This particular Jacoby piece displays all the illogic and mendacious reasoning one could expect. Cold weather in some spots during this past winter is supposed to indicate global cooling. Jacoby is not interested in heat waves, but in case weather is not at all the same thing as climate. Whether I go out the door tomorrow and it feels like spring or winter has no bearing on climate change that takes place over decades. On the other hand, finding that my region has moved into a new growing zone in my lifetime does indicate climate change rather than weather.
There is also a complete misreading by Jacoby of a recent article by two scientists from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. The articile in question suggests the possibility that the climate may have entered a period of greater stability. There’ only one problem with Jacoby’s excitement at this news. The authors, like all other reputable climate scientists, see a clear long-term trend toward global warming, and their analysis suggests that “warming over the 21st century may well be larger than that predicted by the current generation of models, given the propensity of those models to underestimate climate internal variability.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-jacquot/hot-or-not-making-sense-o_b_172269.html)
Apparently Jacoby did not get to this point.
Jacoby concludes with what is meant to be a rousing call to arms to warn against the religious zealotry of those who would combat global warming now. Not surprisingly he attacks Al Gore: “But for many people, the science of climate change is not nearly as important as the religion of climate change. When Al Gore insisted yet again at a conference last Thursday that there can be no debate about global warming, he was speaking not with the authority of a man of science, but with the closed-minded dogmatism of a religious zealot. Dogma and zealotry have their virtues, no doubt. But if we want to understand where global warming has gone, those aren’t the tools we need.” (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/03/08/wheres_global_warming/?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed1)
In one column Jacoby has displayed ignorance, intellectual dishonesty, and a stunning lack of irony: the insults he hurls against the Noble Prize winner would apply far more accurately to Mr. Jacoby himself. I do not at all believe that religion by itself should deprive us of the capacity to understand the real and present danger of global warming. Indeed, religious faith could strengthen a conviction that the time has come to take real action, but it seems that Mr. Jacoby takes denial of global warming as an article of faith that functions as a bizarre as well as highly destructive form of identity politics.
CLIMATE CHANGE Statement of William Happer Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics Princeton University Before the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Senator Barbara Boxer, Chair February 25, 2009 Madam Chairman and members, thank you for the opportunity to appear before the Committee on Environment and Public Works to testify on Climate Change. My name is William Happer, and I am the Cyrus Fogg Bracket Professor of Physics at Princeton University. I am not a climatologist, but I don’t think any of the other witnesses are either. I do work in the related field of atomic, molecular and optical physics. I have spent my professional life studying the interactions of visible and infrared radiation with
William Happer Testimony to Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Page 2
February 25, 2009
gases – one of the main physical phenomena behind the greenhouse effect. I have published over 200 papers in peer reviewed scientific journals. I am a member of a number of professional organizations, including the American Physical Society and the National Academy of Sciences. I have done extensive consulting work for the US Government and Industry. I also served as the Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy (DOE) from 1990 to 1993, where I supervised all of DOE’s work on climate change. I have come here today as a concerned citizen to express my personal views, and those of many like me, about US climate-change policy. These are not official views of my main employer, Princeton University, nor of any other organization with which I am associated. Let me state clearly where I probably agree with the other witnesses. We have been in a period of global warming over the past 200 years, but there have been several periods, like the last ten years, when the warming has ceased, and there have even been periods of substantial cooling, as from 1940 to 1970. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) have increased from about 280 to 380 parts per million over past 100 years. The combustion of fossil fuels, coal, oil and natural gas, has contributed to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. And finally, increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause the earth’s surface to warm. The key question is: will the net effect of the warming, and any other effects of the CO2, be good or bad for humanity? I believe that the increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind. I predict that future historians will look back on this period much as we now view the period just before the passage of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution to prohibit “the manufacturing, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” At the time, the 18th amendment seemed to be exactly the right thing to do – who wanted to be in league with demon rum? It was the 1917 version of saving the planet. More than half the states enacted prohibition laws before the 18th amendment was ratified. Only one state, Rhode Island, voted against the 18th amendment. Two states, Illinois and Indiana, never got around to voting and all the rest voted for it. There were many thoughtful people, including a majority of Rhode Islanders, who thought that prohibition might do more harm than good. But they were completely outmatched by the temperance
William Happer Testimony to Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Page 3
February 25, 2009
movement, whose motives and methods had much in common with the movement to stop climate change. Deeply sincere people thought they were saving humanity from the evils of alcohol, just as many people now sincerely think they are saving humanity from the evils of CO2. Prohibition was a mistake, and our country has probably still not fully recovered from the damage it did. Institutions like organized crime got their start in that era. Drastic limitations on CO2 are likely to damage our country in analogous ways. But what about the frightening consequences of increasing levels of CO2 that we keep hearing about? In a word, they are wildly exaggerated, just as the purported benefits of prohibition were wildly exaggerated. Let me turn now to the science and try to explain why I and many scientists like me are not alarmed by increasing levels of CO2. The earth’s climate really is strongly affected by the greenhouse effect, although the physics is not the same as that which makes real, glassed-in greenhouses work. Without greenhouse warming, the earth would be much too cold to sustain its current abundance of life. However, at least 90% of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a bit player. There is little argument in the scientific community that a direct effect of doubling the CO2 concentration will be a small increase of the earth’s temperature — on the order of one degree. Additional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can. It is like putting an additional ski hat on your head when you already have a nice warm one below it, but your are only wearing a windbreaker. To really get warmer, you need to add a warmer jacket. The IPCC thinks that this extra jacket is water vapor and clouds. Since most of the greenhouse effect for the earth is due to water vapor and clouds, added CO2 must substantially increase water’s contribution to lead to the frightening scenarios that are bandied about. The buzz word here is that there is “positive feedback.” With each passing year, experimental observations further undermine the claim of a large positive feedback from water. In fact, observations suggest that the feedback is close to zero and may even be negative. That is, water vapor and clouds may actually diminish the already small global warming expected from CO2, not amplify it. The evidence here comes from satellite measurements of infrared
