Weather expert Piers Corbyn says there's no link between carbon dioxide and temperature
Not everyone accepts the idea that global warming actually exists. Piers Corbyn, managing director of Weather Action, is one such person.
From the conference floor, Corbyn made a stern rebuttal to the view that global warming was a problem. He criticised the keynote speaker, former environment minister Michael Meacher, for saying all those who question the validity of global warming are in the pay of big companies such as Exxon and Mobil.
"I do object to being lumped into the frame of 'the scientists' and those who are in the pay of big oil companies, in fact it's quite the opposite. Weather Action makes money by selling long-range weather forecasts, and we have to understand the science to get them right," he said.
Corbyn's concern was that any weather event was taken by the global warming lobby to be proof of global warming. "We've just been told that this drought we've got now is proof of global warming. Actually the global warming models talk about wet winters, not dry winters. We've had some dry winters, so we've got this drought, yet people still say this is proof," he said.
The fact, said Corbyn, was there hadn't been an increase in global warming. "There has not been any increase in extremes, and there's been less land falling storms in the US over the last 40 years per decade, 30% less than in the first half of this century."
Corbyn said there had been no relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature in the past million years. "Other than where there is one, it's temperature that drives carbon dioxide."
He gave the example of Greenland, which he said was two degrees warmer between 9,000 and a million years ago, but no polar bears died out. And the temperature rise between 920AD and a 1020AD was about 0.70C, he said. "Which is the same as now, and something very interesting was happening then, which is happening now: namely the magnetic pole of the earth was moving towards the North Pole and there was a rapid rise in temperature followed by a fall."
Corbyn said this will happen again.
He told the conference: "What you need actually is proper science and forecasts - and we can do forecasts - and I can tell you now, there's going to be a flood in the Mississippi (River) in 2015."
