No Need to Panic About Global Warming
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.
Related Video
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.