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Monday 16 May 2011

Mr Cameron. Please go back to School.

Mr. Cameron,

Can you please have a word with that Mr Huhne, who is setting out to bankrupt me and almost everyone else in the country, through higher fuel bills. (Mind you, he might be facing jail by the end  of the week).

The Earth has been warming for approximately 200 years. The rate of warming has been fairly constant at 0.5C per century from the beginning of that epoch until about the year 2000.  These natural, non-anthropogenic causes are well-known in the scientific literature. They are called climate cycles. The recent warming starting at the beginning of the 19th century superseded the so-called Little Ice Age which had lasted for several centuries.

I believe that you, as the PM of UK, has a real responsibility to check out what we Engineers call "the numbers". And the numbers are jolly important here, Mr. Cameron. Do you happen to know what happened to the important numerical value of the rate of warming when CO2 in terms of ppm started to grow strongly around 1945? The figure  was 0.5C per one hundred years, if you care to remember. Well, the answer is---nothing, absolutely nothing. Check out the climate stats at NOAA and you'll be impressed by the unaltered rate of warming (0.5C/century) up until ca 1998. Anthropogenic, fossil-burning type increase of the level of CO2 in the atmosphere from ca 280 ppm around 1945 to ca 390 ppm as of today didn't cause the global temperature to soar and accelerate one little bit.

And one more important number for you as the PM to watch: What happened to the rising global temperature after 1998? Well, the important thing is that nothing much has happened to the global T since then. The rate of warming as of today is approximately 0.12-0.14C per century which is not statistically significant. Despite the fact that since 1998 mankind has continued to inject CO2 into the air (in fact, about 25% of ALL the CO2 man ever produced by fossil burning occurred after 1998) the increase of global T has flattened and the Earth isn't getting any noticeably warmer. Even Phil Jones agrees with me about this. So why all the climate razzmatazz in your branch of life as opposed to mine? I wouldn't know. ;-)
It'd be much better for you to take my climatological crash course above than attempting singlehandedly to crash into a Hermageddon of economical ruin for Britain.

Think about it, will you? The climatology of the last million years is crystal clear - CO2 has never caused the global T to go up or down. Look at the ice core data from Antarctica, will you? It's the other way around - the heat content of the atmosphere and the big oceans cause CO2 to move up and down.

No mathematician or physicist I know has seen any evidence that the IPCC version of climate science can account for recurring climate cycles in a way that is even remotely as successful as standard, pre-IPCC text-book treatments of climate change. Buy yourself  a 1980's text-book dealing with climate and I'm sure you'll understand what I'm getting at, Mr. Cameron.

Regards

The Filthy Engineer.