Global Warming Is Nothing To Worry About
In the Wall Street Journal sixteen scientists who dissent from the notion of a “scientific consensus” in favor of global warming say concerns over carbon emissions are overblown:
Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. 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.” But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.
The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that 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.
The fact is that 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. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. 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.
What’s more, they point out that some in the scientific community are afraid to speak out for fear of having their livelihoods taken away by vengeful climate alarmists:
Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.
What’s happening in the climate sciences now seems reminiscent of Galileo’s war with the Catholic Church over his theories about the movements of planetary bodies. In Galileo’s day, many scientists had theories and research which ran contrary to the religious doctrine, but they were afraid to go public with their work out of fear of persecution.
Today, those questioning the dogma of the climate alarmists face the same dilemma. Not only are many of the leading alarmists also extremely powerful in scientific communities, but government entities who use climate alarmism as leverage for all manner of policies from higher taxes to larger budgets to more regulatory power also control a lot of the public funding for the institutions these scientists work out.
It is a brave scientist, indeed, who dares question the “consensus” on global warming.
Tags: Climate Change, global warming
