Deane Smart’s summary of the IPCC Report offers all the reassurance of nit-picking – for monkeys! There is absolutely no evidence the “greening” Smart refers to will reduce famine because the “greenery” is not all food, it is mostly weeds and scrub.
Already, earth’s increasing temperature is causing soil desiccation – that’s the difference between nature and a glass house, where you can certainly add CO2 but also water. If you have any. A casual acquaintance with the truth shows droughts are more frequent, more severe, and last longer exactly as the science predicted. At the present rate the Sahara will spread into Spain.
I remind Smart absence of evidence is not proof of absence. In a large complex system like earth’s climate, it takes extraordinary science to detect the human influence above natural variation.
Nevertheless, clever attribution studies show there are more and worse hurricanes and the cause is global warming. With higher sea surface temperatures, not only does more
water evaporate but more latent heat (energy) is transported into the atmosphere.
Due to the disturbance of the polar vortex and jet streams, weather is sometimes moving more slowly, resulting in huge deluges that cause flooding. Smart claims flooding may be less in Australia. How reassuring is that for the driest continent on the planet, apart from Antarctica?
Talking about Antarctica, if we burn all the fossil fuel we know about, the sea level will rise 60 metres. Not in Smart’s lifetime of course so that’s all right, eh.
Dennis N Horne, Howick
