Climate ‘Emergency’? Not So Fast
People’s Climate March NY City 2014. Image: Mike Segar/Reuters
Americans should not be stampeded into a disastrous climate crusade. By obligating the United States once more to the Paris agreement, and by signaling very clearly that “climate” will be central to its policies, the Biden administration has joined other governments in the crusade against a supposed “climate emergency.”
We use the word “crusade” advisedly, since the frenzy over climate resembles the medieval crusades against foreign infidels and home-grown heretics. There is even a children’s climate crusade.
Medieval crusaders would chant Deus Vult, or “God wants it” — the ultimate virtue-signaling slogan. Few leaders of medieval Europe could resist the temptation to join the crusades. The medieval elite could count on earthly rewards to add to their heavenly treasures. The enemies of God — and the little people — paid the bills.
Some climate crusaders have invoked the mandate of heaven, and others use language all too reminiscent of millenarianism. But most claim to be following a mandate of science.
We are both scientists who can attest that the research literature does not support the claim of a climate emergency.
Nor will there be one.
None of the lurid predictions — dangerously accelerating sea-level rise, increasingly extreme weather, more deadly forest fires, unprecedented warming, etc. — are any more accurate than the fire-and-brimstone sermons used to stoke fanaticism in medieval crusaders.
True believers assert that this emergency can be averted only by eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions. Greenhouse gases include ubiquitous water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, and above all, carbon dioxide, a gas released when fossil fuels are burned to power transportation, generate electricity, and are used to manufacture amenities of modern life.
Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere let sunlight warm the earth’s surface. But they absorb some of the heat radiation from the surface and atmosphere that would otherwise cool more efficiently by escaping directly to space. Greenhouse gases — and clouds — keep the earth’s surface temperature several tens of degrees Celsius warmer than it would be without them.
So far, climate crusaders have refrained from vilifying water vapor and clouds, which make the largest contribution to greenhouse warming of the earth. Carbon dioxide, demonized as “carbon pollution,” is an improbable villain. Green plants use the energy of sunlight to manufacture sugar and other organic molecules of life from carbon dioxide and water molecules.
A byproduct of photosynthesis is the oxygen of our atmosphere. Each human exhales about two pounds of the “pollutant” carbon dioxide every day.
In fact, history shows that warmings of a few degrees Celsius — which extended growing seasons — have been good for humanity. The golden age of classical Roman civilization occurred during a warm period. Cooling periods, which were accompanied by barbarian invasions, famines, and plagues, have been bad. Barbara Tuchman characterizes such periods as “the calamitous 14th century” in her book, A Distant Mirror.
More carbon dioxide will certainly increase the productivity of agriculture and forestry. Over the past century, the earth has already become noticeably greener as a result of the modest increase of CO2, from about 0.03 percent to 0.04 percent of atmospheric molecules. More CO2 has made a significant contribution to the increased crop yields of the past 50 years, as well. The benefits to plants of more CO2 are documented in hundreds of scientific studies.
Water vapor, and the clouds that condense from it, warm the earth’s surface at least four times more than does carbon dioxide. Paleoclimate data show little correlation between CO2 and climate, suggesting that the effects of CO2 are, in fact, marginal. Climate crusaders use computer models that include clouds, convective heat transfer in the atmosphere and oceans, and other factors to claim that “positive feedbacks” increase the predicted warming to 4.5 C or more.
Supposedly, the direct consequences of any change are amplified. This would violate Le Chatelier’s principle that says “when a settled system is disturbed, it will adjust to diminish the change that has been made to it.”
Crusaders like to claim that the climate violates Le Chatelier’s principle and has “tipping points.” Given the much higher and changing levels of carbon dioxide that prevailed over much of the earth’s history, it is unlikely that life would have survived if such tipping points existed.
Neither contemporary observations nor the geological record support computer-based claims that CO2 is the “control knob” for the earth’s climate. Warmings, similar to or larger than the current one, have been observed many times in the past few millennia when there has been negligible use of fossil fuels. A thousand years ago Greenland really was warmer than today and supported Norse farmers who grew crops such as barley, which cannot be grown there now because of the cold.
