by Zbigniew Jaworowski, M.D., Ph.O., and D.Sc., who is a professor at the Central Laboratory for Radiologi-cal Protection in Warsaw. A multidisciplinary scientist, he has studied glacier ice samples from around the world, analyzing traces of heavy metals and radionuclides. He is well known as an expert on radiation effects, and has served as the chairman of the UNSCEAR (United Nations Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation). Among his previous articles in 21st Century Science & Technology is "Ice Core Data Show No Carbon Dioxide Increase, " Spring 1997, p. 42.

Despite billions of dollars and millions of propaganda headlines, the global warming prophesied by the climate modelling industry is not scientifically real

The amount spent on climate studies worldwide has now reached the astonishingly high level of about $5 billion per year.¹ In the United States alone, more than $2 billion is spent annually for climate studies, not including the costs of satellites, ships, and laboratory construction. ² Climatologists have obtained this immense amount of funding by creating the vision of a man-made planetary climate catastrophe.

In the 1970s and the 1980s, computer models of climate prophesied a doubling of the carbon dioxide (CO2) content in the atmosphere during the next 6O years. The greenhouse effect of this CO2 increase, together with that of other greenhouse gases released by human beings into the atmosphere – CH4, N2O, CFC-11 (freon), and CFC-12 – was supposed to increase the average global surface air temperature by 5°C. In polar regions, the increase was projected to be 10°C. Later, in the 1990s, climatologists truncated the computer model estimates of the man-made increase of global temperature by the year 2100, first to 3,3°C^3,5 and then to 2°C.⁷

Climate warming caused by man-made greenhouse gases, is usually presented as a gloomy catastrophe that will induce the mass extinction of animals and plants, epidemics of contagious and parasitic diseases, droughts and floods, and even invasions of mutated insects resistent to insecticides. Melting glaciers are predicted to raise sea level by 3.67 meters, flooding islands, densely inhabited coastal areas, and great metropolises. ^{6, 8} There will be mass migrations and a host of other social and environmental effects – always detrimental, never beneficial.

According to one American climatologist, the "scare-them-to-death" approach seems to be the best way to get money for climate studies. Dr. Stephen Schneider, a leading prophet of man-made climate warming, stated this bluntly:

"To capture the public imagination... we have to... make simplified dramatic statements, and little mention of any doubts one might have.... Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest". ⁹

Great international organizations, such as the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and others, direct the immense stream of money for climate studies. The sour-ces of these funds are the governments of many countries, the European Union, and the World Bank. The IPCC, founded in 1988, became a leadíng scientific adviser to the governments that are part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, and known for short as "The C!imate Treaty."

The IPCC reports, which have become bibles for bureaucrats and environmentalist fanatics, ac-cuse modern civilization of being responsible for global warming, and repeatedly state that they reflect a true "consensus" of the scientific community. This statement about consensus is totally false: The assessments, conclusions, and even the working method of the IPCC are criticized by numerous scientists today. A more accurate description of the current situation would not be consensus, but rather controversy. Science does not progress via a process of consensus, or voting. There was no "consensus" for Copernicus’s idea, in his time, that the Earth orbited the Sun. Consensus is not needed in science; it is for politicians.

Qpinions critical of the IPCC reports have been expressed by many prominent, competent scien-tists. For example, Or. Frederick Seitz, a past president of the U.S. National Acaderny of Scien-ces and the American Physical Society, President Emeritus of Rockefeller University, former Chairman of the Defense Science Board, and former Science Adviser to NATO, stated: "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report." ¹⁰ Dr. Keith Shine, one of the leading authors of the IPCC reports, described the editing process of the IPCC reports as follows:

About half of the scientists who took part in preparing the IPCC report of 1996 do not agree with its conclusions’ – hardly a consensus. Even the leading establishment science journals, Science and Nature, have exposed the IPCC’s lack of consensus and its wrong methodology. Nature devoted two editorials to the subject,^{13, 14} and an editorial in Science stated that: "If one examines some of the scientific articles on the subject [climate warming modeling], one finds virtually unanimous agreement that the models are deficient."¹⁵ The incompati-bility of IPCC procedures with the usual standards of scientific research led Science to write that "IPCC’s reputation for procedural correctness and consensus-building around scien-tific accuracy will be permanently compromised."¹⁶