William Happer Testimony to Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Page 4
February 25, 2009
radiation escaping from the earth into outer space, from measurements of sunlight reflected from clouds and from measurements of the temperature the earth’s surface or of the troposphere, the roughly 10 km thick layer of the atmosphere above the earth’s surface that is filled with churning air and clouds, heated from below at the earth’s surface, and cooled at the top by radiation into space. But the climate is warming and CO2 is increasing. Doesn’t this prove that CO2 is causing global warming through the greenhouse effect? No, the current warming period began about 1800 at the end of the little ice age, long before there was an appreciable increase of CO2. There have been similar and even larger warmings several times in the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age. These earlier warmings clearly had nothing to do with the combustion of fossil fuels. The current warming also seems to be due mostly to natural causes, not to increasing levels of carbon dioxide. Over the past ten years there has been no global warming, and in fact a slight cooling. This is not at all what was predicted by the IPCC models. The climate has changed many times in the past with no help by mankind. Recall that the Romans grew grapes in Britain around the year 100, and Viking settlers prospered on small farms in Greenland for several centuries during the Medieval Climate Optimum around 1100. People have had an urge to control the climate throughout history so I suppose it is no surprise that we are at it again today. For example, in June of 1644, the Bishop of Geneva led a flock of believers to the face of a glacier that was advancing “by over a musket shot” every day. The glacier would soon destroy a village. The Bishop and his flock prayed over the glacier, and it is said to have stopped. The poor Vikings had long since abandoned Greenland where the advancing glaciers and cooling climate proved much less susceptible to prayer. Sometimes the obsession for control of the climate got a bit out of hand, as in the Aztec state, where the local scientific/
religious establishment of the year 1500 had long since announced that the debate was over and that at least 20,000 human sacrifices a year were needed to keep the sun moving, the rain falling, and to stop climate change. The widespread dissatisfaction of the people who were unfortunate enough to be the source of these sacrifices played an important part in the success of the Spanish conquest of Mexico.
William Happer Testimony to Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Page 5
February 25, 2009
The existence of climate variability in the past has long been an embarrassment to those who claim that all climate change is due to man and that man can control it. When I was a schoolboy, my textbooks on earth science showed a prominent “medieval warm period” at the time the Vikings settled Greenland, followed by a vicious “little ice age” that drove them out. So I was very surprised when I first saw the celebrated “hockey stick curve,” in the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC. I could hardly believe my eyes. Both the little ice age and the Medieval Warm Period were gone, and the newly revised temperature of the world since the year 1000 had suddenly become absolutely flat until the last hundred years when it shot up like the blade on a hockey stick. This was far from an obscure detail, and the hockey stick was trumpeted around the world as evidence that the end was near. We now know that the hockey stick has nothing to do with reality but was the result of incorrect handling of proxy temperature records and incorrect statistical analysis. There really was a little ice age and there really was a medieval warm period that was as warm or warmer than today. I bring up the hockey stick as a particularly clear example that the IPCC summaries for policy makers are not dispassionate statements of the facts of climate change. It is a shame, because many of the IPCC chapters are quite good. The whole hockey-stick episode reminds me of the motto of Orwell’s Ministry of Information in the novel “1984:” “He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.” The IPCC has made no serious attempt to model the natural variations of the earth’s temperature in the past. Whatever caused these large past variations, it was not due to people burning coal and oil. If you can’t model the past, where you know the answer pretty well, how can you model the future? Many of us are aware that we are living in an ice age, where we have hundred-thousand-year intervals of big continental glaciers that cover much of the land area of the northern hemisphere, interspersed with relative short interglacial intervals like the one we are living in now. By looking at ice cores from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, one can estimate past temperatures and atmospheric concentrations of CO2. Al Gore likes to display graphs of temperature and CO2 concentrations over the past million years or so, showing that when CO2 rises, the temperature also rises. Doesn’t
William Happer Testimony to Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Page 6
February 25, 2009
this prove that the temperature is driven by CO2? Absolutely not! If you look carefully at these records, you find that first the temperature goes up, and then the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere goes up. There is a delay between a temperature increase and a CO2 increase of about 800 years. This casts serious doubt on CO2 as a climate driver because of the fundamental concept of causality. A cause must precede its effect. For example, I hear my furnace go on in the morning about six o’clock, and by about 7 o’clock, I notice that my house is now so warm that I have too many covers on my bed. It is time to get up. It would never occur to me to assume that the furnace started burning gas at 6 o’clock because the house got warm at 7 o’clock. Sure, temperature and gas burning are correlated, just like temperature and atmospheric levels of CO2. But the thing that changes first is the cause. In the case of the ice cores, the cause of increased CO2 is almost certainly the warming of the oceans. The oceans release dissolved CO2 when they warm up, just like a glass of beer rapidly goes flat in a warm room. If not CO2, then what really causes the warming at the end of the cold periods of ice ages? A great question and one of the reasons I strongly support research in climate. I keep hearing about the “pollutant CO2,” or about “poisoning the atmosphere” with CO2, or about minimizing our “carbon footprint.” This brings to mind another Orwellian pronouncement that is worth pondering: “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” CO2 is not a pollutant and it is not a poison and we should not corrupt the English language by depriving “pollutant” and “poison” of their original meaning. Our exhaled breath contains about 4% CO2. That is 40,000 parts per million, or about 100 times the current atmospheric concentration. CO2 is absolutely essential for life on earth. Commercial greenhouse operators often use CO2 as a fertilizer to improve the health and growth rate of their plants. Plants, and our own primate ancestors evolved when the levels of atmospheric CO2 were about 1000 ppm, a level that we will probably not reach by burning fossil fuels, and far above our current level of about 380 ppm. We try to keep CO2 levels in our US Navy submarines no higher than 8,000 parts per million, about 20 time current atmospheric levels. Few adverse effects are observed at even higher levels.
