Trench Wars of Climate Science

The 'climate dissidents' challenging the hypothesis of human caused climate crisis are predominantly scientists of professor emeritus grade, leading the fight for liberties.

It has been suggested at various forums that opposition to the drive towards 'climate neutrality' will remain the fight of a few older male representatives of a dying breed, and will disappear with them. Indeed, the 'climate dissidents' are predominantly elderly scientists or other experts of senior age.

The reasons are logical. Firstly, the older generation of scientists have grown up in a more 'climate neutral' scientific environment than is common today, and have had the opportunity to experience how the current alleged consensus on 'anthropogenic catastrophic global warming' is constructed. Secondly, they have little left to lose from the 'cancelling' by alarmist climate activists, having retired or holding positions unthreatened by political influences, free of the need to apply for research grants. Thirdly, life experience develops a backbone and enhances responsibility for the results of one's actions. It is not for nothing that candidates for certain important positions are required to be at least 40 years of age.

Since climate change is a complex subject with many aspects not fully understood by science, the average citizen, or at least one without a clear personal understanding of physics or a technical degree, can only pick a side whose claims to believe. Many fall for the appeal to trust fallacy by unreservedly subscribing to the seemingly authoritative views of the summaries of UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, based on a 'consensus of thousands of scientists'. It may seem plausible that the collective view is superior to the opinion of a single scientist, but it is worth recalling Albert Einstein's comment that a single proof of a fault is sufficient for invalidating a theory. Consensus is a notion of politics rather than of science, which is why it is never mentioned in regard to Ohm's law and other proven relationships in physics.

Climate crisis skepticism of Estonian scientists

As sharp as the gentlemen appear in "Pealtnägija" (Eyewitness, an Estonian TV programme) episode "Estonian veteran scientists do not believe in the dangers of global warming" (16.04.2014) that is still accessible in National Broadcasting archives, the TV make-up cannot hide the presumable range of birth years of most of the protagonists. There, scientists Anto Raukas (born in 1935), Arno Arrak (1927), Arvi Liiva (1930), and Volli Kalm (1953) rally behind Olavi Kärner's (1942) statement "Humanity's impact on climate is negligible". Yet they do so not due to dementia – the key is in the words "veterans" and "scientists", plus perhaps an above-average dose of backbone. Still, official records or obituaries of meritorious academics from the climate dissident camp almost never mention their disagreement about the causes of climate change.

Geologist Anto Raukas (1935-2021) was a member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. He was one of the well-known Estonian scientists arguing there is no catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Ave Maria Mõistlik.

The same ‘camp’ was held by an Estonian academic Endel Lippmaa (1930-2015), a significant figure in the restoration of Estonian independence in 1991, whose interview from 2008 has sometimes been labelled ‘a regrettable core text for deniers’ by climate activists. In 2019, much in the spirit of the Green Era, an Estonian paper Eesti Ekspress fact-checked that interview, giving it a headline which called the interviewed academician, essentially, as stupid. Although the knowledge in the field of climate has increased in the meantime, and the respected academician had indeed been over-confident in extrapolating some graphs, the arguments used to refute the more weighty points as well as some secondary points were not convincing and sometimes not even true. Regarding the retrospective reassessment of satellite based temperature measurements touched upon in a comment, a recent article by NOAA researchers (Zou et al., 2023) may be of interest to the specialist. It absolves Dr John R. Christy, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) in the United States, who was previously accused of baseless criticism of the accuracy of NASA GISS satellite measurements, and whose algorithms, even after correcting for the initial shortcomings, have shown temperatures measured from the satellites to be lower than those of other processors of satellite data.

I recall reading somewhere more than a decade ago that the relevant scientific community in Estonia has been skeptical about the extent of anthropogenic climate change. Perhaps the now thinned-out generation of specialists was influenced not only by their own research findings but also by the fact that in the United States in 1998 'the overwhelming majority of US climate scientists' – fifty out of sixty – held this view. Gathered together in the American Meteorological Society, they declared, in opposition to the views and policies already widely circulating in the public at the time: ''The policy initiatives derive from highly uncertain scientific theories. They are based on the unsupported assumption that catastrophic global warming follows from the burning of fossil fuel and requires immediate action. We do not agree." Alarmist activists have sought to portray such views as a denial of global warming. In reality, scientists who nowadays often call themselves climate realists argue that the additional warming caused by anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions on top of natural processes in the climate is not high enough to justify radical intervention in the economy and human lifestyles, let alone be catastrophic. More importantly, however, it concludes that limiting greenhouse gas emissions would therefore not stop climate change.

