A network of more than 1,600 scientists and other professionals connected with the study of climate science have signed a document declaring that there is no climate emergency. The declaration first made news last summer, but now several hundred signatures have been added, including that of Nobel Prize-winner John Clauser from the United States.
Scientists from all over the globe have signed the declaration, which now includes two Nobel Prize winners: Clauser and Norwegian engineer and physicist Ivar Giaever. Other notable American signatories include MIT’s Dr. Richard Lindzen; Dr. H. Sterling Burnett of the Heartland Institute; and Dr. William Happer from Princeton.
The signatories believe that climate science has become far too politicized and that the discussion surrounding climate change has degraded into a war over beliefs rather than a true debate about science.
“To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in,” the declaration explains. “This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. Should not we free ourselves from the naive belief in immature climate models?”
The declaration shares several self-evident observations that cannot be reasonably refuted, among them the notion that the climate variability we see is largely the result of natural factors rather than a buildup of trace greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
“The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming,” the document states.
The declaration also pushes back on the fact that carbon dioxide, a gas necessary for life on Earth due to its role in photosynthesis, is categorized by the climate hysteric community as a “pollutant.”
“CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth,” the declaration states. “More CO2 is favorable for nature, greening our planet. Additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also profitable for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.”
Those invested in the climate-change fallacy have denigrated the declaration, claiming that it is “anti-science” and includes signatories who are without training in climate science or are beholden to fossil-fuel interests.
“It’s quite a lazy declaration. It doesn’t really have any supporting information. I would regard these views as fringe,” said Simon Cook, a lecturer on environmental science at Dundee University in Scotland. “They play on a veneer of credibility.”
OK. But that “veneer of credibility” now includes two Nobel laureates.
“This declaration wilfully overlooks, over-simplifies and misrepresents basic facts, as well as the vast breadth of scientific knowledge on the interaction between atmospheric composition, climate and living organisms,” said Alistair Jump of Stirling University.
Jump accused the signatories of having their “head in the sand” when it comes to climate.
“People sticking their head in the sand won’t make the global climate emergency go away — it will just remove the chance that we have to mitigate the impacts of the climate crisis and prepare economically and socially for the profound change that it is already bringing to individuals, communities and ecosystems across the globe,” he said.
Scientists such as Jump and Cook have completely bought in to the climate emergency narrative and have no time for debate on the subject, which is another point that the declaration makes. Science without committed skepticism isn’t really science at all — it’s a belief system. It’s a belief system that its adherents would rather not be questioned. But without such questioning, that belief system is not science; it’s religion.
One of the signatories, Dr. H. Sterling Burnett, signed the declaration because he thought he had a duty to do so.
“I signed on because it’s my belief that in situations where one understands a topic of public importance, it is wrong to stay silent when lies are being told,” Burnett told The New American.
Unfortunately, Burnett doubts that the declaration will help much with the current crop of climate decision-makers.
“Sadly I have no confidence that this or other declarations like it have significant influence over climate decision makers — of whom most are profiting in terms of money or power from the so-called climate crisis,” he added. “Such declarations can, however, influence public opinion, which hopefully will apply pressures to decision-makers (indirect influence), and buy time, provide a holding action so to speak, for the truth about climate change to become more widely known.”
Or, as the declaration itself says: “Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.”
But today’s climate science is all about politics and societal change — whether society wants that change or not.