William Happer Testimony to Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Page 7
February 25, 2009
We are all aware that “the green revolution” has increased crop yields around the world. Part of this wonderful development is due to improved crop varieties, better use of mineral fertilizers, herbicides, etc. But no small part of the yield improvement has come from increased atmospheric levels of CO2. Plants photosynthesize more carbohydrates when they have more CO2. Plants are also more drought-tolerant with more CO2, because they need not “inhale” as much air to get the CO2 needed for photosynthesis. At the same time, the plants need not “exhale” as much water vapor when they are using air enriched in CO2. Plants decrease the number of stomata or air pores on their leaf surfaces in response to increasing atmospheric levels of CO2. They are adapted to changing CO2 levels and they prefer higher levels than those we have at present. If we really were to decrease our current level of CO2 of around 400 ppm to the 270 ppm that prevailed a few hundred years ago, we would lose some of the benefits of the green revolution. Crop yields will continue to increase as CO2 levels go up, since we are far from the optimum levels for plant growth. Commercial greenhouse operators are advised to add enough CO2 to maintain about 1000 ppm around their plants. Indeed, economic studies like those of Dr. Robert Mendelsohn at Yale University project that moderate warming is an overall benefit to mankind because of higher agricultural yields and many other reasons. I remember being forced to read Voltaire’s novel, Candide, when I was young. You recall that Dr. Pangloss repeatedly assured young Candide that he was living in “the best of all possible worlds,” presumably also with the best of all CO2 concentrations. That we are (or were) living at the best of all CO2 concentrations seems to be a tacit assumption of the IPCC executive summaries for policy makers. Enormous effort and imagination have gone into showing that increasing concentrations of CO2 will be catastrophic, cities will be flooded by sea-level rises that are ten or more times bigger than even IPCC predicts, there will be mass extinctions of species, billions of people will die, tipping points will render the planet a desert. A few months ago I read that global warming will soon bring on a devastating epidemic of kidney stones. If you write down all the ills attributed to global warming you fill up a very thick book.
William Happer Testimony to Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Page 8
Febr
uary 25, 2009
Much is made about tropical diseases like malaria and yellow fever devastating the populations of temperate climates because of the burning of fossil fuels and the subsequent warming of the earth. Many people who actually work with tropical diseases, notably Dr. Paul Reiter, a specialist on tropical diseases, have pointed out how silly all of this is. Perhaps I can add a few bits of history to illustrate this point. One of the first military expenditures of the Continental Congress in 1775 was $300 to purchase quinine for the Continental Army and to mitigate the effects of malaria. The Continental Congress moved from the then Capital of the United States , Philadelphia, to my home town of Princeton, New Jersey, in the summer of 1783 for two reasons. The first was that the Congress had not yet paid many soldiers of the Revolutionary War their promised wages, and disgruntled veterans were wandering up and down the streets of Philadelphia. Secondly, there were outbreaks of malaria in cities as far north as Boston. The Congress knew you were less likely to catch malaria in Princeton than in Philadelphia. In 1793 there was not only malaria, but a horrendous outbreak of yellow fever in Philadelphia. Many thousands of people died in a city with a population of about 50,000. And I should point out that Philadelphia was a bit cooler then than now, since the little ice age was just coming to an end. Controlling tropical diseases and many other diseases has little to do with temperature, and everything to do with curtailing the factors that cause the spread – notably mosquitoes in the case of malaria and yellow fever. Many of the frightening scenarios about global warming come from large computer calculations, “general circulation models,” that try to mimic the behavior of the earth’s climate as more CO2 is added to the atmosphere. It is true that climate models use increasingly capable and increasingly expensive computers. But their predictions have not been very good. For example, none of them predicted the lack of warming that we have experienced during the past ten years. All the models assume the water feedback is positive, while satellite observations suggest that the feedback is zero or negative. Modelers have been wrong before. One of the most famous modeling disputes involved the physicist William Thompson, later Lord Kelvin, and the naturalist Charles Darwin. Lord Kelvin was a great believer in models and differential equations. Charles
William Happer Testimony to Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Page 9
February 25, 2009
Darwin was not particularly facile with mathematics, but he took observations very seriously. For evolution to produce the variety of living and fossil species that Darwin had observed, the earth needed to have spent hundreds of millions of years with conditions not very different from now. With his mathematical models, Kelvin rather pompously demonstrated that the earth must have been a hellish ball of molten rock only a few tens of millions of years ago, and that the sun could not have been shining for more than about 30 million years. Kelvin was actually modeling what he thought was global and solar cooling. I am sorry to say that a majority of his fellow physicists supported Kelvin. Poor Darwin removed any reference to the age of the earth in later editions of the “Origin of the Species.” But Darwin was right the first time, and Kelvin was wrong. Kelvin thought he knew everything but he did not know about the atomic nucleus, radioactivity and nuclear reactions, all of which invalidated his elegant modeling calculations. This brings up the frequent assertion that there is a consensus behind the idea that there is an impending disaster from climate change, and that it may already be too late to avert this catastrophe, even if we stop burning fossil fuels now. We are told that only a few flat-earthers still have any doubt about the calamitous effects of continued CO2 emissions. There are a number of answers to this assertion. First, what is correct in science is not determined by consensus but by experiment and observations. Historically, the consensus is often wrong, and I just mentioned the incorrect consensus of modelers about the age of the earth and the sun. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 in Philadelphia the medical consensus was that you could cure almost anything by bleeding the patient. Benjamin Rush, George Washington’s Surgeon General during the War of Independence, and a brave man, stayed in Philadelphia throughout the yellow fever epidemic. He worked tirelessly to save the stricken by bleeding them, the consensus treatment of the day. A few cautious observers noticed that you were more likely to survive the yellow fever without the services of the great man. But Dr. Rush had plenty of high level-friends and he was backed up by the self-evident consensus, so he went ahead with his ministrations. In summary, a consensus is often wrong.
William Happer Testimony to Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Page 10
February 25, 2009
Secondly, I do not think there is a consensus about an impending climate crisis. I personally certainly don’t believe we are facing a crisis unless we create one for ourselves, as Benjamin Rush did by bleeding his patients. Many others, wiser than I am, share my view. The number of those with the courage to speak out is growing. There may be an illusion of consensus. Like the temperance movement one hundred years ago the climate-catastrophe movement has enlisted the mass media, the leadership of scientific societies, the trustees of charitable foundations, and many other influential people to their cause. Just as editorials used to fulminate about the slippery path to hell behind the tavern door, hysterical op-ed’s lecture us today about the impending end of the planet and the need to stop climate change with bold political action. Many distinguished scientific journals now have editors who further the agenda of climate-change alarmism. Research papers with scientific findings contrary to the dogma of climate calamity are rejected by reviewers, many of whom fear that their research funding will be cut if any doubt is cast on the coming climate catastrophe. Speaking of the Romans, then invading Scotland in the year 83, the great Scottish chieftain Calgacus is quoted as saying “They make a desert and call it peace.” If you have the power to stifle dissent, you can indeed create the illusion of peace or consensus. The Romans have made impressive inroads into climate science. Certainly, it is a bit unnerving to read statements of Dr. James Hansen in the Congressional Record that climate skeptics are guilty of “high crimes against humanity and nature.” Even elementary school teachers and writers of children’s books are enlisted to terrify our children and to promote the idea of impending climate doom. Having observed the education of many children, including my own, I am not sure how effective the effort will be. Many children seem to do just the opposite of what they are taught. Nevertheless, children should not be force-fed propaganda, masquerading as science. Many of you may know that in 2007 a British Court ruled that if Al Gore’s book, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was used in public schools, the children had to be told of eleven particularly troubling inaccuracies. You can easily find a list of the inaccuracies on the internet, but I will mention one. The court ruled that it was not possible to attribute hurricane Katrina to CO2. Indeed, had we taken a few of the many billions of dollars we have been spending on climate change research and propaganda and fixed the dykes
William Happer Testimony to Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Page 11
February 25, 2009
and pumps around the New Orleans, most of the damage from Hurricane Katrina could have been avoided. The sea level is indeed rising, just as it has for the past 20,000 years since the end of the last ice age. Fairly accurate measurements of sea level have been available since about 1800. These measurements show no sign of any acce
leration. The rising sea level can be a serious local problem for heavily-populated, low-lying areas like New Orleans, where land subsidence compounds the problem. But to think that limiting CO2 emissions will stop sea level rise is a dangerous illusion. It is also possible that the warming seas around Antarctica will cause more snowfall over the continent and will counteract the sea-level rise. In any case, the rising sea level is a problem that needs quick local action for locations like New Orleans rather than slow action globally. In closing, let me say again that we should provide adequate support to the many brilliant scientists, some at my own institution of Princeton University, who are trying to better understand the earth’s climate, now, in the past, and what it may be in the future. I regret that the climate-change issue has become confused with serious problems like secure energy supplies, protecting our environment, and figuring out where future generations will get energy supplies after we have burned all the fossil fuel we can find. We should not confuse these laudable goals with hysterics about carbon footprints. For example, when weighing pluses and minuses of the continued or increased use of coal, the negative issue should not be increased atmospheric CO2, which is probably good for mankind. We should focus on real issues like damage to the land and waterways by strip mining, inadequate remediation, hazards to miners, the release of real pollutants and poisons like mercury, other heavy metals, organic carcinogens, etc. Life is about making decisions and decisions are about trade-offs. The Congress can choose to promote investment in technology that addresses real problems and scientific research that will let us cope with real problems more efficiently. Or they can act on unreasonable fears and suppress energy use, economic growth and the benefits that come from the creation of national wealth.
