Global warming not a man-made problem (August 23, 2001)

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HALIFAX, N.S. — Global warming and cooling is part of a natural process and human beings are not the cause, says a group of scientists gathered in Halifax this week.

Furthermore, the group charges expensive, global efforts to reduce greenhouse gases will not stop the ice caps from melting or the planet from warming

“I believe what mankind is doing has nothing to do with flooding and with drought,” says Petr Chylek, chairman of the International Conference on Global Warming, underway at Dalhousie University. “It is quite possible that we can cut carbon dioxide emissions to zero, and we’d still have global warming.”

Chylek, a physicist and atmospheric specialist at Dalhousie, is one of a growing number of international scientists speaking out against the unproven predictions of many of their colleagues, who have convinced the United Nations industrial activity is leading the world toward cataclysmic temperature change.

This common view, shared by 180 countries including Canada, last month lead to the resurrection of the Kyoto Protocol, a global commitment to cut the gases produced by such things as factories, heavy-duty vehicles, cars and electric generating stations.

While Canada’s Kyoto commitments during the next decade are expected to cost up to one per cent of its economic growth, the U.S. refused to ink the deal sighting economic reasons. Chylek and about 50 other dissenting scientists in attendance agree, Kyoto is based on poor science and public scare tactics.

“We see headlines in newspapers that Greenland is melting and raising sea levels,” says Dr. Chylek. “There is absolutely no evidence that Greenland is melting. Temperatures in Greenland are actually going down. I believe that in a few decades, when these very dire predictions have not happened, the public will turn against science in general, asking why we created this scare.”

One scientist, Wayne Evans of Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., even says Canada can reap $20-billion worth of economic benefits from a warmer climate, through increased forestry and farming output, if we learn to adapt to changing temperatures.

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