NOTE: This op-ed was rejected by the New York Times. It was submitted as a response by The president of The Heartland Institute in reply to Fred Krupp’s Wall Street Journal essay. I reproduce it here in hopes of it reaching a wide audience. Feel free to reproduce it elsewhere. – Anthony
by Joe Bast
Dear Fred,
I read your August 7 opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, “A New Climate-Change Consensus,” with great interest. As you know, The Heartland Institute is a leading voice in the international debate over climate change. The Economist recently called us “the world’s most prominent think-tank promoting skepticism about man-made climate change.”
First, I welcome you to the effort to bring skeptics and alarmists together. We need your help. We have been trying to do this for many years.
For example, we ran more than $1 million in ads calling on Al Gore to debate his critics. He repeatedly refused. We hosted seven international conferences on climate change and invited alarmists to speak at every one, the most recent one held in Chicago on May 23-24. Only one ever showed up, and he was treated respectfully.
Regrettably, your colleagues in the liberal environmental movement responded at first by pretending we don’t exist, and when opinion polls and political decisions revealed that strategy wasn’t working, by denouncing us as “deniers” and “shills for the fossil fuel industry.”
Most recently, your colleagues on the left went so far as to break the law in an attempt to silence us. Prominent global warming alarmist Peter Gleick stole corporate documents from us and circulated them with a fake and highly defamatory memo purporting to describe our “climate change strategy.” Gleick confessed to stealing the documents on February 20.
Greenpeace is using the stolen and fake documents to attack climate scientists who affiliate with The Heartland Institute, while the Center for American Progress and 350.org are using them to demonize corporations that fund us. No group on the left, including yours, has condemned these activities.
In your opinion piece, you say “if both sides can now begin to agree on some basic propositions, maybe we can restart the discussion,” and you end by saying “it is time for conservatives to compete with liberals to devise the best, most cost effective climate solutions.”
Reconciliation will be difficult so long as you and others on the left fail to express doubt or remorse over the errors, exaggerations, and unethical tactics that continue to be used against skeptics.
For example, it is impossible for skeptics and alarmists to come together so long as alarmists pretend – as you do, Fred, in this very essay – that recent weather trends in one part of the world lend proof to their theories and predictions. Anyone familiar with the science knows this claim belongs in the kindergarten of the climate science debate.
Another basic error you repeat is that surface-based temperature data validate or prove that human greenhouse gas emissions affect the climate. They cannot, first because they measure temperatures on only a small part of the Earth’s surface, second because they are notoriously unreliable, and third because they tell us nothing about what is causing warming or cooling.
You are asking, in effect, that skeptics simply “shut up and sit down,” that they concede as being true the most flawed and unlikely assumptions of the alarmist movement, and that they endorse policies that are wholly unnecessary and extremely costly.
While I cannot presume to speak for all global warming skeptics, I think I can channel the opinion of most when I say, “hell no!”
Your overture comes at a time when the science backing global warming alarmism is crumbling, as amply demonstrated by the reports of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate change (NIPCC). International negotiations for a new treaty are going nowhere. Public opinion in the U.S. and other countries decisively rejects alarmism. Politicians here and abroad who vote for cap and trade or a carbon tax rightly fear being tossed out of office by voters who know more about the issue than they do.
Your appeal to “restart the discussion” would have skeptics snatch failure from the jaws of victory. I’m sure you understand why we won’t go there.
I have a counter proposal. Let’s restart the discussion by agreeing on these basic propositions:
First, people and organizations that break the law or use hate language such as “denier” should be barred from the global warming debate.
Second, recent weather and temperature anomalies have not been unusual and are not evidence of a human effect on climate.
Third, given the rapid and unstoppable increase in greenhouse gas emissions by Third World countries, it is pointless for the U.S. and other developed countries to invest very much in reducing their own emissions.
Fourth, tax breaks and direct subsidies to solar and wind power and impossible-to-meet renewable power mandates and regulatory burdens on coal-powered electricity generation plants have been disastrous for taxpayers, businesses, and consumers of electricity, and ought to be repealed.
Fifth, the world is entering an era of fossil fuel abundance that could lift billions of people out of poverty and help restart the U.S. economy. We have the technology to use that energy safely and with minimal impact on the environment and human health. Basic human compassion and common sense dictate that fear of global warming ought not be used to block access to this new energy.
