A hugely important piece on global warming (or the lack thereof)

I read something the other day that was confirmation of a belief I have expressed many times in this blog--global warming is NOT something we should allow people to use to ruin our economy. The Wall Street Journal had an article entitled "No Need to Panic About Global Warming," which was signed by sixteen well-respected scientists in fields dealing with climate and related endeavors.

We're in a time of great political activity. The article points out a key thing: candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

Here's proof of their claim. In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

Dr. Giaever is not alone, and he's no crank. In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share his opinions. And what's interesting is that his position is not growing weaker. The number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now, according to the article. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."

How has this hugely important factor (no global warming over the past 10 years) been missed? Computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2. Nice maneuver, right?

The article points out something important that's often missed, and it's so simple. CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. The scientists who write this piece say that better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

I'm going to stop here even though this is only about half of the Journal piece. I think this is so important that I'd like everyone reading this to take another look and share this with your friends. I'll take on the other half in the next blog.

Global warming takes another hit

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal that cautions us to think clearly about global warming issues. The author of the article, Bret Stephens, looks at a popular book called Freakonomics, which came out in 2005. Its authors, University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and writer Stephen Dubner, had a lengthy chapter on global warming where they discussed former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold and some of his ideas. Global warming fanatics were not happy with this book, says Stephens, because its authors did not appear to be sold on the hysteria surrounding global warming.

Now these two men are out with a second book, SuperFreakonomics, and the results are the same. Al Gore, a former Clinton official name Joe Romm, and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman lash out at this book for its supposedly bad reporting as well as its lack of enthusiasm for global warming. Actually, Levitt and Dubner are considered careful researchers. In addition, Stephens says they do acknowledge temperatures have risen a little over one degree Fahrenheit over the past century. But here's where they part company with the global warming hysteria. They note that sea levels will probably not rise more than 18 inches over the next 90 years, which is less than the normal variation of tides along most coastlines. They say "changes in carbon-dioxide levels don't necessarily mirror human activity." My favorite quotation is from Mr. Myhrvold when he says Al Gore's scary scenarios "don't have any basis in physical reality in any reasonable time frame."

Stephens indicates SuperFreakonomics also challenges the current climate-change craziness in other ways. For example, the authors say climatologists show a herd mentality by matching one another's forecasts. In addition, like everyone else, they respond to the economic reality of research funding. Money is available for those who can claim the greatest problems lie ahead of us. The two authors also point out that huge problems often have cheap and simple solutions. Think of world hunger -- it was solved not by population control but by developing better strains of rice and wheat. So maybe, they suggest, we can tackle global warming with a variety of cheap fixes rather than destroying the economies of the United States and other industrialized nations. They even say we may want to do nothing until the state of technology gets better and can tackle the problem with better solutions.

As you might expect, global warming fanatics hate these ideas. They are interested in controlling huge economies, gaining vast new powers in the process. Stephens quotes Newsweek's Stefan Theil as support: "climate change is the greatest new public-spending project in decades." Remember how people said it's important to follow the money? Well, here's another good example.

Books like Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics are important. They cause us to slow down and truly think rather than being carried along with our emotions. Before we destroy our economy, let’s consider the evidence carefully.