Quotes from an article
by William Happer, PhD,
written in 2011,
about greenhouse gases
and carbon dioxide:
( Note:
After reading Happer,
my first impression was that
the quotes below
are a "PhD version"
of what I've been saying on
this Honest Global Warming
Chart Blog since 2014. )
“The message is clear
that several factors
must influence the earth’s
temperature, and that while
CO2 is one of these factors,
it is seldom the dominant one.
The other factors are not
well understood.
Plausible candidates are
spontaneous variations of the
complicated fluid flow patterns
in the oceans and atmosphere
of the earth—perhaps influenced
by continental drift, volcanoes,
variations of the earth’s
orbital parameters (ellipticity,
spin-axis orientation, etc.),
asteroid and comet impacts,
variations in the sun’s output
(not only the visible radiation
but the amount
of ultraviolet light,
and the solar wind
with its magnetic field),
variations in cosmic rays
leading to variations
in cloud cover,
and other causes."
“Let me summarize
how the key issues appear to me,
a working scientist with a
better background than most
in the physics of climate.
CO2 really is a greenhouse gas
and other things being equal,
adding the gas to the atmosphere
by burning coal, oil, and natural gas
will modestly increase the
surface temperature of the earth.
Other things being equal,
doubling the CO2 concentration,
from our current 390 ppm
to 780 ppm
will directly cause
about 1 degree Celsius
in warming.
At the current rate
of CO2 increase
in the atmosphere
—about 2 ppm per year
—it would take about 195 years
to achieve this doubling.
The combination of a
slightly warmer earth
and more CO2
will greatly increase
the production of food,
wood, fiber,
and other products
by green plants,
so the increase
will be good for the planet,
and will easily outweigh
any negative effects.
Supposed calamities like the
accelerated rise of sea level,
ocean acidification,
more extreme climate,
tropical diseases near the poles,
and so on are greatly exaggerated.
“’Mitigation’ and control efforts
that have been proposed
will enrich a favored few
with good political ties
—at the expense of the
great majority of mankind,
including especially the poor
and the citizens
of developing nations.
These efforts will make
almost no change
in earth’s temperature.
Spain’s recent experiment
with green energy destroyed
several pre-existing jobs
for every green job it created,
and it nearly brought the country
o bankruptcy.
“The frightening warnings
that alarmists offer about
the effects of doubling CO2
are based on computer models
that assume that the direct
warming effect of CO2 is multiplied
by a large “feedback factor”
from CO2-induced changes
in water vapor and clouds,
which supposedly contribute
much more to the greenhouse
warming of the earth than CO2.
But there is observational evidence
that the feedback factor is small
and may even be negative.
The models are not in
good agreement with observations
—even if they appear to fit
the temperature rise
over the last 150 years
very well.
“Indeed, the computer programs
that produce climate change models
have been “tuned” to get
the desired answer.
The values of various parameters
like clouds and the concentrations
of anthropogenic aerosols
are adjusted to get the best fit
to observations.
And—perhaps
partly because of that
—they have been unsuccessful
in predicting future climate,
even over periods as short
as fifteen years.
In fact, the real values
of most parameters,
and the physics of how
they affect
the earth’s climate,
are in most cases
only roughly known,
too roughly to supply
accurate enough data
for computer predictions.
In my judgment, and in that
of many other scientists
familiar with the issues,
the main problem with models
has been their treatment
of clouds, changes of which
probably have a much bigger
effect on the temperature
of the earth than
changing levels of CO2.”
“What, besides the bias
toward a particular result,
is wrong with the science?
Scientific progress proceeds
by the interplay of theory
and observation.
Theory explains observations
and makes predictions
about what will be observed
in the future.
Observations anchor
our understanding
and weed out the theories
that don’t work.
This has been the
scientific method
for more than
three hundred years.
Recently, the advent
of the computer
has made possible
another branch of inquiry:
computer simulation models.
Properly used,
computer models
can enhance and speed up
scientific progress.
But they are not meant
to replace theory
and observation
and to serve as
an authority
of their own.
We know they fail in economics.
All of the proposed controls
that would have such a
significant impact on the
world’s economic future
are based on computer models
that are so complex and chaotic
that many runs are needed
before we can get
an “average” answer.
Yet the models have failed
the simple scientific test
of prediction.
We don’t even have a theory
for how accurate the models
should be.”