From Science Matters

by Ron Clutz

The climate realists at Creative Society have put together a short video with pithy statements skewering the CO2 theory of climate change.  Above is the video and below a transcript with exhibits and the speakers’ identities.

Dr. Harold Burnett
Over time the atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have radically fluctuated throughout the earth’s geologic history. They have been in the past as much as 5000 parts per million. Currently they are about 420 parts per million. So over long periods of time they have fluctuated, but in general they have fallen.

Gregory Wrightstone
There doesn’t seem to be any correlation whatsoever with increasing CO2 and temperature. And in fact one of the things we’re being asked to believe is that our modern temperatures are unusual and unprecedented, as thought we’ve never seen temperatures like this in thousands of years. That’s just not the case.

Prof. Ole Ellestad
We have a map showing temperature changes over the last 11,000 years. These are Greenland ice cores and we can see a thousand years ago, about 2000 years ago and about 3000 years ago we had warm periods. And everything indicates that these were periods of global warming.

Hans Borge
It was long before man-made CO2 emissions had any considerable volume. Therefore we know that the natural variability can be large.

Jan-Eric Solheim
In this graph we also show what the IPCC does. It prolongs more or less this curve going to infinite.  So it becomes warmer and warmer because of the CO2 release or climate. And that’s what we think is wrong. Our prediction is that it will soon start Cooling and we have to be prepared for that.

Gregory Wrightstone
The warming trend we’re in right now though started more than 300 years ago. But again 250 years of warming took place before we started adding CO2. But we’re asked to believe that those natural forces that have been driving temperatures since the dawn of time suddenly ceased in the 20th century.#

Hans Borge
CO2 is a gas that has very little effect on the climate. The IPCC models assume that the higher the CO2 level, the higher the water vapor level, and water vapor is a gas with the greatest impact on the climate. But the assumption that the more CO2, the more water vapor, has never been proved.

Jan-Eric Solheim
With some colleagues I have done experiments to see if CO2 can heat or carry heat. So we have built small greenhouses and tried to heat it by the sun outside or inside with artificial heating. We were able to show that carbon dioxide stops radiation, but we were not able to show any heating. So it’s a mystery how CO2 cannot heat, but what can heat is the water.

Gregory Wrightstone
The water vapor temperature changes first and then CO2 levels follow that. It’s not the other way around. If man increasing CO2 is going to drive temperature, CO2 should change first and then temperature should change.

Jan-Eric Solheim
The blue curve is the temperature of the sea that is the ocean surface temperatures. The red is the land temperature which we get in this case from HadCRUT, which is an official temperature series. First comes the change in the sea temperature, a little bit later the land temperature (red) and then about one year, 10 or 11 months the carbon dioxide changes. And when temperature at the sea surface goes down, the carbon dioxide goes down 10 or 11 months later.

Hans Borge
Well let me show you another table that might tell you a little bit about the CO2 content. Take a look:  there are 3 000 billion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere and the total man-made emissions per year are 20 to 30 billion tons. But if you look at the ocean, it has far more CO2. So the exchange of CO2 between the ocean and the atmosphere totally overshadows human activity.

Jan-Eric Solheim
So a more detailed analysis telling that this red part here is apparently what anthropogenic yes or mankind produced carbon dioxide, which is about three percent of the increase from 1960. But nature produces the rest, this variable curve here. So 97 percent of the increase comes from nature, according to these scientists.

Prof. Ole Ellestad
The IPCC also claims that the sun has no effect on us. It’s a great paradox; not clear how they arrive at that. Moreover today we see that the warming is happening not only on our planet but also on other planets and on the moon too, where there’s a completely different atmosphere that has nothing to do with CO2. So clearly there is a sun factor which is missing in their model.

Gregory Wrightstone
Well, the iIPCC if you look back on their charter it was formed to present the data that supports warming. They weren’t tasked to provide all the data. They started with an assumption and went from there. So if that’s their task, they’re doing a darn good job at it. You better have some good science behind you, and it’s just not there.

Dr. Harold Burnett
The world’s governments through the UN formed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Now you would think that would be studying climate change, but they specified that you study the human causes of climate change. So they ruled out all natural factors. They said no no: we’re not going to study whether the sun plays a role; we’re not going to study whether volcanoes play a role; we’re not going to study whether ocean current shifts play a role. And we really don’t understand clouds, so we’re not going to count them much. What we’re going to study is human CO2 emissions because that’s what we can get a handle on.

That’s not the way science is supposed to work. If you make faulty or incomplete assumptions, your models are going to be weak, because they’re only as good as the accuracy of the stuff that’s put in them. Now climate models have failed to accurately reflect past temperatures; they fail to accurately represent present temperatures; but we’re told we can trust their projections of future temperatures.  That doesn’t seem reasonable to me.

Gregory Wrightstone
If on the other hand, you like the scientific process, we’re not getting much data out there. Dr Will Happer is our chairman here at the CO2 coalition and he’s got a paper that he and Dr. Van Wijngaarden have done on climate sensitivities. They’re not able to get it in any prestigious journals, yet it’s a landmark study. They need to shut people like me down: I was just banned on linkedin, which should be a professional network, a social media network. I don’t talk those things that are controversial; I post scientific facts, and they were being removed. And they came back and said: No, you’re done. We don’t allow that kind of information on linkedin.

Prof. Ole Ellestad
This debate is so violent that if you go to the media you can express your opinion, but you will be strongly criticized, and then you won’t really have an opportunity to defend yourself. But most importantly, you won’t get into the media with your first articles.

Hans Borge
This is what we see now in the academic world, for example at universities. Academic freedom is so endangered. I have to say that many people who joined the ranks of climate realists do so when they retire; because until retirement they just don’t dare. Researchers who claim something different don’t get grants; they don’t have their say in either published media or in edited journals.

Dr. Harold Burnett
First off you’re having a difficult time getting published because journals won’t hear it. Well, that affects your tenure track position and your colleagues are frowning at you. And you’re not getting government grants because government doesn’t give grants to study natural factors for climate change or to study things that prove humans aren’t causing climate change. Because government has a motive: expanding its its reach. I know researchers who’ve left the field because they feel like they can’t give their honest assessment and get it either published or get tenure.

Prof. Ole Ellestad
Climate and environment are often lumped together. But being against climate doesn’t mean being against the environment. That is, we are not against climate, but we are skeptical of CO2, which is not the same as being skeptical of the environment. So important environmental issues should be discussed and resolved.

Dr. Harold Burnett
That subsurface volcanic activity in Antarctica and even in parts of Greenland and Iceland are contributing to the melting of the glaciers there. That is not controlled by CO2. We don’t control the ocean currents; we don’t control the magnetism of the earth’s magnetic poles and how it shifts or can shift over time. We don’t control our orbit.

We don’t control those things and they’re really what’s driving things. That’s why we should study them, because they’re really what’s driving climate change. And if we think it’s bad, we should know that too.

I want an adaptable society. An adaptable society is one that does not lock us into solving the wrong problem.