Posted on 02/28/2009 7:17:29 AM PST by Delacon
No, Dr. Will Happer is not a celebrity. He is merely a physicist of considerable renown who happens to agree with many of the world’s other leading scientists that the current panic over climate change is a lot of “hysterics about carbon footprints.” Dr. Happer, the Cyrus Fogg Bracket Professor of Physics at Princeton University, testified before the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on February 25. He told them:
Many people don’t realize that over geological time, we’re really in a CO2 famine now. Almost never has CO2 levels been as low as it has been in the Holocene (geologic epoch) — 280 (parts per million - ppm) — that’s unheard of. Most of the time [CO2 levels] have been at least 1,000 (ppm) and it’s been quite higher than that,” Happer told the Senate Committee.
“Earth was just fine in those times,” Prof. Happer noted. “The oceans were fine, plants grew, animals grew fine. So it’s baffling to me that we’re so frightened of getting nowhere close to where we started,” Happer explained. Happer also noted that “the number of [skeptical scientists] with the courage to speak out is growing” and he warned “children should not be force-fed propaganda, masquerading as science.”
Global-warming alarmists are pushing for incredibly wasteful and expensive “carbon sequestration” and carbon “cap and trade” schemes that will have virtually no impact on global CO2 levels or global temperatures. But rising CO2 levels shouldn’t be worrying us anyway.
“I believe that the increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind,” Happer told the committee. He cited the well-known evidence from other researchers that increasing CO2 levels will greatly benefit crop yields, meaning more food for the world’s people and animals. Dr. Sherwood Idso and other scientists have published extensively on the numerous benefits to be derived from increasing CO2 levels: more robust forest and vegetation growth, greater plant resistance to stress, greater drought resistance, reclaiming of deserts and barren lands.
“What about the frightening consequences of increasing levels of CO2 that we keep hearing about?” Dr. Happer asked rhetorically. “In a word, they are wildly exaggerated, just as the purported benefits of prohibition were wildly exaggerated,” he answered. “At least 90% of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a bit player,” he explained. “But the climate is warming and CO2 is increasing. Doesn’t this prove that CO2 is causing global warming through the greenhouse effect? No, the current warming period began about 1800 at the end of the little ice age, long before there was an appreciable increase of CO2. There have been similar and even larger warmings several times in the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age. These earlier warmings clearly had nothing to do with the combustion of fossil fuels. The current warming also seems to be due mostly to natural causes, not to increasing levels of carbon dioxide. Over the past ten years there has been no global warming, and in fact a slight cooling. This is not at all what was predicted by the IPCC models."
Professor Happer is a former director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy. He has published over 200 scientific papers, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences. Prof. Happer has joined the more than 650 distinguished scientists from around the globe who have provided statements challenging the alleged “scientific consensus” frequently sited in support of human-caused, or anthropogenic global warming. Those statements are available in a 231-page report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
These scientists represent more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 report for policymakers. But the AGW “scientific consensus” fraud becomes even more ludicrous when the results of the Global Warming Petition Project are factored in, since more than 31,000 American scientists have signed onto the document urging “the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.”
Lol, your link takes us to his exceptional achievements. He was also a leader in the government about climate change.
“I just read through it. My short summary: I stopped arguing about global warming on FreeRepublic because I kept reading nonsense like this.”
This is your best comeback to an address to the US Senate EPW about climate change from a credentialed authority who has worked within the government as an authority on climate change? Adieu?
Don’t let la port hit you on the derriere on the way out.
I give up. I tell people, everybody, that man made global warming is a hoax. I can speak until my tongue tires and my lips go slack from exhaustion and the response I get is the same... “Thousands of scientists and politicians can’t be wrong. If they were, well we’d surely have heard about it.”
With that kind of lazy lack of intellect filling the space between the ears of millions and millions of adults, it is no surprise that they voted for Obama, and they continue to pretend that George W. Bush is responsible for every ill in existence in the world.
I even tell people that Bush tried to curtail the banks crazy lending scheme and that he got told to take a hike by Congress... and that this happened multiple times. The response is the same, “If this is true, how come we didn’t hear about it?” They don’t recognize that they had heard about it, although instead of hearing about Bush trying to limit damage to the economy by trying to put a stop to the crazy lending free for all, they heard that Bush was trying to implement racist measures to prevent minorities from getting loans... Yeah, well - they heard about that. They didn’t realize that the two were the one and the same just told from different perspectives.