Agree to these five simple propositions, Fred, and we can begin to work together to address some of the real environmental problems facing the U.S. and the world.
But the kind of debate is not the yelling across the fence that goee on now. We have to get a few of their “experts” against a few of ours, and demonstrate the knowledge of weather, climate and the natural large scale drivers that they ignore, in a way that wipes them out in a well organized and well publicized forum. These people are not weather and climate observers, they are voyeurs, ( I got that term from a good friend of mine, but dont know if he wants me to attribute it to him. If I find out he does, I will) The peak in on the weather when it suits them to push their propaganda points.
Until such time that a) they are shown to be either ignorant of the facts or deceptive where every one can see and b) co2 is put in its rightful place as a red herring to the climate debate, this is going to continue. And if they wont come out and debate where they can be seen, their “all stars” against ours, then it should be pointed out they are running for one reason, they know they have nothing to stand on and can be refuted.
I am not even asking for a position on our team. I just want to watch them beaten by our side. But dont kid yourself, this is going to continue, as the media and administration is on their side, until these 2 things happen in a way for all to see
perhaps one of the networks will carry a 5th debate.. on the climate scam. Bound to get ratings
Joe says voyeurs – I say Jihadis. The latter cause far more damage than the former!
Peter Miller says: August 14, 2012 at 2:52 am
The global warming industry is a well funded gravy train. […] why should alarmists do anything which could possibly upset their gravy train by doing something like publicly debating the subject of CAGW?
That is why it will never happen. The sustenance of their existence depends on maintaining the status quo.
Peter Miller says:
August 14, 2012 at 2:52 am
1. Most sceptics accept rising CO2 levels have had a mild impact on global temperatures – these rising CO2 levels have obviously been caused by the activities of man.
Only a fraction of the rising CO2 levels are due to man, it’s not so obvious that all of it is. Don’t concede them the argument that we’re responsible in total. We’re not.
I’m astonished that discussions of “sustainable economies,” pop up here, there is nothing sustainable about an economy which requires the use of force to get enough money to drive it. Taxes are extortion, and funding “sustainable economies” through taxation is not a long term solution. Real sustainable economies are the result of voluntary exchanges where each party believes they are the better for having made the trade. When the majority of the consumers of electricity want to draw their power from some source other than petrochemicals, that form of power generation, what ever it may be, will succeed in the marketplace. Until then, keep your guns away from successful energy sources! Yes, the EPA is guns!
The second condition is just plain daft.
The statement “Second, recent weather and temperature anomalies have not been unusual and are not evidence of a human effect on climate.” defines the positions of the two sides – an AGW skeptic would agree with that statement, an AGW proponent would not.
There would be no point in the Heartland Institute debating AGW with people who agree because they would already be on your side.
I’m not in line on this one – I read the conditions as “agree that we’re right, or we won’t talk with you”. Who is going to sign up to that?
The New York Who?
The problem is, the POLITICAL debate is well advanced, but the SCIENTIFIC debate is non-existent, because: Nobody knows the fundamental science they are pretending to know, or deluding themselves that they know. There are no competent climate scientists. Neither the “alarmist” nor the “lukewarm” believers in the greenhouse effect–of increasing temperature with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (not “the temperature with, vs. without, an atmosphere”, you proud fools)–know the first thing about what the evidence is telling you: that there is no such greenhouse effect, and your belief in it only marks your own scientific incompetence. There should be no public debate on the science, first and foremost because the mostly lay public is not educated to competently participate, and now it should be clear (but of course it is not, which is the main point) that even the “experts” are miseducated, and clinging to failed theoretical dogma (so the dismal truth is, “climate science” is not ready for prime time–after the last 40 to 50 years of imbibed false theory). These statements are the real point of departure for any reasonable debate (which should be entirely open to the lay public, but without its participation, AND without the participation of climate scientists, who have universally failed in their professional responsibility; hand it over to non-climate scientists–preferrably physicists over the age of 60, educated before the dogma of the “greenhouse effect” was accepted as “settled science”–and anyone who respects the stable Standard Atmosphere over the hysterical “meme” of runaway climate change. And given the stillborn state of the scientific debate, cancel all governmental “climate” policies, forthwith–cease and desist now, or yesterday if possible.
