Four-part Series: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4

Burke, VA, July 9, 2015

I’m writing to you about a very serious matter, so I beg for your patience as I explain it. Rest assured from the start, though, that I’m not asking you for money.

I’m privileged to coordinate a network of about 60 evangelical scholars—roughly a third theologians, a third natural scientists, and a third economists and policy experts—all dedicated to applying excellent theology, ethics, science, and economics to public policy to promote Biblical earth stewardship, economic development for the poor, and the proclamation and defense of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We pursue all of these goals in a world increasingly influenced by an environmental movement whose worldview, theology, and ethics often conflict with Christianity’s, whose scientific and economic analysis often fall short of high standards of scholarship, and whose policies therefore often achieve little good so far as conserving or improving the environment but can impose significant harm on people, especially the poor.

One of our greatest concerns is that the demand to reduce allegedly dangerous, manmade global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions would trap the world’s poorest 2.9 billion people—about 1.3 billion of whom still use wood, coal, charcoal, and dung on open fires as their primary cooking and heating fuels and about 1.9 billion of whom lack all access to electricity—in extreme poverty and the high rates of disease and premature death that inevitably accompany it.

As Deepak Lal, one of the world’s leading development economists, put it in his book Poverty and Progress: Realities and Myths about Global Poverty:

The greatest threat to the alleviation of the structural poverty of the Third World is the continuing campaign by western governments, egged on by some climate scientists and green activists, to curb greenhouse emissions, primarily the CO2 from burning fossil fuels. …

[I]t is mankind’s use of the mineral energy stored in nature’s gift of fossil fuels … [that] allowed the ascent from structural poverty which had scarred humankind for millennia.

To put a limit on the use of fossil fuels without adequate economically viable alternatives is to condemn the Third World to perpetual structural poverty.

Although the harm such policies would bring to these poorest of the poor around the world is our greatest concern, we cannot ignore the harm they would bring to millions in the developed world as well.

The starkest measure of that is probably the increase in excess winter deaths (EWDs) caused by fuel poverty. This is a problem that has arisen around Europe over the last decade or so. Policies to reduce global warming by mandatory substitution of more expensive wind and solar energy for less expensive energy generated from coal and natural gas have caused home heating costs to rise substantially, resulting in a rapid increase in fuel poverty—defined as needing to spend 10 percent or more of household income on home heating. This in turn has led to an increase in EWDs.

In each of the last five winters, England and Wales recorded an average of about 27,860 EWDs. Research by the World Health Organization concludes that from 30 to 40 percent of EWDs in Europe and Great Britain over that period are attributable to fuel poverty. If that is so, then fuel poverty caused an average of 8,358 to 11,144 deaths in each of those winters in England and Wales alone.

How many fuel poverty-caused EWDs would similar energy cost increases have caused in the United States, with a population over five-and-a-half times larger? An average of from 46,000 to 62,000 per year. (This doesn’t even account for the fact that much of the United States experiences much colder winters than Great Britain.)

And fuel poverty-caused EWDs aren’t simply deaths that occur a few days, weeks, or perhaps months earlier than they otherwise would have. That’s what EWDs are, without fuel poverty. These are deaths that might not have occurred for years to come in the absence of fuel poverty.

There are many other ways such policies would harm people in America and around the world. Because everything we make, transport, and use requires energy, an increase in the cost of energy means an increase in the cost of everything else. That hurts everyone to some extent, but the poor most of all because they spend the highest percentage of their income on energy.

If we are to embrace calls to reduce global warming by such policies, then, the reasoning behind those calls should be compelling.

We believe it isn’t.

We’ve made the case—scientifically, economically, and ethically—in a series of four scholarly papers, written and reviewed by outstanding climate scientists, economists, and theologians, published in 2005, 2006, 2009, and 2014. The last, A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor 2014: The Case against Harmful Climate Policies Gets Stronger, was co-authored by David R. Legates, Ph.D., Professor of Climatology at the University of Delaware, and G. Cornelis van Kooten, Ph.D., Professor of Economics and Research Chair in Environmental Studies and Climate at the University of Victoria, British Columbia—both committed evangelical Christians and both well-published, respected scholars in their fields. Hundreds of evangelical scientists, economists, and theologians have endorsed the conclusions of those papers by endorsing public statements based on them.

Now we plan to make that case to the American people and their political representatives, and we hope you’ll join us by endorsing the Open Letter below, which you can do quickly and conveniently by clicking here. (signing of this letter is no longer available).

Why should you care?

