Waarom hebben we een klimaatdebat nodig en geen klimaatconsensus?

Onder de titel:  'A New Climate-Change Consensus. It's time for conservatives to compete with liberals to devise the best, most cost-effective climate solutions', schreef Fred Krupp, president van het 'Environmental Defense Fund', in de WallStreet Journa (WSJ) een opinieartikel, waarin hij poogde een brug te slaan tussen de beide kampen in het klimaatdebat, vooral op het politieke vlak.

One scorching summer doesn't confirm that climate change is real any more than a white Christmas proves it's a hoax. What matters is the trend—a decades-long march toward hotter and wilder weather. But with more than 26,000 heat records broken in the last 12 months and pervasive drought turning nearly half of all U.S. counties into federal disaster areas, many data-driven climate skeptics are reassessing the issue.

Respected Republican leaders like Govs. John Kasich of Ohio and Chris Christie of New Jersey have spoken out about the reality of climate change. Rupert Murdoch's recent tweet—"Climate change very slow but real. So far all cures worse than disease."—may reflect an emerging conservative view. Even Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, during public comments in June, conceded the reality of climate change while offering assurances that "there will be an engineering solution" and "we'll adapt."

Even if my outlook differs, these views may turn out to be a welcome turning point. For too long, the U.S. has had two camps talking past each other on this issue. One camp tended to preach and derided questions about climate science as evidence of bad motivation. The other camp claimed that climate science was an academic scam designed to get more funding, and that advocates for action were out to strangle economic growth. Charges of bad faith on both sides—and a heavy dose of partisan politics—saw to it that constructive conversation rarely occurred.

Lees verder hier.

Krupp is van mening dat er toch overeenstemming zou kunnen/moeten worden bereikt over enkele fundamentele feiten, waarbij hij uitvoerig verwijst naar het BEST-project (BEST = 'Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project' onder leiding van Richard Muller.) Op die basis zou naar zijn mening consensus over het klimaatbeleid mogelijk moeten zijn. Het vervelende is echter dat die overeenstemming afwezig is.

Het BEST-project is sterk bekritiseerd door klimaatsceptici. Ook een aantal aanhangers van de menselijke broeikashypothese (AGW = Anthropogenic Global Warming) waren er niet gelukkig mee, zij het om andere redenen.

Onder de titel, 'Why We Need Debate, Not Consensus, on Climate Change', reageerde Jo Bast, directeur van het Heartland Institute op deze oproep. Maar –  zoals vaak voorkomt – wilde de WSJ deze reactie niet plaatsen. Anthony Watts deed dat wèl op zijn blog WUWT.

Joe Bast:

Dear Fred,
 
I read your August 7 opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, “A New Climate-Change Consensus,” with great interest. As you know, The Heartland Institute is a leading voice in the international debate over climate change. The Economist recently called us “the world’s most prominent think-think promoting skepticism about man-made climate change.”
 
First, I welcome you to the effort to bring skeptics and alarmists together. We need your help. We have been trying to do this for many years.
 
For example, we ran more than $1 million in ads calling on Al Gore to debate his critics. He repeatedly refused. We hosted seven international conferences on climate change and invited alarmists to speak at every one, the most recent one held in Chicago on May 23-24. Only one ever showed up, and he was treated respectfully.
 
Regrettably, your colleagues in the liberal environmental movement responded at first by pretending we don’t exist, and when opinion polls and political decisions revealed that strategy wasn’t working, by denouncing us as “deniers” and “shills for the fossil fuel industry.”
 
Most recently, your colleagues on the left went so far as to break the law in an attempt to silence us. Prominent global warming alarmist Peter Gleick stole corporate documents from us and circulated them with a fake and highly defamatory memo purporting to describe our “climate change strategy.” Gleick confessed to stealing the documents on February 20.
 
Greenpeace is using the stolen and fake documents to attack climate scientists who affiliate with The Heartland Institute, while the Center for American Progress and 350.org are using them to demonize corporations that fund us. No group on the left, including yours, has condemned these activities. ...

En zo gaat hij nog een tijdje door.

Your overture comes at a time when the science backing global warming alarmism is crumbling, as amply demonstrated by the reports of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate change (NIPCC). International negotiations for a new treaty are going nowhere. Public opinion in the U.S. and other countries decisively rejects alarmism. Politicians here and abroad who vote for cap and trade or a carbon tax rightly fear being tossed out of office by voters who know more about the issue than they do. ...

En dan komt Bast met een tegenvoorstel.

I have a counter proposal. Let’s restart the discussion by agreeing on these basic propositions:
 
First, people and organizations that break the law or use hate language such as “denier” should be barred from the global warming debate.
 
Second, recent weather and temperature anomalies have not been unusual and are not evidence of a human effect on climate.
 
Third, given the rapid and unstoppable increase in greenhouse gas emissions by Third World countries, it is pointless for the U.S. and other developed countries to invest very much in reducing their own emissions.
 
Fourth, tax breaks and direct subsidies to solar and wind power and impossible-to-meet renewable power mandates and regulatory burdens on coal-powered electricity generation plants have been disastrous for taxpayers, businesses, and consumers of electricity, and ought to be repealed.
 
Fifth, the world is entering an era of fossil fuel abundance that could lift billions of people out of poverty and help restart the U.S. economy. We have the technology to use that energy safely and with minimal impact on the environment and human health. Basic human compassion and common sense dictate that fear of global warming ought not be used to block access to this new energy.
 
Agree to these five simple propositions, Fred, and we can begin to work together to address some of the real environmental problems facing the U.S. and the world.

Lees verder hier.

Het is opmerkelijk – maar niet ongebruikelijk – dat de WSJ deze keurige reactie niet wilde plaatsen. Het is tekenend voor de nog steeds bestaande polarisering in het klimaatdebat, waarin niet alleen de progressieve media, maar ook een blad als The Economist, al tientallen jaren de kant van de alarmisten hebben gekozen en tegengeluiden stelselmatig negeren.

Zojuist kreeg ik bericht dat de Wall Street Journal inmiddels tóch een reactie heeft geplaatst onder de titel: 'Climate Consensus' Data Need a More Careful Look.' Het artikel is geschreven door: Roger W. Cohen, Fellow, American Physical Society, La Jolla, Calif; William Happer, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J.; en Richard S. Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

 

Voor mijn eerdere DDS-bijdragen, zie: