Dr Tim Ball and Tom Harris: Record Cold Forces Rethink on Global Warming

Headlines around the world are reporting exceptionally frigid conditions and unusually high levels of snowfall in recent weeks. They tout these events as records, but few people understand how short the record actually is -- usually less than 50 years, a mere instant in Earth’s 4.6-billion year history. The reality is that, when viewed in a wider context, there is nothing unusual about current weather patterns.

Despite this fact, the media -- directly, indirectly, or by inference -- often attribute the current weather to global warming. Yes, they now call it climate change. But that is because activists realized, around 2004, that the warming predicted by the computer models on which the scare is based was not actually happening. Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels continued to increase, but the temperature stopped increasing. So, the evidence no longer fit the theory. English biologist Thomas Huxley commented on this dilemma over a century ago:  "The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."

Yet, the recent weather is a stark reminder that a colder world is a much greater threat than a warmer one. While governments plan for warming, all the indications are that the world is cooling. And, contrary to the proclamations of climate activists, every single year more people die from the cold than from the heat.

A study in British medical journal The Lancet reached the following conclusion:

Cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather, according to an international study analyzing over 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries.

How did this bizarre situation develop? It was a deliberate, orchestrated deception. The results of the investigation of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were deliberately premeditated to focus on the negative impacts of warming. In their original 1988 mandate from the UN, global warming is mentioned three times, while cooling is not mentioned even once. The UN notes that:

Continued growth in atmospheric concentrations of "greenhouse" gases could produce global warming with an eventual rise in sea levels, the effects of which could be disastrous for mankind if timely steps are not taken at all levels.

This narrow focus was reinforced when the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a body the IPCC is required to support, defined climate change as being caused by human activity.

When Is a Climate Model 'Useful'?

IPCC Working Group 1 (WG1) produced the evidence that human-created CO2 was causing global warming. That finding became the premise for Working Group 2 (WG2), which examined the negative impact, and Working Group 3 (WG3), which proposed mitigation policies and actions to stop the warming. The IPCC did not follow the mandatory scientific method of allowing for the null hypothesis; namely, what to do if evidence shows CO2 is not causing warming.

As MIT professor emeritus of atmospheric meteorology Richard Lindzen said, they reached a consensus before the research even began. The consensus “proved” the hypothesis was correct, regardless of the evidence. To reinforce the point, the UK government hired Lord Nicholas Stern, a British economist, to produce an economic review of the impact of warming. Instead of doing a normal cost/benefit analysis as any non-political economist would do, he produced what became known as the 2006 Stern Review -- which only examined the cost.

If Stern and the IPCC did a proper study, they would find that the impact of cooling is much more deleterious to all life on Earth, especially humans. Anthropologists tell us two great advances in human evolution gave us more control of the cold. Fire and clothing both created microclimates that allowed us to live in regions normally inaccessible. Consider the city of Winnipeg, with three technological umbilical cords: the electricity from the north, the gas from the west, and the water pipeline from the east. Three grenades set off at 2:00 a.m. on a January morning with temperatures of -30°C would render the city frozen solid within hours.

Between 1940 and 1980, global temperatures went down. The consensus by 1970 was that global cooling was underway and would continue. Lowell Ponte’s 1976 book The Cooling typified the alarmism:

It is cold fact: the global cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species.

Change the seventh word to warming, and it is the same threat heard today. The big difference is that cooling is a much greater threat. To support that claim, the CIA produced at least two reports examining the social and political unrest aggravated mainly by crop failure due to cooling conditions. The World Meteorological Organization also did several studies on the historical impact of cooling on selected agricultural regions, and projected further global cooling.

The sad part about all this is that there was a strategy that governments could, and should, have adopted. It is called game theory, and it allows you to make the best decision in uncertain circumstances. It requires accurate information and the exclusion of a biased political agenda. The first accurate information is that cold is a greater threat and a more difficult adaptation than to warming. After all, if you prepare for warming, as most governments are now doing, and it cools, the problems are made ten times worse. However, if you prepare for cold and it warms, the adjustment is much easier.

The current cold weather across much of the world should prompt us to re-examine climate realities -- not the false, deceptive, and biased views created and promoted by deep state bureaucrats through their respective governments.

Dr. Tim Ball is an environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba. Tom Harris is executive director of the Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition. This article was first published HERE.