William Happer Testimony to Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Page 12
February 25, 2009
couldn’t you have just posted a sentence or two and a link? Do you really think someone is going to wade through this, especially the way it’s formatted? To say nothing of copyright infringement….
<
p>Charley or Bob, maybe you ought to take this down and give Edgar a lesson on how to post links in the comment section.
The election of President Obama has apparently terrified the denial community at the possiblity that something might actually be done to combat global warming. It won’t be easy given the intrasigence of economic interests that benefit from dirty energy, but action is certainly more likely than under the Bush administration, which alternately denied global warming or refused to respond.
<
p>Because of Obama’s election, the pro-global warming crowd has responded with a heap of incoherent and inaccurate op-eds, like Jacoby’s where the author either does not understand the article that he cites or did not bother to read it in the first place anyway. George Will did much the same thing in the Washington Post.
<
p>Reviewing the comments on posts to news stories from around the world suggest that the denial crowd is also engaged in a campaign to try to shape debate by being the first to post on any story on climate change. This is entirely their right, of course, but raises the question of why they so strongly favor global warming? Do Republicans want to make the GOP into the GWP or the Global Warming Party?
<
p>The long post not only brings up many irrelevant points, but the author seems to suggest that global warming would actually be a good thing.
<
p>The motive for denial remains unclear. Is it too painful to admit that human activity is changing the climate? Is it so repugnant to consider any form of government initiative to respond the crisis that a worsening climate crisis is actually the best future we can aspire to? Why do some conservatives and apparently some libertarians (if that is an acurate label to use for Jacoby) so strongly favor Global Warming?
At least I can understand what passes for motive in those industries that stay in business by harming the atmosphere. Elected officials who rely on the contributions thereof also have a “motive” that makes logical, if not meritorious sense. With Jeff Jacoby, however, I can’t answer the fundamental question of how he benefits from denying global warming.
In this case, the commenter said nothing about the merits, but just complained about how it was posted.
Christopher, can you honestly say that there are not some points to be made by the other side–points based on science? The author is a well respected professor at Princeton so you should at least listen/read what he has to say on the subject.
Improved formatting may help, but any “scientific” response with as many “We are all aware” arguments as this one has is hard to take seriously.
… are hashed out in the scientific community. The other guy testifying that day was Chris Field. Here gave a short response to Mr. Happer’s testimony in an interview with Amy Goodman (quoted here via the science blog A Few Things Ill Considered – emphasis mine):
<
p>
The diarist complained only about the technical issues of formatting, linking, and copyright and you respond with the accusation of being afraid of the truth – a complete non sequiter.
<
p>As for other arguments measuring whether or not the average global temperature is rising, and if so by how much, is about as objective as you can get.
He’s not merely a physics professor – he’s the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the George C. Marshall Institute! What’s that, you ask? Why, it’s a conservative think tank, funded by Exxon.
Oh, wait – was I supposed to paste those entire articles in?
Happer does not carry out research or publish on climate. All one can ascertain is that for some reason the very notion of human-caused climate change bothers him. In that respect he seems very similar to some other deniers. Some just don’t like the idea that we (collectively) are causing global warming. Others move very quickly to assert that if we are causing global warmiing than it must be good.
<
p>Happer’s essay builds up an absurd strawman
<
p>”The existence of climate variability in the past has long been an embarrassment to those who claim that all climate change is due to man and that man can control it” I would defy Haper to produce a single climate scientist or historian who believes all climate change is due to man. What climate scientists have discovered is that people have created an entirely new and extraordinarily powerful force for climate change. At the same time, past history also teaches us that human societies can destroy their environment and threaten their own existence.
<
p>A question for deniers: What other findings of science or of social science do you deny?
<
p>What is the threshhold for belief? Is it Miami underwater? What plan for action would you recommend then?
I am slightly bemused by the fact that no one here has actually challenged Happer’s statements based on science. Don’t be deniers, now.
Al Gore is not a scientist, but a messenger who the deniers love shooting down. He is communicating the strong consensus of those who are experts. Don’t make this about ad hominem attacks.
You may have heard of these guys.
The point is that there is an increasing minority of respected scientists who disagree. Are you so cocksure of everything in life that you can’t consider the possiblility that “climate change” may not be quite what Al Gore tells us it is.
Utter waste of bits.
<
p>And no, the minority is neither increasing, nor respected. Please read Mr. Lynne’s comment.
