Think again

[caption id="attachment_278" align="alignright" width="133" caption="Timothy Ball, PhD"][/caption]

According to Professor Timothy "Tim" Ball, one of Canada's first PhD holders in Climatology and pioneer of reconstructing the past climates, global warming doesn't exist. But few people believed it. Professor Tim Ball knows why.

"I think it may be because most people don't understand the scientific method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," Prof. Tim Ball said. "A scientist makes certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law."

Professor Tim Ball belongs to the camp of "heretics" in the climate change debate. Although some would call him and his ilk as "skeptics", "heretics" is more fitting a term. Like the heretics in the past centuries, he is met with disdain and damnation for challenging scientific dogma. The scientific dogma being that global warming exists; that CO2 causes it; and that we should act swiftly before it's too late.

For espousing views that contradict the popular notion, he is scoffed at.  "I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as libellous, from an academic colleague,saying I had no right to say what I was saying, especially in public lectures," Prof. Tim Ball said.

Yet he stood by what he believed is based on facts. Whether you "Believe it or not," Dr. Tim Ball said, "Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2)."

The heretics' views on global warming

Much of the hot (pun fully intended) rhetoric on global warming comes from Al Gore, a former Vice President of USA and now Nobel Laureate on Peace. Citing evidences spurred over the years by various scientists, Al Gore contends that the warming of the earth  is caused by the unprecedented rise of CO2 in the atmosphere.

But from the least publicized views of certain "heretics", the notion that CO2 caused global warming has been thought of as fundamentally flawed. Where Al Gore contends CO2 as the driver of global warming, these "heretics" contend otherwise.

In a video posted at YouTube, Al Gore was pitted against some of the climatologists who hold views opposite to Al Gore's. Here's what they say:

Prof. Ian Clark (Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa): If we look at climate from the geological timeframe, we would never suspect CO2 is a major climate driver.

We can't say that CO2 would drive climate. It certainly never did in the past.

Piers Corbyn (Climate Forecaster, Weather Action): None of the major climate changes in the last thousand years can be explained by CO2.

Prof. Patrick Michaels (IPCC & Dept. of Environmental Science, University of Virginia): Anyone who goes around and says that CO2 is responsible for most of the warming of 2oth century hasn't looked at the basic numbers.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="286" caption="The time series shows the combined global land and marine surface temperature record from 1856 to 2001. Data from Jones et al., 1998; and from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (www.cru.uea.ac.uk; compilation by Phil Jones). Source: Earthguide"][/caption]

In the past hundred fifty years, the temperature has risen just over half of degrees celsius. But the strange thing is most of that lies in the early decades of the 20th century--between 1905 and 1940 when industrial production was still...on its mold. At 1940, as industry expanded, for some reason, the world cooled.

Prof. Syun-Ichi Akasofu (Director, International Arctic Research Center): CO2 began to increase exponentially in about 1940. But temperature actually began to decrease in 1940 and continue to about 1975...When the CO2 is increasing rapidly and yet the temperature is decreasing, then we can not say that CO2 and temperature go together.

Dr. Tim Ball (Former Professor of Climatology, University of Winnipeg): Temperature went up significantly up to 1940 when human production of CO2 was relatively low. And then in the post-war years when industry and the whole economies of the world really got going and human production of CO2 just soared, the global temperature was going down. In other words, the facts didn't fit the theory (CO2 caused global warming).

There have now been several major ice core surveys. Every one of them shows the same thing: the temperature rises or falls, then after a few hundred years CO2 follows.

Dr. Tim Ball (Former Professor of Climatology, University of Winnipeg): The ice-cold record goes to the very heart of the problem we have here. It said, if the CO2 increases in the atmosphere, as a greenhouse gas, then the temperature will go up. But the ice core record shows exactly the opposite. So the fundamental assumption--the most fundamental assumption of the whole theory of climate change to the humans--is shown to be wrong.

As it said towards the end of the video, THEY DEBATE, YOU DECIDE.