“Global warming is more likely to improve rather than harm human health,” according to a new study published by three non-profit climate research organizations. Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report directly challenges findings of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which publishes regular assessment reports used by governments worldwide, including our own, to form public environmental policy. The 430-page report includes data largely ignored by IPCC.
Editors of the study conclude anthropogenic (manmade) greenhouse gases (GHG) “are not playing a substantial role” in global temperature increases during the past century, contrary to IPCC claims that human activities are to blame. They acknowledge that rising levels of GHG certainly contribute to climate change, but they find natural sources to be the main cause. Furthermore, the authors hail this as a harbinger of good things to come, explaining “the net effect of continued warming and rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere is most likely to be beneficial to humans, plants and wildlife.”
A press release promoting the report points out the IPCC is “already under severe criticism for violating the requirements of academic peer review and relying on secondary sources.” Climate Change Reconsidered presents major peer-reviewed scientific evidence refuting UN claims.
One key finding is evidence that IPCC climate models used to estimate warming fail to include several important environmental variables and therefore routinely over-estimate results. The report finds no proof to back up IPCC hysteria that blames CO2 for melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels, disastrous changes in ocean circulation, or calamitous differences in precipitation patterns and river flows.
In fact, the report staunchly defends positive effects of carbon dioxide. “More CO2 promotes more plant growth both on land and throughout the surface waters of the world’s oceans,” the authors explain. “This vast assemblage of plant life… [tends] to counteract the heating effects of CO2‘s thermal radiative forcing.” Ecological effects include increasing crop yields, improving adaptive responses of aquatic life, and health benefits for both people and animals.
The study also reveals Earth’s average temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period, which spanned the prosperous 10th to 13th centuries, were warmer than current temperatures even though there was 28 percent less atmospheric CO2 then. And it predicts more weather-related prosperity. “Even in worst-case scenarios, mankind will be much better off in the year 2100 than it is today, and therefore able to adapt to whatever challenges climate change presents.”
Three organizations sponsored Climate Change Reconsidered: The Heartland Institute, The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change,and the Science and Environmental Policy Project. The main authors are Craig D. Idso, Ph.D., editor of the online magazine CO2 Science, marine geologist Robert M. Carter, Ph.D., a research professor at Australia’s James Cook University, and atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer, Ph.D., who was the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service. Eight other climate researchers contributed to the study. The team is already working on a follow-up volume due for publication in 2013.
The full report is available here at the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) website.