An independent organization, The European Science and Environrnental Forurn (ESEF), re-cently published two monographs, in which a few dozens of scientists (including Sir Fred Hoyle) present studies contradicting the conclusions of IPCC.^{17, 18} One hundred or so scientists signed the 1996 Leipzig Declaration, protesting the alleged lPCC consensus and the implementation of the Rio de Janeiro treaty. The Leipzig Declaration termed the provisions of this treaty "dras-tic policies –lacking credible support from the underlying science–... ill-advised, wrought with economic danger, and likely to be counter-productive." In 1998, 17,000 scientists signed what is known as the Oregon Petition, protesting against the l 997 Kyoto agreements.’ These agreements demanded, among other things, a ¹⁹ decrease of energy production in the United States by 35 percent in one decade. Just how sensitive the leaders of the IPCC and related organizations are to the threat of losing credibility (and funding) can be seen in a recent paper by the former chairman of the openly political IPCC body, Bert Bolin, and four leading officers of Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems (GCTE) and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP). Bolin et al., writing in Science, Sept. 17, 1999, comment on the study by DeLucia et al. (Science, May 14, p. 1177), which projected that in the year 2050, the world’s forests would absorb 50 percent of man-made CO2 – that is, that there is no imminent global warming. Bolin et al. state,

This is an open attempt to include political criteria in forming scientific statements, and to limit the freedom of science. Such statements evoke the unholy ghost of the politically minded Soviet academician Trofim Lysenko.

Both the idea of man-made global warming, and a pressure to limit fossil fuel burning, were poli-ticized long ago.²⁰ Climate warming became a convenient justification for the now popular neo-Malthusian propositions of limiting the population increase in Third World countries, and the ex-cessive taxing of fossil fuels. The so-called BTU tax would be levied at $500 per ton of carbon, ²¹ causing an eight-fold increase of the price of bituminous coal and a drastic reduction of global economic activity. The nuclear industry applauds this, believing naively that somehow, the global warming scare will make public opinion more favourable for nuclear energy.

Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Devel-opment (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, in June 1992, set the stage for the political fight: "We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse."⁽¹²⁾

Strong was seconded by Timothy Wirth, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Issues: "We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy." Richard Benedick, another representative of the U.S. State Department, stated: "A global warming treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect." Maurice Strong elaborated on his idea of "sustainable development," which, he said, can be implemented by "deliberate quest of poverty... reduced resource consumption... and set levels of mortality control." This death sentence echoes the 18th century recommendations of Parson Thomas Malthus, who advised:

The Benefits and Costs of Catastrophism

Exhortations by climatologists on catastrophic themes are beloved by ministries of environmental protection, because it justifies their very existence. Such exhortations are beloved also by mi-nisters of finance, eager to increase the budgets of their governments by imposing new taxes. Thus, the interest of climatologists in hunting for research grants is concurrent with the interest of governments. In fact, governments may gain about 500 times more than the climatologists; Taxing all industrial emission of CO2 into the atmosphere (5 gigatons of carbon per year) could reach $2.5 trillion per year. However, losses in the world’s economy caused by the BTU tax would be orders of magnitude greater, and could ruin global industry and induce mass impover-ishment – just as actually proposed by Maurice Strong in Rio de Janeiro. According to Sir Fred Hoyle, this could have the eventual effect of returning us all to the Dark Ages. ²³

Merely 20 years ago, in the 1970s, climate warming was called "amelioration," that is, a bette-ring of the climate, and the warm periods in the past epochs were known as "climatic optim-ums". Dr. Stephen Schneider, the leading prophet of greenhouse warming catastrophe cited above, in the 1970s was warning that industrial dust emissions would induce a drastic climactic cooling – a cooling that soon alter the year 2000 would bring a new Ice Age.²⁴ At that time, cooling was a better provider of funding for the attack on industry and population than warming!

