The European Journal

100 REASONS WHY GLOBAL WARMING IS NATURAL

I hope my '100 Reasons' report goes some way to challenging the message of the climate change alarmists - I am glad to see the Daily Express runs an article on the report on the front cover today, in '100 REASONS WHY GLOBAL WARMING IS NATURAL', and in the Telegraph, Climate change is 'natural not man-made'.

100 Reasons why the ‘ Copenhagen ’ Governments and other proponents of “man-made” Global Warming theory of Climate Change are completely wrong

In compiling this assessment, I am grateful to the real hard-working academic researchers and professors; the integrity and arguments of Roger Helmer MEP; the ‘Friends of Science’ organisation for providing facts and myths on climate change; the United States organisation, ‘No Cap-and-Trade Coalition’; for the detailed research by Dr. Singer in his editing of the report, ‘Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate’, (The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change), published by The Heartland Institute in 2008 and also his report with Dr. Idso, ‘Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)’, also published by the Heartland Institute in 2009, where many of the central arguments are drawn from. Also, the work and insights by Lord Monckton of Brenchley’s report ‘Climategate: C au ght Green-handed! Cold facts about the hot topic of global temperature change after the Climategate Scandal’, Science & Public Policy Institute, 2009 have been useful. I have attempted to credit all other researchers and organisations in the content of the report. Other valuable papers include Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner in Executive Intelligence Review, 22 June 2007 and John McLean’s paper ‘The IPCC can’t count its “expert scientists”: Author and reviewer numbers are wrong’ in January 2009, all of which I have used to compile my pamphlet.

1. Politicians and activists say we must tackle global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there is no real scientific proof that the current warming is c au sed by the rise of greenhouse gases resulting from human activity.

2. Why should politicians devote our scarce resources in a globally competitive world to a false and ill-defined problem, whilst ignoring the real problems the entire planet faces, such as: extreme poverty, hunger, disease or terrorism.

3. Politicians and activists say we must tackle global warming, pointing to rising sea levels but the ongoing rise in the sea level does not depend on short-term temperature changes, and in any case the rate of sea-level increases has been steady since the last ice age 10,000 years ago.

4. Activists and dubious “scientists” provide ice core proof of how warming over the centuries has been accompanied by raised CO2 levels, but as Professor Ian Clark, an expert in Palaeoclimatology from the University of Ottawa, and other scientists have claimed, warmer periods of the earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.

5. For activists, global warming is accompanied by raised CO2 levels but after World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions – while global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.

6. As Philip Stott, Emeritus Professor of Biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and many other scientists have said, climate change is too complicated to be c au sed by just one factor, whether CO2 or clouds. Stott said: “The system is too complex to say exactly what the effect of cutting back on CO2 production would be or indeed of continuing to produce CO2.”

7. It is a myth that the “hockey stick” graph (used by the UN’s IPCC) proves that the earth has experienced a steady, very gradual temperature increase for 1000 years, then recently began a sudden increase, bec au se significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time. It is known that the Medieval Warm Period, from around 1000 to1200 AD was followed by a period known as the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the 17th Century the “average global temperature” has been rising at the low steady rate, although from 1940 – 1970 temperatures actually dropped, which some will recall led to a “Global Cooling” scare.

8. A proper analysis of ice core records from the past 650,000 years demonstrates that temperature increases have come before, and not resulted from, increases in CO2 by hundreds of years, which is an indication that ocean warming is an important source of the rise in atmospheric CO2.

9. Since the c au se of global warming is mostly natural, then there is in actual fact very little we can do about it. (We are still not able to control the sun).

10. As Peter Lilley MP stated in the House of Commons on 5th November 2009, “…fewer people in Britain than in any other country believe in the importance of global warming. That is despite the fact that our Government and our political class—predominantly—are more committed to it than their counterparts in any other country in the world.” There is no genuine belief in man-made global warming theory bec au se it simply does not add up.

11. The United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which created a statement on scientific unanimity on climate change and man-made global warming, was exposed as seriously troubled when new information was released (under threat from Freedom of Information legislation), demonstrating that substantial numbers of the panel of 2,500 climate scientists had serious concerns, which the Panel rejected as it publicly claimed to have formed a “consensus”. There was no such agreement. There was serious dissent.

12. A computer hacker released a number of files and e-mails from the University of East Anglia ’s Climate Research Unit (CRU), a Unit which works closely with a handful of other meteorological institutes around the world, which details the source of the basic temperature data that underpins the “science” of global warming. The evidence from this episode demonstrated that the small group of scientists, with some associations to the IPCC, had been manipulating the essential data, applying “adjustments” to create or exaggerate warming trends. They are now the subject of an inquiry. This is the exclusive data on which the modern global warming hypothesis rests.

13. The United Kingdom ’s Met Office has been forced this year to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by revelations about the data. Their new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.

14. Politicians and activists push for renewable energy sources such as wind turbines under the rhetoric of climate change, but it is essentially about money – under the system of Renewable Obligations Certificates (ROCs), wind companies can sell their energy at an almost guaranteed price. Much of the money is paid for by consumers in electricity bills. It amounts to £1 billion a year, and Ofgem calculates that it will amount to about £4 billion by 2020.

15. The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had tampered with their own data so as to conceal inconsistencies and errors.

16. The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had campaigned for the removal of a learned journal’s editor, solely bec au se he did not share their willingness to debase science for political purposes.

17. The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had mounted a venomous public campaign of disinformation and denigration of their scientific opponents via a website that they had expensively created.

18. Even the head of Britain ’s Climate Change watchdog has predicted that households will need to spend up to £15,000 on a full energy efficiency makeover if the Government is to meet its ambitious targets for cutting carbon emissions in response to nonsensical climate change targets.

19. A healthy public relations collusion between politicians across the globe spread the message that 4,000 IPCC scientists believed in global warming, when actually there were only c. 3,750 people, and when we remove the duplications and the total number of au thors plus reviewers, it drops from 3,750 to 2,890, and when we consider that in about 25% of the cases, the editors rejected the suggestions, then there is even less. In fact, we eventually get to the predicament in which 53 au thors and seven favourable reviewers make up a total of 60 people who explicitly supported the claim made by the IPCC that global warming represents a threat to the planet. That is one scientist for every two countries.

20. In pursuit of the global warming rhetoric, wind farms will do very little to nothing to reduce CO2 emissions.

21. While the wind power industry argues that there are “no direct subsidies”, this form of power involves a total subsidy of as much as £60 per MWh, which falls directly on electricity consumers. The burden on consumers will grow in line with attempts to achieve its targets – as the recent OFGEM report has confirmed.

22. In pursuit of global warming ideology, wind farms have been erected but bec au se wind is unpredictably and continuously variable, wind power requires back-up. Even the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) accepts a figure of 75% back-up is required, making them highly inefficient.

23. In the UK, a group of scientists informed the media that we are “at the top end of IPCC estimates”, and that global temperatures “could increase by 6 degrees”, but the truth is that global temperatures are below the low end of IPCC predictions, and that there is indeed no need for alarmism.

24. The small (+0.7 deg C) increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends. The predictions of the IPCC’s computer models continue to fly in the face of observed data.

25. Professor Plimer – Professor of Geology and Earth Sciences at the University of Adelaide – has provided an au thoritative sketch of 4½ billion years of earth climate history, stating that the idea of taking a single trace gas in the atmosphere, accusing it and finding it guilty of total responsibility for climate change, is an “absurdity” bordering on madness.

26. Throughout the earth’s history, temperatures have often been warmer than today’s climate and CO2 levels have often been higher – more than ten times as high.

27. A Harvard University astrophysicist and geophysicist, Willie Soon, said he is “embarrassed and puzzled” by the shallow science in papers that support the proposition that the earth faces a climate crisis c au sed by global warming.

