Galileo was a climate denier

Galileo was a climate denier. He said Earth was not the center of the universe. The prevailing view in those days, which was in vogue as early as Aristotle’s time, claimed the Sun rotated around the Earth.

Galileo, and Copernicus before him, said what they saw in their telescopes could be explained only if the Earth orbited the Sun. Condemned for dissenting, Galileo was tried by Inquisition for his heliocentrism, convicted of heresy, ordered to recant and sentenced to house arrest, where he was confined for the rest of his life, and barred from publishing his work.  Today, we would say he was canceled. Think about that: he was canceled for claiming man was not the center of the universe.

What happened to Galileo is a parable for the way prevailing thought today addresses climate change.  Citing the United Nations, the so-called scientific consensus informs us that climate change is anthropogenic, with man at the center of our universe and our consumption of fossil fuel as the leading cause of catastrophic climate change.

But the climate hysterics are as wrong as the Church was in condemning Galileo. If not corrected, this error will have profound impacts on life as we know it. The remedy they say is to ban production of oil, gas and coal, gasoline powered cars and trucks, gas stoves and furnaces for our homes, in favor of EV vehicles, solar and wind power.  I lived in Southern California when wind turbines first appeared.  Now, hundreds blot the horizon, like Star Wars machines marching into the desert.

These remedies respond to a crisis that does not exist. The alleged crisis was advanced in a bum’s rush to take control of our daily lives without any analysis of the premises of the claims, the credibility of the claimants, or the benefits of fossil fuel.

First, the government misrepresented the scientific reports it relies on.  The 1995 report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was altered after it was approved and before it was published. In 1996, the Wall Street Journal reported the UN’s 1995 report was altered prior to publication in order to conceal the fact the science of the matter was not settled. The following passages are examples of those included in the approved report but deleted from the published version:

·       "None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases."

·       "No study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed to date] to anthropogenic [man-made] causes."

Undeterred by lack of consensus, the government proceeded as if the science is settled. Add this to the large and growing pile of lies from our government.

Second, the climate models the IPCC used to predict catastrophe are flawed. They substantially underestimated the role of the sun in global warming, which means it overestimated man’s contribution.  Researchers at Princeton University found that the modeling used to make predictions of the future failed to accurately account for the cooling impact of clouds. In 2020, Professor Bjorn Stevens, a director of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology called it “the biggest question – there is no bigger question… For 50 years, people have been making climate projections, but all of them have had a false representation of clouds.”

Any theory of climate change based on such fundamental errors should not be relied on cancel our use of fossil fuel.

Plus, any theory advanced by the UN is suspect on its face. This is the same UN that appointed Saudi Arabia where apostasy is a capital offense, to the Human Rights Council, the body responsible for protecting human rights.

Third, those who claim we must cease the use of fossil fuels failed to weigh the benefits of fossil fuel.  A proper analysis must include an assessment of the benefits as well as the well-established risks.  Alex Epstein’s 2022 work, Fossil Future, Why Global human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal and Natural Gas – Not Less, states the case for the many benefits to the human race from the use of fossil fuels, all of which have been ignored.

These benefits include fertilizers to grow the food that feeds the world, machines that build our infrastructures and are used in modern medicine, and fuel to heat and cool our homes.  Fossil fuels save lives. Epstein reports that the National Academy of Sciences credits the fossil fuel based pesticide DDT with saving over 500 million lives. Our life expectancy increased from 30 years in 1400 to over 70 years by 2000.

Recently, a global network of over 1800 scientists and professionals have declared there is no climate emergency and the policy changes being forced on us are misguided.

Why has there been little or no public discussion of the benefits of fossil fuel before we rush headlong toward the destruction of the basic industry that has done so much to improve human life? Instead, like Galileo long ago, the dissenters are cancelled and dismissed as kooks.

It is time to re-evaluate where we are going with this climate hysteria.