To The Editors, The Baltimore Sun:
Gentlemen - Lord Monckton has asked me to send you the article below, special to The Baltimore Sun, which he has written in response to the article by Tom Pelton on the effect of "global warming" on the Cheseapeake coastline. - James Rowlatt, Clerk to His Lordship

Time for cooler heads on “global warming”
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley: special to The Baltimore Sun

Tom Pelton (May 23) writes that “global warming” may flood half the beaches on Maryland’s Eastern Shore this century, drowning 400 square miles of Chesapeake Bay and wiping several islands off the map.

The source of the Sun’s story was the “National Wildlife Federation”, a lobby group. Its “Report” is not peer-reviewed. Independent scientists did not scrutinize it. It has not appeared in any learned journal. It has no authority. It is not true.

I checked with Professor Niklas Moerner, who has spent his entire professional career studying sea level. These are the facts:

The UN’s climate panel has just cut its high-end sea-level forecast to 2100 from 3 feet to less than 2 feet. Its best estimate is that sea level will rise just 17 inches – not the “27 inches” mentioned by the Sun. But Moerner sees no reason why sea level should rise by more than 8 inches this century, just as it did last century.

Sea level has risen at an average 4 feet a century for the past 10,000 years, but the scope for future rises is limited because most of the land-based ice that used to cover much of North America melted long ago.

Nearly all of the world’s remaining ice is on the high plateau of East Antarctica, which has been cooling for half a century and has not melted at any time in the past million years, even though each of the last six interglacial warm periods was up to 8 F warmer than today.

The Greenland ice sheet last melted 850,000 years ago, for natural reasons. The UN does not expect it to melt again unless temperatures stay at least 4 F above today’s for several thousand years. Yet Greenland is cooler today than in the 1940s, and much cooler than when the Vikings settled it in the Middle Ages. Their burial ground at Hvalsey on the south-western shore is under permafrost today. The average thickness of the Greenland ice sheet grew by 2 inches a year from 1993-2003.

The UN thinks the main cause of sea-level rise will be “thermosteric expansion” – water swelling as it warms. However, a peer-reviewed paper published just days ago says 6000 automatic thermometers show the world’s oceans have been cooling since 2003.

Cooling? Yes. According to the UK’s Hadley Center for Forecasting, “global warming” stopped in 1998. Since 2001, temperatures have been plummeting at a rate equivalent to 7 F per decade. A recent paper in Nature says no new warming is expected until at least 2015.

Tom Pelton’s Sun article quotes the UN’s climate panel, which said last year that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal”. True, because global temperatures began to rise more than 300 years ago. From 1700-1998, for natural reasons, temperatures rose by around 1 F per century. We could not have had any significant impact until 50 years ago: yet the centennial rate of temperature rise has remained constant.

The oldest instrumental temperature record in the world, in Central England record, shows that from 1700-1735 midland temperatures suddenly rose 4 F, not because of humankind but because of the Sun.

Sami Solanki, an eminent solar physicist, reported in 2005 that for 70 years the Sun has been more active, and for longer, than during almost any similar period in 11,400 years. This solar Grand Maximum led the International Astronomical Union to conclude recently that most warming is sun-driven, not SUV-driven.

Tom Pelton went on to quote a “Federation” spokesman saying that “Industry needs to cut its output of greenhouse gases by 80 percent by midcentury” to prevent further “damage”. Yet there is no need to cut greenhouse emissions. Labor unions and industries that defeated Gov. O’Malley’s bill mandating reductions were right.

Even if “global warming” were a problem, Western cuts in emissions would merely transfer our industries and jobs to China, which emits more greenhouse gases than any other nation, and emits more per unit of electricity generated. Therefore, as China replaces our manufacturing, total emissions and pollution worldwide will actually rise. Where is the environmental benefit in that?

Mr. Pelton also quotes the “Federation’s” lobbyist as saying that less waterfront housing would mean fewer people killed by severe storms. Yet there has been no uptrend in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes in a century. The frequency and intensity of severe tropical cyclones and typhoons has fallen for 30 years.

Two scientific papers in recent weeks have confirmed the UN’s view that there is no link between “global warming” and the frequency or intensity of hurricanes or other extreme-weather events such as the Burma disaster.

The Sun quotes the “Federation” as suggesting that “allowing ‘global warming’ to continue will also have an economic impact”. Yes – a beneficial impact: history shows warming is kindlier than cooling.

There are many real environmental problems. Our influence on climate is not one of them. Besides, we can no more stop “global warming” – if it resumes – than King Canute could command the waves not to wet the Royal feet.

The correct policy response to a non-problem that we cannot influence is to have the courage to do nothing.

Lord Monckton’s full-length feature movie, Apocalypse? NO!, is now available from www.greatswindle.com