As Paul Driessen, author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death and one of the world’s foremost scholars on the Green movement’s harm to the poor, put it when he signed, “this is a hugely important science, ethics, and human rights issue.”

My friend Gordon Evans, Environmental Manager with the Texas A&M University System, explains the importance of this:

In my position as environmental manager for one of the largest university systems in the U.S., I regularly make it a point to ask scientists and engineers working in the real world, solving real day-to-day problems and stewarding our natural resources and environment, about their professional views on the issues of climate and energy. Their responses almost uniformly reflect disagreement with, practically a disdain for, the climate alarmists’ and sustainability activists’ premise that manmade climate change is an imminent danger.  Many further contend that humanity’s small contribution to a naturally warming world may be a net benefit. They also largely reject renewable energy, particularly wind, solar and biofuels, believing these to be currently unsuitable and costly alternatives to safe and affordable fossil fuels and nuclear energy.

Fear is a powerful emotion, and it is being used by environmental activists to try and manipulate the public conscience and political discourse. … Why should you and I care?  Unfortunately, this is not a mere academic exercise or Hollywood script. Climate alarmism leads to bad public policy which leads to poor energy decisions that harm many people, disproportionately the poor in this country and around the world.

This letter warns the American people and their leaders of such harm, but is it scientifically sound?

Here’s what Hal Doiron, Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and chairman of The Right Climate Stuff Research Team, a group of retired NASA Apollo Program engineers, says:

Our research team of retired NASA scientists and engineers have conducted our own independent and objective assessment of the anthropogenic global warming controversy and we agree with the conclusions and recommendations of this open letter.

Why do the American people and their leaders need this letter? Because, as Bill Kirk, CEO and Founder of Weather Trends International, puts it, “the fraud and manipulation of scientific data has forever corrupted real research. We rely on pristine data sets, and governmental/weather agencies are purposely changing past history to fit an agenda ….”

Dr. David Black, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Aegis Sciences, Inc., says he signed the letter “to join in support of science and to reject the ideology of climate change.”

Here are just a few others who have signed so far, representing a few of the many disciplines relevant to climate change and climate-and-energy policy:

• Timothy Ball, Ph.D., Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D., and David R. Legates, Ph.D., Climatology, and Neil Frank, Ph.D., John Coleman, Ph.D., and Joseph D’Aleo, Ph.D. (Hon.), Meteorology (the last two co-founders of The Weather Channel)
• Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus, William Happer, Ph.D., Philip A.W. Bratby, Ph.D., and Donald A. Hirst, Ph.D., Physics, Philip Pennance, Ph.D., Chemical Physics, and Lubert Leger, Ph.D., Physical Chemistry
• John Shanahan, Ph.D., Engineering, Raul Eduardo Chao, Ph.D., David H. Lester, Ph.D., and Alfredo M. Lopez, Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, and Hugh Kendrick, Ph.D., and James H. Rust, Ph.D., Nuclear Engineering
• Albrecht Glatzle, Ph.D., Agricultural Science, Edward C. Krug, Ph.D., Biogeochemistry
• C. Joseph Touhill, Ph.D., and Jay Lehr, Ph.D., Environmental Science
• Mark J. Perry, Ph.D., and Timothy D. Terrell, Ph.D., Economics
• Wayne Grudem, Ph.D., Joseph A. Pipa, Jr., Ph.D., and Jay Richards, Ph.D., Theology

Your endorsement will help many more Americans and their leaders see the need to challenge climate alarmism and its policies, in order to protect the poor and others in America and around the world. Thank you for your consideration, and God bless you.

In Christ,

E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., Founder & National Spokesman
The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
3712 Ringgold Rd. #355, Chattanooga, TN 37412
www.CornwallAlliance.org

An Open Letter on Climate Change
to the People, their Local Representatives,
the State Legislatures and Governors,
the Congress, and the President
of the United States of America

Human-induced climate change, also known as anthropogenic global warming (AGW), is real. Crucial questions facing the public and policymakers are its magnitude, its benefits and harms relative to the benefits and harms of the activities that drive it, and the benefits and harms of proposed responses to it.

As the American people and their political representatives formulate policy regarding AGW, they should consider the following:

Human Exceptionalism and Humanity’s Role in the Earth

Severe poverty, widespread hunger, rampant disease, and short life spans were the ordinary condition of humankind until the last two-and-a-half centuries. These tragedies are normal when human beings act and are treated as if they were mere animals, which need to submit to nature. The Judeo-Christian heritage (Genesis 1:28; 2:15), in agreement with common sense, teaches instead that human beings are exceptional, able to rule over nature, freeing ourselves from poverty and hunger to live long and healthy lives. Our rule over nature should express not the abusive rule of a tyrant but the loving and generous rule of God the Creator (Genesis 2:15). It should thus express itself by enhancing the fruitfulness, beauty, and safety of the earth (Genesis 1:1–31; 2:4–14), to the glory of God and the benefit of our neighbors (Matthew 22:36–38).

How Societies Overcome Poverty

Our Judeo-Christian moral tradition puts a high priority on protecting and helping the poor (Psalm 41:1; Galatians 2:10). It also teaches, along with economic history, that what delivers people from absolute material poverty is a combination of moral, social, political, scientific, and technological institutions. These include science and technology grounded on a view of the physical world as an ordered cosmos that rational creatures can understand and harness for human betterment; private property rights, entrepreneurship, and widespread trade, protected by the rule of law enforced by limited and responsive governments; and abundant, affordable, reliable energy generated from high-density, portable, constantly accessible sources. By replacing animal and human muscle and low-density energy sources like wood, dung, and other biofuels, and low-density, intermittent wind and solar, fossil and nuclear fuels have freed people from the basic tasks of survival to devote time and bodily energy to other occupations.

Empirical Evidence Suggests that Fossil Fuel Use Will Not Cause Catastrophic Warming

Many fear that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use endanger humanity and the environment because they lead to historically unprecedented, dangerous global warming. This has led many well-meaning people to call for reduced carbon dioxide emissions and hence reduced use of fossil fuels.

Computer climate models of the warming effect of enhanced atmospheric carbon dioxide are the basis for that fear. However, to validly inform policymaking, computer climate models must be validated by real-world observation, and they have not been. Over time, observed global average temperature (GAT) diverges increasingly from modeled GAT.

On average, models simulate more than twice the warming observed over the period during which anthropogenic warming is supposed to have been the greatest (about the last 35 years). None simulate the complete absence of observed warming over approximately the last 20 years at Earth’s surface and 17 to 27 years in the lower troposphere (where we live).¹ Over 95 percent simulate more warming than observed. These data confirm the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) observation that we are currently experiencing an absence of global warming long enough to be nearly impossible to reconcile with the models.

All of this makes it increasingly clear that the models greatly exaggerate the warming effect of carbon dioxide. The models’ errors are not random—as often above as below observed temperatures, and by similar magnitudes—but consistently above observed temperatures, making it apparent that the models are biased. The large and growing divergence between model simulations and observed GAT severely reduces the models’ credibility both for predicting future GAT and for informing policy.

The Judeo-Christian worldview provided the basis for scientific method by teaching that a rational God designed an ordered universe to be understood and controlled by rational persons made in His image (Genesis 1:26), which is why science as a systematic activity arose in medieval Europe. One of Christ’s apostles, Paul, even asserted the essence of science when he wrote, “Test all things, hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). In that spirit, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman explained “the key to science” this way:

In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is—if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.²

We would add to Feynman’s statement that it also makes no difference how many people agree with your guess. The scientific method never appeals to consensus. It demands that theories be tested by empirical observation. By that test, the models are wrong. They therefore provide no rational basis to forecast dangerous human-induced global warming and no rational basis for efforts to reduce warming, whether by restricting the use of fossil fuels or by any other means.

For the Foreseeable Future, Wind and Solar Energy Cannot Effectively Replace Fossil Fuel and Nuclear Energy

Fossil fuels, because of their lower costs and higher efficiency, account for over 85 percent of total global energy use, and nuclear energy for about 6 percent. Wind and solar energy, because of their higher costs and lower efficiency, account for only a few percent. Mandated substitution of low-density, intermittent energy sources like wind and solar for high-density, constant sources like fossil fuels, before the former technologies become economically competitive, would be catastrophic to the world’s poor. It would simultaneously raise the cost and reduce the reliability and availability of energy, especially electricity. This, in turn, would raise the cost of all other goods and services—especially food—since all require energy to produce and transport. It would destroy scores to hundreds of thousands of jobs in America and, by slowing economic growth, prevent the creation of millions more here and abroad, especially in the developing world. It would slow the rise of the poor out of poverty and threaten to return millions to it. And it would make electricity grids unstable, leading to more frequent and widespread, costly and often fatal, brownouts and blackouts—events mercifully rare in wealthy countries but all too familiar to billions of people living in countries without comprehensive, stable electric grids supplied by stable fossil or nuclear fuels.

