Two More Leading Scientists Challenge Man-Made Climate Change

by EIR Staff

[Print version of this article]

May 9—Once again the political falsification, “98% of scientists agree on man-made global warming,” is shown to be propaganda: Two well-known and respected American physicists, one of them the most recent Nobel Prize winner in that field, have made clear their opposition to the “narrative” of climate change and human guilt for it. Because of their accomplishments, the new statements and actions of Prof. Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and of Dr. John F. Clauser, who has worked in several U.S. national laboratories and universities, will impact the views of other scientists around the world.

Prof. Postal: ‘Man-Made Climate Change’ Theories Are Wrong

Leading nuclear arms and disarmament expert Professor Postol joined May 8 in a webinar with a Green Party dissident group to attack the narrative of man-made climate change as caused by CO₂. Theodore Postol is Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology and International Security at MIT, and is one of the world’s best-known authorities on the effects of nuclear weapons and the devastating characteristics of any nuclear war. He had not previously spoken out on the claims made about climate change.

The group, the Green Renaissance Sovereign Rights Movement, opposes the international takeover of Green Party organizations by intelligence agencies to promote a fascist agenda of world war, depopulation, corporate control, and to deny the Global South the right to cheap electricity, according to its online policy statement and statements by members of the group. It wants to avoid “identity politics,” and unite left and right to fight against the threat of global war, and for a more just society. And the Green Renaissance, unlike a lot of other antiwar and “green” groups, calls man-made climate change itself, along with the “great reset” of the World Economic Forum, a corporate hoax. It circulates a report for this purpose.

Dr. Postol’s role as an advisor on the scientific principles involved, is very important, since he is an expert on nuclear and other weapons of war, and very widely respected by antiwar organizations which otherwise support man-made climate change dogma. He was introduced by Jeremy Kuzmarov, managing editor of Covert Action magazine, as a hero who was censored for exposing the hoax of alleged Syrian government bombing of al-Qaeda linked groups with chemical weapons.

Dr. Postol insisted at the May 8 meeting that any theory—like the current theories about climate change—which cannot explain the phenomenon or predict its future behavior must be wrong. He attacked the idea that scientific discovery proceeds in a linear deductive way; it can be explained that way, but that is not how discovery of a new theory occurs; instead it happens by trial and error, often a flash of insight, Postol said. He referred to the 1962 book by Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, on the question of overthrowing an old paradigm, when facts don’t fit an existing theory.

Dr. Clauser:
‘Dangerous Corruption of Science’

Also this month, Dr. John Clauser, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics for his advances in quantum physics, joined the board of directors of the CO₂ Coalition, a longstanding and leading scientific organization opposed to the entire “zero-carbon” drive, which publishes studies showing that increasing carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is a benefit to the biosphere and to the world’s economies.

In its May 8 press release, the CO₂ Coalition quoted Dr. Clauser:

The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people. Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience.

In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists. In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis. There is, however, a very real problem with providing a decent standard of living to the world’s large population, and an associated energy crisis. The latter is being unnecessarily exacerbated by what, in my opinion, is incorrect climate science.

The press release also quoted another physicist, the late Dr. Edwin Jaynes, that Clauser’s discoveries and work “will surely go down as one of the most incredible intellectual achievements in the history of science.”

According to the CO₂ Coalition, Dr. Clauser has developed a climate model whose dominant process involves the visible light reflected by cumulus clouds, which cover on average half of the Earth’s surface. His view is that existing models greatly underestimate the feedback from this cloud cover in providing a dominant thermostatic control of the Earth’s temperature.

‘Scientists Have Failed the Public’

Postol, in the May 8 webinar, presented in a very clear way the reason why the prevailing theory of man-made climate change doesn’t fit the facts. He pointed out that CO₂ is not causing temperature changes; rather, the flux of cosmic rays, mostly electrically-charged particles that promote cloud formation—a process which is modulated by the changing magnetic activity of the Sun—largely determines the temperature on Earth. He cited the work of Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark on the role of cosmic rays, saying Svensmark should be given a Nobel Prize. He explained that the movement of our Solar System in the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy accounts for the periodic increase in galactic cosmic rays during ice ages.

Postol showed graphs of temperature changes over time, including the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, to show there is no unusual warming period today.

In response to questions, however, Dr. Postol was unwilling to call this all a “hoax,” saying that “hoax” involved a “motive”; he said he believed that many people, including well-meaning people, had bought into a false narrative for a variety of reasons. In some cases, he admitted, it was to make money, as was the case with companies and universities. He reserved his anger for so-called “scientists”—such as the president of the American Physical Society, and the board of Scientific American—who refuse to look at any facts which don’t fit their theory.

Postol was attacked by the president of the American Physical Society, Robert Rosner, who also wrote for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Rosner did not respond to the scientific answers that Postol presented about climate, but called him a “global climate denier.” Postol said climate was not his specialty, but he took it up for moral reasons:

My conclusion is that the scientific community has failed the public. my alma mater, MIT, was given $6 million for the climate study.

The Real Threat: Nuclear War

Dr. Postol emphasized he was more worried about the real threat of nuclear war than any false threat of the climate burning us up. He was very upset with people who cavalierly dismissed the threat of nuclear war, insisting:

I believe we’re on the edge of doom, either by design or accidentally in the next few decades; my generation, or a little older than me, from World War II, were serious about war, not the current ones.… Look at the cavalier behavior of the Biden Administration, of people who say, “Oh, Putin is bluffing; he would never use nuclear weapons.” Well, I don’t believe Putin is bluffing!

Postol and the Green Renaissance group agreed they were for a clean environment, but they lacked the scientific policy approach of physical economy, as developed over many decades by the late Lyndon LaRouche, Jr., such as the concepts of potential relative population-density and energy flux-density of power sources and machinery, to determine what the correct policy should be. Postol was reserved about nuclear power, even though it could be built safely, because, he insisted, it was very expensive. He was reluctant to trust the corporate culture of the nuclear industry, and afraid that plutonium could be diverted for nuclear weapons. “On the question of population,” he said, “I am not going to get into that.”

Asked what he thought of the well-known CO₂ Coalition, Postol said that they were correct in many of the points they made, but “too strident” in his view. Nonetheless, he did salute Dr. Will Happer, a founding member of the CO₂ Coalition, as a “first rate scientist…. You can trust anything he has to say.”