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Carbon dioxide, we’ve been told over and again, is the enemy that must be subdued if we are to avoid catastrophic global warming. It is, however, a faulty premise. Physics, not politics, tells us that man’s CO2 emissions will not cause catastrophic climate change nor an increase in extreme weather.
“The common belief that CO2 is the main driver of climate change and the EPA Endangerment Finding assertion that ‘elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may reasonably be anticipated’ to endanger the public health and welfare are scientifically false,” conclude the authors of a new paper.
Richard Lindzen and William Happer are not political hacks. They are serious researchers with extensive experience and robust academic backgrounds. Lindzen is emeritus professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Happer a Princeton University emeritus physics professor. What they have to say is important in a world that is sodden with climate-related myths and folk tales.
While Democrats and their leftist counterparts in other advanced nations have gone to war on carbon dioxide, Lindzen and Happer argue that cutting CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 and eliminating fossil fuel use “will have a trivial effect on temperature.”
How can they say this? After all, don’t 97% of scientists agree that humanity’s use of fossil fuels is causing our world to overheat? (They don’t, more on that later.)
Lindzen and Happer confidently make those statements because “unscientific evidence is the fundamental basis” behind the rush to net zero GHG emissions as well as the EPA’s claim that “elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may reasonably be anticipated to endanger the public health and to endanger the public welfare of current and future generations.”
They use the term “unscientific” because the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “is government-controlled and thus only publishes government opinions, not science.” The summaries for policymakers that are produced by the IPCC are “approved line by line by member governments,” which “override any inconsistent conclusions scientists write for IPCC reports.”
The pair cite a 1995 report that was rewritten to say “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate,” and was the opposite of the language from a draft composed by independent scientists. Not only has the IPCC failed to correct this fabrication, it “has repeatedly reported the same false science ever since.”
Inconsistent with the climate narrative but consistent with reality, Lindzen and Happer also point out that CO2 is not only a weak greenhouse gas, its impact decreases as its atmospheric levels rise.
“It becomes a less effective greenhouse gas at higher concentrations because of what in physics is called ‘saturation.’ Each additional increase of CO2 in the atmosphere causes a smaller and smaller change in ‘radiative forcing,’ or in temperature.”
Simply put, “the common assumption that carbon dioxide is in the IPCC’s words ‘the main driver of climate change’ is scientifically false.”
Now, back to the 97% claim. It relies on the dubious assertion that the acknowledgment by many that man’s CO2 emissions have a mild, harmless influence on the climate is the same as believing that man is causing a catastrophe. These are conflicting positions, yet they are lumped together in the 97% for political purposes.
“The assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research,” former Heartland Institute president and chief executive Joseph Bast and University of Alabama in Huntsville climate scientist Roy Spencer wrote in 2014 in the Wall Street Journal.
Furthermore, science is not determined by consensus, Lindzen and Happer remind us, it is guided by experiment and observations.
The climate change tale is based on such a wobbly foundation, and its adherents screech so loudly and shade the truth so often that we can’t help but believe they know they’ve been intentionally misleading the public.
Maybe we’ve reached a Solzhenitsyn moment in which we know they’re lying, they know they’re lying, and they even know that we know they’re lying. And they still don’t care, because for them it’s all about raw political power and the acquisition of other people’s money.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Is is not ” What if”. but It is
There was a period during the plandemic when traffic was significantly reduced yet there was no corresponding change in measured CO2. The overall consumption of fuel during that time could easily be compared to CO2 measurements for validation but nobody is interested in data that doesn’t support their narrative.
Yes, the above argument may or may not be causing the weather to change, but the thing we can control that is clearly causing many unhappy changes is our population.
We have 200 million more people in the US than when I was born several decades ago. 200 million more people making trash, pollution, using energy, driving cars and trucks, needing apartments and houses, building in flood plains, forest fire and earthquake prone locations. 200 million needing schools, office building, hospitals, etc. All the open space, forests and farms around where I grew up are covered, cut and gone.
Should we set a voluntary population goal to reduce all the above? Smaller families, severely restrict even legal immigration, terminate all the Diversity Visa programs and similar policies which were never sound policies, and are even more illogical after 4 years of Biden’s Open Borders.
What should our most beneficial population target number be from the 340 million people we have today?
Perhaps the MRNA jab helped depopulation, the Covid spread from the lab .I know dam well the leaders of the world didn’t take it.The WEF agenda is to depopulate along with the wars.
I’ve just donated $250 to I&I. Why? Because many of the facts that I rely on-and the conclusions I reach which are based on those alluded facts-I read not in the NY Times, not in the Washington Post, not in the Huffington Post, not in any of the left-wing journalistic-trolls which are called-by many of the gremlins on the Left “fair and unbiased”, but I read the unvarnished, relevant facts in I&I (and before that in Investors Business Daily.
I’m just sorry I can only afford $250.
