(This IBD Editorial was sent to me by the authors)
By WILLIE SOON, ROBERT CARTER AND DAVID LEGATES
This is a response to “Why Can’t We Innovate Our Way To A Carbon-Free Energy Future?“, a “Perspective” by Bjorn Lomborg that ran in this space a week ago.
Bjorn Lomborg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” and “Cool It,” is right about the need to focus on critical health and economic priorities. But he is wrong about human carbon dioxide emissions causing what is now being called “global climate disruption.”
By demonizing the gas of life, in league with Al Gore and Bill Gates, Lomborg commits several serious scientific errors. As independent scientists, with broad training in mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology and geography, we know CO2 is not a pollutant, and the notion of “carbon-free” or “zero-carbon” energy is inherently harmful and anti-scientific.
If nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, helium or any other nontoxic gas is pumped into a chamber containing air and a growing plant, the response is barely measurable. By contrast, if more CO2 is added, the plant and its root system benefit enormously, displaying enhanced growth and more efficient use of available water and nutrients.
Far from having detrimental effects, carbon dioxide has decidedly beneficial impacts on plants, aquatic and terrestrial alike, and a new study connects enhanced plant productivity to greater bird species diversity in China. How, therefore, can anyone conclude that human carbon dioxide is a pollutant that must be eradicated?
These facts erect a formidable barrier for “zero-carbon” advocates. By insisting that no human CO2 should be emitted, they are promoting continued suboptimal growth of food plant species in the face of impending global food shortages — and poorer functioning and less diversity in the global ecosystem.
Zero-carbon activists respond to these facts by asserting that human CO2 emissions cause “dangerous global warming.” They are wrong about this, too.
If rising atmospheric CO2 levels drive global temperatures upward, as they insist, why is Earth not suffering from the dangerous “fever” that Al Gore predicted? Instead, after mild warming at the end of the twentieth century, global temperatures have leveled off for the past decade, amid steadily rising carbon dioxide levels.
Lomborg’s claim that we need to “cure” so-called “unchecked climate change” is thus fallacious and contradicted by reality. Reducing human CO2 emissions will likely have no measurable cooling effect on planetary temperatures.
His insistence that we prioritize expenditures is spot-on when applied to genuine environmental and societal problems. However, it is irrelevant when the problems are mythical — or devised to advance ideological agendas. Moreover, even if human impacts on the global climate can actually be measured at some future date, humans currently lack the scientific and engineering understanding and capability to deliberately “manage” Earth’s constantly changing climate for the better.
Most certain of all, atmospheric carbon dioxide is not the “climate control knob” that anti-hydrocarbon alarmists assert, and it is irresponsible for Lomborg to claim his socio-political agenda will provide a low-cost solution for the global warming “problem.”
The scientific reality is that even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been unable to demonstrate a cause-and-effect scientific connection between rising human CO2 emissions and dangerous warming.. To support global limits on CO2 emissions, in the absence of real-world data showing clear cause and effect, is scientific and policy incompetence on the highest order.
Imagine a drug company seeking FDA approval for a new drug, based on an analysis that says simply: “Our supercomputers say the drug is safe and effective. We have no clinical data to support this, but can think of no reason actual results would contradict what our computers predict. Moreover, failure to license the drug will be disastrous for patients suffering from the targeted disease.” Failing to demand actual dose-and-response studies, before licensing the drug, would be gross negligence on FDA’s part.
Between 2007 and 2009, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions dropped approximately 10%, to their lowest level since 1995, largely because of reduced energy consumption during the recession. Similar CO2 emission reductions occurred in Britain, Germany, France and Japan.
Have their climates gotten better or less dangerous? Are they now a better place, for having a lower intensity carbon energy diet? Have global temperatures been statistically unchanged since 1995 because, or in spite of, Chinese and Indian carbon dioxide emissions increasing far more than the aforementioned countries reduced theirs?
These are practical, not rhetorical questions. As far as we can see, the only direct effect of decreasing CO2 levels via expensive renewable energy programs has been to cost more American and European jobs than would otherwise have been the case during the global economic recession.
