Dr. Will Happer’s Testimony Before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming - May 20, 2010
My name is William Happer, and I am the Cyrus Fogg Bracket Professor of Physics at Princeton University. I have spent my professional life studying the interactions of visible and infrared radiation with gases - one of the main physical phenomena behind the greenhouse effect. I have published over 200 papers in peer reviewed scientific journals. I am a member of a number of professional organizations, including the American Physical Society and the National Academy of Sciences. I have done extensive consulting work for the US Government and Industry. I also served as the Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy (DOE) from 1990 to 1993, where I supervised all of DOE’s work on climate change.
Key Excerpts: The CO2 absorption band is nearly “saturated” at current CO2 levels. Adding more CO2 is like putting an additional ski hat on your head when you already have a nice warm one below it, but you are only wearing a windbreaker. The extra hat makes you a little bit warmer but to really get warm, you need to add a jacket. The IPCC thinks that this jacket is water vapor and clouds. [...]
The climate-change establishment has tried to eliminate any who dare question the science establishment climate scientists and by like-thinking policy-makers - you are either with us or you are a traitor.
Orwellian: I keep hearing about the “pollutant CO2,” or about “poisoning the atmosphere” with CO2, or about minimizing our “carbon footprint.” This brings to mind a comment by George Orwell: “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” CO2 is not a pollutant and it is not a poison and we should not corrupt the English language by depriving “pollutant” and “poison” of their original meaning. Our exhaled breath contains about 4% CO2. That is 40,000 parts per million, or about 100 times the current atmospheric concentration. CO2 is absolutely essential for life on earth. Commercial greenhouse operators often use CO2 as a fertilizer to improve the health and growth rate of their plants. Plants, and our own primate ancestors evolved when the levels of atmospheric CO2 were at least 1000 ppm, a level that we will probably not reach by burning fossil fuels, and far above our current level of about 380 ppm. We try to keep CO2 levels in our US Navy submarines no higher than 8,000 parts per million, about 20 time current atmospheric levels. Few adverse effects are observed at even higher levels. [...]
That we are (or were) living at the best of all CO2 concentrations seems to be an article of faith for the climate-change establishment. Enormous effort and imagination have gone into showing that increasing concentrations of CO2 will be catastrophic: cities will be flooded by sea-level rises that are ten or more times bigger than even IPCC predicts, there will be mass extinctions of species, billions of people will die, tipping points will render the planet a desert. Any flimsy claim of harm from global warming brings instant fame and many rewards.
Sea Level: The sea level is indeed rising, just as it has for the past 20,000 years since the end of the last ice age. Fairly accurate measurements of sea level have been available since about 1800. These measurements show no sign of any acceleration. The rising sea level can be a serious local problem for heavily-populated, low-lying areas like New Orleans, where land subsidence compounds the problem. But to think that limiting CO2 emissions will stop sea level rise is a dangerous illusion. It is also possible that the warming seas around Antarctica will cause more snowfall over the continent and will counteract the sea-level rise.
Hockey Stick: I was very surprised when I first saw the celebrated “hockey stick curve,” in the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC. Both the little ice age and the medieval warm period were gone, and the newly revised temperature of the world since the year 1000 had suddenly become absolutely flat until the last hundred years when it shot up like the blade on a hockey stick. This was far from an obscure detail, and the hockey stick was trumpeted around the world as evidence that the end was near. We now know that the hockey stick has nothing to do with reality but was the result of incorrect handling of proxy temperature records and incorrect statistical analysis. There really was a little ice age and there really was a medieval warm period that was as warm or warmer than today. I bring up the hockey stick as a particularly clear example that the IPCC summaries for policy makers are not dispassionate statements of the facts of climate change.
