Looking into the heart of the global warming scam

On Tuesday, I had no intention of driving all the way to Salem to hear the Great Global Warming Guru James Hansen speak at Willamette University. After all, I had seen him when he spoke at the University of Oregon a couple of years ago, and had not found him an inspiring speaker. But the entire picture changed when Bill Turlay came down sick and could not go. In an e-mail I read about noon, he offered me two tickets to an exclusive reception, dinner, and lecture with Hansen. Since no one else was available at the last minute, I went by myself.

What I found was an elite group of insiders and benefactors who were socializing with large glasses of wine and politically correct conversation. What was I to do? I certainly did not belong in this crowd.

But there was James Hansen as big as life standing right next to me. I know how to talk to a fellow astrophysicist. So I asked him what he thought of the remarkably quiet sun and what that meant for our future climate. He knew about the recent deep solar minimum and the long length of cycle 23. He also mentioned that the Maunder Minimum was a cold period. I asked if he had read the recent Norwegian paper just out last week correlating cold temperatures in the Norwegian Arctic to the length of the previous solar cycle. I explained that it showed the time lag necessary to transport the increased or decreased solar heat from the equator to the north polar region on ocean currents. He had not seen the paper but said "we can calculate that," a typical refrain from those who routinely trust theory over evidence.

When the conversation moved to Total Solar Irradiance, he pointed out that the 0.1 % variation required an amplification factor, and I suggested Svensmark's Galactic Cosmic Rays with the caveat that we did not really know the magnitude of its effect on cloud cover. I could see that Hansen was becoming increasingly uneasy, perhaps because I was avoiding carbon dioxide entirely.

So Hansen started to talk with one of the benefactors, a man who had produced the wine we were drinking. This man was also into manufacturing bio-diesel, which gave me a chance to ask if he was getting any net bio-energy out for the fossil fuel that went into growing and refining the bio-diesel. Yes, he was, because he was using waste oil from a french fry operation. So I broadened the discussion to ask whether any of the bio-fuel efforts make sense, and Hansen acknowledged that they generally do not. We had a laugh when Hansen admitted to opposing corn ethanol in his home state of Iowa. It was an easy going conversation, because I stayed away from the hot-button issues, where I would have had to object to Hansen's line.

When it was time for dinner, we proceeded to assigned seating. That meant that Hansen sat with the Dempsey family benefactors, and I sat with people I did not know. But one of them recognized me! Was I the person who had spoken to Oregon AMS meeting, he asked? This fellow (a dentist from Portland) wanted to hear both sides. Because he kept quiet about who I was, it was easy for me to steer the dinner conversation in directions I wanted it to go without precipitating a fight.

Hansen's later lecture to a large audience involved very little science that was of course presented in his way. It was mixed with his usual pictures of grandchildren, stories and pictures of being arrested at the White House, a picture of the hated George Bush and stories about Bush trying to muzzle him, more talk about his accomplishments, and finally much talk about how an escalating carbon tax was the only way to save humanity. As the dentist said to me afterwards: "not much science."

Surprising statements to come from Hansen included an attack on President Obama for not using his initial 70% approval rating to ram through a carbon tax and strong support for nuclear energy. I think Hansen realizes that bio-fuels are not the answer, despite a plug for algae-based fuel. In an interesting twist on the nuclear question, Hansen pointed out that the worst nuclear power accident in America (Three-Mile Island) produced no fatalities, except for 1 or 2 estimated from linear extrapolations that failed to recognize the 'threshold' phenomenon. He pointed out that sunlight radiation is good for us in small doses and bad in large ones. His understanding of this was excellent.

As soon as Hansen strayed into carbon dioxide and climate, he was in Fantasy Land. He tried to address the "contrarian argument" involving the several century lag of CO2 behind temperature as a feedback phenomenon, not realizing that his argument only works if warming from CO2 is negligible. He characterized warming as causing an "extermination" of species, not realizing that bio-diversity is much greater in warmer regions. He characterized the 0.8 C rise in temperatures over the 20th century as unusual, when such increases have been characteristic of previous warm periods in this Holocene Epoch. He touted warmer than normal seasons in Texas last summer and Russia the summer before, not realizing that the Pacific Northwest had record cold here last spring. He touted satellite measurements of shrinking ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica, not realizing that these are either minimal or wrong because temperatures well below freezing make substantial melting impossible. And he even suggested that fossil fuel companies control the message that Americans get about climate through the mainstream media! He kept hammering these companies for their "subsidies."

The bottom line with James Hansen is that he would never survive in a setting where it was really possible to question him. He is showing his age.

Afterward I suggested to the new Willamette President Steven Thorsett that there are two sides to this issue, and he should support hearing the other side too. He said that they already get both sides in their classrooms. I scoffed at that, given all the one-sided "sustainable" rhetoric that he was spouting. Finally in exasperation with me he said: "Look I used to have an office near Will Happer at Princeton, so I know your side!" To which I replied, "Yes, Will is a good friend of mine. You ought to invite him to speak here." Thorsett is an astrophysicist like me, but one who has long since abandoned science in favor of administration where the name of the game is "money." And he is smart enough to know where to find it and where not to find it - in climate skepticism.

I also approached Willamette Professor Joe Bowersox with the thought that there were two sides to the climate issue. He is their Dempsey Professor of Environmental Policy in the Department of Environmental and Earth Science and Director of the Center for Sustainable Communities. He was the MC for the Hansen lecture. He would be a completely lost cause, were it not for his cousin (the skeptical Portland dentist) who sat with us at dinner and the lengthy conversation we had about forest policy. We found enough in common to agree to continue our conversation.

The Willamette University events on Tuesday night provided a fascinating look into the very heart of the Global Warming scam in Oregon and beyond.

It is a story heavy on money, elitism, and influence and very light on science and critical thinking. The wine and fancy dinner were good.

Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA