Andrew Bolt: The truth that warmists continue to dodge
A climate scientist let slip a fact that sceptics like me have tried for years to point out, but activists would rather exploit these terrible bushfires than listen to the truth, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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Activists are exploiting these terrible bushfires to whip up an astonishing fear of man-made global warming and hatred of sceptics like me.
But know what makes me sure, even after this fiery devastation, that the global warming menace is exaggerated?
It’s warmist scientist Andy Pitman, who has once again confirmed exactly what I’ve been saying. How horrified he’ll be to hear it.
You may remember Professor Pitman, the director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes. He last year was recorded admitting to fellow warmists that droughts — like this severe one that’s fed the fires — are NOT caused by global warming.
“As far as the climate scientists know there is no link between climate change and drought,” he said.
“There is no reason a priori why climate change should make the landscape more arid.”
Indeed, despite the drought, Australia’s rainfall over the century has increased, not fallen.
Pitman and the ABC were naturally mortified when I and others started to quote him. Pitman is now furious that former prime minister Tony Abbott last week quoted his admission, too, in The Australian.
But in his anger, Pitman let slip a fact that sceptics like me have tried for years to point out.
Pitman complained that “Abbott quotes me on drought … when in fact for 15 years I have been warning that the risk of fires is increasing as a consequence of climate change”.
That’s because, he said, the extra carbon dioxide we emit is actually plant food that causes “greening”, meaning we get more leaves and even trees to burn in a drought.
But Pitman has been too honest. Most warmists have dodged this truth, because it undermines their fear campaign.
You see, it’s actually sceptics like me who have for years argued that global warming is greening the planet, and that this is, overall, a good thing.
As renowned physicist Freeman Dyson says: “The whole earth is growing greener as a result of carbon dioxide, so it’s increasing agricultural yields, it’s increasing the forests and it’s increasing growth in the biological world.”
NASA has found that an area about twice the size of the continental United States got greener between 1982 and 2009. This helps to explain why world grain crops keep setting new records.
But wait! A greener planet. Bigger crops. Fewer cyclones, too. Is this really something we want to stop?
This goes to the key question that sceptics like me keep asking.
We don’t deny the planet has warmed. We instead question whether the warming we’re seeing — less than predicted — is all bad.
We particularly question whether it’s smart to spend billions or even trillions to cut emissions in a largely symbolic attempt to “stop” all this.
Of course, some warmists will say: look at these deadly fires! Don’t they prove global warming is deadly?
In fact, tragic as they’ve been, they are far from our worst, measured either by deaths or area burnt.
What’s more, our bush this summer was dried out by a drought that was caused primarily not by global warming but by a natural and regular change in ocean patterns called the Indian Ocean Dipole.
When that dipole pushes warmer water in the Indian Ocean east to Australia, we get rain; when it replaces that with cooler water, we get drought.
Last December the Bureau of Meteorology warned the dipole had pushed so much cool water our way that we get no real rain until April. We’d get no rain to stop the fires.
Well, the bureau was wrong. The dipole suddenly decayed a couple of weeks ago, and we’ve since had lots of rain over eastern Australia, with more to come this week.
So, thanks to Pitman, the sceptics’ case is even clearer.
Do we really want to spend a fortune to slash our emissions in a largely futile attempt to “stop” a warming that isn’t anything as dangerous as we’re told?
Or would it be far cheaper and infinitely more effective to finally do all the fuel reduction burns needed to keep down the fuel loads in our forests?
After all, even Pitman is blaming extra fuel loads for the intensity of the flames.
Yet Victoria, for one, has over the past five years burnt only half the area recommended by the royal commission into the shocking 2009 fires that killed 172 people — four times more than died in this summer’s fires.
But that’s one more topic warmists hate. Reason is their enemy, and only fear is their friend.
- Professor Pitman has since clarified his statement about the links between climate change and drought and now says "there is no direct link between climate change and drought". "I'm equally certain that for some regions there's an indirect effect of human-induced climate change on drought because of the change in rainfall patterns."