Conclusion: I regret that the climate-change issue has become confused with serious problems like secure energy supplies, protecting our environment, and figuring out where future generations will get energy supplies after we have burned all the fossil fuel we can find. We should not confuse these laudable goals with hysterics about carbon footprints. For example, when weighing pluses and minuses of the continued or increased use of coal, the negative issue should not be increased atmospheric CO2, which is probably good for mankind. We should focus on real issues like damage to the land and waterways by strip mining, inadequate remediation, hazards to miners, the release of real pollutants and poisons like mercury, other heavy metals, organic carcinogens, etc.
Life is about making decisions and decisions are about trade-offs. The Congress can choose to promote investment in technology that addresses real problems and scientific research that will let us cope with real problems more efficiently.
Or they can act on unreasonable fears and suppress energy use, economic growth and the benefits that come from the creation of national wealth.
Climate Depot’s Selected Highlights of Dr. Happer’s May 20, 2010 Congressional Testimony: (Dr. Happer’s Full Testimony here: (To read the warmists’ testimony of Ralph Cicerone, Stephen Schneider, and Ben Santer, see here. )
By Dr. Roy Spencer
Just an update...as the following graph shows, sea surface temperatures (SSTs) along the equatorial Pacific ("Nino3.4" region, red lines) have been plunging, and global average SSTs have turned the corner, too. (Click here for the full-size, undistorted version. Note the global values have been multiplied by 10 for display purposes.)
The corresponding sea level pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin (SOI index, next graph enlarged here) shows a rapid transition toward La Nina conditions is developing.
Being a believer in natural, internal cycles in the climate system, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that global-average SSTs will plunge over the next couple of months. Based upon past experience, it will take a month or two for our (UAH) tropospheric temperatures to then follow suit.
See post here.
See ENSO model forecasts from May from IRI (enlarged here).
Here is the CFS model ensembles (enlarged here).
Leaked Document Shows Spain’s “Green” Policies Are An Economic Disaster
According to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Pajamas Media has received a leaked internal assessment produced by Spain’s Zapatero administration. This assessment confirms the catastrophic economic failure of Spain’s “green economy” initiatives. On eight occasions US President Obama has referred to these policies as being the model he envisions for America.
Pajamas Media has received a leaked internal assessment produced by Spain’s Zapatero administration. The assessment confirms the key charges previously made by non-governmental Spanish experts in a damning report exposing the catastrophic economic failure of Spain’s “green economy” initiatives.
On eight separate occasions, President Barack Obama has referred to the “green economy” policies enacted by Spain as being the model for what he envisioned for America.
Later came the revelation that Obama administration senior Energy Department official Cathy Zoi - someone with serious publicized conflict of interest issues - demanded an urgent U.S. response to the damaging report from the non-governmental Spanish experts so as to protect the Obama administration’s plans.
Most recently, U.S. senators have introduced the vehicle for replicating Spain’s unfolding economic meltdown here, in the form of the “American Power Act.” For reasons that are obvious upon scrutiny, it should instead be called the American Power Grab Act.
But today’s leaked document reveals that even the socialist Spanish government now acknowledges the ruinous effects of green economic policy.
Unsurprisingly for a governmental take on a flagship program, the report takes pains to minimize the extent of the economic harm. Yet despite the soft-pedaling, the document reveals exactly why electricity rates “necessarily skyrocketed” in Spain, as did the public debt needed to underwrite the disaster. This internal assessment preceded the Zapatero administration’s recent acknowledgement that the “green economy” stunt must be abandoned, lest the experiment risk Spain becoming Greece.
The government report does not expressly confirm the highest-profile finding of the non-governmental report: that Spain’s “green economy” program cost the country 2.2 jobs for every job “created” by the state. However, the figures published in the government document indicate they arrived at a job-loss number even worse than the 2.2 figure from the independent study.
This document is not a public report. Spanish media has referred to its existence in recent weeks though, while Bloomberg and the Washington Examiner have noted the impact: Spain is now forced to jettison its plans - Obama’s model - for a “green economy.”
Remarkably, these items have received virtually no media attention.
