From: HELMER Roger
Sent: 26 September 2007
Subject: RE: Take action on cars and climate change
Dear ....
Thank you for writing to me. I have received a number of very similar letters, and I wonder who drafted the original version -- Greenpeace, or Friends of the Earth, perhaps? As it seems to be a standard letter, I trust you will not be offended to receive a standard reply.
I am afraid that I do not share the conventional alarmist position on CO2 emissions. More and more scientists are coming forward to challenge the conventional position. I have worked with Prof Fred Singer, for example, of the University of Virginia, who believes that observed changes in climate are natural, not man-made. Climate has always changed. Some of these scientists challenging the current paradigm are signatories of the successive IPCC reports.
Even the IPCC itself in its latest report appears to be moderating its cataclysmic prophecies. This is part of what I suspect will be a progressive but substantial climb-down.
Analysis of long-term temperature and atmospheric CO2 trends shows that the two correlate, but that CO2 follows temperature, rather than vice versa, suggesting that temperature drives CO2, not that CO2 drives temperature. All the CO2 warming models predict that the temperature effect should be greatest in the high atmosphere, at around 10km. Observations contradict this prediction. While some glaciers are melting, others are growing. Recent reports show that total ice mass in the Antarctic (home to 90% of the world's ice) is growing, not retreating. Sea level is rising, but only at the rate we have seen since records began (and the rate slowed slightly during the 20th century).
Records over the last decade show that 1998 was the warmest year. Since then, temperatures have reached a plateau. This is consistent with a cyclical model of climate, and I expect 2030 to be cooler than 2010. Bear in mind that the earth cooled between 1940 and 1970, and scientists then predicted an Ice Age!
The relation between atmospheric CO2 concentration and warming effect is not linear but logarithmic. It is a law of diminishing returns. That means that most of the potential CO2 warming is already in place, and further increases in CO2 levels will have little effect. During the geological past, the earth's atmosphere had much higher CO2 levels than today. You might like to look at the excellent speech delivered a few days ago by the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, at the UN's Climate Week. You'll find it on http://www.klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=pnHwpGc13sXM
I am in favour of measures to reduce fossil fuel consumption, but my concern is energy security, not climate change. I think the current EU proposals with regard to auto emissions are pointless and hugely damaging to our economic prospects. If you really want to reduce CO2 emissions, we should be building more nuclear generating capacity -- the only realistic way to make a significant difference. Nuclear is the cheapest, cleanest, safest, most predictable and reliable mainstream base-load generation technology available. We need to get on with it now.
Best regards
ROGER HELMER MEP
http://www.rogerhelmer.com
-----Original Message-----
From: ....
Sent: 26 September 2007
To: HELMER Roger
Subject: Take action on cars and climate change
Dear Mr Helmer,
I understand that you will soon be voting on amendments to the draft eport on the 'Community Strategy to reduce CO2 emissions from passenger ars and light commercial vehicles' prepared by your colleague, Chris Davies and recently voted on by the Environment committee.
I welcome the report and the Commission's Communication on introducing mandatory CO2 standards for cars but I feel that we can further tackle climate change by strengthening these proposals.
In particular, I feel that the following principles should be followed:
- The community's long term objective of average fleet emissions of 120g/km by 2012 should be achieved by fuel efficiency improvements alone;
- Any further measures should add to this target and not be part of it;
- Further long term mandatory targets of at least 80g/km by 2020 should be set;
- No differentiation between vehicles should be allowed that will increase a vehicle's emissions;
- The opportunity should be taken to restrict the top speeds of cars and the advertising of cars with high emissions. And may I add that restricting the top speeds of cars may go some way to reducing the large numbers of young men killed on the roads of the UK because they think they can handle a powerful car.
As my representative in the European Parliament, I hope that you will vote for the amendments to the report which will promote these principles.
Thank you for help on this crucial issue.
Yours sincerely,
Myth of climate change certainly exlodedThursday, 5th July 2007A startling new revelation from the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) blows apart the myth of scientific unanimity. New information suddenly revealed by the IPCC, apparently to preempt embarrassing disclosures under Freedom of Information laws, shows that significant numbers of the panel of 2,500 climate scientists -- usually described as "unanimous" in their support of man-made global warming -- have registered serious concerns, which the IPCC serially rejects even while claiming a "consensus". It is becoming obvious that this climate-change consensus is a journalistic fiction.
An illustrative example of how the IPCC treated substantive, often damning critiques and contrary views presented by its own panel members to reject it not with typical rebuttal but with the claim that the alleged error happens to be their "standard practice". And therefore, it is good, goes the "logic".
The IPCC is driven by a central group committed to the climate change orthodoxy, with specific sectors of the work farmed out to appropriate specialist groups. It is becoming increasingly clear that the ideologically-driven central group is exerting "politburo" control over the whole project. It systematically rejects and denigrates dissenting opinions, whether from within or outside the IPCC.
Papers are submitted by panel members to the IPCC for inclusion into its reports. Both the selection and editing of these papers is in the hands of the central group, who also draft the Executive Summary -- the only section (if any, beyond the press release or those of pressure groups) that most politicians and journalists read. These summaries have been consistently shown to adopt a more hard-line alarmist position than is justified by the underlying science. The summaries are political spin, not science.
Meantime the Oregon Petition dissenting from the alarmist consensus has attracted the voluntary and verified signatures of over 17,000 qualified scientists who have serious doubts about the anthropogenic hypothesis and who oppose the Kyoto Protocol.
Commenting on these revelations, Roger Helmer MEP, a member of the European parliament's Temporary Committee on Climate Change, said:
"This is the moment when we realise that the self-proclaimed Emperor has no clothes. Far from being a monolithic group of 2500 scientists committed to the idea of catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming, the IPCC panel itself is riven with dissension and is desperately struggling to keep the lid on this internal dissent.
"We need to examine whatever it is that scientists do actually agree upon before we do huge -- further -- damage to our Western economies in an attempt to avert a highly speculative risk".
Mr Helmer chaired a conference on climate change in the European parliament in Brussels on July 4th, which was addressed by celebrated climatologist Professor Fred Singer, and other experts including Hans LaBohm, a former adviser to the Dutch Foreign Ministry and himself an expert panelist of the IPCC who disagrees fundamentally with their conclusions.
These experts have produced a challenge to the IPCC conclusions, presenting an alternative science-based view in the name of a larger coalition of experts most with experience as IPCC authors or expert reviewers, called the Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).