- BUENOS AIRES, Argentina
(CNSNews.com)
- The British government released a new climate analysis this week alleging
that white Christmases in England will be just a memory unless global
warming
is halted.
-
- According to an analysis by British Environment Minister
Elliot Morley,
- ( http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/ministers/morley.htm
)
- England is 65 percent less likely to have a white
Christmas
in the year 2050 due to the effects of global warming.
-
- Coastal areas of England will be 90 percent less likely
to see any snow by the year 2080. Morely is attending the UN climate summit
in Buenos Aires.
-
- Norman Baker, the British Parliament's Liberal Democrat
environment spokesman, summed up the analysis this way:
-
- ( http://www.libdems.org.uk/index.cfm
- /page.homepage/section.home/article.7943 )
-
- "Britons will soon be left with only dreams of a
white Christmas, as the chances of it actually happening become more
remote."
-
- Despite the fact that London has experienced only six
white Christmases in the past 45 years, Baker said any future lack of snow
could be blamed on only one factor. "Global warming is the main reason
for this shift in seasonal weather and is responsible for changing the
world as we know it," Baker said.
-
- But William O'Keefe of the Washington-based George
Marshall
Institute said no one should stop dreaming of a white Christmas -
"just
like the ones they used to know" -- based on the new British
study.
-
- "The 65 percent probability that white Christmases
will disappear in London is one hundred percent wrong," O'Keefe told
CNSNews.com. The Marshall Institute, which "encourages the use of
sound science in making public policy," takes a skeptical view of
alarmist global warming.
-
- "The British analysis is a compilation of fiction.
There is no science and no scientific basis for those projections,"
said O'Keefe, who is attending the U.N. summit here.
-
- "They (the projections) are pure speculation, which
get credibility because they are run through computer models that have
never been validated scientifically," O'Keefe explained.
-
- But Britain's Baker believes the analysis should prompt
a call to action on climate change.
-
- "It is not only Christmas that will be affected.
In the New Year we can expect more of the extreme weather, floods and gales
suffered across the Continent this year. This is a global issue, but the
government needs to make reducing greenhouse gases one of its top New
Year's
resolutions," Baker said.
-
- But O'Keefe noted that many alarmist climate-change
claims
have proven contradictory.
-
- "The world has gone through periods over hundreds
of thousands of years and million of years where it's been warmer, it's
been colder; and it was only a few decades ago that the scientists who
are now telling us we are going to lose a white Christmas were telling
us we were going into an ice age and there would be white Christmases 365
days a year," he said.
-
- "When people sing Bing Crosby's song in years ahead,
they will still experience the beauty of a white Christmas," O'Keefe
predicted, referring to the classic Christmas song.
|
