The real ‘deniers’

LORNE GUNTER

National Post
9 mars 2009

William Happer is hardly a climate change “denier.” A physics professor at Princeton, he is a former director of energy research for the U.S. Department of Energy, where he supervised work on climate change between 1990 and 1993. He is also one of the world’s leading experts on “the interactions of visible and infrared radiation with gases,” and on carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect. Two weeks ago, he told the U.S. Congress, “I believe the increase of CO2 (in the atmosphere) is not a cause for alarm.”

Claims that an increase of atmospheric CO2 will lead to catastrophic warming “are wildly exaggerated,” according to Prof. Happer. While a doubling (we have seen about a 35% rise since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution) might lead to a 0.6C rise in global temperature, he told Congress, “additional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 ... that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can.”

Prof. Happer added that while CO2 concentrations have risen steadily for more than 100 years, warming began before that — 200 years ago — and even during the time when temperatures and carbon concentrations have risen together, the link has hardly been consistent. For instance, while CO2 was rising rapidly from 1950 to 1970, temperatures were going through an especially cold period.

Over the past decade, while carbon dioxide concentrations have continued to grow, there has been “a slight cooling,” according to the Princeton physicist. Any warming in recent decades, then, “seems to be due mostly to natural causes, not to increasing levels of carbon dioxide.”

Why then do organizations such as the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) continue to put faith in climate supercomputer models that show disastrous warming in the coming century? Because, as Prof. Happer explained, the IPCC believes in what is called a “positive feedback loop.”

In short, water vapour and clouds account for about 98% of the greenhouse effect versus less than 2% for CO2. The IPCC believes, though, that a doubling of CO2, while not significant on its own, will trigger a huge increase in the greenhouse impact of water vapour. But so far, in the real world, “the feedback is close to zero and may even be negative.” Prof. Happer testified.

The significance of Prof. Happer’s statement is not that it proves global warming is false, but rather that it shows there is no consensus among respected scientists. The notion that the “science is settled,” as claimed by global warming advocates, is not true.

Also, two weeks ago, three of five independent scientists asked by Japan’s Society of Energy and Resources to assess the current state of climate science concluded that global warming, to the extent it is still occurring, is a natural phenomenon, not manmade.

In his official contribution, Kanya Kusano, program director at the Earth Simulator at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, called the IPCC’s warming theories “an unprovable hypothesis” and likened the current supercomputer models to ancient astrology.

Even the Discovery Channel, never a fan of scientists who dissent from climate orthodoxy, reported last week on a University of Wisconsin study that shows global temperatures have at least flatlined during the past decade and that that trend could continue for another 30 years. The authors of that report — Kyle Swanson and Anastasios Tsonis — think rapid warming could resume after that. But for now, warming has ceased.

Against this legitimate scientific doubt, recent statements by environmentalists and alarmist scientists sounds positively hysterical.

Robert Kennedy, Jr. called coal companies “criminal enterprises” and demanded their CEOs be jailed “for all eternity.” Michael Tobis, a climate modeller at the University of Texas labelled as “palpably evil” anyone who questioned the wisdom of former U.S. vice-president Al Gore and suggested that doubting Mr. Gore was “morally comparable to killing 1,000 people.”

U.S. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu claimed warming will lead to “no more agriculture in California.” Meanwhile Susan Solomon, of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and lead scientist with the IPCC, said even if carbon emissions are stopped, temperatures around the globe will remain high until at least the year 3000 and within 10 years “the oceans will be toxic, and all life in them will die.”

Ironic, isn’t it, that those who doubt the warming theories are the ones called the “deniers.”