Expert questions wisdom of trying to influence climate

Change coming regardless; money better invested in mitigating effects
By Deborah Gyapong
OTTAWA (CCN)

Michael Hart, author of “Hubris: The Troubling Science, Economics, and Politics of Climate Change,” questions the wisdom of trying to halt global warming.

In Canada, where both sides of the aisle in Parliament have accepted the notion man-made climate change is real and steps must be taken to halt Greenhouse Gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, Hart did not join in the praise for the Oct. 5 ratification of the Paris climate agreement or for Prime Minister Trudeau’s Oct. 3 pledge to introduce a carbon price if provinces do not adopt their own schemes.

The professor emeritus of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University said climate will change regardless of what humans do or do not do, and money is best invested in mitigating climate effects rather than trying to prevent carbon dioxide emissions.

“The Paris agreement is a classic example of what governments do when they want to be seen to be doing something,” said Hart, who participated in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiations in the early 1990s. He described the agreement as “big on hype,” with obligations put off “far into the future, long beyond anybody’s political life” and “voluntary.”

“That’s the nature of any of these environmental agreements,” he said. “They are happy to talk for the benefit of people, but the delivery will be anemic.”

Hart pointed out a number of scientists who have done the climate change computer modeling say if “every aspect of the Paris agreement is fully implemented over 30 years, it would make at best a .02 degrees Celsius difference, and that is only if you believe the UN and all the alarmist scientists have a firm fix on how the climate behaves, which of course is nonsense.”

Hart said he decided to research climate change and write his book after having the question repeatedly brought up by his students. He said he discovered the science behind man-made climate change is “on the basis of a theory that has repeatedly been demonstrated to be without evidence.”

“When I went to school, science was dependent on physical, observational evidence,” he said. “There is no observational physical evidence to back up the claim C02 is causing a crisis in the planet’s climate.”

The alarmist scenarios are all based on computer modeling, he said. “If you ask a real scientist ‘Is the planet warming?’ he’ll say, ‘It depends on the time frame.'”

If you look at the last 200 years, it is warming, but if you look at the last 10,000 years, it is cooling, Hart said. Over the last 3 million years, the earth has gone through a number of cycles where the “dominant cycle is glacial or cold, with interruptions called inter-glacial periods,” he said.

“Fifteen thousand years ago, in Ottawa you would have been sitting on top of two miles of ice, because you would be in the middle of an Ice Age,” he said. He cited a number of warming and cooling periods in the earth’s history that are caused by many overlapping and trends.

“For Christians to believe that humans can change the fundamental laws of nature is a little rich,” said Hart, who is a Presbyterian. “If you are deeply worried about the fact of climate change, that is always going on, and may get out of hand, the best thing to do is adapt to it.”

Hart also expressed concerns about Prime Minister Trudeau’s moving ahead with climate-change targets without waiting for the results of the American election in November.

Though he said Prime Minister Harper did not articulate well his strategy during his tenure, he seemed to be waiting to see what the Americans would do, and if they do something real, Canada would follow suit. Hart said if Hilary Clinton wins, you will “continue to have the rhetoric and some action.”

Hart predicted “fundamental change in the US stance” if Donald Trump wins.

Europe is “backing away from the stupid decisions it make in the last 20 years,” he said. The renewable sources are “beginning to cost a lot,” both in direct costs and the cost of energy for consumers.

“People in the UK are energy poor, and we’re getting close to that in Ontario because the enthusiasm for all these measures is steadily waning,” he said. In Australia’s Victoria State, which had invested heavily in windmills and solar energy, a significant storm knocked many of them out.

“It’s hard to run an electrical grid with intermittent and unreliable inputs,” he said.

Hart said the other reason he researched “Hubris” was his interest in reducing the regulatory burden on modern economies. He said movements to change reduce climate change tend to increase the regulatory burden.

“Increasingly these movements think we can’t make up our own minds based on common sense,” and everything “must be done by regulation,” he said.

Movements to clean up air and water have been successful, because both are a lot cleaner than they were 50 years ago, he said. However, he disagrees that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. “It’s plant food and it’s critical to the rhythms of nature.”

Because there has been a rise in carbon dioxide, “the planet is about 25 per cent greener than it was 50 years ago,” he said.

“People in the UN have admitted the real objective is to use [climate change] as a vehicle for redistributing wealth,” he said. “They have said this in unguarded moments.”

“If the climate gets warmer, the amount of food available will increase and will be less expensive.” Farmers are not “stupid,” he said, and will adjust by growing different crops, adapted to the environment.