(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
David Socrates says:
October 31, 2010 at 3:00 am
David, you are correct on that. Socialists never seems to get the fact that government intrution allways create a disturbance in the marked.
Margaret Tatcher created a stir when she claimed the central commitee shouldnt waste their time deciding the price of eggs. They were caught (by her) sitting late at night discussing the price of eggs.
Much better letting the marked fix that, and you can discuss foreign policy!
And she was right, wasnt she? Adam Smiths good old “Invisible hand” can fix energy prices too. All by itself.
Correction to my last post; Which Central Commitee? The one in Moscow, of course.
And now they want a Central, Central Commitee. In the UN. Bah!!!
That doesnt take away the fact that the Concorde was a wonderful plane and technical achievement. But so was the Messerschmitt 262, the Messerschmitt 163 and the Arado 234. So what ? For what price?
Steven Mosher says:
October 30, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Mr Mosher, an intresting comment, and I agree that the “Blackbeards of the world want to use CAGW as an excuse for their agenda whish is as always to “rule the world”.
I have a question for you which is sincere. How does a process, the GHG CO2, which warms the atmosphere rapidy via redirecting outgoing IR photons back towards the oceans, thereby increasing water vapor and clouds, which then reduce SW radiation from entering the oceans where the residence time of heat is far longer then in the atmosphere, induce long term warming instead of what appears to be more logical, increase short term warming while decreasing long term warming via a reduction of acumulated energy into the oceans?
Is not the “residence time” of all incoming radiative spectroms (TSI) the most important factor, and since our current understanding of many processes is quite limited, especially cloud fromation, how can we say we really know the mid term and long term consequences of increased CO2?
Re Mike D. says:
October 30, 2010 at 11:57 am
“It’s all going to be okay, GM. Trust me. Warmer is better. Really it is. You’ll like it. The plants and the animals will like it. Nothing to worry about. Now close your eyes and go to sleep and you’ll see… in the morning things will all be okay.”
Thanks Mike, I also feel all better now, time to go to sleep. (-;
BTW, I agree with you point. The benfits of CO2 and warmth should be promoted far more and I actually did feel better after reading your bedtime assurances to GM; because I realized that with China and India following their own path the world will get warmer, and greener, and more comfortable despite the growing pains and decadal periods of economic depression humanity must go through to learn how to get along with billions of brothers and sisters.
BTW, I did not read all the comments, but did anyone tell GM that O2 and CO2 are in a symbiotic relationship with each other over the 24 hour day and both work together for plant growth?
Regarding Anthony’s comment; “In fact there’s a whole website dedicated to tracking such horrible dastardly deeds like this that I do. Gasp! Shock! Of course it’s run by another “anonymous coward”. Heh.”
What web site is this?
Dave Springer says:
October 30, 2010 at 1:49 pm
@Mosher
… “The water cycle is thus a self-governing heat engine which maintains a set operating temperature. Adding more CO2 when the water cycle is active does nothing as it just revs up the water cycle heat engine.”
This is where I also think Steve Mosher may be incorrect, and this is why I am starting to think that the residence time of all incoming CO2 is what needs the engineering level report Steve McIntyre has long asked for but never recieved.
So why did you ban GM for making a comment about locking someone up but then allow countless personal attacks against him without the same punishments?? That seems a bit odd… Also just prior to you banning him you stated how open this forum was in regards to opinions… Anyway… In regards to the meaningful posts here, why are the benefits of co2 to plant growth taken with so much importance? Sure plants will love a warmer earth with more co2 but the concern isn’t what will happen to the planet, it’s what will happen to humans on the planet. Co2 making plants grow dosent mitigate dry spells, rising oceans etc…
GM’s post that O2 is poisonous to plants is a fallacy that should be corrected. In fact, plants and animals both breathe in O2, and breathe out CO2. With no O2, both air breathing plants and animals die. The production of O2 from photosynthesis is not breathing, but an additional process of extracting energy from the sun. As David pointed out, O2 and CO2 at earth’s surface go over a diurnal cycle, with CO2 increasing at night, with both plants and animals breathing, but no photosynthesis going on, and
decreasing over the course of the daytime, with plants’ production of O2 overwhelming the production of CO2 by both plants and animals.
Robb876 says: October 31, 2010 at 6:36 am
… Anyway… In regards to the meaningful posts here… the concern isn’t what will happen to the planet, it’s what will happen to humans on the planet. Co2 making plants grow dosent mitigate dry spells, rising oceans etc…
——————————————————————————
Well Robb876 tell me what, in your opinion, does mitigate dry spells, rising oceans etc.?