The Scientific Foundation for Climate Theories

Global warming that is allegedly caused by man-made emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, is a hypothesis based on computer modeling and theoretical arguments. The most impor-tant foundation for this hypothesis is the analysis of greenhouse gases in ice cores from Green-land and Antarctica. From these results, glaciologists have inferred that the CO2 content in the pre-industrial atmosphere was 26 percent lower than it is now. In several papers published du-ring the last decade, however, it has been demonstrated that the ice core studies are tainted by the manipulation of data, the illegitimate rejection of inconvenient results, and one-sided interpretations – all of which disqualify these studies as a reliable source of ínformation on atmospheric changes during past ages.

The low concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases found in air inclusions in the ice, are artifacts resulting from a variety of more than 20 chemical and physical processes that either occur in the polar ice sheets or result from coring the ice; they are not the real concen-trations in the pre-industrial atmosphere. Most of these processes tend to decrease the con-centration of CO2 in the gas inclusions. These factors were all but ignored by glaciologists in their unilateral interpretations of their analytical results.^25-33

On the other hand a meticulous analysis of the abundant 19th century measurements of CO2 in air, show that its average atmospheric concentration before 1900 was 335 parts per million by volume (ppmv)³⁴ – that is, similar to the CO, concentration in 1978.

Recently, it was found that there is an inverse relationship between atmospheric CO2 concen-tration and stomatal frequency in tree leaves, and that this phenomenon provides an accurate method for detecting and quantifying century-scale CO2 fluctuations. Birch leaves recovered from Holocene-era lake deposits in Denmark by a team of Dutch scientists, for example, demon-strate that 9,600 years before the present (YBP), the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was 348 ppmv – the same as the CO2 concentration in 1987. From 9,600 YBP until about 9,400 YBP, the CO2 levels remained between 333 and 347 ppmv. So, in contrast to the much touted ice core estimates, the stomatal frequency signal shows that early Holocene CO2 concentrations were similar to those at the end of 20th century.

The authors of the Dutch study stated: "Our results contradict the concept of relatively stabilized Holocene CO, concentrations of 270 to 280 ppmv until the industrial revo!ution."³⁵ The tree leaf studies corroborate the criticism of ice core studies and destroy the very foundation of the global warming hypothesis.

Temperature Changes: The Long Cycles

The CO2 content in the atmosphere and atmospheric temperature have never been stable; they have fluctuated since the dawn of time. Geological evidence shows that the atmospheric con-centration of CO2 which is now about 350 ppmv, was about 5,600 ppmv in the late Ordovician, 440 million years ago;³⁶ 340 million years ago, in the Carboniferous period, it was 4,000 ppmv; and about 90 million years ago, in the Cretaceous period, it was about 2,600 ppmv. These extremely high concentrations were obviously not associated with a "runaway greenhouse effect," the mantra of the global warming propagandists.

For the past 100 million years, the average surface temperature of the Earth and the atmosphe-ric CO2 level have been decreasing systematically.³⁷ About 50 million years ago, the CO2 con-centration (2,000 ppmv) was almost six-fold higher than now, but air temperature was higher by only 1.5°C. In the Ordovician, when the CO2 content in air was 16 times higher than it is now, the air temperature in the tropics was not increased, and in the high latitudes, there was the glaciation of Gondwanaland.³⁶

The reason for the lack of relationship between the temperature changes and CO2 concentra-tion in past epochs is that it is not CO2, but water, H2O, that is the main greenhouse gas. It is also the case that increasing CO2 concentration above a certain, rather low level cannot incre-ase the air temperature (see below). It was not CO2 that determined the permanent oscillations of Earth’s climate in the past, but rather changes of the solar constant; these are in step with clirnatic oscillations with a periodicity of about 2,500 years. This is suggested inter alia by gla-cial deposits on the bottorn of the North Atlantic, salt deposits in the glaciers and in the ocea-nic sediments, and the carbon-13 content of tree rings.³⁸

In the longer time scale, the duration of alternating and asymmetric cycles of long glaciations, and much shorter warm inter-glacial periods, was from 20,000 to 400,000 years. Since about 2 million years ago, one cycle has typically lasted about 100,000 years, with glacial cycles that were about 90,000 years long, and warm periods that were about 10,000 years long.^{6, 40, 41} During the last 85Ó,OOO years, there have been seven or eight such cycles (Figure 1). The temperature difference between the warm and cool phases is 3°C to 7°C.⁴²

Figure 1: TEMPERATURE VARIATIONS AT EARTH’S SURFACE

The three curves show temperature variations at the Earth’s surface during the last million years (a), the last 10,000 years (b), and the last thousand years (c). The dotted line represents temperature at the beginning of the 20th century.

Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 1990, (Note 8)

The present warm period started about 10,500 years ago,⁶ and thus one may expect the co-ming of the new Ice Age soon, perhaps in the next hundred or thousand years. After a Climatic Optimum around 800 YBP, there was a Little Ice Age between 1550 and 1700, when the ave-rage surface temperature of the globe was about 1°C lower than it is now (Figures l and 2). After 1750, the climate began to warm again, but we still have not reached the warmth of the 12th century (Figure 2). An acceleration of warming occurred around 1938, and then for 40 years, until 1976, the globe was cooling. Between 1976 and 1984, there was a rapid increase of the global surface temperature. The 40-year-long period of cooling of the global atmosphere between 1938 and 1976 occurred when about 75 percent of the total mass of man-made CO2 was released into the atmosphere (Figure 3). It is obvious that all these changes were not dependent on the anthropogenic emission of CO2.

Figure 2: SURFACE TEMPERATURES IN THE SARGASSO SEA

Surface temperatures of the Sargasso sea --east of the West indies-- have been determined for a period of about 3,000 years by analyzing oxygen isotope ratios of fossil organisms in bottom sediments. The data run to 1975.
During the warming period, --about 500 BC-- Mediterranean countries, the Indian subcontinent, and China enjoyed an unprecedented heyday. A cooling period about 500 A.D. was associated with a decline in the European economy and civilization, from which Europe recovered in a new climatic warming about the year 1,000 A.D. Since the end of the Little Ice Age, temperature has not yet come back to the Medieval Optimum.

Source: Adapted from L.D. Kelgwin, 1996, Science, Vol. 274, pp. 544-545.

Figure 3: ANNUAL EMISSIONS OF MAN-MADE CO₂ AND TEMPERATURE CHANGES

The 40-year long period of cooling of the global atmosphere between 1938 and 1976 occurred when about 75 percent of the total mass of man-made CO2 was released into the atmosphere. Annual emissions of anthropogenic CO2 (light line) are plotted against temperature changes near the Earth´s surface (heavy line).

Source: see notes 96, 97, 98

At the regional European scale, the measurements from nine representative stations do not show warming between 1780 and 1989. Except for the years near l940, the climate of Europe has been cooling during the past 200 years (Figure 4). For example, between 1780 and 1980, the summer temperature in Warsaw decreased by 0.39’C; in Vienna, by 0.91’C; in Prague and Budapest, by 0.53’C. In Warsaw, the warmest two-decade periods were the years 1899-1919 and 1934-1954;in Vienna, 1788-1817, 1943-19ó3, and 1970-1990; in Prague, 1797-1817 and 1943-1963; in Budapest, 1788-1808, 1934-l954, and 1971-1991. The greatest deviation of average temperature, in the region of +0.82°C, was observed in Prague in the years 1797-1817.⁴³

FIGURE 4: EUROPEAN SUMMER TEMPERATURES (1780-1989)

Except for the year 1940, the climate of Europe has been cooling during the past 200 years. Shown here are treds of European summer tempe-ratures, 1780.1989, in nine representative European meteorological sta-tions: Budapest, Central England, De Bilt, Einburgh, Hohenpeissenberg, St. Petersburg, Trondheim, Uppsala and Warsaw.

zSource. G.R. Weber, 1996 (See note 43)

In the United States, average annual temperatures do not show great changes between 1895 and 1997: The centennial trend was only +0.022°C per decade, and for the period 1940-1997, +0.008°C per decade.⁴⁴ All these regional fluctuations cannot tie related to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.

Satellite measurements of the temperature of the lower troposphere provide us with evidence against the theory of man-made global warming. Between 1979 and 1997, these measurements (270,000 readings per day over 95 percent of the Earth’s surface) revealed a slight coo-ling trend of – 0.04°C per decade (Figure 5). In the same time period, ground-level measure-ments over land and sea were showing a warming of +0.15°C per decade, and computer models projected a warming of+0.18°C per decade.⁴⁶ Satellite measurements up to 1998 are given in Figure 6. The difference between satellite and balloon measurements on the one hand, and ground-level measurements on the other, is usually explained as the result of ground-level mea-surements being influenced by local heating of the atmosphere by cities, and changes in methods in sea-surface measurements.

FIGURE 5: CHANGES OF AVERAGE GLOBAL TEMPERATURE OF EARTH´S ATMOSPHERE

Satellite measurements of the temperature of the lower troposphere between 1979 and 1997 (30,000 readings per day over 95 percent of the Earth´s surface), reveal a slight cooling trend of -0.04°C per decade. Changes of average global temperatu-re of Earth´s atmosphere are show here from the satellite measurements in the lower troposphere (solid line), and near surface measurements over land and sea (dotted line).

Source: Adapted from A.H. Gordon, 1998, (See note 98).

Ground-level data for the period 1940-1996 from 107 stations in California show that tempera-ture increases with increases in population density in areas where these stations are located. In a rural Californian station, Fast Park, which is not near "urban heat islands," a negative tempe-rature trend was registered during the same 3 940-1996 period.⁴⁷

The Influence of the Sun

Recent studies by several groups of oceanographers, meteorologists, and astrophysicists show excellent agreement between the fluctuations of sea-surface temperature and the activity of the Sun. During the past 50 years, tropical and subtropical parts of three oceans have been cooling and warming by about 0.1°C, exactly in step with the 11-year solar cycle. This is asto-nishing, because differences in solar brightness reach only O.1 percent, not enough to cause the observed temperature changes. It seems that the solar signal triggers a climate effect by some amplifying mechanism. During the Little Ice Age, 300 years ago, solar radiation was only 0.25 percent lower than it is now.⁴⁸ Since 1750, air temperature over the Northern Hemis-phere has been changing almost exactly in the rhythm of magnetic solar cycles, but not in the rhythm of greenhouse gas changes: When the Sun was more active, the Earth’s troposphere was warmer (Figure 7).^{47, 49, 51}

The mechanism that amplifies the solar signal is probably a phenomenon like El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), that is, thermal anomalies of the east equatorial Pacific waters: El Niño, warming, and La Niña, cooling. ENSO anomalies occur as irregular 2- to 7-year cycles, asso-ciated with large-scale changes of atmospheric pressure in the tropics, between the southeas-tern and western Pacific. ENSO influences the climate of the whole planet.⁵² Satellite measure-ments suggest that during the observation period of the last 20 years, El Niño of 1998 caused the strongest thermal anomaly in the Earth’s atmosphere. In April and May 1998, the deviation of the global temperature from the 1982-199l average reached +0.7°C.

During the past 20 years, El Niño has occurred several times, but in ]997-1998, it developed without simultaneous volcanic eruption. Twice earlier, El Niño was associated with large volcanic eruptions, which injected enormous amounts of dust into the stratosphere: El Chichon in 1982, and Mt. Pinatubo in 1991. These eruptions caused a cooling of the global atmosphere, which masked El Niño’s thermal effects (Figure 6). It seems that ENSO is probably the strongest factor of natural variability of the global climatic system. Negative and positive anomalies of the global temperature associated with ENSO have been observed since 1958,⁵⁴ and some were even observed as far back as 1610.⁵²

Figure 6: SATELLITE TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENTS IN THE LOWER STRATOSPHERE

Numerous observations suggest that the ENSO phenomenon depends on the activity of Sun: Great solar explosions cause dramatic increases of the solar wind, and de-crease the intensity of cosmic radiation reaching the Earth’s atmosphere. Because cosmic rays provide condensation centers for clouds, great solar explosions probably enable the formation of El Niño, through a short-term, 2-to 3-percent decrease of the global cloud coverage. (Fig. 7)