In another spasm of crusading fervor, some climate warriors want to do away with traditional farming and ranching because they are sources of the minor greenhouse gases, such as methane from ruminant livestock, paddy rice, etc., and nitrous oxide, mainly from fertilizer use.
his could threaten the livelihoods of farmers in countries whose governments have signed on to the Paris agreement.
The crusade against methane and nitrous oxide will be all pain and no gain for farmers and for those who consume their produce.
A serious review of policy-related climate science is long overdue. Crusaders will continue to retort that “the science is settled; it is time to act!” But real science is never settled, nor is scientific truth determined by consensus or political diktats.
Agreement with observations is the measure of scientific truth. Climate models predict two or three times more warming than has been observed. They have already been falsified. A soon-to-be published book by physicist and New York University professor Steven Koonin, Unsettled, convincingly lays out some of the problems a high-quality review would reveal.
There is no climate emergency. Americans should not be stampeded into a disastrous climate crusade. The medieval crusades did far more harm than good, destroying the lives of many decent people of all faiths, and leaving a bitter legacy that complicates international relations and social harmony to this day. A climate crusade that destroys economies and ultimately lives will be as bad, or worse.
Richard Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor, Emeritus, of atmospheric sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a fellow of numerous professional societies, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
William Happer is the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor, Emeritus, of physics at Princeton University, a fellow of numerous professional societies, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
See more here: nationalreview.com
Thanks to Gregory Wrightstone, author of the best-selling book Inconvenient Facts
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Trackback from your site.
Herb Rose
| #
How is it that a Professor Emeritus in atmospheric sciences does not know that the evaporation of water requires heat and the condensation of that water releases that heat? Water is not keeping he Earth warmer but cooling it by moving energy from the surface to the top of the troposphere where it is radiated into space.
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Herb,
I cannot an answer your question but since you are here I can ask you, and expect an answer from you. I have read that you do not believe the atmosphere contains any water molecules because its temperature is too cold. Instead you have proposed that any water in the atmosphere exists as tiny (minute) particles of condensed water molecules. So how can these tiny particles of condensed water molecules condense again??? For you clearly wrote: “the condensation of that water releases that heat.”
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi Jerry,
I do not say that the atmosphere does not contain any water molecules I say it doesn’t contain water vapor or molecules not associated with other molecules.
Droplets of water grow larger as more smaller droplets come in contact and are incorporated into the droplet. This is also the condensing of small water droplets into larger droplet. What do you believe happens when water droplets collide? Do you believe that there is an elastic collision?
Here’s a question for you. You have stated many times that water forms around seed nuclei in the atmosphere. Since the super cooling of water cannot occur if there are nuclei which can initiate crystal formation or where agitation disturbs the water droplets how can clouds be liquid water (observed when an airplane flies through a cloud) when the temperature is so far below the freezing point?
I have an another experiment you can do. When an electrically charged object deflects a small stream of water it is because the water has an electric charge. Try doing the experiment with water that has been boiled and see if there is the same deflection. Why does boiled water freeze faster than non boiled water. According to accepted theory the rate of energy loss is determined by the difference in temperature so once the two containers of water have the same temperature they should lose energy at the same rate and freeze at the same time.
Have a good day,
Herb
Reply
Opus
| #
Anyone who has ever experienced a Southern (U.S.) summer thunderstorm, knows it can be unbearably hot and muggy immediately after the storm. Water cools the surface and the vapor returns the heat to the atmosphere, thus warming the atmosphere while cooling the surface. Could it be the long term affect of H²O vapor cools the Earth but on the short term warms the Earth? With H²O constantly being added and subtracted from the atmosphere,does ultimately create a balance where it causes no significant heating?
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi Opus,
The cooling after a rain is from the water evaporating taking heat from the surface into the atmosphere. The temperature drops but the humidity increases and this inhibits the evaporation from your body preventing you from cooling. It is similar to wind chill where a wind removes heat from your body faster with no change in temperature making it feel colder.
Herb
Roger Higgs
| #
They’re right about CO2, but wrong about sea level.
