891 ABC Mornings programme with David Bevan and Matthew Abraham...

891 ABC

Mornings programme

with David Bevan and Matthew Abraham


9.21 am


DR DAVID EVANS

Former consultant to the Greenhouse Office (now Office of Climate Change)

(Proofed)

ANNOUNCER:

Read an interesting article in the Australian last week. These are the words that stuck out, “I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model – FULCAM – that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol in the land use change and forestry sector.” And this fellah went on to say that when he started that job in 1999, it was a great job. Everybody was really excited, they were properly resourced and they thought they were saving the planet. Now he’s not so sure. Dr David Evans is a former consultant with the Greenhouse Office, the author of that article in the Australian and he joins us now. Good morning David Evans.





EVANS:

Good morning.



ANNOUNCER:

Can you explain to our listeners how you had this – well, was it a road to Damascus conversion? Or- what’s gone on, in your thinking, over the issue of greenhouse gases over the last few years.



EVANS

Well, when I started the job in ’99, the evidence that greenhouse gases, and particularly carbon emissions, caused global warming was fairly good. At that stage, as exhibited in Al Gore’s movie, we knew that from the old ice core data, that in previous warmings over the last half a million years, temperature and carbon moved in lockstep. So we assumed that carbon was causing the temperature rises. Since 1998 or so, the science has changed a fair bit. Unfortunately the public and the decision makers are still caught back in the pre-1998 situation. First of all, the new ice core data that came through from about 1998 through to 2003 was a high resolution and the data points were only a couple of hundred years apart, instead of a couple of thousand years apart, and that new ice core data shows that the rise in temperature preceded the rise in carbon dioxide by, on average, about 800 years. So we know that the temperature rises cause the CO2 rises, not the other way round as previously assumed. Now, if you look carefully at Al Gore’s movie, you’ll find that’s the only evidence offered for why carbon emissions cause global warming. He shows lots of evidence that global warming’s occurring, but that’s the only evidence he offered for the causes – that carbon emissions cause global warming. And it gets worse than that. Turns out that there is no other evidence, and by evidence you mean that someone saw something on a particular date or there was some observations made that implicated or implied that carbon emissions cause global warming. The case that carbon emissions cause global warming is now entirely theoretical and it’s all driven by computer models and computer models and theory aren’t evidence. But it’s worse than that - something else happened. By 2006 we had a new result. You see, each cause of global warming heats the atmosphere in a different pattern, a so-called signature. The pattern for increased greenhouse warming, which would be what you’d get if you had carbon emissions causing global warming, would be an increase in the heat above the tropics at about eight to 12 kilometres up. That is to say, you’d get a hot spot there. Now, people have been looking for several decades now sending up radio sones - which are weather balloons with thermometers attached - into that region, to try and detect the hot spot. They never found it. In fact, they’re quite sure that it isn’t there. So, by 2006, we had the result that the hot spot is missing. The signature of increased greenhouse warming is missing, and therefore, we know that carbon emissions aren’t the main cause of the recent global warming.



ANNOUNCER:

Is there any doubt that the planet is warming up?



EVANS:

Uh, depends when exactly you’re talking about. You see, the planet warms up and cools down sort of like weather on a long scale, it’s always happening. Now, it’s certainly warmed up most of last century and there was a strong warming trend from about 1975 up to about 2001. Now 1998 was a very hot year, there was an El Nino event there which tends to heat the planet a little and the warming trend continued to through the end of 2001. But the satellite data, the satellite global temperature data since 2001, shows that the global temperature has been flat and maybe even dropping a little since then.



ANNOUNCER:

There was a spike in about 2005, but the trend line since 2001 has been down.



EVANS:

Slightly, yeah.



ANNOUNCER:

Yeah. So, a slight cooling of the planet?



EVANS:

Uh, it’s not really worth talking – describing – about it. It is a little cooling but you’re sort of looking for major events and long trends in this sort of game. So, you know, anything that only lasts a few months or a year doesn’t really count very much.



ANNOUNCER:

Well, should we read anything into the temperature of the planet stabilising in the last few years? Perhaps dipping a little?



EVANS:

Yeah. Yeah, for instance, since 2001, you’ve got carbon emissions continuing at their- well, accelerating. You’ve got the carbon dioxide levels continuing to increase at their usual pace. Yet the temperature has not gone up.



ANNOUNCER:

Now, you’re saying, also here, that actually measuring temperatures, the world’s temperature – um, land based temperature readings – it’s a bit like having a big telescope near a major city – you get light pollution.



EVANS:

Oh, it’s worse than that. The way you measure it using a land based system is you put a thermometer in a small box. The box is there to shade the thermometer. You usually put it in a pole so that it’s about five feet off the ground and easier to read (inaudible) and you pop this – you know, there’s a reading station somewhere out in the countryside. And these thermom- these temperature reading stations have been placed all over the world, mainly in western countries. They’ve been there for decades. The problem is, though, they were put there usually a few decades ago on the outskirts of the city, because that was convenient. But the cities have grown in the mean time. And so the micro climate around these thermometers has often changed. Someone has put a road nearby or a footpath or a house, or, in some cases, you can find cases where an air conditioning outlet is only a couple of meters away from a thermometer. And obviously this is affecting the readings. Another problem is too that the rural network of these land based thermometers largely disappeared due to funding cuts and so we’ve got the situation now that the land based thermometers are heavily corrupted by the urban heat island effect.



