The Northampton Seminar
Michael McClymond
We all have heard the media reports alleging that earth temperatures are rapidly increasing, that the increase in temperature is due to CO2 levels in the atmosphere, that the rising CO2 levels are due to the burning of fossil fuels, and that dire consequences will follow if humanity as a whole doesn’t immediately reduce fossil consumption. Those who question any or all of the propositions just listed are sometimes referred to in the media as “climate change deniers”–in a none-too-subtle comparison with the “Holocaust deniers.”
Yet some truly distinguished scientists are now claiming that much of the accepted wisdom in the media reports is untrue.
One of the really striking facts is the lack of any increase in global temperature averages from about 1999 to around 2013. Did CO2 rise during this period? Yes, to some extent. Did temperatures rise during this period? No. Everyone agrees on this fact. This, in and of itself, ought to be a warning to those favoring the simplistic model that sees direct proportionality between CO2 and global temperature. We know that this model must be wrong, even if we only consider the very recent evidence of the last twenty years.
Freeman Dyson is not as well known as Albert Einstein, or Stephen Hawking, but he spent decades at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, as a colleague of Einstein during the early years. I have read some of his non-technical writings, and he is indeed a titan of twentieth-century science.
Dyson in a recent interview (see link below) says that he himself is “100% Democrat” in his politics but goes on to say that Obama is simply wrong on climate change. Dyson doesn’t believe that the future climate rise is going to be anything like the alarmist predictions. He says that CO2 is basically nourishing to plant life, and that we ought to have more of it rather than less of it (!). Dyson argues that there are good reasons, though, to reduce fossil fuel consumption, but that the reasons have little to do with the climate change models and theories being touted in the media.
Dyson agrees that that there is climate change, yet his approach to the now-standard CO2-based model is rather equivocal: “The models [for climate change] solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world we live in.” In 2009 he wrote: “What has happened in the past 10 years is that the discrepancies between what’s observed and what’s predicted have become much stronger. It’s clear now the models are wrong, but it wasn’t so clear 10 years ago” (quotations from the Wikipedia essay on Dyson; citing http://edge.org/conversation/heretical-thoughts-about-science-and-society).
Another leading voice is Richard Lindzen, who from 1983 until his retirement in 2013 was Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is no more convinced than Dyson is. There are other scientists–including specialists in meteorology–who agree with Lindzen and Dyson and have published their findings to this effect.
One wonders if future generations will look back at this climate change alarmism as something like the 1950s flying saucer craze–a cultural trend that said more about the underlying fears of the society at the time than it did about science itself?
Fear not! If humanity destroys itself, it is much more likely to happen through war, famine, or pestilence rather than through man-made climate change. (And read Revelation 21-22 for some truly encouraging writing about the future.)
The Dyson interview link is here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/11/freeman_dyson_interview/
Michael McClymond is Professor of Theology at St Louis University.
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