A good number of scientists active in Estonian public life have indicated certain degrees of climate skepticism between the lines, and I will not be listing them here. I have occasionally posed provocative questions at certain events in an attempt to inspire informed contemporaries: speak out against yet another media-spread thought virus! Young people, unlike seniors in their sixties or older, lack a comparable experiential immunity to the nonsense promoted by the state.

Remarkable actors on the international stage of the climate drama

When it comes to choosing whose ideas to trust, I prefer atmospheric physicists, paleoclimatologists, and especially field scientists with a wealth of experience, whose research goes deeper than computer models, contrary to ambitious young scientists or civil servants who have made a career out of researching and parroting IPCC publications. Below are a few examples of those whose argumentation, in my view, carries weight. While the lines of the alarmist camp still seem to hold in the media, there have been numerous defections to the less glorified climate realist side, with none in the opposite direction.

In the 1950s, Dr Roger Revelle (1909-1991) was one of the first in the United States to draw attention to the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and the resulting theoretical threat of global warming, and one of the inspirers of the 1979 scientific report "Long-term impact of atmospheric carbon dioxide on climate", prepared by the US government's independent group of scientific advisers, JASON. He was also involved in the launch of the Mauna Loa Observatory for measuring atmospheric CO2 concentrations, the results of which are used worldwide to date. By 1991, his views on the need for climate policy constraints had changed, as evidenced by his co-authorship of the article 'What to do about Greenhouse Warming: Look before you Leap', published shortly after his death. The article, which is deeply 'climate skeptical' by today's yardstick, argued that, since the scientific basis of greenhouse gas-induced warming is still uncertain and evidence of dangerous warming is scarce, it would be necessary to wait another ten years before drastic action could be taken, so that the scientific understanding of the processes of climate formation could be more complete. As one of Dr Revelle's students had been Al Gore, who justified his crusade against global warming on the basis of what Revelle had taught him, the authorship of the article was challenged and its removal was demanded. One of the co-authors of the article, Dr Fred Singer (1924), Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at the University of Virginia, took the dispute to court and won. The reference at the end of the article to the argument of the 2018 Nobel Prize winner in economics, Dr. William Nordhaus (1941), who has noted that global warming could not be stopped within 2°C, is still relevant today: "...those who argue for strong measures to slow greenhouse warming have reached their conclusion without any discernible analysis of the costs and benefits..."

Albert Einstein's successor at Princeton University in the US, the physicist-mathematician Freeman Dyson (1923-2020), "disagreed with the scientific consensus on climate change" even according to Wikipedia. It is noteworthy that he was one of the co-authors of the 1979 and 1980 JASON scientific reports by a group of US government scientific advisers on the potentially dangerous climate impact of carbon dioxide, but changed his position in the face of factual developments in climate. In 2009, he publicly accused activist climate scientist Dr James Hansen of exaggerating the risks and turning science into ideology. Interesting nuance: his friend Syukuro Manabe mentioned in a 2015 video interview on global warming hysteria when talking about failure to obtain meaningful projections from climate models, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2021 for his efforts. According to Dyson, the CO₂ added to the atmosphere has a positive effect on humanity by stimulating vegetation growth. Predictors of climate catastrophe are said to have formed an enormous religion of true believers. Water vapour is responsible for 90% of the greenhouse effect, while anthropogenic CO₂ plays an insignificant role.

Dr William Happer (1939), Professor Emeritus of Physics at Princeton University in the United States, is a distinguished scientist who has chaired the government's science advisory group JASON. In his September 2023 IPA video lecture in Australia, as a co-author of the 1980 JASON scientific report "Long-term impacts of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels”, he made an unexpected statement on the origins of the key indicator presented there. According to him, the 3 ºC rise in temperature which should follow a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ and which is still considered by the IPCC as the likely scenario, was derived unscientifically to satisfy the expectations of the sponsors:

"The first number we got was too small, so we increased it just arbitrarily until it was big enough that it would seem like an ok thing to put in the book that our sponsors would like. So we guessed three degrees of warming from doubling CO₂ and I can assure you that wasn't science. That was just what do you think the sponsors want. I am actually quite ashamed of it."

Dr. William Happer, Professor Emeritus of Physics at Princeton University has acknowledged that climate science unscientifically tries to satisfy the expectations of the sponsors. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Gage Skidmore.

