Posted on 05/22/2010 8:32:15 AM PDT by Delacon
Dr. Will Happer's Testimony Before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming - May 20, 2010
My name is William Happer, and I am the Cyrus Fogg Bracket Professor of Physics at Princeton University. I have spent my professional life studying the interactions of visible and infrared radiation with gases – one of the main physical phenomena behind the greenhouse effect. I have published over 200 papers in peer reviewed scientific journals. I am a member of a number of professional organizations, including the American Physical Society and the National Academy of Sciences. I have done extensive consulting work for the US Government and Industry. I also served as the Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy (DOE) from 1990 to 1993, where I supervised all of DOE's work on climate change.
Key Excerpts: The CO2 absorption band is nearly “saturated” at current CO2 levels. Adding more CO2 is like putting an additional ski hat on your head when you already have a nice warm one below it, but you are only wearing a windbreaker. The extra hat makes you a little bit warmer but to really get warm, you need to add a jacket. The IPCC thinks that this jacket is water vapor and clouds. [...]
The climate-change establishment has tried to eliminate any who dare question the science establishment climate scientists and by like-thinking policy-makers – you are either with us or you are a traitor.
Orwellian: I keep hearing about the “pollutant CO2,” or about “poisoning the atmosphere” with CO2, or about minimizing our “carbon footprint.” This brings to mind a comment by George Orwell: “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” CO2 is not a pollutant and it is not a poison and we should not corrupt the English language by depriving “pollutant” and “poison” of their original meaning. Our exhaled breath contains about 4% CO2. That is 40,000 parts per million, or about 100 times the current atmospheric concentration. CO2 is absolutely essential for life on earth. Commercial greenhouse operators often use CO2 as a fertilizer to improve the health and growth rate of their plants. Plants, and our own primate ancestors evolved when the levels of atmospheric CO2 were at least 1000 ppm, a level that we will probably not reach by burning fossil fuels, and far above our current level of about 380 ppm. We try to keep CO2 levels in our US Navy submarines no higher than 8,000 parts per million, about 20 time current atmospheric levels. Few adverse effects are observed at even higher levels. [...]
That we are (or were) living at the best of all CO2 concentrations seems to be an article of faith for the climate-change establishment. Enormous effort and imagination have gone into showing that increasing concentrations of CO2 will be catastrophic: cities will be flooded by sea-level rises that are ten or more times bigger than even IPCC predicts, there will be mass extinctions of species, billions of people will die, tipping points will render the planet a desert. Any flimsy claim of harm from global warming brings instant fame and many rewards.
Sea Level: The sea level is indeed rising, just as it has for the past 20,000 years since the end of the last ice age. Fairly accurate measurements of sea level have been available since about 1800. These measurements show no sign of any acceleration. The rising sea level can be a serious local problem for heavily-populated, low-lying areas like New Orleans, where land subsidence compounds the problem. But to think that limiting CO2 emissions will stop sea level rise is a dangerous illusion. It is also possible that the warming seas around Antarctica will cause more snowfall over the continent and will counteract the sea-level rise.
Hockey Stick: I was very surprised when I first saw the celebrated “hockey stick curve,” in the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC. Both the little ice age and the medieval warm period were gone, and the newly revised temperature of the world since the year 1000 had suddenly become absolutely flat until the last hundred years when it shot up like the blade on a hockey stick. This was far from an obscure detail, and the hockey stick was trumpeted around the world as evidence that the end was near. We now know that the hockey stick has nothing to do with reality but was the result of incorrect handling of proxy temperature records and incorrect statistical analysis. There really was a little ice age and there really was a medieval warm period that was as warm or warmer than today. I bring up the hockey stick as a particularly clear example that the IPCC summaries for policy makers are not dispassionate statements of the facts of climate change.
Conclusion: I regret that the climate-change issue has become confused with serious problems like secure energy supplies, protecting our environment, and figuring out where future generations will get energy supplies after we have burned all the fossil fuel we can find. We should not confuse these laudable goals with hysterics about carbon footprints. For example, when weighing pluses and minuses of the continued or increased use of coal, the negative issue should not be increased atmospheric CO2, which is probably good for mankind. We should focus on real issues like damage to the land and waterways by strip mining, inadequate remediation, hazards to miners, the release of real pollutants and poisons like mercury, other heavy metals, organic carcinogens, etc.
