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Friday, August 04, 2006
Letters Editor, National Post
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Re: Mann-made global warming, Allan M.R. MacRae, Aug 2
Dear Editor,
Allan MacRae’s characterization of the Wegman Report as a “scathing rebuttal of Michael Mann’s hockey-stick graph” inadvertently under cuts the importance of the report. The report is available at; http://energycommerce.house.gov/.
Rather than being “scathing”, the report reveals a very sober and serious review of the methodology used to construct Mann’s temperature estimate for the Northern Hemisphere. The authors conclude that “our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis”.
This has very little to do with technical aspects of the debate over recent alleged anthropogenic global warming. It does have a lot to do with the credibility of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). How many more of the climate change projections proffered by the IPCC are of similarly dubious quality, relevance and significance?
Over the past 15 years, our government has placed near total faith in the IPCC as the sole source of information on climate change. This confidence, as well as paraphrasing of the IPCC’s assertion that; “the 1990s are likely to have been the warmest decade of the millennium in the Northern Hemisphere and 1998 is likely to have been the warmest year”, can easily be found on Environment Canada’s website. For example, I refer readers to a “fact sheet” titled Greenhouse Gases, Climate Change and the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
It is indeed past time for Canada to stand up and soberly and seriously re-consider the significance of climate change projections established by the IPCC and the merit, if any, of the Kyoto Protocol as a means of managing the greenhouse gases said to be the cause.
Yours truly,
Duane Pendergast