“Valerie Rawlinson says:
August 14, 2012 at 2:49 am
Don’t agree with suggestion five. What we really need is vision to learn to live with the earth in a sustainable way. And the vision to create an alternative economy that will allow us to do so.”
Wind mill and solar panels aren’t an alternative economy.
The US can’t build an economy on these source of energy, and expecting
developing economies to do so is unrealistic.
There could be a possible advantage of such technology for use in isolate regions, but in term
nation of million of people it’s not going work as the solution. It situational and supplemental
perhaps.
Using natural gas resources instead using coal is much cleaner and environmentally better
solution. And with fracking technology one a much wider and larger availability of local natural resources.
Hmm, yes, “think-think[sic]” does promote skepticism, especially as contrasted with the prog-left’s chat-chat consensus. Verification-ism is not science.
“Flatearthers”, PN? Our children are going to look at these Alarmists, they way we do the Piltdown crowd, we shouldn’t be throwning insults at the few advocates who stayed sane.
“In the year 1527, the Medici being expelled from Florence, there was a fight for the Palace of the Signoria, and a bench was thrown down from on high so as to fall upon those who were assaulting the door; but, as fate would have it, that bench hit an arm of the David in marble by Buonarroti, which is beside the door of the Ringhiera, and broke it into three pieces. These pieces having remained on the ground for three days, without being picked up by anyone, Francesco went to the Ponte Veccio to find Giorgio, and told him his intention; and then, children as they were, they went to the Piazza, and, without thinking of any danger, in the midst of the soldiers of the guard, they took the pieces of that arm and carried them to the house of Michelagnolo, the father of Francesco, in the Chiasso di M. Bivigliano. From which house having afterwards recovered them, Duke Cosimo in time caused them to be restored to their places with pegs of copper.” – Giorgio Vasari (“Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects” 1568)
JamesNV
Hiding from the truth won’t make it change or go away. Look at the “studies” from the AGW camp that show the stark differences in belief of AGW between the two parties. Now think of which party wants the government to take care of us from cradle to grave, and which one wants individuals to stand on their own two feet, work hard and succeed.
AGW alarmism isn’t about the science, it is about political control over the masses so the brilliant elites can decide how we minions live our lives. It is, at the heart of this discussion, political. Ask yourself, when did AGW, Eco-terrorism and the push for a world government really take off. Your answer will probably be: in the late 80’s, early 90’s. It’s no coincidence this is when the USSR collapsed. This is a politician fight, first and foremost, and you need decide which side you are on. NOW!
Bill
JamesNV says:
August 14, 2012 at 2:23 am
I’m a lefty and I get annoyed when the debate is framed in political terms. I understand that many are polarized because of their politics, but this issue isn’t supposed to be about political affiliations. Framing it in those terms only seems to exacerbate the polarization. I don’t see any good in doing that.
You are right, of course, but tell it to your comerades and tell it loudly. This whole mess is framed as a political issue by them in the first place.
See the wicked meme of Climate Justice, for example.
I’m at a bit of a loss.. Since this was in response to an essay in The Wall Street Journal, why ask The New York Times to the be path for rebuttal? Why not ask The WSJ to publish the rebuttal since they are the audience that Mr. Krupp was addressing? I know the NYT has an extreme left stance, but to expect them to print it does not make sense. The WSJ is the one to prove fair and balanced journalism.
BTW, I agree with most of the 5 points, with a rewrite to #5 (see Ed Koch quote below). Fossil fuels are the cheapest, easiest and quickest ways to lift impoverish nations, but that the industrialized nations need to pursue nuclear, especially Thorium. The western civilization has the technology to design and help build clean and safe fossil fuel plants for the third world while we get on the path for nuclear. Adding more nations to a fossil fuel diet will drive up the price, even with added extraction from the earth. We need to ladder the worlds’ energy production, while the undeveloped nations move to fossil fuels, we move to nuclear/hydrogen. And in the 1K years that buys us, look to develop the next rung in the energy ladder.
As Ed Koch, Mayor of New York city said while campaigning , “If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, you should vote for me, if you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, you should see a psychiatrist.”
Renaud says ‘the five stages of ..grief’
You are right about this and it is important then to show those going through such grief a lot of respect as they come to accept the realisation of their loss.