Life is about making decisions and decisions are about trade-offs. The Congress can choose to promote investment in technology that addresses real problems and scientific research that will let us cope with real problems more efficiently.
Or they can act on unreasonable fears and suppress energy use, economic growth and the benefits that come from the creation of national wealth.
Related Links:
Prominent Scientist Will Happer Tells Congress: Earth in 'CO2 Famine' - Feb. 25, 2009
Flashback 2009: Princeton Physicist Happer: 'The idea that Congress can stop climate change is just hilarious' - Warns of 'climate change cult' -- Declares Congress has been 'badly misinformed' on global warming
Flashback 2009: Team of Scientists' Open Letter To U.S. Senators: 'Claim of consensus is fake'
ping
It’s the old story “follow the money”. The CO2/Carbon Footprint argument is all about certain investors getting rich from it.
This guy should be heading NOAA not that lying zealot Hansen
Excellent summary!
I use to think that was all it is. Capitalists will try to capitalize on anything including hysteria. Just like an alarm salesman will try to sell you an alarm by exagerating the crime statistics in your area, entrepreneurs will try to make money off of the global warming hysteria. But that isn’t the underlying problem. It is, at its base, a governmental power grab. If the government can control the energy supplies then they can control everything. The scary thing is that the progressive/Obamists actually think that this is a good thing and will do anything(lie/cheat/and steal) to bring it about.
The fact that he had to precede his statements with his resume’ shows how little weight the scientific method has in our society.
What prevails as science is who can lay claim to the most logical fallacies rather than the results of observation.
I’m sure the IRS will begin auditing him on Monday in retaliation for this statement.
So what?! Al Gore took a course in climate science in 1967 and was subsequently a divinity school dropout!
Read his full testimony on the first pdf link. He throws in a disclaimer that his opinions are his own and not those of PU or any scientific organization with which he is a member. IOW, brave though he is to testify, he has been sufficiently cowed. The alarmists at PU and within the scientific have robbed him of his well earned authority and creditability as opposed to Gore’s unearned authority and creditability on the subjest. I’d say “what a shame” but its more terrifying than that when the scientific community is reduced to these circumstances.
Along with creating government offices for taking all of our medical records, every financial transaction, and requiring everyone send out tax forms to everyone they bought from or sold to through the whole year.
They also want to know all of the websites you visited at all times, but haven’t fully put that one into place. The others mentioned above, unfortunately, are already in place or will be funded starting in a few weeks.
Thank you, Delacon:
http://investigatingobama.blogspot.com/2010/05/princetons-dr-william-happer-debunks.html
FR Ping List for Investigating Obama and Sentinel Radio’s “The Awakening.” Please reply or FReepmail, if you want on or off.
True.
CO2 content in natural gas is a parasite. It robs useful heat from the desired heating effect and sends it out the stack.
But I do understand the frustration with the anti-CO2 crowd. When CO2 is the result of carbon combustion, it is not a bad thing, and it is plant food. It is not pollution.
I would suspect it would be great to mix in with the drilling mud to add downward pressure to prevent blow-out (but I digress).
Our local gas just went down 10 cents, I joked with the attendants "What, did you just hook up to the Gulf of Mexico?"
Semantics will get you every time. The effort by the EPA to classify as a “pollutant” is another term that needs defining. I don’t mean that WE need to define it. I mean that we shouldn’t let the government define it on their own terms for their own purposes. The booze I drink has a level of “impurities” useless toward it’s positive effects but that doesn’t mean they are bad. And as far as I can tell, the EPA’s definition of pollutant could be applied to just about everything. I’ve been told, broccolli is good for me. Yikes, humans are making broccolli by the ton. If humans make so much broccolli that I get buried by it, then I will surely die. Therefore it must be a pollutant. IOW we are not endangered by CO2 and it certainly shouldn’t be considered a pollutant.
bfl
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