President Václav Klaus: Inaugural Annual GWPF Lecture
Global Warming Policy Foundation, 21 October 2010 [here]
The Climate Change Doctrine is Part of Environmentalism, Not of Science
It is a great honor for me to be here tonight, getting a chance to deliver the inaugural lecture of the Global Warming Policy Foundation to such a distinguished audience.
Even though it may seem that there is a whole range of institutions both here and overseas which bring together and support those who openly express doubts about the currently prevailing dogma of man-made global warming and who dare to criticize it, it apparently is still not enough. We are subject to a heavily biased and carefully organized propaganda and a serious and highly qualified forum here, on this side of the Atlantic, that would stand for rationality, objectivity and fairness in public policy discussion is more than needed. That is why I consider the launching of the foundation an important step in the right direction.
We should keep saying very loudly that the current debate about global warming –and I agree with the Australian paleoclimatologist Prof. Carter that we should always speak about “dangerous human caused global warming” because it is not “warming per se that we are concerned with”[1] – is in its substance not part of the scientific discourse about the relative role of a myriad of factors influencing swings in global temperature but part of public policy debate about man and society. As R. M. Carter stresses in his recent book, “the global warming issue long ago ceased being a scientific problem.”[2]
The current debate is a public policy debate with enormous implications.[3] It is no longer about climate. It is about the government, the politicians, their scribes and the lobbyists who want to get more decision making and power for themselves. It seems to me that the widespread acceptance of the global warming dogma has become one of the main, most costly and most undemocratic public policy mistakes in generations. The previous one was communism. …
It is not a new doctrine.[16] It has existed under various headings and in various forms and manifestations for centuries, always based on the idea that the starting point of our thinking should be the Earth, the Planet, or Nature, not Man or Mankind.[17] It has always been accompanied by the plan that we have to come back to the original state of the Earth, unspoiled by us, humans.[18] The adherents of this doctrine have always considered us, the people, a foreign element.[19] They forget that it doesn’t make sense to speak about the world without people because there would be no one to speak. In my book, I noted that “if we take the reasoning of the environmentalists seriously, we find that theirs is an anti-human ideology” … [more]
by Foo Furb
by carl j.
The rate of increase in temperature is parallel to the rate of increase of the additions to the atmosphere that people have made to the air. A correlation is never the cause of a phenomenon, but it is your best bet to start examining the probable cause. .
by Bob Zybach
In response to Carl J., let’s assume that global temperature really is increasing and that human additions to the atmosphere are having a causal effect.
I’m not certain the first assumption can even be accurately measured, but am certain the second assumption has never been proved. But — for the sake of argument — let’s assume both statements are true.
So what?
Klaus examines this point in excellent fashion. Why should we fear, or have the audacity to predict, catastrophic events as a result of such a correlation? If the globe is warming, rather than cooling, that is good news. People prefer the weather in Hawaii to that in Antarctica by a wide margin for lots of good reasons.
From my understanding of the topic, there is almost zero chance that claimed recent increases in global temperature (if they can, indeed, even be measured) are a result of atmospheric increases in CO2. If this causal effect is actually taking place, however, then the logical answer is to keep producing CO2.
AGW has been used as an acronym for Anthropogenic (-ally caused) Global Warming. A better designation would be Apocalyptic (-ally feared) Global Warming. That is what politicians are using to promote their agendas, and what government scientists are using to line their pockets
Klaus is right. This (predictions of apocalypse caused by warming climate) is pure politics posturing as science. Scientists who have fanned the flames of this charade should be ashamed. Voters in democratic countries should take note. You’ve been played, big time.
Over the last 15 years global temperatures have declined while atmospheric CO2 concentrations have risen [see graph here]. Hence there has been no recent correlation. Correlation is not the same as causation, but the lack of correlation implies no causation.
Moreover, many paleo studies indicate that CO2 lags temperature. So the causal arrow-of-time principle is violated.
On the other hand, a new study, to be posted at W.I.S.E. in a few days, presents evidence suggesting the post-1492 epidemics so decimated native populations in the Amazon that anthropogenic burning there all but ceased — which in turn caused a decline in atmospheric CO2 and brought on the Little Ice Age.
One thing is certain: the Earth is not too warm. We are at the tail end of a 11,900-year-long interglacial era, the Holocene. For the last 1.8 million years the Earth has shifted between 100,000-year-long Ice Age cold climates where continental ice sheets grow to a mile thick and half of North America becomes lifeless, and short, 10,000-year-long warm spells where the ice sheets melt and life returns.
Looking back over the last 260 million years, the Earth has been warmer than today 99% of the time. We live in the coldest era since the the Karoo Ice Age from 360–260 million years ago.
Life likes it warm. We are water-based phenomena, and temperatures below freezing can be deadly. Bio-productivity and biodiversity are greatest near the Equator, lowest near the poles.
So if we can heat the planet by burning fossil fuels and stave off the next Ice Age glaciation somehow, we would be doing Life Itself a favor.
by Bob Zybach
Mike:
Excellent summary. I would also like to point out that in a 1992 paper I presented at an EPA forum, I brought up the fact that from 7000 to 9000 years ago about 1/3 of the earth’s forests were cleared by fire by people for the purposes of agricultural farming and grazing.
During and following that massive exercise in smoke creation and land clearing, the northern hemisphere entered it’s period of greatest warming during the Holocene — described regionally by Hansen as “the oak maximum” and more generally as the Hypsithermal Period, Climatic Optimum, and by other names.
These events may well be related to the Amazonian observations you will publish.
by Charles S.C.
Not much to add to Mike’s comments. Climate changes. Period. And co2 follows warming because warmer water outgasses co2.
Mr. Klaus had stated many times that the objectives of the green movement are the same as that of communism, fascism and socialism. Remove individual freedoms through scare tactics, hatred of those of differing opinion and central planning. President Klaus should know. I am sure he remembers even better than I do when Russian tanks invaded Czechoslavakia.
Anti-human, except for the priestly class of the greens. The ones who plan to inherit the earth.
I just wish our own President was this smart. What a great post! Congratulations to good science and common sense!