News / Politics
Senator Kerry’s climate statement ‘false in every particular’, says SPPI
Senator Kerry Misfires about Global Warming and National Security, a new critical paper by SPPI, examines the Senator’s seemingly remarkable achievement of getting every fact wrong. The facts and data of the past and the present are more than sufficient to demonstrate that every claim from Senator Kerry and from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is baseless and false. The list includes:
Wilkins Ice Shelf: Senator Kerry said the recent cracking of the thin “ice-bridge” linking the Wilkins Ice Shelf to the Antarctic Ice Shelf was caused by “global warming”. It was not: there has been no statistically-significant “global warming” for almost 15 years.
Arctic ice-cap: Senator Kerry said the Arctic ice-cap would vanish in summer by 2013 because of “global warming”. It will not, and, even if it does, “global warming” will not be the cause: there has been rapid global cooling for very nearly eight years.
Polar bears: Senator Kerry said polar bears were under threat from “global warming”. They are not: their population has increased fivefold since the 1940s, and they survived the last interglacial period 125,000 years ago, when there was no summer ice in the Arctic.
Famine and drought: Senator Kerry said “global warming” would bring more famine and drought. It will not: “global warming”, if and when it resumes, would cause the space occupied by the atmosphere to hold more water vapor, reducing drought globally.
Pandemics: Senator Kerry said “global warming” would cause worse pandemics. It will not: so-called “tropical” diseases can flourish even in Arctic temperatures. It is inadequate public-health measures, not rising global temperatures, that spread supposedly “tropical” diseases.
Natural disasters: Senator Kerry said “global warming” would cause more natural disasters. It will not: hurricane activity is now at its lowest in half a century; and patterns of flood and drought are much as they always were.
Climate refugees: Senator Kerry said “global warming would cause human displacement on “a staggering scale”. It will not: the only significant cause of human displacement would be rapidly-rising sea level, but this is not happening and is not likely to happen.
Middle East water supply: Senator Kerry said “global warming” would shrink the water supply in the Middle East. It will not: water has been scarce there for 1000 years, and warmer weather is already moistening the atmosphere and greening hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of the Sahara.
Asian water supply: Senator Kerry said “global warming” would melt the Himalayan glaciers, drying up the water supply of a quarter of the planet’s population. It will not: it is Eurasian winter snow cover, not the glaciers, that supplies Asia with its water, and that shows no trend in 50 years.
Sea level rising 3 feet: Senator Kerry said “global warming” would raise sea level 3 feet. It will not: sea level rose 8 inches in the 20th century, is currently not rising at all, and will rise by little more than 1 foot in the 21st century.
Robert Ferguson, SPPI President, says: “Senator Kerry and his staff appear locked in a time capsule of out-dated talking points. The supposed ‘threat of catastrophic climate change’ recited by Senator Kerry, is all but non-existent in the scientific literature. The mismatch between the apocalyptic language of Senator Kerry and the scientific evidence from the real world is truly startling.”
The paper concludes that the scientific illiteracy on the part of Senator Kerry and other legislators “is about to have expensive consequences for American taxpayers and for their jobs and their birthright of freedom. It is disturbing that every one of Senator Kerry’s scientific errors invents problems where there are none, or exaggerates harmless climate trends. This suggests the strong possibility that his errors may have been deliberate.”
Read Senator Kerry Misfires about Global Warming and National Security here:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/sen_kerry_misfires.html
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