Global warming exaggerated, speaker claims

The world is getting warmer, but the problem isn’t as severe as many scientists claim, said noted climatologist and author Patrick J. Michaels in a speech Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Inland Empire Reforestation Council in Coeur d’Alene.

Michaels, a professor at the University of Virginia, is a contributing author and reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He’s critical of the group’s 2001 report that shows a sharp spike in global temperatures, which was used to promote programs, including the Kyoto protocol, aimed at curbing greenhouse gases. The panel includes dozens of the world’s leading scientists, a majority of whom have endorsed the report.

“People like to exaggerate this issue. That’s obvious,” Michaels told the gathering of more than 200 foresters from across the Northwest. “Large-scale environmental issues must be distorted to get money.”

Although Michaels didn’t have much to say on the topic of forestry, he was invited to speak at the conference because of a growing concern that warmer weather is bringing dramatic changes to forests, said Wade Zaharie, chairman-elect of the Inland Empire Reforestation Council. Huge tracts of evergreens across the West have been attacked in recent years by beetles, which appear to be flourishing because of warmer winters, Zaharie said.

Foresters are also trying to determine which mix of tree species will best adapt to the West’s changing climate. The U.S. Forest Service is trying to restore ponderosa pine, a species that can withstand warmer winter temperatures and drier summers.

Pat Behrens, a Forest Service silviculturist in Bonners Ferry, said planting decisions made by foresters today will determine the shape and health of forests for generations to come. Global warming is posing many new questions, he said, and Michaels’ speech only added to the confusion.

“I don’t think anybody has an answer,” Behrens said. “The whole thing now is about maintaining diversity.”

Global warming is a lightning-rod issue, and Michaels admitted that his views have not made him many friends within academia and many scientific circles. He has been criticized for accepting funding from the energy industry and is also a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, which advocates market-based solutions for most of the world’s energy problems.

“All garden parties need their skunks,” Michaels said.

Michaels does not dispute that burning fossil fuels has led to a warmer planet, but he said the leading climate prediction models have been manipulated.

Most scientists and world leaders have come to believe climate change has followed a hockey stick pattern: Nearly 1,000 years of stability followed by a sharp rise since the 1960s. Michaels said the prevailing United Nations-backed model completely ignores a lengthy warm period in the middle ages, as well as a temperature spike in the 1930s and 1940s that rivals the current rise.

“The United Nations is wrong. This is dead wrong,” he said.

Michaels believes the climate will warm by 1.6 degrees Celsius over the next 100 years. That’s about a degree less than most scientists believe, he said. The impacts of the warming are not yet understood and huge questions remain. Michaels believes technology improvements will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including those from China’s fast-growing economy.