Source: J. Christy, R. Spencer, and W. Braswell, 1999 (see note 46)

Figure 7: SOLAR MAGNETIC CYCLE LENGTH AND
NORTHERN HEMISPHERE TEMPERATURES

The shorter the magnetic cycle, the more active, and hence brighter, the Sun. During the paste several hundred years, terrestrial temperature has fluctuated in step with solar brightness, as would be expected. Moving 11-year average of terrestrial Northern Hemisphere temperatures, as deviations from the 1951-1970 mean, are shown by the heavy line. The length of the solar magnetic cycle is shown in the thin dotted lines.

Source: A.B. Robinson, S.L. Baliunas, W. Soon, and Z.W. Robison, 1998 (See note 47.)

Computer Models Are Only Opinions

Computer models of climate are nothing more than the formalized opinions of their creators, on the working of the global climate system.⁵⁷ If these models were capable of correctly projecting climactic changes, they should be able to pass the test of accurately reconstructing past cli-mates, or at least reconstructing the present climate.

Usually, for projections of the human impact on climate, one of the many versions of the Gene-ral Circulation Model (GCM) is used. Testing of the various versions has demonstrated that the models are unable even to correctly reconstruct the present climate. All GCM models had a 100 percent error for atmospheric precipitation predictions, and a 2°C error for global tempera-ture estimates. For the Arctic region, this error reached 10°C, and for Antarctica, 20°C.⁵⁸

When 14 CCM models were fed with identical climate input parameters in a test, they produced 14 different answers, ranging from cooling to warming of the global climate.⁵⁹ A similar test run for 17 GCM models produced similar results.⁶⁰ This explains why the IPCC projection of tempe-rature changes, based on GCM modelling, is in complete disagreement with the real temperature measured by satellites (Figure 8).

Figure 8: DIVERGENCE OF TEMPERATURE TREND IN LOWER
TROPOSPHERE FROM IPCC GLOBAL WARMING FORECAST

The computer models project the greatest warming of the Northern Hemispheric atmosphere in the Arctic, by as much as 8°C to 10°C.³⁵ These projections, however, have not been confirmed by the in situ measurements. At Spitsbergen, where the Norwegian Meteorological lnstitute has carried out observations since 1912, temperature does not show a positive trend.⁶¹ A lack of warming was also found in five other Arctic regions,⁶² on the Scandinavian Peninsula, in Den-mark, and in Greenland.^{62, 64}

A long series of measurements from 10 meteorological stations, forming an arc around the Arc-tic, demonstrates that there has been not warming, but rather cooling of the region.⁶⁵ Analysis of the data from these stations, covering a Canadian sector of Arctic, Greenland, Iceland, and Eurasia, shows that a strong warming occurred in the Arctic around 1920. Between 1912 and 1920, in Spitsbergen and West Greenland, the air temperature increased by 3.5°C to 5°C. After l950, the Canadian stations Resolute and Alert observed a cooling trend, In this period, the temperature in Western Greenland decreased by 1.5°C. A negative trend was observed also in the Russian Arctic, with the greatest, short-term temperature decreases of 4°C to 5°C in Franz Josef Land.

Nine Danish meteorological stations in Greenland observed similar long-term changes, with coo-ling of this region between 1940 and 1985.^{65, 66} During the decade 1955-1964, in a sector of the Arctic between Greenland, Norway, Spitsbergen, and Novaya Zemlya, the temperature of surface sea-water decreased by 0.1°C to 0.6°C in winter, and 0.1°C to 0.25°C in summer. Between 1945 and 1975, a decrease of seawater temperature of 1°C was also observed around the Faeroe Islands, and the average temperature of the Atlantic north of 35°N decreased by 0.5°C, between 1940 and 1987.⁶⁴

A review of temperature measurements from the Greenland ice Sheet shows a decrease of air temperature during the past 30 years, and a 15 percent decrease of precipitation; both these effects are just the opposite of what computer models project.⁶⁷

