Heartland Emails Address Politics, Not Merits of Arguments

Mainstream media had something of a field day last week over alleged leaked documents from the Heartland Institute that purport to show the organization’s funding sources and its 2012 strategy. After reading at least a half a dozen articles about these leaked documents, I was left wondering: so what?

The implication is that the source of funding taints the group’s views on climate change. It calls to mind a Nightline interview from the early 1990s in which Al Gore tried to get Ted Koppel to discredit those who questioned extreme climate claims. At the end of the program, Koppel made a very insightful observation:

The issues of global warming and ozone depletion are undeniably important. The future of mankind may depend on how this generation deals with them. But the issues have to be debated and settled on scientific grounds, not politics. There is nothing new about major institutions seeking to influence science to their own ends. The church did it, ruling families have done it, the communists did it, and so have others, in the name of anti-communism. But it has always been a corrupting influence, and it always will be. The measure of good science is neither the politics of the scientist nor the people with whom the scientist associates. It is the immersion of hypotheses into the acid of truth. That’s the hard way to do it, but it’s the only way that works.

Judge Heartland’s views on their own merits. That should be the only standard that is relevant.

What are the facts? No one denies that the earth is warmer than it was 50 or 100 years ago. No one denies that human activities, primarily land use, have an impact on climate. No one denies that carbon dioxide (CO₂) is a greenhouse gas. No one denies that burning fossil energy adds CO₂ to the atmosphere and, all other things being equal, that would produce additional warming. But the areas of agreement essentially stop there, and most everything else is conjecture By those who predict a climate apocalypse.

Projections of large temperature increases come from computer models that are based more on professional judgment than scientific facts. The projected increases come from what scientists refer to as positive feedback. That is, as CO₂ increases so does water vapor in the atmosphere which keeps more of the sun’s energy from being radiated back to space. That enhances the warming associated with CO₂ emissions from using fossil energy.

So far, the assumed positive feedback in these models has not been matched empirical evidence of increased atmospheric water vapor. Additionally, climate advocates have not been able to adequately explain or model important processes that also affect climate: clouds, oceans, aerosols, solar activity, etc. Recent research has shown that the warming that took place between the late 1970s and late 1990s could have been the result of the Pacific Decadel Oscillation which operates on a 30 year cycle. The end of that cycle could explain why the previous warming trend has not continued in the past decade. And just recently, a Danish scientist was able to use the CERN facility to demonstrate that solar activity may have a larger effect on cloud formation than previously believed.

This serves as a reminder that there is more that we don’t know about the climate system than we do and that projections based on assumptions are dangerous.

Instead of the media and advocates using a hacking to play “gotcha” and use pejorative words like denier to describe organizations that question climate orthodoxy, we all would be better served by supporting research to reduce climate uncertainties and to be more cautious about jumping to conclusions about the extent of human influence on the climate system.