28. Climate alarmists have raised the concern over acidification of the oceans but Tom Segalstad from Oslo University in Norway , and others, have noted that the composition of ocean water – including CO2, calcium, and water – can actually act as a buffering agent in the acidification of the oceans.

29. The UN’s IPCC computer models of human-c au sed global warming clearly predict the emergence of a “hotspot” in the upper troposphere over the tropics, but former researcher in the Australian Department of Climate Change, David Evans, said that radio temperature data for the upper troposphere actually shows there is no such hotspot.

30. The argument that climate change is a result of anthropogenic global warming is the argument of flat earthers.

31. The aggressive and ideological manner in which US President Barack Obama sidestepped Congress to order emission cuts shows how undemocratic and irrational the entire transnational decision-making process has become with regards to emission-target setting.

32. William Kininmonth, a former head of the National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological Organisation, wrote “the likely extent of global temperature rise from a doubling of CO2 is less than 1C. Such warming is well within the envelope of variation experienced during the past 10,000 years and insignificant in the context of glacial cycles during the past million years, when Earth has been predominantly very cold and covered by extensive ice sheets.”

33. As Canada has shown the world, targets derived from the existing Kyoto commitments were always unrealistic and that didn’t work for the country.

34. News announced by the Met Office asserts we are in the hottest decade since records began but this is precisely what the world should expect if the climate is cyclical, and based on solar and astronomical factors.

35. In the lead up to the Copenhagen summit, David Davis MP rightly said of previous climate summits, at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and Kyoto in 1997 that many had promised greater cuts, but “neither happened”. Are we really continuing along the same lines?

36. The UK ’s environmental policy has a long-term price tag of about £55 billion, before taking into account the impact on its economic growth.

37. The science of what determines the earth’s temperature is in fact far from settled or understood.

38. The UN’s panel on climate change warned that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035 but this is severely inaccurate says a professor at Ontario Trent University , J. Graham Cogley, and he believes, quite rightly, the UN au thors got the date from an earlier report wrong by more than 300 years.

39. In pursuit of hysterical climate change policy, the EU under existing Kyoto obligations has attempted to claim success, while actually increasing emissions by 13 per cent, Lord Lawson has warned. To make it worse, the EU has pursued this scheme by purchasing “offsets” from countries such as China , who it has paid billions of dollars to destroy atmospheric pollutants, such as CFC-23, which they had manufactured purely in order to be destroyed. The EU emissions trading scheme itself has been a complete failure.

40. It is claimed that the average global temperature was relatively unchanging in pre-industrial times, has sky-rocketed since 1900, and will increase by several degrees more over the next 100 years (as stated under the Mann et al. “hockey stick” curve) but the Mann et al. curve has been exposed as a statistical contrivance. There is no convincing empirical evidence that past climate was unchanging, nor that 20th century changes in average global temperature were unusual or unnatural.

41. Michael Mann of Penn State University has shown that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age do in fact exist, which contrasts with his earlier work that produced the now infamous hockey stick graph that showed a constant temperature over the past thousand years or so and a recent dramatic upturn.

42. The globe’s current approach to climate change in which major industrialised countries agree to nonsensical targets for their CO2 emissions by a given date – as it has been under the Kyoto system – is very expensive and has no bearing on political realities.

43. The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had emailed one another about using a “trick” for the sake of concealing a “decline” in temperatures in the paleoclimate.

44. The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had expressed dismay at the fact that, contrary to all of their predictions, global temperatures had not risen in any statistically-significant sense for 15 years, and had been falling for nine years. They had admitted that their inability to explain it was “a travesty”. This internal doubt was in contrast to their public statements that the present decade is the warmest ever and that “global warming” science is settled.

45. The world “warmed” by 0.07 +/- 0.07 degrees C from 1999 to 2008, not the 0.20 degrees C expected by the IPCC.

46. The IPCC predicts that a warmer planet will lead to more extreme weather (including drought, flooding, storms, snow, and wildfires), but the last century – during which the IPCC claims the world experienced more rapid warming than any time in the past two millennia – did not experience significantly greater trends in any of these extreme weather events.