The central issue is not whether rising CO2 levels will cause a warmer planet. The fundamental concern is whether globally warmer temperatures are factually worse (or better) for human societies — and more (or less) damaging to the environment — than colder temperatures (like those experienced during the ice ages and Little Ice Age).
Bjorn Lomborg, Al Gore and Bill Gates need to consider the likelihood that, driven by changes in solar activity and ocean circulation, Earth will cool significantly over coming decades. Damaging the global economy with ineffectual carbon dioxide controls, in a futile quest to “stop global warming,” looks stupid now.
Viewed later, with hindsight, it will be judged outrageously irresponsible.
• Soon studies sun-climate connections at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
• Carter is an emeritus fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs and chief science advisor to the International Climate Science Coalition.
• Legates is a hydroclimatologist at the University of Delaware and serves as the state climatologist of Delaware.
This editorial appeared at Investors Business Daily – here
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John Whitman says:
October 30, 2010 at 2:03 pm
I agree with you on the CO2 issue. It is when someone points to plant and animal artifacts from millions of years ago in the now-Arctic and suggest this shows it was warmer before, and so on, that I object. (That was on the biological productivity of the tundra post and elsewhere in previous weeks and months.) The issue is complicated enough without introducing facts that, while true, are unrelated.
I do wonder, however, if very high levels of CO2 were possible with an old physical layout but are not now possible. Perhaps, human inputs are keeping Earth’s trace gas levels from drifting lower as a result of our current configuration. As someone wrote recently, most of the carbon is in carbonates not hydrocarbons.
Errata Dept.: Writes Anthony to GM: “Yeah right, lock up-jailed no similarity….since you have no honor, we’ll take the same tact with you then. Troll bin for you. . .”
Should be ‘tack’, not ‘tact’. A typo, I assume. But a bit of a pun, since GM is clearly bereft of any ‘tact’ whatsoever.
/Mr Lynn
Apropos locking up people; ( Siberia is a roomy place )
http://www.prisonplanet.com/james-cameron-and-google-ceo-questioning-warming-science-is-criminal.html
A brilliant observation, assuming your numbers are correct, one which ties in very nicely with Willis Eschenbach’s thunderstorm-cooling hypothesis, too. Ought to be put on a poster on every academic and governmental bulletin board.
Indeed. However, it is unfortunately neither ignorance nor stupidity, but cupidity and malevolence on the part of the enviro-ideologues.
Excellent post.
/Mr Lynn
Smokey says: October 30, 2010 at 1:12 pm:
“The CO2=catastrophic AGW hypothesis is an unverifiable conjecture; a scientifically baseless opinion kept alive only through an enormous transfer of wealth. It is entirely outside of the scientific method, which is universally rejected by those promoting their agenda that CO2 is the primary cause of climate change.
“If the IPCC and its true believers had rigorously applied the scientific method and its corollary, Occam’s Razor to their methodology, the CO2=CAGW conjecture would have long since been relegated to the same pseudo-scientific trash heap along with Scientology, phrenology, astrology and other faith-based belief systems.”
—————————————————————————————Smokey Thanks.
Your whole post (above) and ending with these 2 paragraphs neatly sums up and clarifies this whole AGM nonsense. If, where it has taken the world so far, were not so tragic and damaging, it would be laughable but the world seems to be locked into this – rushing lemming like for the precipice.
Doug
rational debate says:
October 30, 2010 at 2:11 pm
re: Stop Global Dumbing Now says: October 30, 2010 at 11:58 am
Hi SGDN,
I’m not familiar with CO2 incubators for growing cell cultures (fascinating!). What CO2 level seems to be optimal or is typically used in them?
I am not familiar with tissue culture requirements, but in microbiology an increase in CO2 tension is generally used to enhance growth of aerobic bacteria. The CO2 tension is most easily increased by placing the culture plates in a vessel, putting a burning candle into the vessel and sealing it. The candle will continue burning until the O2 level will no longer sustain combustion whilst increasing CO2. This would suggest to me that the CO2 concentration would be around 10% (and the O2 would be reduced to 5%). These conditions make the culture of many bacteria considered to be strict aerophiles, such as N. meningititis B. pertussis or H. influenzae possible. Please note, these bacteria all require special media to be successfully isolated.