Douglas
Re. Douglas Field (October 30, 2010 at 9:08 pm), replying to my comments of October 30, 2010 at 6:32 pm, says: “David Socrates agreed. But even so, there is no evidence so far as I can determine, that carbon dioxide 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, I hope that I never implied that the approximately 70 year up and down cyclic variation in the Hadley world temperature series data could possibly be due to man-made CO2. The general belief is that the oscillation is due to cyclic shifts in energy in the oceans and is entirely natural. Likewise the very gentle 0.41degC/century long term trend since records began in 1850 could not be due to man-made CO2 since it started at least 100 years before the comparatively rapid post-World War II increases in man-made CO2 took off.
Since climate has always changed on annual, decadal, centennial and millenial timescales, it seems bizarre to suggest that any of the temperature excursions evidenced in the Hadley data are anything other than natural. Unless of course one has already decided on the truth of the CO2 warming theory and so is hell bent on reading unwarranted implications into the temperature data ‘tea leaves’.
GM represents the combination of narcissism with youthful naivety. Being young and believing you understand everything is not uncommon. To some extent most of us here have experienced the same problem at some time in our pasts.
The problem with narcissists is they have to try and shove what they believe is their superiority down everyones throat and cannot take ownership of their failures. When the AGW ship completely sinks GM will be running around blaming others. He will never see his own failings.
If you are so enlightened and not smirking over there, how about all the scientists and peer reviewed research that does not support AGW that you are apparently denying? I’ll take my own opinion based on a review of the state of the relevant science and their opinions over yours any day, and over the likes of those who were the most egregious in ClimateGate such as Mann, Jones, etc. who clearly are involved in advocacy and ‘post normal’ science rather than real science.
Here is a non-comprehensive list that still contains over 800 peer reviewed published research papers that are skeptical of or outright ‘denying’ AGW or various related aspects of the AGW hypothesis. 800 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming (AGW) Alarm http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
While you are there, how about reading Seven Eminent Physicists; Freeman Dyson, Ivar Giaever (Nobel Prize), Robert Laughlin (Nobel Prize), Edward Teller, Frederick Seitz, Robert Jastrow and William Nierenberg, all skeptical of “man-made” global warming (AGW) alarm. http://www.populartechnology.net/2010/07/eminent-physicists-skeptical-of-agw.html
Be sure you watch the video at the bottom of Dyson, its fascinating.
Then there are the large number of highly reputable scientists, including Nobel prize winners, who sent the open letter skeptical of AGW to the Secretary-General of United Nations: http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4603
(continued online)
Or the open letter to the US Government by over 700 scientists, also including Nobel prize winners; http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=10fe77b0-802a-23ad-4df1-fc38ed4f85e3
Or the 31,000+ scientists, including over 9,000 PhD’s, who signed the petition project? petitionproject.org
So, just who is it that’s really guilty of denying and dismissing a body of relevant science here? Look in the mirror, bubblehead.
re: Robb876 says: October 31, 2010 at 6:36 am
If you bother to read the related posts, you’ll see that GM wasn’t at any point ‘banned.’ He/she was merely put into a moderated status, where posts were held up. Why? Not because of expressing an opinion, or because of the comment about locking people up. It was because when challenged on the comment about locking people up, he/she proceded to claim that saying people should be locked up was somehow not the same as recommending they be jailed, in addition to all of the previous posts containing pretty nasty personal attacks of large segments of society (we’re all insane, dumber than village idiots, equivalent to 3 yr olds annihilating half the world with nukes, etc).
To be allowed to post again, GM was then given very simple options; either admit being locked up is the same as being jailed, or providing his/her real name on further posts. Gee, what terrible and difficult options.
It appears that GM didn’t have the decency to do either, or was oh-so sincerely interested as to have already left.
Anyhow, the issue is pretty trivial, but your mischaracterization of it bothered me.
Douglas,
In case you didnt understand, my point was that the benefits experienced by plant life don’t negate the potential harms that civilization could see… The whole argument of “its better for plants” dosent seem reasonable to me.. Anyway, mitigation of these threats include such things as reduction in use of fossil fuels, although I don’t think I really need to say that.