The Poor Would Suffer Most from Attempts to Restrict Affordable Energy Use

The poor, whether in America or elsewhere, will suffer most from such policies. The world’s poorest—the 1.3 billion in developing countries who depend on wood and dried dung as primary cooking and heating fuels, smoke from which kills 4 million and temporarily debilitates hundreds of millions every year—will be condemned to more generations of poverty and its deadly consequences. Instead, they desperately need to replace such primitive and dirty fuels with electricity, the most affordable sources of which are fossil fuels.

The poor in the developed world, too, need more, and cheaper, electricity and other energy from fossil fuels. On average, they spend two or more times as much of their incomes on energy as the middle class. When governments mandate substitution of wind and solar for fossil fuels, the affected poor lose access to decent food, housing, education, health care, and more as their energy costs rise. Some freeze to death, as tens of thousands did in the United Kingdom in several recent winters due to that nation’s rush to substitute wind and solar for coal to generate electricity, because they are unable to pay their electricity bills and still buy enough food.

Affordable Energy Can Help Millions of the World’s Poor Emerge from Poverty

The same computer climate models that exaggerate the warming effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide nonetheless rightly simulate that greater economic development driven by growing use of fossil fuels will add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Consequently, the IPCC finds that the warmest scenarios for the future are also the richest, especially for those societies that are now the poorest.

The risks of poverty and misguided energy policies that would prolong it far outweigh the risks of climate change. Adequate wealth enables people to thrive in a wide array of climates, hot or cold, wet or dry. Poverty undermines human health and life even in the best of climates. It follows that because reducing fossil fuel use means reducing economic development, it also means condemning poor societies to remain poor, and requiring poor people of today to sacrifice for richer people of the future—a clear injustice.

Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Enhances Plant Growth

While adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere causes far less warming than previously feared, it has a positive effect on plant life. Scientifically understood, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but a gas harmless at twenty times its current atmospheric concentration and vital to all life on the earth.

With more carbon dioxide in the air, plants grow better in warmer and cooler temperatures and wetter and drier soils, make better use of soil nutrients, and resist diseases and pests better, increasing their fruit production, expanding their range, and greening the earth. This makes more food available to all other creatures, especially—as agricultural yields rise, making food more affordable—the world’s poor. Substituting wind, solar, and other low-density energy sources for coal, oil, and natural gas therefore hurts the poor not only by raising energy (and all other) prices but also by reducing food production. It also hurts the rest of life on earth by depriving it of the fertilizing effect of heightened carbon dioxide.

By using fossil fuels to generate energy to lift billions of God’s precious children out of poverty, we liberate from the tomb of the earth the carbon dioxide on which plants and therefore all the rest of life depend. This beautifully reveals the Creator’s wisdom and care for all of His creation—people, animals, plants, and the earth itself.

Summary and Call to Action

Climate change is overwhelmingly natural and cyclical; human contribution to it is slight and not dangerous; attempts to reduce human contribution by reducing CO2 emissions would cause more harm than good; and expanded use of fossil fuels is necessary to provide the abundant, affordable, reliable energy indispensable to lifting and keeping societies out of poverty. Although CO2 emissions warm the earth slightly, they do not warm it dangerously, and the benefits of fossil fuel use, especially in enabling whole societies to rise, and remain, out of poverty, far outweigh whatever risks might accompany their small contribution to global warming.

In light of these considerations,

1. We call on the American people to speak out against policies aimed at curbing global warming and make their views known to opinion leaders at local, state, and national levels.
2. We call on local, state, and federal policymakers to speak out against and refuse to endorse any global agreements that require such policies.
3. We call on the news media both to resist demands by climate alarmists to conform their coverage of climate science and policy to any consensus that human activity is causing dangerous climate change and to refuse to characterize those who challenge any such consensus on scientific grounds as “deniers,” a pejorative term incompatible with rational, open, respectful discussion of scientific issues.

It is both unwise and unjust to adopt policies, whether at local, state, or federal levels, let alone a global agreement, requiring reduced use of fossil fuels for energy. Such policies would condemn hundreds of millions of our fellow human beings to ongoing poverty, and put hundreds of millions more at risk of returning to the poverty from which they rose, while achieving no significant climate benefit. We respectfully appeal to you to reject them.

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[i] McKitrick, R.R., 2014, “HAC-Robust Measurement of the Duration of a Trendless Subsample in a Global Climate Time Series,” Open Journal of Statistics (4):527–535, online at http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojs.2014.47050.

[ii] Feynman, R., 1965, The Character of Physical Law (London: British Broadcasting Corporation), 4, emphasis added.