This grief looks ordered when tabulated as five stages, but this tabulation neglects that some will be in a couple of stages at the same time, may revert, and in community there will be people in any stage.This makes it hard to manage such a thing as loss of belief in AGW.
Politically all that can be done is remove people who refuse to debate as they may do more harm to the body politic by limiting free speech.
JamesNV says:
August 14, 2012 at 2:23 am
I’m a lefty and I get annoyed when the debate is framed in political terms. I understand that many are polarized because of their politics, but this issue isn’t supposed to be about political affiliations. Framing it in those terms only seems to exacerbate the polarization. I don’t see any good in doing that.
The problem James is that the left wing polis (progressives, commis, liberals) are using AGW as a means of raising taxes and improving their control over the people.
Too direct, too honest, too simple — the left will never go for it. The NY Times, which long ago abandoned it’s motto “All the news that’s fit to print” for “All the news that fits (the agenda),” commits the classic error of authentic journalism, omitting parts of the story that it doesn’t like and thereby telling a lie.
@- Joe Bast
“I have a counter proposal. Let’s restart the discussion by agreeing on these basic propositions:”
1} Stop using the term blanket term ‘alarmist’ and maybe the ‘other side’ will stop charaterising even the skeptics who reject the role of rising CO2 in the climate with the ‘D’ word.
2} The recent vast disproportion of hot records broken over cold records is certainly clear evidence of unusual climate change. Unless you have a more credible cause for this massive shift then anthropogenic is the best theory available.
3} The rapid rise in emissions by some third world nations is not unstoppable, tech transfer could ameliorate the rate of rise. But the premise is mathematically wrong. The large emissions per capita of Americans means that just a small investment in reducing those emissions such as few percent from increasing vehicle mpg efficiency would cause a big reduction in total emissions easily offsetting many third world increases.
4} Tax breaks, direct subsidises and mandates have been very effective in changing the energy use in Germany. The failure to make them work in the US is not a fault with the regulation as Germany {and a number of other nations} have applied them successfully and with very little evidence of economic damage. Perhaps political will and industrial opposition have undermined the application of such policy in the US.
5} the world is already in an era of peak oil with minimal changes in oil production for almost a decade. Coal is abundant, but transport cost make it uneconomic beyond use in a local power station. Natural gas and shale oil can be exploited but the cost, financial and in energy, to extract it makes it comparable with renewables. The cheap fossil fuels have already been used up. What is left is increasingly expensive to extract even without the clear evidence it is radically altering the climate. The idea that it is a easy source of wealth for the developing world is a delusion.
Even if you ignore the external costs.
Seeking ‘agreement’ on claims and assertions that are so demonstrably wrong is not going to persuade the vast majority of scientific organisations or the many people who have grasped the underlying physics to view your positions as anything other than a politicaly motivated defense of an unsustainable status quo.
BillD says:
August 14, 2012 at 4:00 am
The Heartland Institute … Most of the debate is in the scientific literature, which Heartland consistently reinterprets.
That my friend is how science works. But I understand how a non-scientist wouldn’t understand that.
Well, the fact that NYT would reject such a call for civility because the author doesn’t support the ‘correct’ position on AGW is very telling.
Our ‘main stream media’ is owned, lock stock and barrel by the establishment; meaning the likes of GE, George Soros, the (D) and, to a lesser extent, (R) parties.
They are not journalists. They have no interest in communicating facts, only opinions that fit with their world narrative.
But for that fact, people like Anthony Watts would not enjoy the success that they do. You don’t need a second or third tier to get your news, if it is being faithfully and accurately delivered by the MSM.
That is why Fox News has been so successful, and I note that the liberal media uses the exact same slander techniques against them as they do against skeptics.
Brian Johnson uk says:
August 14, 2012 at 2:16 am
There are still humans around who think the planet was created in seven days. With mindsets like that and the likes of Hansen,Gore,Mann, Jones,Trenberth and others with direct connections to the sympathetic AGW Media nothing will change in any meaningful time scale. How long did it take for Dragons, Witches and Papal Indulgences to be accepted as utter rubbish?
CO2 is good for us carbon life forms and for our essential friends the food producing plants, trees etc.
===============================================
How strange to be attacked by skeptics. Considering it was people of faith who largely carried the skepticism yoke when no one else would.
