, Tim Groser, recommends it should be ditched at

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10851772

Carbon Price is “Inching close to zero”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/07/european-carbon-price-zero

Sir Peter Gluckman

The Government’s Chief scientific advisor has announced new funding for the National Science Challenges at

http://www.pmcsa.org.nz/

It is more interesting in what it does not say that in what it says.

§ Aging well – harnessing science to sustain health and wellbeing into the later years of life

§ A better start – improving the potential of young New Zealanders to have a healthy and successful life

§ Healthier lives – research to reduce the burden of major New Zealand health problems

§ High value nutrition – developing high value foods with validated health benefits

§ New Zealand’s biological heritage – protecting and managing our biodiversity, improving our biosecurity, and enhancing our resilience to harmful organisms

It is all very laudable, but there is no mention of any new ideas that might push any of these objects further.

For the first time there is no mention of the environment, global warming, climate change endangered species, or sustainability. It is actually getting real, at last.

Conclusion

These are, as yet, only straws in the wind. There is still much to do before science and common sense can once again prevail.