The US still has a serious energy problem, and many organizations are searching for the right energy policy, with most doing this in a fossil-fuel constrained world. However, this may be a terrible constraint as it is possible that the diagnosis on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is erroneous. Today, as our financial and energy policies hang in the balance, citizens should demand an open debate on this fossil-fuel constraint, something that is not happening.
What do the Sloan Professor of Meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the founder of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and the head of the space research laboratory in St. Petersburg, Russia, have in common? First, they are skeptics of the AGW hypothesis. They are not fans of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, a part of the political science of alarmism that began 40 years ago with Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb. And they are all physicists: Richard Lindzen, Robert Jastrow, and Habibullo Abdussamatov.
Physicists might hold the key to this diagnosis. This commentary is based on a paper in the International Association for Energy Economics Energy Forum, third quarter 2008, entitled “Global Warming–Witnesses for the Defense of the Skeptical Perspective: Physicists.”
This struggle is occurring at a time when every day brings new inputs that the concern on AGW might be fading. Examples:
- A recent headline reported, “Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof.”
- Recent papers on Greenland Ice Sheet stability bring needed reality.
- A paper on whether warming is influencing hurricanes was titled “Global warming to decrease hurricanes.”
- Another publication on concerns the Gulf Stream was in danger was titled “Ocean circulation noisy, not stalling.”
- The claim that we face an imminent catastrophe is unfounded and terribly inappropriate.
- The views of 17 physicists/mathematicians are proof of a serious debate on AGW.
- The claim that “all scientists agree” is juvenile at best, fraudulent at worst.
- All scientists need to reconsider the position of Thomas Huxley: Skepticism is the highest of duties for scientists, blind faith the one unpardonable sin.
One might wonder how a barely discernable 0.6° C. increase since the late 19th century can gain acceptance as the source of weather catastrophes. Answer: Those with a vested interest in climate alarmism have cranked up the propaganda.
This interest in physicists started with a 2006 Houston Chronicle interview with Chris Rapley of the British Antarctic Survey. He asked, “If carbon is increasing, how can you deny there’s going to be warming?” Rapley stated if you knew how physics worked, you would stop arguing on AGW.
How then do physicists see AGW? As openers, a 1990 analysis by Jastrow, plus William Nierenberg and Frederic Seitz (all now deceased), showed a range of 0.4-1.8° C. for the next century. This was much lower than the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 1990, a range of 1.5-4.5° C. The above physicists viewed this as alarmist. They agree, if the assumptions they used are valid, there will be some warming–but nowhere as big as the IPCC would like the public to believe. Then the IPCC report in 2001 boosted the range to 1.4-5.8° C.
Lindzen, the MIT professor, noted in 1993 that model predictions depend on large increases in carbon dioxide plus mechanisms within the models that amplify the climatic response to increasing CO2. These amplifications need to be debated. In 2006 Lindzen also noted that alarmists intimidate dissenters, saying scientists who deviate from alarmism have seen their funds disappear.
Abdussamatov reported that Mars also has global warming. But parallel warmings on Mars and Earth can only be a result of an increase in the one factor common to both planets: solar irradiation. Abdussamatov now believes this has peaked and sees deep cooling by 2040.
Two additional witnesses, of the 17 covered in the energy economics paper, are cited below.
Sherwood Idso, a former research physicist at the US Water Conservation Lab in Phoenix and an adjunct professor of botany at Arizona State University, has argued that increasing CO2 levels are beneficial due to an increase in photosynthesis, leading to significant increases in crop and forest growth.
Hendrick Tennekes, former director of research, Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute, lost his post due to his views on climate modeling. He is concerned with the monopoly that modeling has on climate research. An example of the many shortcomings with models: They don’t include feedbacks between changing farming and forest practices and atmospheric circulation. For this and other reasons they can’t agree on precipitation patterns, a far more relevant factor to food production than a tiny increase in temperature. Tennekes concluded: “We only understand 10% of the climate issue.”
Several conclusions follow:
Indeed, with all of this testimony against the AGW hypothesis and climate alarmism, one might ask if it is not time to have this issue tossed out of court.
Gerald T. Westbrook
Houston