You asked who’s an expert on climate change. I answered you. Now you’re telling that the point is something else, and asking more questions, this time about me. I happen to be an expert in that area, and the answer is “no”.
<
p>Any more questions?
Sticks and stones.True experts are not idealogues. You’ll have to do more than name call, obfuscate, and avoid answering direct questions to impress me. Sorry old chap.
I called you a name? What name was it? It must have been awful – tell me what it was, and I promise to never use it again. I obfuscated? What part of my replies is unclear? I’ll be happy to explain. Where did I avoid answering a direct question? Is there some part of ‘no’ that’s giving you trouble, old bean?
Assuming that my remarks toward Al Gore are Ad-hominem is an attempt to paint me in a certain way. I think that those remarks, given his lust for publicity and public adulation, are justifiied. (by the way, check out the size of Gore’s carbon footprint on Google). You continue to obfuscate because you refuse to address the points made by the profesor from Princeton. Is this too much for an expert like you to handle? By the way, it must be nice to have such faith in one’s beliefs. No wonder that some cynics are calling the global warming fad the new religion.
I said nothing about Al Gore, or about your remarks concerning him. I answered two questions you asked, directly and honestly, without any obfuscation. I have not, up to now, “refused to address” anything.
<
p>The only thing I’ve claimed to be an expert on is me – are you disputing that with your scare quotes? I am prepared to defend my expertise on the subject of me to the ends of the Earth!
<
p>BTW, for someone who imagines that people are calling him names, you seem to be living in a well-glazed house.
address some of the points made by the Princeton professor. I prefer sugar krullers to glazed doughnuts, in any event.
Not interested in your supposed faith, or your pet professor, or your dessert preferences. Not after you respond to my generous help with your expert-finding problem by dumping on my expertise.
And your comments towards kirth and about Al Gore are Ad Hominem. The latest are even more so. No substance, just ridicule and stale talking points.
<
p>It’s notable that you didn’t rely to the points raised by me. Mr. Lynne, or kirth with anything other than mockery.
Sorry, I’ve got to go prepare supper. Interesting that the three of you never deigned to address the points made by the Princeton professor. Don’t preach to me about stale talking points and mockery. You guys have it down pat.
Just one example: Mr. Lynne provided an actual climatologist from the same hearing.
Sorry, got to go.
I’m with kirth. Game over.
The whole point of his post was to waste as much of our time as possible refuting his cut-and-paste nonsense.
Call me anything you want, but I am not a troll. At least I took the time to read Kirth’s link to Seed Magazine and that objective interviewer, Amy Goodman. You guys still refuse to even open your minds to any viewpoint, seeming to take pride in not reading the professor’s points.
Or perhaps your mind is too open. I didn’t link to Seed magazine.
And “Seed” wasn’t the site, but an ad promotion.
Please stop pointing at some article we are supposed to read. If you are too lazy to make the argument yourself, don’t expect anyone to waste time responding.
However, Edgarthearmenian, I don’t think I’ve ever presented as much material as you just did and expected anyone to wade through it — particularly people who disagreed with me. In your shoes, I’d summarize, I’d highlight why it’s important, I’d indicate why even those who disagreed with me might heed what I was quoting.
<
p>I realize that is a lot of work. I realize that your climb is uphill here. You’re outnumbered, and, frankly, the evidence for global warming and for the human role in it seems overwhelming to me and many of us on BMG. Making any argument against the default position would seem to require a lot of explaining. We read you and think of those retreating glaciers, the melting blocks of ice, and the latest hurricane statistics.
<
p>Among conservatives, this is, of course, different.
<
p>Groups of conservatives tend to think that the media is biased against them, that academics don’t know what they’re talking about, and that liberals are too fuzzy-headed to know to what’s up. To groups of conservatives, of course, Gore is a liar and exaggerator; he cannot possibly be correct. So with conservatives, you’d have the wind at your back. You wouldn’t have as much work to do.
That is, if your posted a long, rambling, badly formatted article over there, then insulted everyone who responded, you’d get flak, too.
<
p>Even over there many would agree that the biggest sin of the Bush administration was the elevation of politics and paid agendas over science.
<
p>Heck, even the Globe comment section mostly shredded Jacoby.
Yes, it was a mistake to post such a long rif and to antagonize people who have their minds made up on the issue. Just so that you, Huh, Kirth and the others know, I don’t go “over there” to visit conservative sites. What fun would that be? As I have said before, I was a liberal in my youth, too. (even spent two years in the Peace Corps from 62-64, heeding JFK’s call to ask not what my country could do for me.)
KBusch, please stop petting the trolls.
Do you call everyone a troll who disagrees with you? C’mon now, take a deep breath and relax. I am not trying to “antagonize” you.
Let’s make a deal. I’ll stop calling you a troll when you stop insulting people that disagree with you and start making actual arguments.
<
p>I’ve asked before — if this blog is so awful, why are you here? By the same token, if liberals are so awful, why aren’t you off talking to your conservative brethren?
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because I disagree with you on some issues that I agree with the conservatives on all issues. As a matter of fact, despite my personal horror of having been treated in a people’s hospital in the old SSSR I have started to come around to supporting national health care. On some issues I happen to agree with you: equal rights for all; support for labor unions and collective bargaining being just two. I also am glad that Obama has done away with the restrictions on scientific cloning and I agree that religion should not be mixed with politics. Unfortunately, KBusch is correct: some days I can’t decide what to have for breakfast.