47. The IPCC says “it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increase of tropical sea surface temperatures” but despite the supposed global warming of the twentieth century, there has been no increase in the intensity or frequency of tropical cyclones globally or in any of the specific oceans.

48. In explaining the average temperature standstill we are currently experiencing, the Met Office Hadley Centre ran a series of computer climate predictions all of which had programmed into them the 0.20 deg C long-term IPCC trend and found that in many of the computer runs there were decade-long standstills but none for 15 years – so it expects global warming to resume swiftly!

49. Richard S. Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has written “The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well.”

50. Despite the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’s status as the flagship of the fight against climate change, it has been a failure.

51. In pursuit of an appalling European climate change policy, the first phase of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which ran from 2005 to 2007 was a failure. Huge over-allocation of permits to pollute led to a collapse in the price of carbon from €33 to just €0.20 per tonne, meaning that the system did not reduce emissions at all. And the second phase, from 2008-2012, is likely to fail too.

52. In pursuit of climate change policy, the EU trading scheme, which has completely failed, actually allows European businesses to duck out of making their emissions reductions at home by offsetting – which means paying for cuts to be made overseas instead.

53. To date “cap and trade” carbon markets have done almost nothing to reduce emissions.

54. In the United States , the cap-and-trade is an approach designed to control carbon emissions and will impose huge costs upon American citizens. It will impose a carbon tax on all goods and services produced in the United States . The average family of four can expect to pay an additional $1700 or more each year. It is predicted that the United States will lose more than 2 million jobs as the result of cap-and-trade schemes.

55. Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has indicated in a presentation of his research that out of the 21 climate models tracked by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the differences in warming exhibited by those models is mostly the result of different strengths of positive cloud feedback – and that increasing CO2 is insufficient to explain global-average warming in the last 50 to 100 years.

56. Ice-core data clearly show that temperatures change centuries before concentrations of atmospheric CO2 change. Thus, there appears to be little evidence for insisting that changes in concentrations of CO2 are the c au se of past temperature and climate change.

57. There are no experimentally verified processes explaining how CO2 concentrations can fall in a few centuries without falling temperatures – to the contrary, it is changing temperatures which c au se changes in CO2 concentrations, which is consistent with experiments that show CO2 is the atmospheric gas most readily absorbed by water.

58. The last warm period ended less than 800 years ago and when thorough researchers compare and contrast these climate changes with changes in civilization and human standards, it is generally concluded that warm periods are beneficial to mankind and cold periods harmful.

59. Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere can be shown not only to have a negligible effect on the earth’s many ecosystems, but in some cases to be a positive help to many organisms.

60. Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels are our best hope of raising crop yields to feed an ever-growing population.

61. Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels of some so-called “greenhouse gases” may be contributing to higher oxygen levels and global cooling, not warming.

62. The biggest climate change ever experienced on earth did not take place recently but actually took place around 700 million years ago.

63. Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas, unlike water vapour which is tied to climate concerns, and which we can’t even pretend to control.

64. Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, today’s CO2 concentration of around 385 ppm is very low compared to most of the earth’s history – we actually live in a carbon-deficient atmosphere.

65. How can politicians insist on global warming when the slight increase in temperature which has been observed since 1900 is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term natural climate cycles, or even that in the last ten years, the earth has cooled slightly?

66. In line with climate change activist’s wishes, the Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy contains a massive increase in electricity generation by wind power and will cost around £4 billion a year over the next twenty years while the benefits will be only £4 to £5 billion overall (not per annum). So costs will outnumber benefits by a range of between eleven and seventeen times. It is claimed by the government that the loss of around £65 billion will be compensated by the “non-monetary benefits”.

67. It is a myth that global temperatures are rising at an unprecedented rate bec au se accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures.

68. Whilst CO2 levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout history, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and the growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years.

69. It is a myth that CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas bec au se greenhouse gases form about 3% of the atmosphere by volume, and so CO2 constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere.