I don’t see how co2 could be a control knob the warming produced by adding co2 to the atmosphere decreases as more co2 is added to the atmosphere.Natural variation (everything else effecting temperature apart from co2)some say is cyclical around rising co2 but what if natural variation does not remain cyclical when co2 increases,what if the Earth has a temperature inertia also,then co2 is not going to keep on raising temperatures even to the extent that we are told that it will.We might have reached a global temperature co2 equilibrium in this decade and temperature will remain the same as we add more co2 to the atmosphere.Why do we have to accept that temperatures are always going to rise with increasing co2?
I am indebted to Doctors Willie Soon, Bob Carter and David Legates for simplifying the wrangling debate on CO2.
My own view is that it is not CO2 or AGW that is contentious; rather it is an element of our society intent on dominating global affairs by utilising humankind’s fear of the unknown, thus creating a furore involving politics, propaganda, financial power and an ever-changing agenda of environmental disaster scenarios.
“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.”
Outrageous? Irresponsible? I’ll say.
It is good to debate the effects of CO2. Likewise it is good to understand more of how the Earth’s climate works in conjunction with the influences that the planet is subject to from beyond its atmospheres that result in a myriad of effects within its atmospheres and below its surfaces.
What is not so often debated is why such importance is being placed upon these elements, how mankind may or may not affect them, and why. Are the minds of the peoples of the world not being diverted from the real issue – a cause for control? Fear, is the ultimate weapon for complete subservience, and if terrorist organisations do not make us cower and clamour protection, then those who seek to gain power beyond the imagination of many, will resort to means that are claimed to affect all – globally – atmospheric content, mankind’s effects upon it, and actions acclaimed to curb such effects.
It should be clear to any scientist involved in climatology and atmospheric research, that the current policies adopted by international governments are first and foremost political in nature, and require scientific evidence to support the policies. And so those elements of science that support policy, are specifically chosen to strengthen the current policies while dissent is rejected. Such is the remit of the UN and its IPCC. To aid and abet these policies, NGO’s are involved to activate a voice for action. Public awareness is thus drawn to those actions that are claimed to be necessary to save us all from boiling/freezing/drowning/dying – at any cost, even if lives are at stake.
However, if one wishes to create the most effective cover for a particular action, then the most effective way is to cloak it, in the opposite action. The clamour for so called sustainable energy/food production/renewables to enrich the quality of life and conserve the resources of the Earth, are but a cloak for the current day Malthusians to enable their goals – population control. An unpleasant subject and one that will doubtless be shouted down – but who by? Those with most to gain by its execution, and by those who wish it were not so.
Look around, see the restrictions in place on new projects, new developments, and new hopes. Existing budgets are being cut back, and essential services are suffering. The legislative machine wishes the world to be one, only then will the controls be in place to deal with what is deemed necessary. The requirement is serfdom, freedom will not be allowed, numbers must be reduced. The great debate over anthropogenic atmospheric contributions is but a method of gaining more control through the highly complex ecological structures which draw people into lengthy detailed debate over the not unimportant minutae, but which distracts from the underlying reason for the existence of the debate in the first instance. The costs to mankind will be in deaths, from fuel and food poverty. The costs to nations economies will bring them crashing down and prey to a new global order.
There are not just irresponsible people in control, there are dangerous ones.
Bjorn Lomborg has me a little mystified. I enjoyed the book “Cool It” in which he makes no pretence of any scientific qualification but accepts some possibility that warming might happen and makes a lucid case that it can be contained by a change in trade restriction s and other economic means. In passing he quietly sinks Al Gore with a neat waterline shot- a diagram of the Antarctic showing the 94% that is cooling and the 6% that is warming with the caption ” Guess where Al Gore made his film”.
He also prints a graph showing the Earth’s temperature 60+ million years ago when the CO2 level was 3000 ppm-how cooling followed for 20 milllion years until Drakes Passage opened enough to allow the circum polar current to refrigerate Antarctica. The ice ages followed in sync with the available (22-,44-or 100k) Milankovich cycles changing as it did 600k years ago at the whim of Chaos Theory. As the Vostok ice cores show CO2 changes followed the temp 6-800 years later. Clearly nothing to do with CO2 and a lot to do with water vapour. Simple stuff that a non-scientist can understand. Has he read his own Book? Old North Queensland Doctor
@Bruce Cobb:
“Lomborg says “let’s forget about subsidizing inefficient technologies or making fossil fuels too expensive to use. Instead, let’s fund the basic research that will make green energy too cheap and easy to resist.” That is the usual approach by Lefties; more government funding.”
Spending public money for public causes is really mainstream European thinking, nothing particularly leftie about it even though Lomborg is a leftie. His point is to spend public money wiseley, i.e. most bang for the buck, and that current wind/solar programmes aren’t.
