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Climate history
Lee C. Gerhard
March 30, 2024
I haven’t joined these discussions before, but Prof. Happer’s note about the strategy of AGW resistance got my attention. I’m a geologist, I’ve been working on climate science issues for more than thirty years, and I would like to think I’ve been successful in convincing literally thousands of people that the CO2 hypothesis is wrong. After Gore’s diatribe, I saw two errors. First, his idea made no sense in that he believed that a miniscule change in the amount of one gas could significantly affect one of Earth’s great dynamic systems. Second, the very diagram he used to prove that CO2 drives temperature shows the exact opposite.
I published my first refutation of the AGW theory in 1996, and over the next ten years published many more papers, a book, and editorials while speaking about the topic all over this country. The Audience were academic, professional, and lay people. Academics were hostile, but sober after my presentation, other audiences were frequently just stunned with the data I gave them. My major professional society never signed on the theory – we held actual debates and panel discussions, inviting experts on both sides to participate, letting our members make up their own minds about what was true (That’s where I first met Prof. Lindzen).
While retired from that battlefield, I still maintain a climate information corresponding group and give an occasional talk. I interact with all kinds of people who positively respond to data. Many times I hear the question: Why haven’t I heard any of those before?
The secret is easy to understand. We must recognize that Americans are highly schooled but poorly educated. Most importantly: They have never been exposed to climate history.
Every audience I have faced has realized there is a history that destroys the current dogma. Climate history is the geologist’s weapon. It is the strategy. The tactic is bringing that history to the lay audience.
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As an addendum I add an editorial I recently wrote, it may never see the light of day, but several editors have had to read it.
IF ONLY……
If only climate scientists understood recent history they wouldn’t depend on their theory-biased computer models to forecast dire warming. The minuscule temperature rise we have recently experienced, whatever the cause, is inconsequential noise in the light of data history. The professed need to restrict warming to 1.5 or 2.0 degrees C are artificial constructs, with no scientific basis.
What the data tells us is that we are nearly 3 degrees C colder than where we were 3000 years ago, and that temperatures are just now climbing out of the longest coldest time of the last 10,000 years. A deeper dive into geologic history shows that carbon dioxide levels today are a shadow of past concentrations. Today’s levels are nearly the lowest ever since plant life began so many millions of years ago. Any global increase in carbon dioxide will be beneficial and have nearly no impact on future temperature. We can hope that there is continued warming, because cold kills.
Why, then, are so many trying to demonize fossil fuels? The very fuels that allow them the leisure to worry about climate change instead of struggling to stay alive? Global society is absolutely dependent upon cheap and plentiful energy for its survival. Why would some demand that society retreat from useful energy sources to bring back mass starvation, poverty, and horse-drawn buggies?
To dream of a utopian world is admirable, but to inflict suffering upon society through ignorance of science is deplorable. Ignoring the meticulous scientific contributions of eminent physical scientists such as Alley, Davis, Dansgaard, and Lindzen deprives humanity of its precious innovation and creativity only for ideology.
The public is “protected” from empirical data by legacy and social media censors. We thus suffer the consequences of unwarranted regulatory intrusions into daily life, whether it be restrictions on heating, air conditioning, dishwashers and stoves or the increased price and availability of electricity.
There is no global climate crisis. There is a global knowledge crisis.
Prof. Dr. Lee C Gerhard, ret.
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