70. It is a myth that computer models verify that CO2 increases will c au se significant global warming bec au se computer models can be made to “verify” anything by changing a great number of input parameters or any of a multitude of negative and positive feedbacks in the program used. In this context, the IPCC predictions do not “prove” anything.

71. It is entirely inconsistent that the United Nations claimed to prove that man-made CO2 c au ses global warming while in a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft stating that “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases” and “No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man–made c au ses”.

72. It is a myth that CO2 is a pollutant, bec au se nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere and human beings could not live in 100% nitrogen either: CO2 is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is and CO2 is essential to life.

73. It is simply not true to claim that global warming will c au se more storms and other weather extremes bec au se, while regional variations may occur, there is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that supports these claims.

74. It is myth that receding glaciers and the calving of ice shelves are proof of global warming given that glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for many centuries. Ice shelves have been breaking off for centuries.

75. It is a falsehood that the earth’s poles are warming; polar ice caps are breaking up and melting and the sea level rising, bec au se that is natural variation and whilst the western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer, due to cyclic events in the Pacific Ocean, we also see that the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder. The main Antarctic continent is actually cooling.

76. The IPCC claims “new evidence suggests that climate-driven extinctions and range retractions are already widespread” and the “projected impacts on biodiversity are significant and of key relevance, since global losses in biodiversity are irreversible (very high confidence)” but those claims are simply not supported by scientific research.

77. The IPCC threat of climate change to the world’s species does not make sense as they have proven to be remarkably resilient to climate change. Most wild species are at least one million years old, which means they have all been through hundreds of climate cycles involving temperature changes similar to or greater than those experienced in the twentieth century.

78. Politicians and climate activists make claims to rising sea levels but the real state of sea levels is not what they have stated. Climate scientists have sought to measure the tide g au ge. Tide g au ging gives different answers for wherever you are in the world. Certain members in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), chose Hong Kong, which has six tide g au ges, and they chose the record of one, which gives a 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level. It is known that this is a subsiding area. It is well known in geological terms that this is the only record which you should not use, but the IPCC has done so.

79. The accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. This eight-year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2. How can CO2 rises bring about global warming?

80. If one factors in for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements show little, if any, global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent). How can CO2 rises bring about global warming?

81. There is strong evidence from solar studies which suggests that the earth’s current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades.

82. Research goes strongly against claims that CO2-induced global warming would c au se catastrophic disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets. In the case of Antarctica , the research actually suggests the opposite: that CO2-induced global warming would tend to buffer the world against such an outcome.

83. The IPCC claims the climate variation due to changes in the solar output since 1750 is smaller than its estimated net anthropogenic contribution. A large body of scientific research suggests the opposite: that it is the sun that is responsible for the greater share of climate change during the past hundred years.

84. The IPCC alleges that “climate change currently contributes to the global burden of disease and premature deaths” and will “increase malnutrition and consequent disorders.” In fact, the overwhelming weight of evidence shows that higher temperatures and rising CO2 levels have played an indispensible role in making it possible to feed a growing global population.

85. The historical increase of the air’s CO2 content has probably helped lengthen human lifespans since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and into the future it will likely provide more of the same benefit.

86. The historical increase in the air’s CO2 content has improved human nutrition by raising crop yields during the past 150 years on the order of 70 percent for wheat, 28 percent for cereals, 33 percent for fruits and melons, 62 percent for legumes, 67 percent for root and tuber crops, and 51 percent for vegetables.

87. The total man-made CO2 emission throughout human history constitutes less than 0.00022 percent of the total CO2 amount naturally degassed from the mantle of the earth during geological history.

88. US President Barack Obama pledged cutting emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, representing a 3-4 percent cut from 1990 levels as he aims to reach a 41 percent reduction by 2030 and 83 percent by 2050. However, target emissions for 2050 will equal those in 1910, when there were 92 million Americans. In 2050, there will be 420 million Americans, so Obama’s promise means that emissions per head will be approximately what they were in 1875. It simply will not happen. The ideology is wrong. The target is delusional.

