Tony Orman: Climate Change - a Manipulated Deception?

There was a recent news item in the “Stuff” newspapers titled “Early Humans Were on the Brink of Extinction”. A major researched reason for the threat to humanity 900,000 years ago was “droughts”, i.e. an extreme weather event.

Then I chanced upon a recent u-tube by Neil Oliver a Scottish television presenter, archaeologist, historian and author.  In it he lambasted governments for “feverish blatant fear mongering” about climate change or as it was previously termed global warming. 

            

Neil Oliver then gave examples of extreme weather events that happened long, long before humans might have had any influence. In 1846, Paris’ temperature reached a sizzling 51.66 Celsius. In 627 AD the heat in France was so great that springs dried up and water so scarce that people died of thirst.

            

Neil Oliver then cited other instances of extreme weather such as 1304 when the Rhine and Seine Rivers ran dry and 1000AD “when rivers ran dry and the fish were left dry under the protracted heat and petrified in a few hours.”

            

In New Zealand Cyclone Gabrielle that wreaked havoc on the North Island’s east coast added fuel to the fire in the breasts of the fervent climate change advocates.

            

Climate change has replaced the term global warming that US politician Al Gore publicised and promoted with his movie 17 years ago. The “New York Times” in late July 2023, reported “events of the past few weeks have Gore even more worried than usual.” “The extremes have now seemingly reached a new level —the temperatures —-unprecedented drought in Uruguay and in Argentina” thundered Al Gore.

            

Al Gore is seemingly unaware of the historical instances of extreme weather events centuries ago, that Neil Oliver knows about and cited.

            

Undeniably climate change has been happening and extreme climate change and associated weather events in New Zealand also centuries ago.

            

In my home patch of Marlborough, there’s an example of the state highway to the West Coast, that runs alongside the Wairau River. About 80 kilometres from the Wairau’s mouth into Cloudy Bay is a noticeable hill in the otherwise steady drive from Blenheim. This hill between Saltwater Creek and the Branch River marks the old moraine’s debris of a glacier that was formed - according to one source, some 350,000 years ago.

            

When that Wairau glacier advanced to just downstream of the Branch River bridge, the climate had obviously cooled. When it retreated - reportedly 8,000 years ago, the climate logically warmed.

            

Today no glacier exists in the Wairau River catchment. The cooling and warming was just part of the normal dynamic cyclic nature of the earth’s climate.

            

Then there’s the remarkable revelation in entomologist George Gibbs’ comprehensive and fascinating book “Ghosts of Gondwana” (published 2016) that in Central Otago near St Bathans about 15 to 20 million years ago, was a large freshwater lake ecosystem of “a sub-tropical dry climate,” featuring crocodiles, turtles and eucalyptus trees.

            

Temperatures had obviously warmed to a sub-tropical dry climate but then must have cooled to Central Otago's present day climate of cold winters and hot summers - again proof of the cyclic dynamics of climate change.

            

In the North Island’s Ruahine Range a botanist/hydrologist scientist Dr Patrick Grant identified climate change cycles going back centuries. Extreme weather such as heavy cyclonic rainfall or little or no rainfall (droughts) have always occurred. Dr Grant identified “severe and widespread droughts in 1859 and 1878.” Then a drought in 1914-15 preceded by an earlier drought in 1907-8 and with intervening dry years in between, so stressed centuries old forest trees that they succumbed and died a few years after the massive 1914-15 drought.

            

Cyclone Gabrielle was nothing new. Of course there were cyclonic storms in Cyclones Alison (1975) and Bola (1988). Dr Grant  referred to climate changes back through the centuries, in saying “it was both warmer and wetter and cooler and drier, at different times.” In the Wakarara Period (1770-1800)  he remarked there was “a very stormy period accompanied by gales.”

            

Climate change is real, cyclic and always occurring. 

            

However, I do strongly consider there are undeniable symptoms of a potential ecological and environmental degradation. In recent years, I have observed alarming declines in wildlife species locally such as kingfishers that once conspicuously sat on roadside power lines. Shining cuckoos in the spring are fewer and fewer. Frogs, sedge moths at dusk on rivers, mayfly hatches in evenings, whirring evening starling flights, German owls, moreporks and fewer sea birds, much less bees, freshwater eels and koura to name some.

            

In short the symptoms represented by declining populations of insects, birds and other wildlife, are ominous - suggesting a potential environmental collapse. Few seem worried and inexplicably the Department of Conservation. But that is almost certainly due too Man’s activities and in particular, sprays and chemicals - not climate change. 

            

To put it simply, the true situation of climate change  can be expressed by an equation represented by Natural Climate Change plus or minus Human Induced Climate Change equals the Actual Climate Change. 

            

But the dogmatic, perhaps demented, disciples of Climate Change/Global Warming seem unwilling to acknowledge the true situation. 

            

That “plus or minus” the “Natural Climate Change” is critical to getting the true perspective.

            

In the frantic evangelising the factor of “natural climate change” is totally missing. However for politicians it’s a populous bandwagon to hitch a ride on to popularity and power - particularly with an election imminent.

            

Indeed, some politicians and bureaucrats blame animals both farmed and even wild. In 2007 the Department of Conservation’s director-general Al Morrison bizarrely blamed wild deer for farting and belching and causing global warming.  They need to be exterminated he ranted.

            

Animals are an easy target. They cannot argue back in defence, but people can. The reason? Deer and cows do not vote but people do. Yet ironically it is people that are the cause of the problem - or more particularly numbers of people. 

            

People fart and belch just like cows and deer. Furthermore people drive cars which belch emissions and fly regularly on jet planes that fart “gases and particles  -- which contribute to climate change.”  Late last year Climate Change minister James Shaw reportedly accompanied by eight others, flew to Egypt to speak to a Climate Change/Global Warming conference  (COP27). Never mind the hypocrisy of the carbon footprint of the flights for nine.

            

Humans want jet flights, demand resources, flush toilets, use chemicals and throw away garbage. Deer, sheep and cattle don’t.

            

Climate change (natural) through ice ages and warm periods, has always been.

            

But true extent of a climate change crisis is not in the natural dynamics but in that induced by people as outlined in the simple equation - Natural Climate Change plus or minus Human Induced Climate Change equals the Actual Climate Change. 

            

Bizarrely the government’s ETS ignores the carbon sequestering of pasture and indeed any trees or shrubs under 5 metres tall. Yet several dozen native plants -some even at maturity- are under 5 metres in height. The ETS seems designed to be anti-farming.

            

No political party has challenged the current Climate Change fad and the manipulation such as the selective omission of vegetation under 5 metres in height, or of the ignoring of the factor of historically proven climate change cycles.

 

Tony Orman (MNZIS) is a Marlborough-based author, conservationist, journalist and former town and country planner.