Yes, we do have our minds made up on this. That doesn’t mean we cannot change our minds in the future, but it does mean that you have more work to do if you want to engage on this issue.
<
p>I’m not one who believes one should wander around with an open mind about everything. I don’t understand how people like that eat breakfast. Insert link to We won’t always play with you.
There are some interesting debates going on among conservatives. It surprises me you’d think they are not so interesting or are not worth joining.
on global warming: Climate science from climate scientists
Don’t get your hopes up, Edgar – none of this batch is Al Gore either.
Don’t shoot the messenger. I’ll read it when it’s inserted correctly.
http://www.realclimate.org/
Ok Edgar cut and paste the links if you have trouble opening them
<
p>First Link
<
p>http://sciencepoliticsclimatec…
<
p>Your Princeton Expert was also one of the naysayers on CFC causing Ozone Depletion Read the article at the link Got that one wrong he did.
<
p>Next you may want to reread some of the real science going on to look closely and to actually document the facts from Fiction the spurious argument that the water has been rising for Centuries is both an over simplification of half the facts
<
p>Link:
http://thingsbreak.files.wordp…
<
p>and
<
p>http://thingsbreak.wordpress.c…
<
p>You may also like to read the info on this site, which goes point for point debunking your precious Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor and his comments and research bought and paid for be yes Exxon/Mobil. You know the massive oil conglomerate that owned the Exxon Valdez and had the record Profits last year.
<
p>Link: http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/n…
<
p>I would say this is certain suspect in it’s value as a purely scientific research opinion.
<
p>By the way I think that the science behind Al Gore is solid and the proof is in the wild swings in weather we are experiencing. Snow in March is not unusual and global warming does not mean Boston will be like Miami in 20 years either what it does suggest is that we have accelerated the onset of increased temperatures in the polar regions we have sped up the melting of the ice glaciers we are effect the salinity of the oceans and that this will have a profound effect on Human Life. I think that is reason enough to care about it I happen to Like Life.
<
p>As Usual just my Opinion
Aside from the fact that Happer is not an expert on climate most of his testimony in now way focused on the issue of human created global warming. He throws a lot of irrelevant balls in the air.
<
p> He states that climate has shifted at various points in past history (a point that any historian or person interested in long-term history could make) and then claims that the scientists who see human-driven global warming have not considered this possiblity or are unaware of it. We live in a world where climate can change, and rather than taking that as a caution we are doing everything we can to push our climate out of is current state, one which has been a boon for the rise of civilizatin.
<
p>He says C02 is not a pollutant in the sense that it is not toxic. Any earth sciences student in middle school could note the same thing. The problem is not that carbon dioxide is toxic but that high concentrations would trap excessive amounts of heat.
<
p>Happer is also internally inconsistent. He denies global warming is a problem, but then seems to imply that it would actually be good for vegetation.
<
p>Whether from supposed experts like Happer or from “journalists” such as Jeff Jacoby who do not seem to either read or understand the sources that they cite the case against global warming is no case at all. This again raises the question about what is really driving the deniers.
<
p>What is it?
<
p>Do you hate Al Gore so much that you want the world to fry?
despite consistently increasing CO2 emissions since the industrial revolution, temp has tended to rise and fall in 30 year cycles. And despite increasingly accelerated CO2 emissions since 1998, beyond all of the disaster warnings at the time and since warned against, it hasn’t gotten any warmer.
<
p>And also why historically – in the big picture – CO2 is a trailing indicator of temperature.
<
p>Its a damn shame that you have to brand everyone “deniers” “who want the planet to fry” just because they don’t agree with your computer simulation models.
<
p>Science is never settled. At least not by immensely complex computer simulations.
<
p>
In fact, the evidence of the following being false is overwhelming:
to post a single link in support?
<
p>For my part I’ll offer this:
http://www.google.com/search?c…
<
p>
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/i…
<
p>The 1998 talking point seems to rely on the fact that 1998 was an outlier: it was abnormally hot even for the hottest decade.
support my assertion that it hasn’t gotten any warmer since 1998.
<
p>So when you say that my point is false, you are clearly incorrect.
<
p>If you’d like to say something else, that’s fine (e.g. “thought 1998 was an outlier on the high side, all recent years have been among the warmest years since… (pick a time frame convenient to your argument)
<
p>There’s actually alot out there, supporting both sides – but in order to access it you sort of have to un-demonize the side you aren’t currently on.
<
p>My favorite site is this one:
<
p>http://climatedebatedaily.com
<
p>
Yes, it seems that it has been cooler since 1998.
<
p>Placing too much weight on a single data point is a sign of insufficient training in statistics, and hence the methods of modern science.
But, 11 years of cooling appears to weaken the P(1) (i.e. that there is global warming), no?
<
p>Revised:
<
p>: Probability that rising CO2 is affecting climate: some unknown probability.
<
p>2: Probability that rising C02 is caused by man: lower than #1.
<
p>3: Probability that the climate affect is harmful to life and property: lower than #2.
