Commentary by James Shott
A few years ago Hal Willis, a scientist from the University
of California, Santa Barbara, resigned from the American Physical Society after
67 years as a member, citing the global warming/climate change issue and the
blind allegiance to global warming theory by so many of the Society’s members, as
well as the organization’s failure to challenge these members in the name of true
scientific investigation, and citing trillions of dollars of research funding
as a major reason the practice of true science on climate change has been replaced
by ideological advocacy.
Of the climate change issue Willis said, “It is the greatest
pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a scientist.” His
position has support from other scientists, among them Dr. Ivar Giaever, a 1973
Nobel Prize-Winner for physics.
Giaever joined more than 70 Nobel Science Laureates in signing
an open letter in October of 2008 expressing strong support for then-presidential
candidate Barack Obama, who had said “no challenge poses a greater threat to
future generations than climate change.” Seven years later he believes Obama’s warning
was a “ridiculous statement.” He told a Nobel forum last July, “I would say
that basically global warming is a non-problem.”
Dr. Richard Lindzen is emeritus professor of Atmospheric
Sciences at MIT. Citing the growing shrillness of the cries about “global
warming” during his 30 years there, during which time he says “the climate has
changed remarkably little,” he notes that the less the climate changes, the
louder the warnings of climate catastrophe become.
In a recent video presentation by Prager University, he said
that participants in the climate change debate fall into one of three groups.
Group One, he says, is associated with the scientific part
of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Working Group
1), and are scientists that generally believe recent climate change is due to
burning fossil fuels, which releases CO2 (carbon dioxide) and might eventually
dangerously harm the planet.
Group Two is made up of scientists who, like Lindzen, don’t
see the problem identified by Group One as an especially serious one. They say
there are many reasons why the climate changes – the sun, clouds, oceans, the
orbital variations of the Earth, as well as a myriad of other inputs, none of
which are fully understood.
Group Three is made up of politicians, environmentalists and
the media. Climate alarmism provides politicians money and power and
environmentalists also get money as well as confirmation of their religious
zealotry for the environment, while the issue satisfies the media’s need for a
cause to support, money and headlines. Said Lindzen, “Doomsday scenarios sell.”
From the climate alarmists’ point of view, virtually every
problem on Earth stems from climate change, as Lindzen said, “everything from
acne to the Syrian civil war.”
The Director of the Center for
Industrial Progress, and author of The
Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, Alex Epstein, shows us in a Prager University
video presentation that contains thorough sourcing for his assertions that burning
fossil fuels has improved the lives of millions in the developed world by
helping solve their biggest environmental challenges, purified their water and
air, made their cities and homes more sanitary and kept them safe from potential
catastrophic climate change.
Could we have built reservoirs, purification plants, and
laid networks of pipes to bring clean water to homes without fossil fuels, he
asks? Fossil fuels can do the same for those in the developing world, if the
powers that be will allow it. More fossil fuel use equals more clean water, he
said.
He further shows that despite an increase in fossil fuel use
from 1.5 billion tons in 1970 to around 2.0 billion tons in 2010, emissions
dropped from about 300 million tons to about 150 million tons during the same
period. This resulted from using anti-pollution technology powered by … fossil
fuels.
If CO2 emissions cause harmful changes in the environment,
and if emissions have increased, then more people must be suffering “climate-related
deaths,” due to things like droughts, floods, storms and extreme temperatures.
But no, Epstein said. “In the last eighty years, as CO2 emissions have rapidly
escalated, the annual rate of climate-related deaths worldwide has rapidly
declined – by 98 percent.”
“In sum,” Epstein said, “fossil fuels don’t take a naturally
safe environment and make it dangerous; they empower us to take a naturally
dangerous environment and make it cleaner and safer.”
A large segment of the public has bought into the “we are
killing our environment” idea put forth by the climate alarmists, and now
meekly accept it when the United Nations and their own government advocate
harmful solutions to climate change, ignoring the mounting pile of contrary
data. Consequently, the economic damage done to regions of the U.S. and the thousands
of American workers put on the unemployment line by the foolish policies of the
Obama administration basically are accepted as necessary.
A strong case has been made that fossil fuels aren’t
significantly harmful, and that they have been and will be extraordinarily
helpful to the people of the world, if only we will listen.
Cross-posted from Observations
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