89. The European Union, whose various 500 million peoples disagree with its emission targets, has already agreed to cut emissions by 20 percent to 2020, compared with 1990 levels, and is willing to increase the target to 30 percent. However, these are unachievable and the EU has already massively failed with its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), as EU emissions actually rose by 0.8 percent from 2005 to 2006 and are known to be well above the Kyoto goal.

90. Australia has stated it wants to slash greenhouse emissions by up to 25 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, but the pledges were so unpopular that the country’s Senate has voted against the carbon trading Bill, and the Opposition’s Party leader has now been ousted by a climate change sceptic.

91. Canada plans to reduce emissions by 20 percent compared with 2006 levels by 2020, representing approximately a 3 percent cut from 1990 levels but it simultaneously defends its Alberta tar-sands emissions and its record as one of the world’s highest per-capita emissions setters. Ottawa is asking that no agreement emerges from the summit which will act as an impediment to its economic growth.

92. India plans to reduce the ratio of emissions to production by 20-25 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2020, but all Government officials insist that since India has to grow for its development and poverty alleviation, it has to emit, bec au se the economy is driven by carbon.

93. It is claimed that during the late 20th Century, the average global temperature increased at a dangerously fast rate and reached a high point of unprecedented magnitude. However, the recent rate of average global temperature rise has been between 1 and 2 degrees C per century, which falls within natural rates of climate change for the last 10,000 years.

94. Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw , Poland published his research that found that a change in earth’s temperature would have more to do with cloud cover and water vapor than CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. He “points out that cloudiness and water vapour [sic] are nearly a hundred times more influential on global temperature variations than all the rest of the greenhouse gases combined. He suggests for example, that if it were possible to double the global CO2 concentration, the effect could be cancelled out by a 1% increase in cloudiness.”

95. One petition by scientists trying to tell the world that the politician’s and media’s portrayal of Global Warming is false was put forward in the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992, from Germany , with 4000 signatures. The Heidelberg Appeal was publicly released at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro . By the end of the 1992 summit, 425 scientists and other intellectual leaders had signed the appeal. Since then, word of mouth has prompted hundreds more scientists to lend their support. Today, more than 4,000 signatories, including 72 Nobel Prize winners, from 106 countries have signed it. Neither a statement of corporate interests nor a denial of environmental problems, the Heidelberg Appeal is a quiet call for reason and a recognition of scientific progress as the solution to, not the c au se of, the health and environmental problems that the globe faces. The Appeal expresses a conviction that modern society is the best equipped in human history to solve the world’s ills, provided that they do not sacrifice science, intellectual honesty, and common sense to political opportunism and irrational fears. The petition was wrongly ignored.

96. Another petition put forward by scientists trying to tell the world about the false portrayal of Global Warming was the Leipzig Declaration in 1996, from Germany with 110 signatures, signed up to a statement claiming that “As independent scientists researching atmospheric and climate problems, we – along with many of our fellow citizens – are apprehensive about the Climate Treaty conference scheduled for Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997” and “based on all the evidence available to us, we cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes and calls for hasty actions.” Again, the petition was wrongly ignored.

97. A petition presented by US scientists trying to tell the world that the Government’s portrayal of Global Warming is false, named the Oregon Petition Project (from California), stated “We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of CO2, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is c au sing or will, in the foreseeable future, c au se catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric CO2 produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.” It has over 31,000 American scientist signatories. Still their voices are ignored.

98. A report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) concludes “We find no support for the IPCC’s claim that climate observations during the twentieth century are either unprecedented or provide evidence of an anthropogenic effect on climate.”

99. Rising CO2 levels increase plant growth and make plants more resistant to drought and pests.

100. Out of the 210 countries that adopted the Kyoto Protocol, only 32 actually ratified it. In May of 2004, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the country’s most prestigious technical institute, published a report concluding that the Kyoto Protocol has no scientific grounding at all.

