` I was impressed by a documentary I saw recently which proved quite conclusively that glacial recession and polar ice cap recession are NOT being caused by rising temperatures (which in fact have been dropping globally for about the past eighteen years) but by reduced precipitation in the catchment areas.

The initial study was triggered by concern about the alarming rate of recession in the west flowing glaciers off the Andes mountains. One of the early discoveries of the study was that precipitation of rain and snow had dropped significantly during the previous two decades. When they went in search of an explanation for this, they found that wind patterns had also changed significantly during this same period of time. As part of the process of finding a possible explanation for the change in wind patterns, they looked firstly at where the winds are coming from now, and then at where the winds had been coming from previously. Previously the winds passed over the Amazon rainforests where they became heavily moisture-laden from evapo-transpiration of water from the foliage. As these moisture-laden winds were forced upwards by the mountains, they cooled rapidly and precipitated a lot of rain and snow. Now, with the forests disappearing at the rate of about ten football fields every minute, the evapo-transpiration is no longer occurring and the surface temperature is rising because the trees are no longer there to absorb all the solar energy.

This rising local surface temperature is causing an updraft of warm dry air which tends to rise vertically, sucking cooler air in from the surroundings, instead of producing a front of cool humid air which had to be pushed towards the mountains. This discovery so amazed the researchers that they then started looking at large scale wind patterns in other parts of the globe to see if similar phenomena were occurring elsewhere. They found that in fact wind patterns had changed in other parts of the world, and high altitude precipitations had been affected by these wind changes. They also attributed polar icecap recession to similar causes, which they were able to authenticate from historical data.

So, the solution to climate change, rising sea levels, "greenhouse gas" effects, etc., is NOT a global emissions trading scheme which will make a few traders obscenely wealthy at the expense of the rest of the world, but which will do NOTHING to solve the purported problem. The solution is VERY SIMPLE, low cost, low technology, low entry level, and easily replicated - PLANT MORE TREES! Destroying the forests caused the problems; replanting the forests will cure it. Simple. Easy. Seedlings are very cheap to propagate and everyone can plant a tree. The PROBLEM is that low-lying Pacific Island nations can't plant the trees they depend on for their geographic survival in political jurisdictions they can't get to and in which they have no influence. Wealthy countries like Australia need to ban all timber imports that are not transparently demonstrable as sustainable - which really means from plantations in non-first-growth forest areas.

Adrian Woodcraft 25th March 2017.