CO2 impact on climate ‘unjustifiably exaggerated’…catastrophic predictions ‘not realistic’
To the President of the Republic, of the Senate, of the Chamber of Deputies, and the Council
PETITION ON ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING, JULY, 2019
The undersigned, citizens and scientists, send a warm invitation to political leaders to adopt environmental protection policies consistent with scientific knowledge.
In particular, it is urgent to combat pollution where it occurs, according to the indications of the best science. In this regard, the delay with which the wealth of knowledge made available by the world of research is used to reduce the anthropogenic pollutant emissions widely present in both continental and marine environmental systems is deplorable.
But we must be aware that CARBON DIOXIDE IS ITSELF NOT A POLLUTANT. On the contrary, it is indispensable for life on our planet.
In recent decades, a thesis has spread that the heating of the Earth’s surface of around 0.9°C observed from 1850 onwards would be anomalous and caused exclusively by human activities, in particular by the emission of CO2 from the use of fossil fuels in the atmosphere.
This is the thesis of anthropogenic global warming [Anthropogenic Global Warming] promoted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations, whose consequences would be environmental changes so serious as to fear enormous damage in an imminent future, unless drastic and costly mitigation measures are immediately adopted.
In this regard, many nations of the world have joined programs to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and are pressured by a intense propaganda to adopt increasingly burdensome programs whose implementation involves heavy burdens on the economies of the individual member states and depend on climate control and, therefore, the “rescue” of the planet.
Human-caused warming not proved
However, the anthropogenic origin of global warming IS AN UNPROVEN HYPOTHESIS, deduced only from some climate models, that is complex computer programs, called General Circulation Models .
On the contrary, the scientific literature has increasingly highlighted the existence of a natural climatic variability that the models are not able to reproduce.
The scientific literature has increasingly highlighted the existence of a natural climatic variability that the models are not able to reproduce.
This natural variability explains a substantial part of global warming observed since 1850.
The anthropogenic responsibility for climate change observed in the last century is therefore UNJUSTIFIABLY EXAGGERATED and catastrophic predictions ARE NOT REALISTIC.
The climate is the most complex system on our planet, so it needs to be addressed with methods that are adequate and consistent with its level of complexity.
Climate simulation models do not reproduce the observed natural variability of the climate and, in particular, do not reconstruct the warm periods of the last 10,000 years. These were repeated about every thousand years and include the well-known Medieval Warm Period , the Hot Roman Period, and generally warm periods during the Optimal Holocene period.
These PERIODS OF THE PAST HAVE ALSO BEEN WARMER THAN THE PRESENT PERIOD, despite the CO2 concentration being lower than the current, while they are related to the millennial cycles of solar activity. These effects are not reproduced by the models.
It should be remembered that the heating observed since 1900 has actually started in the 1700s, i.e., at the minimum of the Little Ice Age , the coldest period of the last 10,000 years (corresponding to the millennial minimum of solar activity that astrophysicists call Maunder Minimal Solar ). Since then, solar activity, following its millennial cycle, has increased by heating the earth’s surface.
Furthermore, the models fail to reproduce the known climatic oscillations of about 60 years.
These were responsible, for example, for a warming period (1850-1880) followed by a cooling period (1880-1910), a heating (1910-40), a cooling (1940-70) and a a new warming period (1970-2000) similar to that observed 60 years earlier.
El Niño oscillations explain recent ‘climate change’
The following years (2000-2019) saw not the increase predicted by the models of about 0.2 ° C [two one-hundredths of a degree]per decade, but a substantial climatic stability that was sporadically interrupted by the rapid natural oscillations of the equatorial Pacific ocean, known as the El Nino Southern Oscillations , like the one that led to temporary warming between 2015 and 2016.
The media also claim that extreme events, such as hurricanes and cyclones, have increased alarmingly. Conversely, these events, like many climate systems, have been moderated since the aforementioned 60-year cycle.
For example, if we consider the official data from 1880 on tropical Atlantic cyclones that hit North America, they appear to have a strong 60-year oscillation, correlated with the Atlantic Ocean’s thermal oscillation called Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation .
The peaks observed per decade are compatible with each other in the years 1880-90, 1940-50 and 1995-2005. From 2005 to 2015 the number of cyclones decreased precisely following the aforementioned cycle. Thus, in the period 1880-2015, between number of cyclones (which oscillates) and CO2 (which increases monotonically) there is no correlation.
The climate system is not yet sufficiently understood. Although it is true that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, according to the IPCC itself the climate sensitivity to its increase in the atmosphere is still extremely uncertain.
It is estimated that a doubling of the concentration of atmospheric CO2, from around 300 ppm pre-industrial to 600 ppm, can raise the average temperature of the planet from a minimum of 1° C to a maximum of 5° C.
This uncertainty is enormous.
‘Climate sensitivity’ much lower than IPCC models
In any case, many recent studies based on experimental data estimate that the climate sensitivity to CO2 is CONSIDERABLY LOWER than that estimated by the IPCC models.
Then, it is scientifically unrealistic to attribute to humans the responsibility for warming observed from the past century to today. The advanced alarmist forecasts, therefore, are not credible, since they are based on models whose results contradict the experimental data.
All the evidence suggests that these MODELS OVERESTIMATE the anthropogenic contribution and underestimate the natural climatic variability, especially that induced by the sun, the moon, and ocean oscillations.
Finally, the media convey the message that, with regard to the human cause of current climate change, there is an almost unanimous consensus among scientists that the scientific debate would be closed.
However, first of all we must be aware that the scientific method dictates that the facts, and not the number of adherents, make a conjecture a consolidated scientific theory .
In any case, the same alleged consensus DOES NOT EXIST. In fact, there is a remarkable variability of opinions among specialists – climatologists, meteorologists, geologists, geophysicists, astrophysicists – many of whom recognize an important natural contribution to global warming observed from the pre-industrial period and even from the post-war period to today.
There have also been petitions signed by thousands of scientists who have expressed dissent with the conjecture of anthropogenic global warming.
These include the one promoted in 2007 by the physicist F. Seitz, former president of the American National Academy of Sciences, and the one promoted by the Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), whose 2009 report concludes that “Nature, not the activity of Man governs the climate.”
In conclusion, given the CRUCIAL IMPORTANCE THAT FOSSIL FUELS have for the energy supply of humanity, we suggest that they should not adhere to policies of uncritically reducing carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere with THE ILLUSORY PRESENCE OF CONTROLLING THE CLIMATE.
To read the petition in its original Italian, click here.