No Need to Panic About Global Warming
January 28, 2012 9 Comments
There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy. So why are they chemtrailing everyone?
Wall Street Journal
January 28, 2012
Editor’s Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:
A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: “I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’ In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?”
In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the “pollutant” carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific “heretics” is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.
Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.
The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere’s life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.
Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.
This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.
Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”
Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.
Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to “decarbonize” the world’s economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.
Princeton physics professor William Happer on why a large number of scientists don’t believe that carbon dioxide is causing global warming.
A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.
If elected officials feel compelled to “do something” about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.
Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of “incontrovertible” evidence.
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.
About Editor
Thing is Norm, no matter who is “right”, if we allow government to fix ANY problem (other than those spelled out specifically in their charter…The Constitution for Americans), we give them powers they shouldn’t have.
If there is a climate problem, the best entity to deal with it is the pricing system in a free market.
Authoritarians on both sides of the aisle never seem to learn from the past.
“Laissez faire, telle devrait être la devise de toute puissance publique, depuis que le monde est civilisé … Détestable principe que celui de ne vouloir grandir que par l’abaissement de nos voisins! Il n’y a que la méchanceté et la malignité du coeur de satisfaites dans ce principe, et l’intérêt y est opposé. Laissez faire, morbleu! Laissez faire!!”
Editor, you follow the same pattern that the deniers do, resorting in calling those who disagree with you names. If you can’t take the heat, then get out of the kitchen. You really shouldn’t get into this sort of debate, you’re supposedly a news source, not witch doctor in search of an audience. You’re the one who started this, so go for it, you can satisfy your ego with being last to comment, but forget sending it to me, as you’ve lost credibility. You are not a Scientist, yet you preach.
I am an individual with a right to free speech.
I am not a news source. My website is a news source. You don’t even know the difference between an free thinking individual and a website that is a news source.
I never called you names. UN spokesperson is not a NAME.
I posted and offered information that contrasted your erroneous beliefs that humans cause global warming. That is not preaching, that is fact.
I can stand the heat indeed, I just have not experienced any. The website’s credibility is intact. You are no one to say otherwise.
Please voluntarily stop posting your heavily uneducated comments here. Otherwise, don’t expect people to sit back and let you lie the way you do.
Consider the source, that being the WSJ, tells the tale. If one is interested, then one can easily find that the satellite instruments, sensors, monitors in use today, do point up to increasing temperatures. CO2 also is being absorbed into the Oceans, making it more acidic. In the quest for more profits in the fossil fuel industry, they have stifled innovation to move beyond its use. Nuclear is poisonous, Solar is coming on like gangbusters, wind, wave, even perhaps cold fusion, are all in the game. The Polar Ice caps are melting, as is the Greenland Ice cap, weather extremes are taking place, the environment is changing and the worlds glaciers are disappearing. What kind of Earth will be left behind for the next generation or the next one if the present trend continues? Insanity seems to be the rule today. Deny it, then it doesn’t exist. We might as well bury our heads in the sand. But that wont change the outcome.
Norman, you sound like a UN spokesperson. It is not the WSJ the one saying it, but all the scientists that sign at the bottom and hundreds or thousands more who different from the Climategate shills, do look at science, instead of making up information. All the things you cite are at best in question.
The reason why everything points to CO2 being the cause of Global Warming is because the computer models are set up so that such consideration is a given. What do you think the result of the calculations is going to be? All that these models do is project the degree of influence that CO2 will have at the levels present today based on the erroneous assumption included in the computer models that CO2 is responsible for the warming.
I have written several articles that explain how solar activity is the first force that drives the weather, not CO2. Atmospheric CO2 even at today’s levels is insignificant when it comes to Global Warming. As far as ocean acidity, these big masses of water have been doing the absorbing you mentioned for hundreds of years, even during times when CO2 levels were 10 times greater. And you see, life made it until today.
May I recommend a website for you to get information on this issue? It is called the Science and Public Policy Institute. Look at all of the material they have and present in a fairly objective way. Please find the website at: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/
You should really get out from behind your desk and do some research on your own instead of following the deniers. Read real science, NASA Science briefs, the researchers who are going out and getting down into it. Are you going to sit there and say that every researcher is using some computer model, one that supposedly is flawed? The fact that you run the story that was posted in the WSJ, giving them credit for being correct, while every one else is wrong, well, who is it who owns the WSJ, the same man that owns the Post in N.Y., the same man who miracle of miracles has triple citizenship, U.S.,Chinese, Australian, that his Media outlet is above reproach? If you dig, you can see by the recorded record that the temperature of the earth is steadily rising. Yes, computer models are used, but they are also updated, used to project into the future. If your argument as stated is all you can come up with, then you have a problem with what is taking place on earth today. I noticed that you didn’t mention the retreating Glaciers, an important source of fresh water to many peoples in the world. Rising temperatures are causing them to melt, and they are not replenishing themselves. Perhaps you don’t understand what CO2 is beyond it being a gas. But . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , that’s something you didn’t investigate, you’re just taking issue because you ran the story.
If NASA is the most trusted source of information, please check this article, where the very same NASA satellite measurements support what you say are the “deniers” theories. https://real-agenda.com/2011/08/05/planets-temperature-controls-co2-emissions-not-humans/. Another article about is here: https://real-agenda.com/2011/07/28/nasa-satellite-data-proves-global-warming-alarmists-wrong/. The peer-reviewed PDF document is here: http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603/pdf
Yes, all official measurements taken by NASA, the IPCC and all of the scientist from Al Gore’s Church of Climatology begin their research by assuming that CO2 does cause global warming. IF you don’t believe it, look it up. That to me, basing your research on an assumption, is a sign of flawed science.
You don’t seem to understand, or maybe you don’t want to understand. The WSJ runs the article, but it is not the WSJ who claims nothing in the article, but the scientists who sign the document protesting the “consensus” theory. You seem to prefer to kill the messenger instead of researching the message.
No matter how many times computer models are updated if all the updates are made following the same methodology. Have you researched about the phenomenon called the Heat Island Effect?
As for the Glaciers, I would like to invite you to see a NASA provided animation of how ice caps and glaciers freeze an defrost and compare those animations based on NASA obtained databases. You’ll see that ice caps have always melted and freeze again throughout history, even before humans walked around here.
But please answer the following question: How is it that you don’t trust the new world order when it comes to economics, politics, internet censorship and other topics, but you trust them to teach you about global warming? The very same people pushing the anthropogenic global warming pseudo-science are the same people who want a world government, who want a police state, who want to censor the internet and so on. Please don’t tell me you don’t know that. Are you ready to pay carbon taxes to Al Gore and Bill Gates in order to save the planet?
By the way, did you check the website I suggested in my previous comment?
Editor, You’re beating a dead horse. But it’s your blog, so you can go for it anyway you like. You are sounding like all the deniers, nit pik what suits your immediate position.
Please, stop making baseless accusations and show us the beef. You cannot even read the material I send you. You are too arrogant to accept you are wrong, much less look at information that does not self assure your weak beliefs.
By the way, since you put in question my knowledge of science, it may be helpful to know that in addition to journalism, I did study climatology and meteorology. Also, as you can see, I do not take ads from Shell, Chevron or Solyndra. So I am not here defending anyone or attacking anyone.
Please refrain from responding to messages or commenting with personal attacks. It makes you look weak and in need of attention. As I suggested once in the past, there are plenty of main stream media outlets that love commentators like you. So if you cannot keep up with a decent debate, move on to those MSM outlets.