Not a new phenomenon

So, we now know that climate change is nothing new. OK, we'll rephrase that; we now know that the climate change INDUSTRY is nothing new! How do we know that? Have a read of this, from Garth George's Herald column this morning:

I am indebted to a reader for sending me a copy of an article which appeared in this newspaper and which I hadn't read.

Under the headlines "Man is making the earth too warm, Threat of melting polar caps", it quoted a prominent physicist as saying that the levels of the oceans could rise 12m and flood vast areas of the Earth in the next half century unless atmospheric temperatures were controlled.

The physicist, Dr Joseph Kaplan, professor of physics at the University of California, said such flooding could occur as a result of accelerated melting of the polar ice caps.

Should the oceans rise by 12m, their waters would roll through parts of New York, London, San Francisco and many other coastal cities.

Dr Kaplan said the melting of the ice caps was being speeded by man's tremendous use of oil and gas which was "changing the Earth's atmosphere".

The burning of fossil fuels was of such great magnitude that discharged gases were creating a "greenhouse" effect over the Earth.

The gases were warming the atmosphere as far up as 26km, and would have a great effect on the Arctic and Antarctic ice masses.

He goes on a bit more, but we've linked to it, so you can go and read it for yourself. But here's the killer line:

Now the reason I missed that story is that it appeared in this newspaper on Tuesday, April 9, 1957, at which time I was 16 years old and preparing to travel by ship to the United States on an American Field Service scholarship.

Dr Kaplan, meanwhile, was head of the National Committee for the 1957-58 International Geophysical year. He died in 1991.

The copy of the Herald containing his predictions was discovered during house renovations when some old carpet was lifted.

George goes on to lambast the International Panel on Climate Change, and well he might. There have been some appalling errors in the IPCC's predictions, and in the methodology used to arrive at those predictions. This leads to his conclusion:

So, just as Dr Kaplan's predictions came to nought, so I believe will the scaremongering global warming predictions of today's climate doomsayers.

Perhaps 53 years from now someone will find an ancient copy of the Herald and laugh at the climate change paranoia which afflicted the world in 2010.

We concur entirely. And perhaps today, the IPCC is wishing that its discredited report (based on discredited data) could, like the reader's 1957 Herald, disappear under the carpet!