“You figure that giving a few Freepers a science lesson (a good thing) is a worthy repentance for your sin of supporting socialism in the form of pseudo-scientific climate alarmism”.
No, wait a minute. I am still waiting for cogitator to even try to refute any of the points made by Dr. Happer in his address to the Senate EPW. All I’ve heard from the Cog is more algorian predictions. Forget about him schooling us dumb Freepers. The cogitator won’t even touch the thread I started that is the actual address Dr. Happer gave to the EPW even though I invited him to do so. Here it is.
To: cogitator
Here is the whole transcript. Let me know what you think.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2196437/posts
Natural forces have much more of an influence on earth's climate than any amount of CO2 or other 'greenhouse gas' we might put into the atmosphere.
, the current warming period began about 1800 at the end of the little ice age, long before there was an appreciable increase of CO2. There have been similar and even larger warmings several times in the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age. These earlier warmings clearly had nothing to do with the combustion of fossil fuels. The current warming also seems to be due mostly to natural causes, not to increasing levels of carbon dioxide. Over the past ten years there has been no global warming, and in fact a slight cooling. This is not at all what was predicted by the IPCC models.”
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‘Nuf said.
Water vapor is from some twenty to over 100 times as potent a “greenhouse gas” as carbon dioxide could ever be. And it would be totally pointless to regulate water vapor.
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I don’t hear that from even “our” talking heads.
So the CO2 that is man made is 3.5percent of 3.4 ten thousandths ?
Damn what number is that? A whole lot of zeros to the left of the decimal point?
The Happer transcript looks good to me, nothing stands out as misleading or incorrect. My point was simply that there are plenty of incorrect notions bandied about here. A prominent one is that CO2 doesn’t matter because its concentrations are too small. But the most rudimentary model that all scientists agree on shows that without CO2 there can be no serious amount of water vapor because the air would be too cold to hold it. The average temperature would be about -18C instead of +15C.
“He’s not a climate scientist”.
Neither is James Hansen who started this whole global warming alarmist religion and keeps adding scripture.
” And he’s also on the Board of Directors of the George C. Marshall Institute. Hmmm...”
Do you realize how idiotic you sound when you attack the messenger instead of the message? Which btw is all you’ve done along this thread when you weren’t throwing out dire and unproven predictions. Yes the Mashall Institute takes money from....wait for it.. EXXXONN!!!!! Hey Al Gore will definitely stand to make billions if people buy into global warming alarmism. Dems definitely will recieve money for re-election from global warming groups they cowtow too. Hmmmm. Go back to DU.
Then you gotta like this quote from the transcript:
“The earth’s climate really is strongly affected by the greenhouse effect, although the physics is not the same as that which makes real, glassed-in greenhouses work. Without greenhouse warming, the earth would be much too cold to sustain its current abundance of life. However, at least 90% of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a bit player. There is little argument in the scientific community that a direct effect of doubling the CO2 concentration will be a small increase of the earth’s temperature — on the order of one degree. Additional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can.”
The first sentence can easily be misinterpreted. Without CO2 the earth would be a ball of ice with an average atmospheric temperature of -18C (instead of 15C) The second sentence is correct and well worth emphasizing. The same water vapor feedback that makes CO2 changes modest is what makes CO2 essential to begin with, the two go hand in hand.
Yes, the positive feedbacks are all modeled. The simplest models just say there will be more water vapor so the earth will be much warmer. No wind, no clouds, no convection, no condensation, no solar effects -> no credibility. The more complex models are almost as flawed because many of those things in that list are not being modeled at small enough scales to get them correct (e.g meso-scale weather).
I figgered Happer was being consistent with the Institute's position. It'd be weird if he said something wildly inconsistent with their position.
Don't forget time-scale. Some of those extreme changes happened over thousands of years. (They look quick when the plot is millions of years long.)
I'm not even convinced we have the ability to make even small changes in the overall climate.
Do you think stratospheric ozone depletion is natural? Ozone depletion is about 50% of the reason that the stratosphere is cooling; the other 50% is caused by reduction of radiative warming due to increased tropospheric GHGs.
Frankly, I'd be interested to find out if the cosmic rays, the absence or presence of which seem to be a major force in the warming and cooling of the planet, are also having an effect on the production of ozone in our atmosphere.
Small wonder that there is a hole there, and it grows larger in their winter when the S. Pole is tilted away from the main source of UV-light.
(There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.)
I might have missed this.
bttt
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