“And the “green energy too cheap and easy to resist” (which is nonsensical, but we know what he means) is just pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking.”
His point is this: New technology doesn’t prevail by being forced on people, but because it has genuine advantages that people genuinely want to use. The current “green” technologies have no such advantages, they are less practical and more expensive than conventional ones, so they can’t win. Subsidizing them is a waste of money and resources.
A new technology will only prevail if it’s MORE practical and cheaper than current technologies, and if it’s also “green” as a bonus, even better. We don’t have such a technology yet, but research may well invent one in the future. For his point it’s irrelevant if the research is financed publicly or privatley. There is no reason to believe public research programmes can’t come up with some wonderful stuff though, it has happened before.
anorak2 says (November 1, 2010 at 4:23 am): ” … it’s irrelevant if the [green energy] research is financed publicly or privately. There is no reason to believe public research programmes can’t come up with some wonderful stuff … it has happened before.”
Oh has it? Where? When? Socialist countries throughout Eastern Europe failed to develop anything worthwhile during the Soviet/Maoist era except starvation. Even Western governments entirely failed to help industrial innovation. That’s why in the 1980’s all over the democratic world, previously publicly owned industries were privatised on a massive scale (not just in Britain by Mrs Thatcher’s government as some people suppose). It was a worldwise transformation from socialism to democratic and market-led freedom as the Soviet empire with all its pretentions crumbled to dust. In the past 30 years, standards of living for tens of millions of ordinary people have risen as a result. Ask the people of Eastern Europe whether they want to go back to ‘public enterprise and investment’.
As least the old style socialism was largely built on incompetence and ignorance. The difference with the current worldwide governmental eco-fever investment/taxation swindle is that it is so obviously also based on scientific fraud.
@David Socrates:
Oh has it? Where? When?
The Apollo programme, Concorde, Airbus, TGV, ICE, nuclear power, the MP3 format.
Socialist countries throughout Eastern Europe failed to develop anything worthwhile during the Soviet/Maoist era except starvation.
Public funding is not equivalent with socialism. All the examples I quoted are from Western nations, including one of the most shining achievements the USA prides itself with.
Even Western governments entirely failed to help industrial innovation.
I think that is completely wrong.
That’s why in the 1980′s all over the democratic world, previously publicly owned industries were privatised on a massive scale (not just in Britain by Mrs Thatcher’s government as some people suppose).
Quite. And many of these experiments have meanwhile failed. The are already examples of re-nationalisations, I predict there’ll be more.
It was a worldwise transformation from socialism to democratic and market-led freedom as the Soviet empire with all its pretentions crumbled to dust.
Replacing one stubborn ideology with its equally stubborn twin brother isn’t really an improvement. Pragmatism rules. Let sectors that are best done privately be private, let those that achieve better results in the public hand remain public. I think that is the legacy learnt from the past 20ish years of ideological privatisation experiments in Western nations.
Expanding on my previous post: There is a widespread notion that greenies are somehow left wing or marxists in disguise, and their opposition is automatically “free market” oriented. I think that is a misconception. Yes it’s true that the early greens from the 1970s and 80s presented themselves as anarchists, socialists or any combination of the above. But that has completetly changed meanwhile, leading some to suspect the “leftie” image was just a marketing plot.
The Green party here in Germany, when in government a couple of years ago, voted for the deepest cuts in the welfare system in the last 50 years. Their leading politicians advocate such cuts, not the slightest trace of any “socialist” rhetoric is left, certainly not in their politics. Later the current “conservative”, “market economy” government uses green rhetoric as an excuse for new taxes on airline tickets, on nuclear power thus hurting consumers, while giving tax breaks to high incomes and companies. The green, or “climate change” agenda is just another welcome excuse for their clientele politics they would follow anyway.
I’m very concerned about the FDA analogy. You dont want to give these bureaucrats any new ideas..
Anthony Watts says: October 30, 2010 at 11:44 am
“His choice. But I’m not going to have people like him ranting about locking people up that don’t have integrity enough to stand behind their own words. He’s at Cal-Tech, using the publicly funded state college network, so one would hope there’s some integrity there.”
The thing is Anthony is that if there was ever a posting that someone felt needed an official complaint, just pinging the IP and port number over to the admin there and it would probably be pretty trivial to find out who posted it from a university domain. It’s not like people are anonymous on the internet if you really want their true identity and they’re not actively trying to conceal it. This is especially true locally if you can match a work and home address to a single username. I have to chase up this kind of thing occasionally with my work.