"SECRET PLAN FOR EURO INCOME TAX"

The Daily Express reports: "SECRET plans to seize more than £4billion a year from Britain and make its citizens pay taxes direct to Europe emerged last night." The European Commission proposes to scrap UK rebate which "would cost every British family at least £155 a year."

Jim McConalogue of the European Foundation is quoted as saying “It is clear from its so-called ‘reform’ agenda that Brussels is committed to the daylight ­robbery of the British taxpayer.” Read the article here.

Ireland's lost powers over arranged marriages, social security benefits and a 30% corporation tax

James McConalogue @ Centre Right: "It has obvious implications for the next UK Government. Where does the UK stand on those laws, before Lisbon and in a post-Lisbon Europe, and its own legislative powers, for example, over arranged marriages, social security benefits and a substantial rise in corporation tax. Brussels plans for financial regulation over the City are already chasing away business from UK shores.

"However, it has more urgent consequences for the Irish people and they must decide for themselves in a pre-referendum Europe. Do they really want to have given away controls over key areas of Irish social and economic policy, which has seemingly lost much of its independence?" Read the post here.

The European Federal Superstate – how much more will its Irish province agree to?

Jim McConalogue @ Centre Right: "The only real difference between Ireland and the other Member States is that Ireland’s great Constitution allows her people to have a say. Bearing in mind the principles the Irish people are reaffirming in this treaty – in moving from a democratic association of European nation-states to the joining of a European federal superstate – the choice in this referendum to a European outsider, with no opportunity for a vote, is obvious." Read the post here.

The EU Referendum cover-up - how Brussels is deceiving the Irish

Jim McConalogue @ Centre Right: "The Irish have no legal guarantees. They have no different Treaty. It is the same Treaty they rejected last year and, with few exceptions, it is the same as the EU Constitution rejected by France and Netherlands in 2005. Where do the Conservatives fit in with all this? More on that to follow..." Read the post here.

The treaty will be dead if there is a No vote in Ireland

Jim McConalogue in The Irish Times writes: "The Czechs, the Poles and the Germans have still not yet ratified – with the first two awaiting the outcome of the Irish referendum and the third, awaiting this new national law before ratifying the treaty.

"The next UK government is also waiting to pounce after Ireland’s vote. If there is a No vote in Ireland, there will be no overall ratification of the treaty by all the EU member-states. Therefore, the treaty would be abandoned. This would mean that the UK’s Conservative Party commitment to a referendum on the treaty, if the ratification process is not completed across the Union, would create intense pressure for a UK referendum. While the UK has already ratified, a Conservative government would undo this by easily winning a No vote in a UK referendum, and withdrawing the UK’s ratification. The treaty will be dead – as it should have been after Ireland first said No." Read the letter here.

EU referendum cover-up

Jim McConalogue in The Irish Democrat writes: "THE EU Summit strategy dealing with Ireland's referendum marked a distinct cover-up for the Irish people in dealing with the Irish No vote. Their way of dealing with it is similar to the Edinburgh Agreement of December 1992, when Denmark changed its No to Maastricht for full Danish opt-outs from some provisions of that Treaty.

"The Irish 'decision' did not previously exist as a formal legal instrument of EU summits. It was invented as a political tool to get around the Danish No to Maastricht in 1992 by the Head of the Council Legal Service, Jean-Claude Piris.

"It is a meaningless way of giving people the feeling of legal certainty - over abortion, neutrality and taxation - which does not exist. It is not any part of the properly ratified EU treaties and even the most minor of changes must only be validated through new ratifications by all 27 member states in their national parliaments.

"The only difference between Ireland and the other member states is that Ireland's great constitution allows her people to have a say."

Lisbon would be bad for workers rights

Michael McLaughlin wrote in the Slugger O'Toole blog: "One of the more genuine civil society groups to emerge from the Trade Unions is The Charter Group. As the names suggests they see the legal status Lisbon proposes for the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the Treaty as a major step forward for workers."

