Imagine if Pope Benedict gave a speech saying the Catholic Church has had it
wrong all these centuries; there is no reason priests shouldn't marry. That
might generate the odd headline, no?
Or if Don Cherry claimed suddenly to like European hockey players who wear
visors and float around the ice, never bodychecking opponents.
Or Jack Layton insisted that unions are ruining the economy by distorting
wages and protecting unproductive workers.
Or Stephen Harper began arguing that it makes good economic sense for
When a leading proponent for one point of view suddenly starts batting for
the other side, it's usually newsworthy.
So why was a speech last week by Prof. Mojib Latif of
Latif is one of the leading climate modellers in the world. He is the
recipient of several international climate-study prizes and a lead author for
the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has
contributed significantly to the IPCC's last two five-year reports that have
stated unequivocally that man-made greenhouse emissions are causing the planet
to warm dangerously.
Yet last week in
The global warming theory has been based all along on the idea that the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans would absorb much of the greenhouse warming caused
by a rise in man-made carbon dioxide, then they would let off that heat and
warm the atmosphere and the land.
But as Latif pointed out, the Atlantic, and particularly the
"How much?" he wondered before the assembled delegates. "The
jury is still out."
But it is increasingly clear that global warming is on hiatus for the time
being. And that is not what the UN, the alarmist scientists or environmentalists
predicted. For the past dozen years, since the
While they deny it now, the facts to the contrary are staring them in the
face: None of the alarmist drummers ever predicted anything like a 30-year
pause in their apocalyptic scenario.
Latif says he expects warming to resume in 2020 or 2030.
In the past year, two other groups of scientists--one in Germany, the second
in the United States--have come to the same conclusion: Warming is on hold,
likely because of a cooling of the Earth's upper oceans, but it will resume.
But how is that knowable? How can Latif and the others state with certainty
that after this long and unforeseen cooling, dangerous man-made heating will
resume? They failed to observe the current cooling for years after it had
begun, how then can their predictions for the resumption of dangerous warming
be trusted?
My point is they cannot. It's true the supercomputer models Latif and other
modellers rely on for their dire predictions are becoming more accurate. But
getting the future correct is far trickier. Chances are some unforeseen future
changes will throw the current predictions out of whack long before the
forecast resumption of warming.
Lorne Gunter is a columnist with the Edmonton Journal and National Post.