Nov. 28, 2011
Is the increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere going to destroy polar bears? Is climate change going to be an unmitigated catastrophe for our civilization and our planet? Are people who disagree flat-earthers, anti-science cranks and evolution-deniers?
No. No. And no.
I realize many people believe the “scientific community” is near unanimous in disagreeing with my three no’s.
Many people are wrong.
Richard Lindzen, a world-class climatologist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a member of the United Nations panel on climate change (IPCC), pointed out, “The American Society of Agronomy, The American Society of Plant Biologists and the Natural Science Collections Alliance … have no expertise whatever in climate.”
These scientific groups are typical of the “overwhelming” scientific opinion that some news media refer to on climate change. Scientists, like the rest of us, are not immune to “motivated reasoning” —to jumping on bandwagons. Freeman Dyson, a Nobel Prize winning physicist from Princeton, says this about the computer models that are used to analyze data and predict climate change:
“The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world we live in.”
In a book review Dyson speculated on the appeal of the overwhelming agreement.
“The books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible.”
Dyson is not alone. Another Nobel Prize physicist, Ivan Glaever, recently resigned from the American Physical Society (APS), because an official bulletin put out by APS claimed there was “incontrovertible” evidence that human activity is causing the temperature to rise to dangerous levels. Incontrovertible sounds more like a Papal Bull than a scientific society. Dr. Glaever sent this email to the APS:
“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? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.”
Many other prominent scientists, including world-respected climatologists like Richard Lindzen, William Gray, Fred Singer and Roy Spencer also believe the climate change scare is more religious than scientific. In 2007 here is how Dr. Lindzen, the MIT expert, put it in a Larry King interview:
“We’re talking of a few tenths of a degree change in temperature. None of it in the last eight years, by the way. And if we had warming, it should be accomplished by less storminess. But because the temperature itself is so unspectacular, we have developed all sorts of fear of prospect scenarios—of flooding, of plague, of increased storminess when the physics says we should see less. I think it’s mainly just like little kids locking themselves in dark closets to see how much they can scare each other and themselves.”
All that said, an impressive majority of professional climatologists today (not of meteorologists interestingly enough) do think the evidence for global warming is compelling. Not as many claim it to be incontrovertible. A few, like NASA’s James Hansen, are so committed to the extremist claims that when asked what would happen if President Obama approved the Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada, he replied, “Essentially, it’s game over for the planet.”
Contrarians are not as dogmatic. They agree there has been some warming over the past century. They agree that the carbon dioxide percentage in the air has risen. They don’t think global warming is a hoax. Some even agree we should have a carbon tax to provide incentives for renewable alternatives. And no one denies the greenhouse effect—without it the earth would be too cold for life.
The debate is not about the data, but about what will happen in the future. Bad mouthing contrarians as anti-science cranks, evolution deniers or flat-earth know-nothings is not helpful.
When scientists make predictions about the future they are often no better than Ouija board seers. The astronomer Carl Sagan predicted a nuclear winter would result from the 1991 burning of 700 oil wells in Kuwait; the biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted “sixty-five million Americans would die of starvation by 1990”; in 1979 a major climate-change proponent, the late Stephen Schneider, “projected that man’s potential to pollute will increase 6 to 8-fold in the next 50 years … sufficient to trigger an ice age”; scientists making up the Club of Rome and the Global 2000 Report to the President (which included physicist John Holdren, present science advisor to President Obama) predicted we would run out of just about everything before the 20th century ended.
What can we say for certain about future climate change? Is it going to get warmer? Is it going to get colder? Will there be more violent storms? Will there be fewer violent storms?
Take your pick. If it gets warmer Canada, Siberia and the Arctic and Antarctic regions will be winners. If it gets colder … who knows? No matter what happens there will be problems. So what else is new? If the past two hundred years are any guide humans will solve the problems and somehow muddle through. On the whole people will create solutions and end up better off than they would be if there had been no climate change.
One thing we can be sure of is that it is the height of folly to bet substantial portions of the present world’s wealth and prosperity (which have brought unprecedented progress to the environment and the people) on any projection, whether it is based on science, religion, or throwing the dice.
Eight of the world’s most prominent economists, including four Nobel winners, met in Denmark a few years ago at the Copenhagen Consensus. They were challenged to put together an imaginary budget of fifty billion dollars in ways that would be of most benefit to the world’s people. They were presented with a list of fifteen global problems and asked to rank them in order and specify how much of the fifty billion each should receive. To the chagrin of climate change activists, climate change (global warming) came out last, fifteenth. It would get the least money. In their considered opinion, more than half the money should go to AIDS research and prevention. The number two priority would be to provide micronutrients such as iron, iodine and Vitamin A to the billions of people who suffer from stunted growth, lower IQ or blindness because they are not getting them. Number three would be free trade (which would bring the most benefits for the least money). After that malaria protection, clean water supplies, new agricultural techniques, etc. would all be, in their opinion, of greater potential benefit to more people in the world than wealth sacrificed now to prevent possible global climate change in the future.
What do you think?
Bill Stonebarger, Owner/President Hawkhill
P.S. My recent DVD program, Resources, Populations and Climate Change gives more details on this subject. You can read and download the complete script, which includes material on global warming at no charge. See also my new book, TWILIGHT OR DAWN? a Traveler’s Guide to Free-Market Liberal Democracy. (Chapter 19.)