Professor Happer's own later projection of an expected rise in temperature due to the increasing proportion of CO₂ in the atmosphere also turned out to be overestimated. He has continued to investigate the effects of greenhouse gases in collaboration with William van Wijngaarden, Professor of Physics at York University in Toronto. Presenting his research to the German parliament (Bundestag) in 2021, he explained that doubling of CO₂ in the atmosphere would, at the current rate, take more than 100 years and would raise the Earth's average temperature still by less than 1ºC. He has said that it is very hard to convince people with technical common sense that such small changes will have any harmful consequences; the differences in temperature that the clouds alone cause over a day are much greater. Perhaps this is why people with a degree in humanities or economics are often hired as climate officials, to be able to preach climate crisis in blissful ignorance of the nature of thermodynamic and radiative processes.

An important role in the fight against climate alarmism is played by the aforementioned UAH Professor of Atmospheric Science John R. Christy, whose satellite temperature measurements show more moderate warming than NASA's GISS. He argues that there is no reason to expect a climate catastrophe or blame mankind for it. He works and publishes frequently with his colleague Roy Spencer (1955), and produces monthly climate summaries. He has also tried to enlighten the US Senate Science Committee at hearings.

Nobel laureate in physics in 1973, Ivar Giaever (1929), calls the cult of man-made catastrophic global warming a new religion, criticising it in his Nobel Laureate Lectures in 2012 and 2015. Nobel laureate in physics in 2022 John Clauser (1942) also denies the climate crisis and calls the IPCC a source of dangerous misinformation.

Of particular note is the 'iris effect' concept of clouds, according to which the atmosphere protects the planet from excessive warming by changing cloudiness, as proposed by Dr Richard Lindzen (1940), Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Physics at MIT. He is one of those who stress that humanity must maintain the courage to do nothing about CO₂ emissions.

Dr Ole Humlum (1949), Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of Oslo, has made it his mission to publish monthly and annual climate reports based on analysis of observation data from national agencies and research universities since March 2009. His detailed and unemotional Climate4You website provides information and graphs on climate parameters, polar regions, and historical climate. Professor Humlum points out the shortcomings of climate models, the significant impact of cooling corrections to historical past data in estimating the extent of warming, and the fact that anthropogenic CO₂ cannot be the main cause of warming. He argues that analysis of measurement results shows that changes in the atmospheric CO₂ content typically follow changes in the surface air temperature, which in turn follow changes in the surface temperature of the oceans, where solar energy is stored.

Dr Ian Plimer (1946), an Australian academician and Emeritus Professor of Geology at the University of Melbourne, explains: on a timescale of tens of millions of years, the Earth's climate is shaped mainly by continental plate tectonics; on a timescale of hundreds of thousands of years, by the planet's orbital cycles; and on a timescale of thousands to tens of years, by changes in the energy flux of solar radiation, which the IPCC ignores. An attempt by the climate skeptic Prince Philip of the United Kingdom (1921-2021) to invite him to lecture at the Royal Palace was obstructed.

One of the founders of the environmental organisation Greenpeace, Dr Patrick Moore (1947), speaking at Princeton University in May 2023 with two prominent scientists, confirmed that there is no climate crisis and that the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is good for the natural environment, and that decarbonisation is unnecessary, undesirable, impossible and not happening.

Age is a common denominator also in the case of former NASA scientists and engineers who participated in the US Apollo, Space Shuttle, and ISS space programmes, organised at The Right Climate Stuff website, led by Thomas L. Moser (1945). According to them, analysis of the scientific literature and communication with scientists in both camps has failed to identify convincing evidence of movement towards catastrophic climate change. Climate change is predominantly natural and the role of CO₂ is negligible. The transition away from fossil fuels is seen as beginning in 2055, as technologies develop.

Dr Frederick Seitz (1911-2008), the physicist president of the US Academy of Sciences and founder of the Oregon Petition against the catastrophic climate impact of greenhouse gases, would be far from the last on the list.

Former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Science and Energy, Physics Professor Steven E. Koonin (1951), has also chaired the government's science advisory group JASON. His call, in an article published in 2021, cannot be misunderstood: it is time to cancel the climate crisis. ”Governments and authoritative bodies such as the US National Academies, the UK Royal Society, and professional societies have a responsibility to state clearly that there is no crisis, and we need to act thoughtfully”.