Thank you, Brian, for the support, for your very kind words, and for your thoughtful contributions to the comments section.
global warming statistics
Here, I am not arguing that global warming is not occurring. Rather, based on the currently available evidence, its statistical treatment, and the secret classification of the RAW data, it is impossible to conclude anything. I mean anything at all about global warming (or cooling).
To create a false sense of consensus about global warming, Obama’s team electronically searched thousands of academic climate publications using search terms like “climate change,” “global warming,” etc. They found 97% had used the search terms. Then, if the publican used those terms even once, they were counted as evidence of global warming. Finding 97% of the publications had used those terms, they declared a consensus. That is completely bogus.
Very few, who are chemists, physicists, medical researchers, statisticians, etc., consider “climate scientists” to be scientists at all. They are talented computer modelers, but they are not scientists.
The NOAA hired me to give them a seminar on applied statistics. In that seminar, I explained that their statistical methods need improvement. Their treatments of both measurement error and prediction error are so bad that I would assign them an F grade in my upper-division statistics class. I taught them how to do a proper analysis of the data.
They knowingly use improper statistical analysis and do an incomplete job of it. Their methods make no sense at all. (And, yes, with two PhDs, I am qualified to make that statement.) As a result, they can not possibly understand the errors in statistical analysis. They were using Gaussian instead of Mandlebroten techniques. Mandelbroten techniques are also known as fractal statistics. They are not “fat-tailed” statistics.
The errors by most climate “scientists” are egregious.
The response, by the Vice Admiral in charge of my seminar, was, “You just don’t understand.” I told him, “You are right. I didn’t understand. However, I DO know that what you are doing is not science. Perhaps it is literature or politics. But it is not science.“
I decided to do the statistics myself. So, I asked for the raw data. Not the data after any adjustments. I was told that the raw data was not available to me because it is a classified national security asset. (Say what?)How could temperature data be harmful to national security? Answer: It can’t.)
For years and years, ocean temperature data collection was done by collecting the ocean’s temperature measured by the water intake scoops on ships. There was no measurement or discussion of the errors introduced by the varying depths of the scoops, the contribution of the ship’s heat, or whether the measurement was taken at the water collection point or further into the ship.
There were virtually no satellite measurements of the entire ocean until 1982. The measurement of Arctic sea ice was first done in 1957. There is just not enough valid data to conclude anything.
Then, on top of all that, climate scientists use Gaussian statistics (the bell curve). Use of Gaussian statistics REQUIRES the data observations be random and independent. Independence means one measurement can not affect another measurement. Not at all. This is an ironclad requirement.
The climate scientists divide the planet into “cells.” Cells are essentially rectangular. Think of them like pixels. Each cell touches several other cells. The grid cells in most climate models used are very large—often from 100 to 600 kilometers squared. The distance from Washington to Toronto is just a bit more than 600 km. The distance from Los Angeles to Las Vegas is far less than 600 km. The weather/climate in one cell affects every cell in its area. As a result, the observations are NOT independent. The observations are dependent on each other, often in very complicated ways.
OK, if that were not bad enough, in addition to using Gaussian statistics, the climate scientists average averages. This results in completely bogus conclusions.
OK. I get it. Doing Mandelbroten statistics is hard. It requires PhD-level statistical knowledge. It seems to me that the federal government could afford that—if it wanted to.
Heartily agree, especially with the following. I have been arguing these points since the Global Warming panic started.
“…what you are doing is not science. Perhaps it is literature or politics. But it is not science.“
“…There were virtually no satellite measurements of the entire ocean until 1982. The measurement of Arctic sea ice was first done in 1957. There is just not enough valid data to conclude anything.”
“…if that were not bad enough, in addition to using Gaussian statistics, the climate scientists average averages. This results in completely bogus conclusions.”
“…OK. I get it. Doing Mandelbroten statistics is hard. It requires PhD-level statistical knowledge. It seems to me that the federal government could afford that—if it wanted to.”
“…Very few, who are chemists, physicists, medical researchers, statisticians, etc., consider “climate scientists” to be scientists at all. They are talented computer modelers, but they are not scientists.”
I was an Atmospheric Hazard computer modeler for 15 years, mostly HAZMAT, but even I, a GI Grunt, saw how totally bogus the findings were. In college, I studied statistics, physics, meteorology, astronomy, biology, and chemistry. I have a reasonable knowledge of the scientific method, and the need to support findings, and to admit the limitations of those findings. These so-called climate “scientists” are not practicing science; they are spouting out-of-their-asses political fiction tailored to their sponsors’ expectations. Like alchemists assuring the baron that they can turn lead into gold, just give them enough time…and money!
The real research being done by non-corrupted sciences shows that deep-space gamma radiation impacts cloud production on earth 200% more than CO2, which has the biggest impact changing the clement of the earth. Physics is physics!
CO2 is essential for life. Unless you are making money on the narrative there is no other reason to ‘combat’ 0.04% of our atmosphere and any reasonable person has known this forever.
Funny how plant life has exploded since the narrative began…
Welcome to the party. Climate hysteria has always been political.
There is nothing factual about “climate-science”, but if you change it to “climate junk-science” It becomes true.