An item which has been covered widely, however, is that President Obama is now pressuring Spain to turn off its spigot of public debt in the name of averting a situation similar to that of Greece.
Also covered widely is Obama’s promotion of the American Power Act - the legislation which would replicate Spain’s current situation in the United States.
Put simply, Obama is currently promoting a policy in the U.S. which is based on a policy that he wishes to see Spain abandon. Welcome to Obamaland, the particulars of which are explained in a fashion grandly more illuminating than this Obama-Zapatero dance in Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America.
A translation of the leaked Zapatero government internal slide presentation: “Renewable Energy: Situation and Objectives April 2010”
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19 free market, conservative, limited government organizations endorse Murkowski resolution
In PDF here.
To Members of the United States Senate:
We urge you to support S. J. Res. 26, the bipartisan legislation sponsored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to overturn the legal force and effect of EPA’s endangerment finding with respect to greenhouse gases (GHGs).
If allowed to stand, the endangerment finding will trigger a regulatory cascade, making carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions “subject to regulationa” under several Clean Air Act (CAA) programs. America could end up with a regulatory regime more costly than any climate bill or treaty the Senate has declined to pass or ratify, yet without the people‟s representatives ever voting on it.
At a minimum, the endangerment finding will allow EPA to deal itself into a position to determine fuel economy standards for the auto industry, control CO2 emissions from stationary sources, and, more broadly, set climate policy for the nation - powers never delegated to the agency by Congress.
The endangerment finding leads to “absurd results,” as EPA itself admits. EPA and its state counterparts will have to process an estimated 41,000 Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permits annually (instead of 280), and 6.1 million Title V operating permits (instead of 14,700) - workloads far exceeding agencies’ administrative resources. The permitting programs will develop enormous, ever-growing backlogs, blocking new construction and forcing millions of firms to operate in legal limbo. The endangerment finding endangers an already uncertain economic recovery.
To avoid a debacle of its own making, EPA proposes to “tailor” the CAA so that firms emitting less than 50,000 tons per year (TPY) of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases are exempt from the permitting programs for six years. But the Act plainly prescribes 250 TPY and 100 TPY as the applicability thresholds for PSD and Title V. In effect, EPA proposes to amend the CAA - another breach of the separation of powers on top of EPA’s bid to “enact” fuel economy standards and climate policy. The Murkowski resolution would nip all this mischief in the bud.
Although the scientific basis of the endangerment finding is controversial, that is not what the Murkowski resolution is about. The resolution is a referendum not on climate science but on who should make the big decisions affecting America‟s economic future. Is climate policy to be made by the people’s representatives or by politically unaccountable bureaucrats, trial lawyers, and activist judges?
Only one answer to that question passes constitutional muster. EPA has no authority to do an end-run around the democratic process. Climate policy is too important to be made by an administrative agency without new and specific statutory guidance from Congress.
Sincerely,
Myron Ebell
Director
Freedom Action
Marlo Lewis
Senior Fellow
Competitive Enterprise Institute
David A. Keene
Chairman
American Conservative Union
Grover Norquist
President
Americans for Tax Reform
Tim Phillips
President
American for Prosperity
Duane Parde
President
National Taxpayers Union
Matt Kibbe
President
FreedomWorks
Jim Martin
Chairman
60 Plus
Thomas J. Pyle
President
American Energy Alliance
Thomas Schatz
President
Council for Citizens Against Government Waste
Ron Pearson
President
Council for America
Stanley R. Lewandowski, Jr.
General Manager Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA)
Jeff Keuter
President
George C. Marshall Institute
Mark Chmura
Executive Director
Americans for the Preservation of Liberty
Niger Innis
National Spokesman
CORE
Amy Ridenour
President
National Center for Public Policy Research
Phyllis Schafly
President and Founder
Eagle Forum
George Landrith
President
Frontiers of Freedom
Chuck Cushman
Executive Director
American Land Rights Association