Farther south, dendrological measurements indicate a systematic summer cooling of 3°C in the Northern Quebec region, between 1800 and 1950.⁶⁸ On the southern side of the globe, at the Antarctic Peninsula, the climate has cooled gradually by 2°C since 1850.⁶⁹ In comparison with the 19th century, the air temperature at Ronne Shelf decreased by about 0.7°C, and by about 4°C in the l980s.⁷⁰

On the global scale, temperature measurements show a lack of systematic increase of air tem-perature after the optimum around the 1940s; instead, there is a cooling trend during the next three decades.^{57, 71} Since the 1940s, the greatest cooling of climate has been observed at the high northern latitudes,⁷² – that is, exactly where the man-made global warming hypothesis projects the highest temperature increase.

The Growing Glaciers

Satellite radar altimeter measurements carried out by NASA suggest that between 1978 and 1985, the polar ice caps were growing at a rate corresponding to a decrease of the ocean level of 0.20 to 0.45 mm per year, mainly as a result of the accumulation of ice in Greenland.^{73, 74} During these eight years, the thickness of the Greenland ice cap increased by about 1.5 meters, which corresponds to a rate of 0.23 cm per year. The precision of these measurements was questioned on the basis of secret military data.⁷⁵ However, the original results of Zwally et al, were confirmed by later measurements during the Geosat Exact Repeat Mission,⁷⁶ and by results of laser measurements.⁷⁷

The measurements in central Greenland carried out on the ground by the Expedition Glaciolo-gique Internationale au Groenland (ECIG) and by other groups in southern Greenland, show an average increase of ice of 3 cm to 9 cm per year.⁷⁴ Since 1968, the fronts of six out of nine small glaciers studied in western Greenland have started to advance.⁶⁶ FGIG measurements have shown that between 1959 and 1968, the surface of the central Greenland ice cap increa-sed in height by 1 meter. Around 1950, most of the ice cap rim in southern and western Green-land was retreating and decreasing in thickness. But since about 1985, numerous of the formerly retreating parts have started to advance. At the beginning of the 1990s, the area of progres-sion widened from the highlands of Greenland, to the lowlands.⁷⁸ Recent studies suggest, as one. paper states, that "There is no compelling indication of increasingly negative balance conditions which might, a priori, he expected from anthropogenically induced global warming."⁷⁹

Of the 18 glaciers studied in the Arctic, 15 (77 percent) now have a positive mass balance slo-pe coefficient. Some of the glaciers show a trend toward a less negative mass balance, and some others show a significant positive trend. Most of the Scandinavian glaciers reached their historical maximum in the 18th century, during the Little Ice Age. After intensive melting in the first part of the 20th century, 17 Scandinavian glaciers dramatically decreased the rate of re-treat and entered a new phase of increasing their mass.^{80, 81} Similar changes were found later in Scandinavia and Spitsbergen.⁸²

In Antarctic a, ice is now growing up so quickly that by about 2050, it will have lowered the sea level by 30 cm.⁸³ Measurements of ice accumulation indicate that in a large part of An-tarctica, the increase of the ice cap now corresponds to 5 to 25 percent of global atmospheric precipitation, and to a lowering of ocean level of 1.0 mm to 1.2 mm per year.⁸⁴ Such behavior of the cryosphere does not support claims that the climate is warming, and that the catastro-phic visions of a man-made sea level rise will be fulfilled.

The Greenhouse Effect

Only about half of the incoming solar energy is absorbed by the Earth’s atmosphere. The rest is scattered back and to some extent absorbed by the atmosphere, or reflected by the ground. The Earth itself radiates at infrared wavelengths, much longer wavelengths than the solar ra-diation. The Earth infrared radiation, unlike the solar radiation, is strongly absorbed in the atmosphere, The absorption is mainly caused by water vapor and clouds, but also by some trace gases. Only a very small part of the radiation emitted by the ground escapes directly to space. In this way, the atmosphere is heated, and returns radiative energy to the Earth’s surface, where it is again absorbed and re-radiated. Thus, a remarkable exchange of thermal energy takes place between the ground and the lower atmosphere. This process, called the greenhouse effect, is responsible for the relatively high mean surface temperature on Earth.

