SOS Forests

Global Warming: The Economics of a Scare

by Gordon J. Fulks, Ph.D.

Presentation to Oregon Economic Roundtable, February 17, 2010

GLOBAL WARMING: THE ECONOMICS OF A SCARE

Full text [here]

Selected excerpts:

The scientific hypothesis of Anthropogenic Global Warming has completely collapsed. That is to say, human emissions of carbon dioxide due to everything from the burning of coal and oil on a massive scale to the respiration of six billion humans on this planet are not now having any measurable effect on the global climate, nor will they likely EVER have catastrophic consequences. Although this is my conclusion, based on an excellent education and a lifetime of experience, science is not determined by what I say, nor by my seniority or pedigree.

Although 31,000 American scientists, 9,000 of us with PhDs, have signed the Oregon Petition Project against Global Warming hysteria, science is not determined by a popular vote. Although one of the signers was the late Dr. Edward Teller, one of the great physicists of the 20th century and another was Professor Richard Lindzen who is widely acknowledged as the greatest meteorologist alive today, science is not determined by hierarchy or authority.

How then can I be so sure of my conclusion? How is science determined, even if it is never completely settled? EVIDENCE! Any scientist is welcome to come up with a hypothesis about how the world works. A clerk from a patent office did so in 1905. He published papers on both his Theory of Relativity and the Photoelectric Effect. His name was, of course, Albert Einstein. Evidence supporting his explanation for the Photoelectric Effect was easily obtained but evidence for his Theory of Relativity was much more difficult to find, because among other things, radioactivity had not yet been discovered.

Einstein famously pointed out that “One man can prove me wrong.” No one did and he eventually received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922, when the Nobel Committee thought that there was then sufficient evidence to back up Einstein’s theoretical conjectures.

Proponents of Global Warming would like you to believe that their nearly two hundred year-old hypothesis is valid, if only because it has not been discarded over the centuries. But bad ideas seem to have a way of resurfacing every so often. WHY? We will get to that in a moment.

Proponents also will never accept Einstein’s comment that “One man can prove me wrong.” WHY? We will get to that in a moment.

Many scientists have pointed to fatal flaws in the Global Warming arguments. One of the simplest and therefore most elegant arguments comes from our own State Climatologist, George Taylor. Yes, I know that Governor Kulongoski forced George out, but he is still MY State Climatologist! George reasons that if Global Warming is really happening, then ALL observing stations should be seeing the warming. That is not the case, even in Oregon. Well sited and well maintained stations in rural areas do not show net warming. In contrast, urban stations show net warming in conjunction with the urbanization that has occurred around them. End of story. Localized warming is not Global Warming.

In science as in the law, the burden of proof lies with proponents, not opponents of a hypothesis. After spending a monumental 80 billion dollars in search of evidence to back up their conjecture, advocates have fallen back on substitutes for real evidence like computer simulations of the climate that seem real to the average guy but are no more realistic than a Hollywood movie. Aside from the fact that these simulations can easily fool the unwary, why do Global Warming proponents keep promoting them? … [more]