Professor Steven E. Koonin says it is time to cancel the climate crisis. Photo from 2009, when Koonin was the US Under Secretary of State for Science and Energy. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Younger generation of climate crisis consensus deniers

Dr Ross McKitrick (1965), Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, was, together with Dr Stephen McIntyre (1947), the first fact-based refuter of the temperature alarmist 'hockey stick' curve in 2003. He is also involved in the analysis of IPCC climate models, and criticises their excessive bias of projections towards warming, which has been exacerbated in the latest family of models, CMIP6. He denies the climate crisis and estimates the costs of climate change due to CO₂ growth to be zero at least by mid-century. In a brief analysis of the outcome of COP28, he points to the high economic costs of doing what was agreed and the failure of climate policies that are based on scaremongering.

US astrophysicist Dr Willie Soon (1965) points to the IPCC's errors in underestimating the climate impact of solar radiation based on the selective use of cherry-picked measurements. He criticises climate alarmism, starting with the temperature 'hockey stick' curve promoted by 'useful idiots'. In his video presentation in August 2022, he recalled that as early as 1933, Germany led by a notorious vegetarian leader had planned to convert the country to hydro and wind power and make widespread use of hydrogen as a carrier of energy, but that the plans were abandoned due to their high cost.

A blog by the versatile Dr Roger Pielke Jr (1968), who has studied hurricanes and disaster losses, offers insight into both the statistics of extreme weather events and the fallacies confirmed by IPCC whistleblowers. He has criticised the alarmist politicisation of climate science and the use of improbable emissions scenarios at the international level and testified at the US Senate hearing. In 2023, he declared the IPCC a source of misinformation.

Professor Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Institute for Space Research (1958), Professor Nir Shaviv of the Racah Institute of Physics at the University of Jerusalem in Israel (1972), and others have been studying the effects of galactic cosmic rays (GCR) on cloud formation for decades. To date, experiments carried out at the CERN laboratory and data analysis of measurements have confirmed a significant climate impact beyond anthropogenic CO₂.

However, tackling climate hysteria is not an exclusively masculine activity. Scientists such as US climatologist Dr Judith Curry and Dr Jessica Weinkle, Australian biologist Dr Jennifer Marohasy, who is fighting the coral reef loss climate alarmism, and Canadian zoologist Dr Susan Crockford, who is fighting the polar bear crisis climate alarmism, are some of those active in this field.

Dr Valentina Zharkova, a solar physicist of Ukrainian origin at the UK's Northumbria University, is cautious in wording but predicts the start of a new Little Ice Age in the coming decades. In a paper published in September 2023 in collaboration with Dr Irina Vasilieva, a Ukrainian academician at the Kiev Observatory, a relationship between temperature, ocean water level, melting ice, solar activity, and orbital parameters is demonstrated.

The rationale and purposefulness of a vigorous zero-emissions climate policy have long since moved beyond a purely scientific exchange of arguments to the present-day struggle for the freedom to organise one’s life and business. As Vaclav Klaus (1941), Honorary Doctor at the Tallinn Technical University and former President of the Czech Republic, aptly noted in his book Blue Planet in Green Shackles: What Is Endangered - Climate Or Freedom?: "The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is no longer socialism or communism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism." Professor Michael Hulme (1960) of the University of Cambridge calls the dangerous ideology that links all problematic phenomena to anthropogenic climate change 'climatism'.

Those who do not independently understand the physical bases of climate formation might do well to ask themselves why is it that a large proportion of those who have the enabling education and hence certainty to understand them, reach conclusions very different from those of the politically supported climate science spokesmen. It is understandable, however, that even scientists do not check the results of all their colleagues in a world of media-endorsed consensus – an ever more complex world can only function by mutual trust.

While the Swedish medieval custom of having uneducated girls identify witches seems to have lost at least some of its popularity, cases of harassment of those who are trying to publish scientific results that do not meet the expectations of climate activists are common in many countries that consider themselves to be the bastions of freedom. The Wikipedia references used in the article also require the reader to be able to read between the lines. However, in a greater or lesser degree of activist fervour, scientists continue to produce, according to US researcher Roger Pielke Jr, nearly 20 new scientific articles a day based on the unrealistic emissions scenario RCP8.5. This is in addition to the tens of thousands already in existence, which the IPCC diligently uses as crisis-heralding input for its climate reports.

Once upon a time, allegedly a journalist was led to believe the findings of a government scientist, Dr Yamaka, that a woman's brain was “the size of a squirrel”. Dissemination attempts of this knowledge for public enlightenment led him into awkward situations. The lesson to be learned from this case is that not everything claimed by a scientist should be taken unreservedly as pure truth. Particularly in cases where the results’ correspondence with the expectations of the sponsors is crucial to ensuring the continued funding of the research, as unfortunately often tends to be the case in climate science today, according to many of those involved.