1/12/2009

Princeton Professor has some harsh words for Global Warming Supporters

The Daily Princetonian has this:

Physics professor William Happer GS ’64 has some tough words for scientists who believe that carbon dioxide is causing global warming.

“This is George Orwell. This is the ‘Germans are the master race. The Jews are the scum of the earth.’ It’s that kind of propaganda,” Happer, the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, said in an interview. “Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Every time you exhale, you exhale air that has 4 percent carbon dioxide. To say that that’s a pollutant just boggles my mind. What used to be science has turned into a cult.”

Happer served as director of the Office of Energy Research in the U.S. Department of Energy under President George H.W. Bush and was subsequently fired by Vice President Al Gore, reportedly for his refusal to support Gore’s views on climate change. He asked last month to be added to a list of global warming dissenters in a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee report. The list includes more than 650 experts who challenge the belief that human activity is contributing to global warming

Though Happer has promulgated his skepticism in the past, he requested to be named a skeptic in light of the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, whose administration has, as Happer notes, “stated that carbon dioxide is a pollutant” and that humans are “poisoning the atmosphere.”

Happer maintains that he doubts there is any strong anthropogenic influence on global temperature.

“All the evidence I see is that the current warming of the climate is just like past warmings. In fact, it’s not as much as past warmings yet, and it probably has little to do with carbon dioxide, just like past warmings had little to do with carbon dioxide,” Happer explained. . . . .

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1 Comments:

Blogger Cam said...

Oh Boy! I'm sure Princeton is very proud...not as much warming as past episodes? Of course not but the rate of warming and CO2 rise is historically unprecedented. I'm starting to think we should take away peoples voting privileges when they reach the age where new information does not compute. Unfortunately for many conservatives this would be quite young.

John - how is that calculation of the earths surface temperature without an atmosphere coming along? Let me know if you need help - it would be quite instructive for you, I think to appreciate the relative magnitudes of solar versus atmospheric radiative forcing.

1/27/2009 2:46 PM  

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