For decades, the world has heard from the so-called “97 percent” of scientists said to believe that the planet faces an existential threat from global warming.
Soon, through the Presidential Committee on Climate Security that the White House is today contemplating, we may be hearing from “the deniers” said to populate the other three percent — i.e., the scientific misfits and incompetents that the press has castigated for putting the planet in peril by questioning climate change.
Some misfits, some incompetents. The head of the committee would be William Happer, currently a senior director at the National Security Council who oversaw a US$3-billion research budget in the first Bush administration as Director of Energy Research in the Department of Energy.
In Happer’s academic career as a professor at Columbia and Princeton universities, he published some 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers and became a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Happer is also past president of the CO2 Coalition, a non-profit that he co-founded following research by him and others that found CO2 to be a boon for the environment.
As put by the CO2 Coalition’s website: “the recent increase in CO2 levels has had a measurable, positive effect on plant life. Future CO2 increases will boost farm productivity, improve drought resistance, bolster food security and help create a greener, lusher planet.”
Other “deniers” reportedly being considered for the commission include Richard S. Lindzen, emeritus professor of meteorology at MIT, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of both the American Meteorological Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a recipient of the Jule Charney award for “highly significant research” in the atmospheric sciences from the American Meteorological Society.
Lindzen’s pioneering research in atmospheric dynamics debunked the notion of disastrous climate change.
Also under consideration is Judith Curry, past chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, who argues that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the chief fount of climate dogma — should be disbanded.
And John Christy, notable for discounting a large role for humans in climate change and for co-developing a record of earth’s temperature from operational polar-orbiting satellites, for which he received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal.
Other skeptics of the prevailing climate orthodoxy who would be qualified to round out the commission include Michael Griffin, the former head of NASA, Princeton’s Freeman Dyson, arguably America’s most famous scientist, and Edward Wegman, a past chairman of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences.
Statistics are important because many claims in the global warming debate — such as the IPCC’s infamous “hockey stick” that purported to show unprecedented increases in temperatures in the 20th century — are based on statistical models.
It was Wegman’s testimony before a congressional committee that established the statistical incompetence of the hockey stick’s authors.
Their model was so flawed that it would produce a hockey-stick shape regardless of the data used as inputs — keying in baseball stats would produce a hockey-stick shape.
In truth, many if not most of the world’s highly prestigious scientists are skeptics. They can afford to be, either because they are retired and no longer dependent on government grants for their livelihood, or because their reputation protects them from attack.
Not so for the majority, mediocre in talent or not, who depend on government grants. Even in the era of Donald Trump, they know their papers won’t be published, and their careers will be shortened, if they dare to defy the global warming orthodoxy.
That orthodoxy remains especially strong among the political class — it’s a supertanker that President Trump can’t quickly turn around.
In 2017, he planned to test the scientific consensus on climate change by staging a televised “red team, blue team” debate, only to have it scotched by critics, particularly former White House chief of staff John Kelly, who dismissed the argument that public discourse would benefit from an open and transparent presentation of competing views.
With Kelly gone, the idea of exposing the public to both sides of the global warming debate is back in the form of a President’s Committee on Climate Security, but like climate science itself, this committee’s future is not yet settled, perpetuating the myth that 97 percent of scientists agree that CO2 imperils the planet.
Read more at the Financial Post
I’ve listened to just about everyone listed and I think they are as a whole conservative thinkers who don’t want to go out on a limb and say “Mini Ice Age.” Most of them were scientists the last time the subject of a MIA was thought to be happening so I can understand their reluctance. The first thing people need to be aware of is that essentially it is slightly cooler today than in 1998. The fact that there were a few spikes has little bearing on what the temperature is today and so is you ask yourself “If it is cooler today than in 1998, the peak of warming, how can anyone say global warming? Deny is a good word to describe the fact that the warmers have been blowing smoke and the public , scientists in other fields, and worsely (I know worsely is not a word but until someone uses a word it isn’t. Worsely should be a word.) the news media keep shouting “Climate Crisis.” Once people get it thru their thick heads that global warming hasn’t taken place in now 20 years they then may focus on the real “Climate Crisis” Global Cooling. This is a much more serious problem mainly because food shortage is most likely going to occur to the point where many will die and countries collapse. I’m glad Kelley is gone. Any person who favors not doing something is a person who realized in his military service the little you do the better. This is based on a premise that if you do something and it fails you look bad, but if you don’t do anything then no points the finger at you and then in Kelley’s case he gets to be a General. Back to the subject – Climate, nothin today is more important than recognizing the threat of what will happen if we don’t prepare for famine. Free enterprise can nip this in the bud, but unless the stupes in the top floor offices know there is money to be made, nothing will happen. Just denying global warming isn’t enough. Our President would benefit greatly if the science community would acknowledge that the “hoax” reported by the President is just that, but they also need to know what the consequences are as the Eddy Grand Solar Minimum proceeds. Mother Nature is about to screw us over to the point of being comparable to an asteroid strike, super volcano or a Solar Electromagnetic Pulse. Unlike the threat of global warming where man actually thinks it is a good idea to change climate, we can prepare and perhaps excel. When I worked, on the way each day I would say “Another opportunity to excel.”
You know that society is seriously screwed up when researchers are persecuted for honestly reporting their observations and conclusions, but a mental midget like AO-C soars to super stardom, propelled by lies.
I’m sure that most people have their doubts about an imminent climate catastrophe. Al Gore’s predictions are now the alarmists’ liability. Climate Change exists only in flawed computer models.
But but… the science fiction is settled isn’t it ?
A warming earth with more plant food and an ability to pull
people out of third world poverty . What’s wrong with that ?
Scary global warming is the biggest fraud ever pulled resulting in tens of thousands of premature deaths per year from fuel poverty and $trillions of wasted new debt to prop up a con game .
The Democrats want to finish the job so they can turn the USA into
a communist country run by China and their UN puppets .