Interesting article . I would be surprised if in 50y time, the late 20th century will be renamed the modern era warm period (MEWP), and be cited as a time when the world prospered with ample food and a thriving biosphere.
I also expect the current cabal of IPCC climate scientists will be derided for spending trillions without spotting the impending climate cooling. They will be seen as having been fooled by the deterministic chaos which drives our quasi-cyclic climate.
GM says:
October 30, 2010 at 10:21 am
But fortunately we are not that dumb, so can avoid basing our lives around the meaningless sqwakings of AGW fear-mongerers. Such tripe as:
Elementary botany would teach you that plants respire just as animals do in order to turn the carbohydrates built from CO2 into energy (just as animals do).
Well, elementary mathematics (on which insurance policies are built) will tell you it is extreme folly to spend $101 on insurance to mitigate a loss of value $100. The AGW scare is proposing much, much more wasteful ‘risk management’ than that.
I wont even comment on the poor structure of that … well, I hesitate to grace it with the description ‘sentence’. I’ll merely ask for some evidence (not models, you know, real evidence) of this fantasy.
Oh, well, binned like the troll you are, so I don’t expect a reply, don’t worry.
GM
October 30, 2010 at 9:17 am
Thank you so much for your posts. They say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That is especially of claims that go against preconceptions. This blog is frequented by a rather skeptical community. Some of my claims are rather extraordinary and are often resisted. I need extraordinary evidence so I really appreciate you posting here and providing it.
“The central issue is not whether rising CO2 levels will cause a warmer planet. The fundamental concern is whether globally warmer temperatures are factually worse (or better) for human societies — and more (or less) damaging to the environment — than colder temperatures (like those experienced during the ice ages and Little Ice Age).”
Disagree as follows:
The fundamental question is:
Do we sufficiently understand natural terrestrial oscillations?
(Perhaps the fundamental concern varies by individual.)
Answer:
No, clearly & simply.
Steven Mosher
Re “Totalitarian Government”
And hence the desire of the AGW alarmists to move towards a global all-controlling Government.
Thank you Richard. I had no idea, and on the face it would seem counter-intuitive. Perhaps these conditions better approximates the surface in the host that has to be initially penetrated in order to infect, when considering mucus/fluid layers or something along those lines? Fascinating regardless!
CO2 is the control knob? Well I suppose if some bacteria in a petri dish were warmed up and experienced a sudden increase in numbers from that rising temperature, then the CO2 the bacteria emitted could be interpreted as having caused the rise in tempeature in the first place according to some.
Myself, I prefer not to invert causality and instead conclude that the increased CO2 was due to a proliferation of life in the petri dish when subjected to a temperature rise.
It seems inverting causality is part and parcel of post-normal science, but under no circumstances should it be dismissed as an “un-intended consequence”.
rational debate says:
October 30, 2010 at 2:11 pm
“re: Stop Global Dumbing Now says: October 30, 2010 at 11:58 am
Hi SGDN,
I’m not familiar with CO2 incubators for growing cell cultures (fascinating!). What CO2 level seems to be optimal or is typically used in them?”
Hi rational debate,
CO2 incubators typically hold the CO2 at 5% (compared to .04% in the atmosphere according to Wiki) the relative humidity at 95% and the temperature at around 37 deg. C. My karyotyping cultures looked so much better when I used one, but they are expensive (controlling CO2 is) so I have to do without.
And I quote;
“Stephen Brown says:
October 30, 2010 at 12:30 pm
“There’s a very interesting post over at James Delingpole’s blog which contains some graphics which put the question of CO2 into a more easily understood perspective.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100060540/happy-climate-fools-day/”
So, who can spot the error in this argument?
Re. Steven Mosher says: October 30, 2010 at 12:54 pm
“C02 is a control knob…”
Steven,
You say “C02 is a control knob…” etc.
