Global Warming Alarmism is Unwarranted
In the November 10, 2018 issue of The Week That Was (TWTW) Archives published by the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), Ken Haapala, President of SEPP, answers the question posed in the title of this article with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a well-regarded theoretical physicist and professor emeritus of Mathematical Physics and Astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. This quote comes from the foreword of a book written by Indur Goklany in 2015 titled “The Improving State of the World: Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet.”
This quote by Dyson and the book by Goklany support my contention that the Global Warming alarmism being promoted by the so-called “experts” concerning CO2 in the atmosphere is unwarranted. The first page of this article is provided below; the remainder of the article in this weekly issue of The Week That Was can be found here.
Quote of the Week: “The people who are supposed to be the experts and who claim to understand the science are precisely the people who are blind to the evidence…I hope that a few of them will make the effort to examine the evidence in detail and see how it contradicts the prevailing dogma, but I know that the majority will remain blind. That to me is the central mystery of climate science. It is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that the whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts?” – Freeman Dyson, foreword in a report by Indur Goklany [H/t Robert Brinsmead]
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Ignoring Evidence: In books such as “The Improving State of the World: Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives On a Cleaner Planet,” Indur Goklany presented extensive, carefully researched evidence supporting the topic in the title. In his 2015 report “CARBON DIOXIDE: The good news,” Goklany presents carefully researched evidence showing the enormous benefits from rising atmospheric carbon dioxide to humanity and the environment. Many economists, politicians, and commentators on the social cost of carbon dioxide ignore evidence of the benefits of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide.
Why “experts” choose to ignore the evidence and prefer to think the human condition is becoming more deplorable, made worse by the use of fossil fuels, is known only to them. Apparently, they imagine a more primitive, simpler world, where the only energy use replacing muscle power from humans and animals is unreliable wind and solar. A few stories in the November 7 Siberian Times give an indication of what life is like in the more primitive world when people go too far from the safety of the village and its energy sources. “Teenage dies a hero after saving his cousin from bear attack” describes how a 16-year-old boy distracted a brown bear that attacked his 13-year-old cousin. The older boy was killed and buried by the bear for future consumption.
Now retired, Freeman Dyson is a theoretical physicist and professor emeritus of Mathematical Physics and Astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is noted for unifying the three versions of quantum electrodynamics by Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga. Also, he is noted for his contributions to solid-state physics, astronomy, and nuclear engineering. His foreword to Goklany’s report on carbon dioxide merits quoting beyond what is above:
“Indur Goklany has done a careful job, collecting and documenting the evidence that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does far more good than harm. To any unprejudiced person reading this account, the facts should be obvious: that the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide as a sustainer of wildlife and crop plants are enormously beneficial, that the possibly harmful climatic effects of carbon dioxide have been greatly exaggerated, and that the benefits clearly outweigh the possible damage.
… continued here.