ANNOUNCER:

So, we should be relying on satellites?



EVANS:

Well, we can trust the satellites because they take broad sways of data across the planet, except the polar regions, 24/7, round and round they go, and they just measure the same thing all the time.



ANNOUNCER:

And what are the satellites telling us?



EVANS:

They’re telling us the temperatures have been flat or slightly down since 2001.



ANNOUNCER:

We’re talking to David Evans. He’s a former consultant with the Australian Greenhouse Office. He says he was a believer, and he’s now a sceptic. David, can you explain your background? What are your qualifications, and do you have any ties to industry that might have a vested interest in questioning the greenhouse proposal?



EVANS:

Yeah, I have vested interests. I worked for the Greenhouse Office and earned a great deal of money from the Australian Government being on the alarmist side. Apart from that, no, I have no vested interests or ties. My background is in mathematics and engineering. I have six degrees, including a PhD from Stanford in electrical engineering. Electrical engineering consists of a lot of signal processing, a lot of computer programming, finding signals, working out feedback, stuff like that – all of which is fairly applicable to understanding the current situation with climate...



ANNOUNCER:

Now, Rosemary of Magill, here on 891 Mornings. If you’ve just tuned in, we’re talking to David Evans, consultant to the Federal Government’s Greenhouse Office, which is now the Office of Climate Change; saying that there is now no credible link between carbon emissions and global warming - on the science. Rosemary of Magill – hello, Rosemary.



CALLER:

…some time ago, there was a programme on television…related to the ice cap of the North Pole…beginning of the twentieth century…ships could actually transverse the ice cap there. So, by that, obviously it wasn’t a solid block of ice like it is now – or melting, as it is now – this has happened in the past. Could you comment on that?



ANNOUNCER:

Dr David Evans?



EVANS:

(inaudible) preface it by saying, I’m an expert on the causes of the global warming, not on evidence for global warming. The extent of the ice caps in the Arctic area is an effect of global warming. We’re not disputing that global warming has occurred. We’re just wondering about the causes of it, because that’s what relevant to the upcoming emissions trading scheme and so on. Yes, in the past, the Northwest Passage has been passable. I understand that a major cause of the melt - the recent melt - in the Arctic is soot from industry and from passing ships. If you put black soot on top of very, very reflective ice, it tends to heat the ice up, because light that was previously reflected is absorbed by the soot and the heat is transferred to the ice. It’s also probably relevant to mention that the ice levels in the Antarctic, down here in the south, are higher than they’ve been for a couple of decades and that the global levels of ice are higher than normal.



ANNOUNCER:

So, are you saying, if you want to save the polar bears, just keep the soot and the pollution away from the ice?



EVANS:

Actually, it’s a serious possibility, yeah.



ANNOUNCER:

David Evans, we’re- we are, however, in a brave new world of emissions trading. We haven’t yet got the final model. We have the discussion paper out there and so there will be a lot of discussion around this. Should we be doing nothing about carbon emissions? Or should we not be confusing carbon emissions with the global warming debate?



EVANS:

Couple of points there. First of all, I don’t claim that carbon emissions have no effect, I’m saying they’re not the main cause of global warming. We know, theoretically, they must have some effect, okay? But it’s fairly minor and that signal is lost in all the noise - the- we know from the lack of the signature that it’s not the main cause. I think we should do a lot further research on climate, on alternate energies, on clean coal; and we should probably plan an emissions trading scheme, but not implement it. I think instead we should wait to see what the big countries do. Wait to see what climate research produces and wait to see whether temperatures resume going up.



ANNOUNCER:

But couldn’t it be too late?



EVANS:

No. No, not really, we know that it’s not a problem.



ANNOUNCER:

Well, why so?



EVANS:

Well, again, we know that the signature’s not there so we know that it’s not carbon emissions that are causing the problem. We can see that the temperatures aren’t going up. So there is no evidence. I mean, what I would like the press and the Opposition to do is simply ask Penny Wong, as the relevant Minister – to ask – to show the evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. We’re about to change our economy radically so as to de-carbonise it. So, obviously, the onus is on the people who wish to do that, to say, well, why? Show us the evidence. But I think you’ll find there is none; there’d be a bit of an embarrassed silence. And remember that models and theory aren’t evidence. They’re just models and theory.



ANNOUNCER:

Adrian of Northfield has called us. We’ve talked with David Evans, a former consultant to what is now the Office of Climate Change. Good morning, Adrian.



CALLER:

….I’ve got a New Scientist mag, a recent one and I’ve become a sceptic as well, as far as carbon….I just want to read this paragraph.... “Oxygen isotopes in shell fragments show that the water around Antarctica 100 million years ago were a balmy 15 degrees.” Now, this is bearing in mind that even at that time Antarctica was still roughly where it is....it was still six months of darkness and six months of light... there was no ice and snow...Federal Government jumping into this too quickly, I think...



ANNOUNCER:

Adrian, thank you. And we have interviewed Penny Wong and we’ll continue to do so, and we’ve interviewed Dr Tim Flannery, recently, has a different view, and we’ll continue to canvass a broad range of views, that’s our responsibility, and Dr David Evans, thank you for bringing us your perspective.



EVANS:

Thank you



(ENDS)