Jim McConalogue from The European Journal replied: I strongly disagree – the Charter Group of trade union activists is arguing for workers to support the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland’s October referendum, but their framework and evidence is perplexing. It has generally put forward the view that Europe has been of enormous benefit to workers and the treaty would further improve workers rights. If you look at the context of this debate, Ireland needs to consider carefully the negative impact Lisbon will have on workers rights.

First, the treaty is a new European Constitution, which by law, will have superiority over the Irish Constitution. If it is accepted, the Irish people will give up their constitutional rights under the Irish Constitution and be subject to very different constitutional arrangements under the European Constitution. This creates a new context – a new European Union, under which workers rights will be placed. Second, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, attached to the treaty, rolls back workers’ rights by failing to include a clause requiring the recognition of trade unions.

Third, ordinary Irish people would be denied their basic rights in the workplace. For example, the European Court of Justice, basing its judgements on the Charter, had recently ruled against Swedish workers’ rights. In the ‘Vaxholm case’, the Latvian company Laval wanted to use Latvian workers in Sweden but would not agree to Swedish pay and conditions. Swedish unions opposed this treatment. The European Court ruled that the union could only act to ensure the Swedish minimum wage was paid and go no further. Other Swedish agreements could not be imposed. It puts pressure on Irish workers to accept minimum wage levels or risk losing their jobs.

At a time when about 450,000 Irish people are unemployed, crushed by cuts, taxes, mortgage payments, on top of public bank-bail-outs, the politicians who brought this upon Ireland are also asking for trust over the issues of workers rights in the treaty.

It is odd, then, that some groups are using those European Court of Justice decisions as evidence for a Yes vote. It is also worth noting that a No vote to Lisbon could be used to obtain a social Protocol which would outlaw these unjust verdicts of the EU Court.

Fourth, Lisbon puts the competition rules of the EU market above the right of Irish trade unions to enforce pay standards higher than the minimum for migrant workers – so whilst it reduces the power of Irish labour, it reinforces the power of migrant workers. The Lisbon treaty allows big business to import cheap labour and undercut Irish workers, in much the same way as it has done in labour disputes in the UK and the Nordic countries.

This comes at a time when Finance Minister Brian Lenihan has said, massive and uncontrolled immigration of EU labour into Ireland helped to cause the economic crash. Overseas workers now make up almost 20% of Ireland’s unemployed.

Fifth, I am glad to note that, in recognition of these aspects of the treaty, the Technical, Electrical and Engineering Union (TEEU) will now be calling for a No vote, stating that its opposition to the policy of the European Court of Justice in interpreting the law in this area was done in “a manner detrimental to the long-term interests of our members”.

In short, Lisbon would be bad for workers rights but it is for the Irish people to decide whether to reject this Treaty again.

Lisbon is not about representing a grand schema of globalisation

David Steven wrote in the Slugger O'Toole blog: "(...) Today’s global challenge recalls the predicament facing the European continent at the beginning of the 20th century. Then, the first period of globalization came to a swift and unexpected end. It took two world wars, and the intervening depression, to put the world back on its feet. The European Union was a response to this devastating failure, fulfilling Churchill’s vision of “a kind of United States of Europe” structured to allow its citizens to “dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom”. Moreover, he said "Now we need the European Union to act once again as a platform for achieving security and prosperity (...)" According to David Steven "Lisbon’s most important reforms will begin to sort out Europe’s ability to interact with and influence the rest of world."

Jim McConalogue from The European Journal replied: Lisbon is not about representing a grand schema of globalisation – if anything it is a regional protectionist arrangement which has closed out developing country markets for decades, particularly through the Common Agricultural Policy. Lisbon will do nothing to help this situation and will only make it worse.

You quote Churchill but his exact words were “We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not combined. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed.” He meant that states be democratically associated, and not absorbed into one superstate. Lisbon is a treaty for the absorption into a European federal superstate. Ireland must of course decide for itself, but Lisbon is a dangerous step towards an enhanced European superstate-building project.