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.
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.