As far as I can see, your argument for action is that man-induced CO2 warming effects are real but that the reason we haven’t see them yet in the temperature record is because they won’t be coming along for decades, and that, because people are reluctant to pay the huge short term costs of mitigating CO2 emissions (and clearly in your view being too stupid or greedy to accept the reality of the adverse long term outcome), the only way to save the world from global warming disaster is to abolish democracy and sort it all out by totalitarian fiat.
I think you have very little appreciation of the uncertainties involved in climate change predictions and theories. Nor do you appear to understand any of the details of the scientific arguments either for or against the man-made CO2 warming theory. I rather suspect that you are simply a “true believer” and nothing rational will shake you out of it.
Nevertheless just before you think about abandoning democracy, there is just one experimental fact I think you should check out for yourself. The world annual average instrumental temperature record for the last 160 years is available online from the Hadley Centre website. Download the data, plot it out yourself using Excel and get Excel to superimpose the linear regression line and display the line’s equation. Much to your surprise, no doubt, this equation will have a distinctly un-alarming positive slope of 0.41degC per century.
You will see that superimposed on this linear trend are cyclic ups and downs of approximately 70 year periodicity. From 1964 to 1998 we were on the upward 35 year swing of the latest cycle and the temperature rise was 0.83degC. That’s equivalent to a rise of about 2.4degC per century, quite close to the 3degC per century that alarmists had been predicting from theory, but quite atypical compared with the 160 year temperature trend of 0.41degC. Perhaps that dramatic and temporary upswing (now reversed since 1998 as we enter the 30 year downward part of the cycle) explains the irrational hysteria that has arisen over the past few years.
In the light of this empirical data, I suggest that a sensible democratic approach would be to monitor the Hadley figures year by year until there is at least some sign of a significant upturn. And not take any precipitate action unless and until justified by the evidence.
There are two common forms of controls in process control. Feedback control and feed-forward control.
In feedback control you have a value in mind you would like the measurement to reach. You keep comparing the actual value with the one you want to reach and make changes in what affects the actual value according to some algorithm. Then you keep doing it again and again till the actual value is equal to the desired value. This works quite well with processes that respond to change reasonably quickly.
In feed-forward control, you keep affecting the actual value according to some model of how the what you are controlling behaves, because the process you are controlling responds very slowly.
The climate is not suited to feedback control it is too slow to respond. To use feed forward control you have to have some model of the process.
Even if we thought that controlling the climate was a good idea, we could not because we don’t have a model for feed forward control and feedback is useless.
Lomberg covers the reference material very well and in his view there is CO2 induced GW, but not by much. He also makes the case for believing that some increase in global temperatures is beneficial, including the statistics that cold spells cause more premature deaths than heat waves. Therefore the greatest threat is that we should revert to a Little Ice Age climate.
Much of the material crosses over with the sceptic tracts from authors like Plimer. If anything, Lomberg should be congratulated on creating an accessible well written text spanning a huge sweep of the middle ground.
What seems to have upset the AGW supporters is that to them, there is only 100% acceptance of the AGW line. Anyone who says that they accept it, but then goes on to offer a practical alternative to the blanket CO2 bans, the huge tax penalties, and the big but useless gestures such as windmills, is seen as undercutting their whole cause. For them, AGW is not about finding a workable result, it is all about being seen to be the sole holders of the right to save the earth, to occupy the sunlit uplands of the environmentally righteous, and to launch massive eye-catching compulsorily funded campaigns.
“…..AGW is an untested hypothesis, that’s correct. The problem is that it will be tested only once and when this happens it will be too late to do anything about it…” GM (1:12 pm).
According to the IPCC (with labyrinthine logic), over 50% of the global mean temperature rise since c. 1950 has over 90% likely been due to human GHGs (CO2 mainly) — which is a neat way of avoiding having to address the off again (25 year), on again (20 year), off again (15 year) pattern of the warming supposedly in response to a monotonic rise in CO2 — the CO2 which is supposed to overwhelm all other factors.
During that 60 years, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have risen from about 310 ppm to 390 ppm.
AGW is not an untested hypothesis, I’m testing it now and I don’t think I’m alone in that.
