Last week, I had the distinct pleasure of spending almost three hours with world renowned climate skeptic Dr. Richard Lindzen. Dr. Lindzen is charming, intelligent, and incredibly interesting. He could just as easily teach history as meteorology at MIT – the man is a fountain of knowledge. He is, in fact, so intelligent and knowlegable that he can be very intimidating. He gave an hour long talk to a group of primarily non-scientists (myself included) and in the end most people were afraid to ask questions. Well, I guess I don’t have the same fear of public humiliation – so I decided to ask some questions. Before I divulge with the fireworks, let me back up a little.
Richard was invited to my campus (Washington and Lee University) last week to give a public talk about “Global Climate Change.” His talk was titled Climate Alarmism and Scientific Illiteracy. He spent a good hour reading directly from his 50+ Powerpoint slides. I spent the hour taking notes so I could revisit some points with him. His talk started with the theme of scientific illiteracy and how this enables the media to exploit the public and create what he calls climate alarmism. In the end he concluded by saying the only way to restrict CO2 emissions was to restrict wealth creation – which is NOT correct - and he finished with an unequivocal conclusion – nothing should be done to reduce CO2 emissions and any policy with this objective is too costly because there are no benefits to doing so.
At the end of his talk he thanked the audience and asked if there were any questions. I was sitting in the front so I turned to see if anyone had a hand up – no one did – so I raised my hand. Richard acknowledged me and I proceeded to thank him for joining us. Then I asked if he thought Dan Schrag (Harvard) was scientifically illiterate. I read some direct quotes from Dan that were in direct opposition of what Richard had just told us. Then, I asked him how I was supposed to make sense of these diametrically opposed statements made by a scientist from MIT and another from Harvard? His answer: Dan is a Marine Scientist, not a Climate Scientist. I also wanted to know how I could remain scientific and weigh the evidence on climate change – this is where it starts to get interesting. I do not have the space here to get into all the details, but my conclusion from Richard’s comments is that every scientist, policy-maker, and news media person who claims to believe that we need to limit CO2 emissions is part of the largest conspiracy ever – Climate Alarmism!
Later that evening in a semi-private conversation (there were two other persons present) I asked him what journals I could read to learn more about climate change. Based on my interpretation of Richard’s comments - I can not trust Science, or Nature and The Journal of Climate is “o.k.” Richard did not suggest another journal. Apparently there is only one journal in the entire world that objectively disseminates scientific evidence on climate change.
We then moved to the question of who will benefit and who will bear the costs of any carbon mitigation policy – I learned that the petroleum industry has no vested interest in whether or not we have a policy to limit CO2 emissions and perhaps even more shocking it is the powerful and well-funded environmental movement that dictates policy decisions. Let me repeat – the environmental lobby has unlimited resources and power and the oil industry has no vested interest in whether we have policies to limit carbon emissions.
I also asked him if every scientist writing that climate change is real and potentially dangerous and thinks we should have limits on CO2 emissions had abandoned their code of ethics – had every single scientist in the world who thinks this is a real problem sold out for the money – his answer – they never had any ethics.
So, I am left to ponder - who do I trust? What should I read? How do I weigh the evidence? My conclusion - I can only trust Richard Lindzen and others who agree with him, I can only read the Journal of Climate and I am supposed to give zero weight to the side of the argument with most of the evidence and all the weight to the side with little evidence. Does that sound like science? In closing, yesterday’s Christian Science Monitor had an article where I learned “a 2004 Science magazine survey of all peer-reviewed scientific studies of climate change showed 928 papers supporting man-made global warming. None denied it.” - must be a conspiracy.