<
p>4: Probability that the climate affect is harmful to life and property AND material: lower than #3.
<
p>5: Probilility that action by society can prevent any harmful effect: lower than #4.
<
p>6: Probility that society can figure out the proper preventative action: lower than #5.
<
p>7: Probablity that society can politically or/and affordab ly cause the proper preventative action to happen: lower than #6.
It’s not 11 years of cooling.
<
p>This is like suggesting that we now know that the price of oil is never going to rise because it just fell by a lot. A recent peak does not disprove the general trend.
<
p>You’re still not factoring in the cost of Boston and Mumbai being under water: Probabilities only matter when wedded to costs.
An unknown probability times a brazillion dollars is still unknown. Maybe let’s start government spending on an asteroid shield, a Yellowstone Caldera explosion contingency plan, a Krylon invasion prevention plan because there is some probability greater than zero that it could all happen and at great cost.
<
p>And, let’s do be sure to spend epic amounts, because even though it might not happen and the spending might not help, well, we have to do something big, even if it’s terribly wrong.
What you call a religion, that broad consensus among climate scientists, would seem to indicate that even the product of P(1) and the six conditional probabilities is still larger than the asteroid danger.
<
p>As for the flying saucer threat, Colonel Tom Edwards will be able to take care of it just fine.
The religion of Global Warmers is almost as shrill as either the Church of the Creationists are Crazy or the Universal Health Universalists.
<
p>1: Probability that rising CO2 is affecting climate: moderately high probability.
<
p>2: Probability that rising C02 is caused by man: lower than #1.
<
p>3: Probability that the climate affect is harmful to life and property: lower than #2.
<
p>4: Probability that the climate affect is harmful to life and property AND material: lower than #3.
<
p>5: Probilility that action by society can prevent any harmful effect: lower than #4.
<
p>6: Probility that society can figure out the proper preventative action: lower than #5.
<
p>7: Probablity that society can politically or/and affordab ly cause the proper preventative action to happen: lower than #6.
<
p>Even given that P(1) = 1, so what, if P(2)*P(3)…is tiny, as it most likely is. So what, unless of course, you’re Al Gore and make a grip of cash on speaking engagements. And even P(1) is suspect. Absent a crystal ball all you have is consensus. i.e. consensus is that there’s life in outer space, consensus is that angels are real….
When constructing utility functions and the like, we tend to multiply probabilities by outcomes. Relying a bit on your framework, there are there things that could show up on the dice:
The downsides of #2 and #3 are very large indeed (desserts, floods, more radical weather variation, shifts in climate with the Gulf Stream possibly stopping). The probability of #3 does not have to be very large for the rational decision maker to decide it’s what one has to bet on.
<
p>This is somewhat like parable of Sabutai and the sated crocodile in another thread. Even if the crocodile is unlikely to eat Satbutai after a full meal, the possible downside of Sabutai’s jumping into the river with her* indicates that would be unwise.
*I believe ChimpsChump’s crocodile is female and attended Wellesley.
I suspect that there is some holdover from the Republican campaign against Al Gore in 2000. Most memorable to Democrats, perhaps, was the accusation that he was wooden, but what the Republicans were playing up was the idea that he exaggerated, even lied. Thus, there was a fair amount of exaggeration and goofiness on the part of Bush campaign surrogates about Gore’s role in getting the Internet going, in his resume, and the Love Story distraction.
<
p>Liberals like me were mostly struck by how different Gore seemed by 2002. He was looking decidedly unwooden, he was giving great speeches, we wished 2002 Gore not 2000 Gore had been the nominee. Conservatives probably disliked those speeches and likely added them to their pile of campaign-induced Gore hate.
<
p>So I suspect that there is something to characterizing the right-wing response to global warming as an outgrowth of the 2000 presidential campaign.
This is a common misconception. Actually, it is toxic.
MSDS(PDF):
<
p>Toxicity of Carbon Dioxide Gas Exposure, CO2 Poisoning Symptoms, Carbon Dioxide Exposure Limits, etc.:
<
p>Steven B. Harris, MD:
In the face of overwhelming evidence of global warming and of the threat of future spikes in global warming to persist in global warming denial is to support global warming. Given the immense mountain of evidence that makes clear the threat there has to be some motive for denial. If it is not hatred of Al Gore what is the real motive?
Maybe this:
Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study
what should we assign as your motive for all the doom-hysteria? A marxist style plot to gain world control by regulating all carbon output? Or maybe just a different point of view?
<
p>oh well
<
p>
Demolisher, you’re very fond of demonizing characterizing liberals as marxists — and two or three years ago you were fear-mongering on the terrorist threat.
e.g. from those according to their ability to those according to their need, etc etc
<
p>The terrorist threat is as real as it could be, and unless Obama continues the vigilance that we instituted under Bush, we risk learning this in a horrible way. I’d really rather not have that happen.
<
p>In any case, there is a recent precedent for a catastrophic terrorist attack. There is no precedent in recorded history of catastrophic climate change. Only in computer models.
<
p>
A slogan is not a theory.
Marx said, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”
<
p>Not sure how that remotely relates to global warming, in any case.
is not the word you were looking for, not that using the appropiate word would make your statement any more correct.