It is kinda depressing to see even the most basic physics of the anthropogenic source of the rising CO2 and its known role in warming the climate are STILL being … rejected by a number of posters here.
A debate with an opposition that cannot even agree within their own ranks about the underlying science that is accepted by all the scientifically informed is a non-starter.
Thanks Joe, keep fighting to give the little guys a voice. There is no reasoning with the political left. Their leaders are dishonest Big Government politicos bent on controlling the energy markets and the their followers are generally rabid eco-zealots and useful idiots, bound and determined to
convince everyone that 2 + 2 = 5. The banking industry is experiencing the same thing, theft by legislation/regulation, big government “banks” using Dodd/Frank to drive the small community banks out of business and consolidate and control the financial markets. Other industries are under similar attack. The time for talking/debating/arguing has passed, the time for action is here. Thank you for your ‘efforts’ and for your support.
Tom Currie AKA John Greenfraud
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2012/07/12/community-bank-others-challenge-constitutionality-dodd-frank-law
“In your opinion piece, you say “if both sides can now begin to agree on some basic propositions, maybe we can restart the discussion,” and you end by saying “it is time for conservatives to compete with liberals to devise the best, most cost effective climate solutions.””
1) As long as the temperature data is adjusted to create a warming trend when there is none or to augment a slight trend, there is no debate. Fraud is fraud.
2) “Both sides begin to agree”? This is not a matter of compromise. The Dems think that it is the role of the Repubs to compromise, which means that, when the Dems push for more socialist entitlement programs, they believe it is the Repubs duty to ALWAYS accept some of it, creating steady progress toward socialism. That’s wrong thinking but it totally serves the Dems’ goals. On something like a budget, it is balanced or not, just as a woman is pregnant or not. There is no compromise or debate.
In science, there is debate over concepts and evidence for or against a concept. But, the science of climate may be complicated, but principles involved are simple, particularly the warmest science claims. As it is impossible for any gas to warm the Earth’s surface and thus the atmosphere, CO2 cannot do what they claim. There are 4 or 5 key and well established aspects of thermodynamics and physics that have to fail (or be ignored or abused) for their claims to work. There is no debate.
3) “it is time for conservatives to compete with liberals to devise the best, most cost effective climate solutions”. This presupposes that there is a need for solutions, which is the point of most warmists. Non-problems do not need solutions. As human activities to not alter the planet’s climate by emitting CO2, methane, or even water vapor, there is no reason to seek Draconian, wasteful solutions. The warmists want to skip debating the science altogether.
The assumption that solutions are required is the hallmark of the warmist stance. They REFUSE to debate the science as they KNOW that they will lose. This is why Al Gore refuses to debate. SO, they jump past their junk science and demand that the real need is for solutions.
The real solution is for the warmists to learn the real science, the false “climate scientists” to be gotten rid of for promoting a global scam and fraudulently altering raw data to fit political needs, and for the UN and those seeking to alter the world to fit their goals be put down and dethroned for their actions.
A true debate of the science would settle everything, as it would explain quickly why the warmists goals and claims are all false. But, then it would NOT be a debate, as a debate assumes two stances or positions that both have merit. In this case, the warmists would be “schooled” and the debate would be a lecture. However, typical of warmists, they would quickly resort to ad hominem attacks and appeals to authority and then claim the “debate” is over.
The Skeptics have been treating their opponents as if the are rational and scientific. They are not. The global warming scare mongers are nothing more then liars and propagandists, interested in supporting their ideological agenda through the use of phoney science. They will stop at nothing to impose their views upon everyone else. They are thugs and bullies, and if given the power will become tyrants and despots. I say these things not to be insulting but to make it clear as to exactly what kind of people we are dealing with. The Climate Liars are dangerous people. Let’s stop fooling ourselves by pretending they are simply misguided souls.
gbaikie says:
Wind mill and solar panels aren’t an alternative economy.
The US can’t build an economy on these source of energy,
Windmills and solar panels are luxury goods which we can only afford to buy because we have (had) a viable fossil-fuel economy which could afford to indulge those who wanted to be “more green”.
Put bluntly, it costs money to be green, so, we have to produce more in order to afford this luxury. The real truth, is that far from spending anything on being “green”, “green” really means consuming less, which in economic terms means spending less, or having less to spend, i.e. cutting GDP … going into permanent recession.