Here’s climate truth in 500 words (3 minutes), released 2 weeks ago, by a geologist (not a financially compromised ‘climate scientist’) for a change …
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350726458_Global_warming_and_cooling_for_last_2000_years_mimic_Sun's_magnetic_activity_not_CO2_scientific_literature_synthesis
Reply
T. C. Clark
| #
It’s diabolical….warmists do not talk about H2O because there is nothing that can be done about H2O…not even warmists or Crusaders propose a plastic tarp over all the world’s oceans. Man made CO2 is made to order for their purposes….and to a lesser extent, methane and NO. Ever notice how one station, Mauna Loa, is sufficient for CO2 measurement world wide, but temp must have thousands of stations and satellites and must have “adjustments” to be sure that the measurements are correct?
Reply
Barry
| #
A really good point TC they take the one measurement of co2 that is in a very high naturally produced co2 area and claim this is the world average. Surely the amount of co2 must vary as does h2o in the atmosphere
Reply
T. C. Clark
| #
I would recommend measuring the temp of Mars with 6 stations and 1/2 of those are simply backups for the possible failure of a station. Admittedly, Mars has no oceans and a thin atmosphere and no biomass like earth, but the temps would suffice to determine if the Mars is cooling or warming.
Reply
Mark Tapley
| #
You can be sure that many of all those stations are located in areas so as to raise the earths average reported temperature. 0.02% is already a very minute amount in the atmosphere. It makes no difference what the facts are about the climate or anything else. The green house C02 fraud was contrived by the Zionist elite’s Club of Rome and this is the narrative the 6 MSM networks and the shabbas goy political shills are going to push, just like the fake virus. It all goes back to the same bunch.
Reply
Finn McCool
| #
I had a quick look at the Vostok Ice Core data showing a high correlation between Temperature and CO2. The data as presented, does show a high correlation between the two.
That presents a problem. As we all know, correlation is not causation. Even worse is that, in the absence of other variables it is impossible to say how they are correlated. Does temperature rise cause CO2 to rise or is it the other way about? The correlation is essentially useless in the absence of more data (Vulcanism, precession, Milankovitch cycles, solar output etc. and probably a lot more that we don’t know).
Drawing conclusions from two variables and their correlation is just plain stupid.
Reply
Alan
| #
The Ice Core data does not show a high correlation. You are doing the same as Al Gore. It is impossible to determine correlation anyway without a mathematical analysi.
Reply
Finn McCool
| #
The data I have does show a correlation. Had you taken the time to read the comment, you would see that I say this causes a problem. Correlation is not causation. Two highly correlated variables do not make a good PCA on their own. The maths are fairly simplistic to determine a correlation.
Reply
THOMASWADAMS
| #
There is an alternative way to regard the warming hysteria; that way suggests that warming hysteria was invented as cover to divert World and popular attention away from something far more calamitous, even more immediate.
The Earth, in it’s celestial orbit, for about the last thousand years, has been in the position where it has always been subject to an Ice Age; The astronomers and scientists who know, say it is imminent; brief review of weather over last twelve months, seems to point that way in support.
Here is the rub! in shorthand version; if one considers all the remedy’s proposed to ward off “Warming”, and then compare that consideration, with the possible onset of an “Ice Age”, you are obliged to realise, that all such afore mentioned warming remedy’s will actually be made real, whether humanity likes it or not. Will you imagine, the terror and turmoil that will ensue, once great swathes of humanity realise, that they live on land soon to be miles deep under glaciers. Amen it is written.
Reply
T. C. Clark
| #
Professor Lindzen said not too long ago that he was unsure if clouds were a net plus or minus on temperature. Maybe he has changed his mind…..maybe not. The GHG effect is supposedly keeping the earth from overheating during the day and slowing the cooling at night as I understand the claims…the GHG at night block some of the IR from returning to space. However, there is no way to model the atmosphere in a laboratory and using some simple version of the complex atmosphere and claiming it is accurate enough …or close enough…is no good. It has been a cool spring but temp in 70s today and I walked outside a few hours after sundown and lots of heat can be felt in the concrete which spent all day in the sun.
Reply
F
| #
https://www.warningmessage.org/library/msccasl.htm – Climate change and Sunday Law
Reply