Without the greenhouse effect, the average temperature near the Earth’s surface would be –18°C, and not +15°C, as it is now. The difference of 33°C is the result of absorption of infrared radiation by the atmospheric greenhouse gases. The most important greenhouse gas is water vapor, which is responsible for about 96 to 99 percent of the greenhouse effect. A reader of the IPCC 1990 report (the bible of the man-made global warming adherents) might incorrectly believe that CO2 causes 25 percent of the entire greenhouse effect.

What is striking in this IPCC report, is that water was not even mentioned in any of its eight tables comparing the greenhouse effect of different atmospheric components! If the correspon-ding values for water had been presented in these tables, the unimportance of the contribution from CO2 produced by man, in the thermal balance of the atmosphere, would have been very clear. If CO2 were the only greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, it would contribute about 22 percent of the present greenhouse effect. However, the real green- house effect of CO2 is much less, because of the overlapping of strong 15 mm absorption lines, and the rotational band of H2O in the 12 mm to 18 mm spectral region.

Detailed analysis performed for the summer atmosphere in the middle latitudes indicates that, to the total greenhouse effect of 342 watts/m, water vapor (continuum and discrete absorption lines) contributes 330 W/m² – that is, 96.5 percent – and CO2 contributes 12 W/m² – that is, 3 percent.^{85, 86} Other studies, taking into account water vapor, liquid water, and convection heat transport, estimate the CO2 contribution as 1 to 5 percent of the total greenhouse effect.^{87, 88, 89} The remaining greenhouse gases are of marginal importance.

It is the existence of oceans, which emit water vapor, and not the presence of CO2, that we can thank for a temperature well above 14º C at Earth’s surface, that is stable in a range of only a few degrees, which has enabled the existence of life. To the total CO2 flux into the global atmosphere of 169 gigatons (Gt) of carbon per year, human industrial and agricultural activity adds about 6 Gt of Carbon per year (see table 1). This is similar to the amplitude of the annual fluctuations of the total mass of atmospheric CO2 (5.4 megatons C/year).

Isotopic mass balance calculations for carbon-12 and carbon-13 of atmospheric CO2 demons-trate that in 1988, the mass of CO2 from fossil fuel burning, which accumulated in the atmos-phere between 1860 and 1988, was about 30 Gt of Carbon – that is, about 5 percent of the total atmospheric CO2 mass.^{31, 90, 91} Similar results were found with non-isotopic CO2 mass balance estirnates.⁹² Hence, rnan’s addition to the total natural greenhouse effect may be about 0.05 to 0.25 percent.

But even this tiny addition is doubtful. According to recent studies, all of the infrared radiation that could escape the Earth’s atmosphere (outside the spectroscopic "window" in the range 7.5 – l 4 mm) is already almost completely absorbed. Any increase of CO2 concentration in the air above its current level cannot contribute significantly to a higher retention of heat by the lower atmosphere.

The Known Consequences of Global Warming Hysteria

The man-made global warming hypothesis is far from being confirmed by observations, many of which suggest that it is false. Environmental daydreamers try to make it seem axiomatic that imaginary dangers of this warming should be remedied without waiting for proof. In fact, they ask that the scientific uncertainty should become a basis for worldwide regulation, which may enormously burden the people of the world, especially in developing countries. F.B. Cross, pro-fessor of business regulation at the University of Texas, warned that "the precautionary principle is deeply perverse in its implications for the environment and hurnan welfare." ⁹⁴ To fulfil their dreams, however, environmentalists are ready to pay any costs: to impoverish entire nations and thus endanger the environment; to destroy the industry created by the toil and sweat of their forefathers: and to strangle our civilization. It is astonishing how easily and credulously a large part of society, exposed to concentrated media manipulation, has accepted the global warming mythology. One can understand the psychological and social reasons for this acceptance. However, the actions of the United Nations Organization and many governments, leading the Earth’s community into an economic and civilizational disaster, on the ground of a wanton specter, do not seem responsible. Is it perhaps too much to ask politicians to act reasonably, instead of for selfish, short-term interests?

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