I reckon they’ve had long enough, every good thing must come to an end.
I’ll be generous though, as their employers let’s give them one more year.
If by then the temperature anomaly doesn’t look more like IPCC predictions, sorry “projections”..http://paulmacrae.com/links/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/ipcc-vs-real-temps-from-syun.png… and catastrophe does not look in prospect then that’s it, enough is enough — time to deal with the sackings.
Let the ‘GM’s of this world be warned, it might be best now to look for an alternative field of endeavor.
I won’t speculate on the success of possible future criminal or civil prosecutions for fraud, misappropriation of public funds, libel and slander etc. etc.
re:
Thank you!! I wonder why that environment is so much more favorable for them? There’s got to be either an evolutionary advantage or holdover of some sort…is the reason known or being speculated or is it one of those things they just don’t have a clue about yet? Regardless, sorry you’re having to do without one. I hope you’re able to get one again soon.
David Socrates says: October 30, 2010 at 6:32 pm Re. Steven Mosher says: October 30, 2010 at 12:54 pm
“C02 is a control knob…”
The world annual average instrumental temperature record for the last 160 years is available online from the Hadley Centre website. Download the data, plot it out yourself ….this equation will have a distinctly un-alarming positive slope of 0.41degC per century.
You will see that superimposed on this linear trend are cyclic ups and downs of approximately 70 year periodicity…… Perhaps that dramatic and temporary upswing (now reversed since 1998 as we enter the 30 year downward part of the cycle) explains the irrational hysteria that has arisen over the past few years.
In the light of this empirical data, I suggest that a sensible democratic approach would be to monitor the Hadley figures year by year until there is at least some sign of a significant upturn. And not take any precipitate action unless and until justified by the evidence.
————————————————————————————
David Socrates agreed. But even so, there is no evidence so far as I can determine, that carbon di-oxide is the cause of this cyclical swing in global temperature. The Hadley Centre (or others) would not only need to show a substantial increase in global temperature but also show evidence of the cause before attempting any precipitate action.
Douglas
kwinterkorn says: (October 30, 2010 at 11:42 am) … Of course, you know that O2 as well as CO2 is essential for plant physiology. …
A much appreciated comment (in it entirety), kwinterkom; thank you.
p.s. This whole topic, from original essay on, is WUWT at its best.
David Socrates says: (October 30, 2010 at 2:06 pm) …shows that throwing taxpayers money at previously unsolved problems rarely achieves results. (If you are British or French, think Concorde.)
This is the second time in the past three days I have seen the Concorde dissed, David (the other was on Bishop Hill). To me, this is a bad example to use for your argument. That critter flew for nearly thirty years with (to my knowledge) a single prang; so even if it failed to reach an original goal it was still an exceptional achievement (even my Chevy Impala was tiring as it neared 30).
First flown in 1969, Concorde entered service in 1976 and continued commercial flights for 27 years.
In reply to my comment about throwing taxpayers money at unsolved problems (October 30, 2010 at 2:06 pm), Roger Carr (October 31, 2010 at 12:25 am) romantizes about the white elephant that was Concorde, saying that it “flew for nearly thirty years … so even if it failed to reach an original goal it was still an exceptional achievement.”
In my view that hardly justifies a taxpayer-funded and wholly written off capital investment of 1.154 billion pounds (2.080 billion dollars) at 1976 prices. At today’s prices this is equivalent to spending 9.710 billion pounds or 15.573 billion dollars.
Also, over the 27 years that Concorde was in service it failed to make an overall operating profit.
I realise that these numbers might seem peanuts compared with the estimated $100billion spent on climate change research (also with no obvious commensurate outcome for the taxpayer) but back in the late 1960s at a time when the UK was in economic crisis and political turmoil, spending so much taxpayers money on a government airplane was a positively obscene government confidence trick on the British taxpayer – just as the worldwide expenditure on climate science is a similar obscenity today.
Nothing further from GM since beiing allowed out of the troll bin!
either he/she/it couldn’t satisfy the criteria, or has gone running off with tail firmly between legs. No moral fibre I guess.