Four-part Series: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4
Burke, VA, November 18, 2015
Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ—Friend of sinners, Friend of the poor.
We’re writing to ask you to join us in doing something that will take courage, so we want you to be well informed, first about who we are, and second about the subject on which we’re asking you to take a stand.
Along with nearly 400 others—including many climate scientists, physicists, mathematicians, economists specializing in environment and development, and theologians, philosophers, and ethicists—we have all signed 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, the full text of which is at the end of this message.
We are Rev. Charles Clough (meteorologist and pastor), Dr. Neil Frank (meteorologist), Dr. Wayne Grudem (theologian and economist), Dr. Jeffrey Haymond (economist), Dr. Tracy C. Miller (economist), Dr. Roy W. Spencer (meteorologist/climatologist), and Dr. David F. Wells (theologian).
Why have we signed the Open Letter? Our reasons, like those of other signers, arise from our understanding of science, economics, theology, ethics, and public policy. What follows summarizes them.
The UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aimed to halve the number of people living below $1.25 per day by 2015. I thank the Lord that that target appears to have been met.
How? By economic growth, primarily in China.
Despite this, many people continue to live in abject poverty. One-quarter to one-third of the world’s population —1.75 billion to 2.33 billion people—lacked access to electricity, and all but three million of those live outside the rich, developed countries. Worse yet, some 2.7 billion still cook their food on inefficient stoves that use dung, crop residues, and wood. It is estimated that 2 to 4 million people die prematurely each year because of health problems associated with biomass-burning stoves. Collection of biomass for burning occupies much time (mainly of women and children) that could otherwise be used to produce wealth; robs cropland of important nutrients that can only partly be replaced by artificial fertilizers from offsite; and causes deforestation.
The MDGs do not talk about economic development, but economic growth is the only way for whole societies to rise out of poverty. And economic development cannot occur without abundant, affordable, reliable, non-intermittent, instant-on-demand energy.
However, many climate scientists, such as those leading the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), argue that we need to mitigate global warming because otherwise it will be the poor who will be hurt the most. Apparently these scientists do not understand their own models. They do not appear to understand that economic models of the energy sector are used to determine the carbon dioxide (CO2) emission scenarios that drive the climate models.
This is an extraordinarily important point to understand, so it bears some explanation.
The energy sector models the climate scientists use to drive their emission scenarios, which in turn drive their CO2 concentration projections, which in turn drive their temperature projections, which in turn drive their impact projections, are themselves based on assumptions regarding population and economic growth, and, importantly, the convergence of per capita incomes between rich and poor countries.
In short, greater economic development for the world’s poorer countries leads to greater CO2 emissions and, according to the models, greater warming and greater impacts.
Reduce that economic growth, and you reduce the emissions, the temperatures, and the impacts.
In other words, the IPCC’s emission scenarios are driven by assumptions regarding the rate at which poverty is reduced or eliminated globally. Projections from climate models are based on the rates of poverty reduction, with the highest (‘worst’) temperature projections resulting when the poorest people in the world increase their incomes from $246 (measured in constant 1990 USD) to $49,000 per year (approximately equal to U.S. GDP per capita in 2014) by the end of the 21st century. The lowest (‘best’) temperature projections result when per capita income of the poorest people rises to only $3,850 annually, which though some 15 times more than now still does not ensure levels of health, long life, and other benefits people in the developed world have taken for granted for a generation or more.
There are huge benefits to health and every other measure one cares to choose when one overcomes poverty. For example, “Superstorm” Sandy resulted in the deaths of some 120 people in the wealthy United States; if it had struck a very poor country (as did the typhoon that struck the Philippines in December 2012), it would have led to a death toll measured in the thousands. Rich people can cope not only with natural catastrophes but also with different climates—from the Arctic Circle to the Equator, from Death Valley to the Amazon rainforest—better than poor people. Adequate wealth more than outweighs any damage from climate change.
It follows that what the advocates of AGW mitigation prescribe, because mitigation can only be achieved to the extent that economic growth is reduced, is to reduce global warming by trapping the world’s poor in their poverty and all the suffering that entails.
Given the underlying foundations of the climate predictions, the only realistic policy, if one is truly interested in the wellbeing of poor people, is to permit them to get rich, even if that means allowing the climate to warm—and it is unlikely that it would warm enough to pose danger, especially danger as great as what comes from poverty.
The underlying assumption in the IPCC climate models leads to the following conclusion: Rising CO2 emissions are, for the most part, a side effect of alleviating global poverty. To mitigate climate change one needs to force the vast majority of humankind to continue living in abject poverty.
Preventing climate change does not help the poor, it dooms them! Poverty simply kills more people than climate. Consequently, it would be immoral to deny the poor the ability to develop by curtailing their access to abundant, affordable, reliable energy, all in pursuit of an environmental objective that only interests one billion rich people.
There are sufficient fossil fuels, at low cost, to drive economic development of the least-developed nations. The problem is not lack of resources; it is the obstacles that both rich and poor countries put in the way of exploration, development, transportation, and distribution of energy. Rich countries block exploitation of all sorts of natural resources on the grounds of their potential adverse environmental impacts, while poor governance, corruption, and failure of the rule of law hinder all aspects of the energy supply chain, resulting in huge waste.
On the one hand, through the United Nations, the rich countries have agreed to pursue policies of economic development in poor countries so that their standards of living converge to those of the developed world. But on the other hand, they have also agreed, via the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to de-carbonize the global economy. These objectives are incompatible. China and India recognize this all too well, which is why they refuse to allow rich countries to seduce them into limiting their greenhouse gas emissions.
The United Nations is confronted with a huge dilemma: We can pursue the rich world’s environmental climate objective only by denying developing countries the cheap energy needed for economic development—and that, we believe, would be immoral.
You can learn much more about the science, economics, and ethics of climate change and climate policy in the paper A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor 2014: The Case against Harmful Climate Policies Gets Stronger, 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, University of Victoria.
Would you please join us in endorsing the Open Letter below? It conveys this message in a powerful way, a message that the American people and their leaders—and people around the world—need to hear.
Sincerely in Christ,
Rev. Charles Clough, M.S. (Atmospheric Science), Th.M. (Dallas Theological Seminary), Retired Chief US Army Atmospheric Effects Team, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, Retired Lt. Col. USAF Reserve Weather Officer, President Biblical Framework Ministries
Dr. Neil Frank, Ph.D. (Meteorology), Former Director, National Hurricane Center; retired Chief Meteorologist, KHOU-TV, Houston,Tx; Fulshear, TX
Dr. Wayne Grudem, Ph.D. (New Testament), Research Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies, Phoenix Seminary, Scottsdale, AZ
Dr. Jeffrey Haymond, Ph.D. (Economics), M.S. (Mechanical Engineering), Dean and Associate Professor, School of Business Administration, Cedarville University, Cedarville, OH, since 2010; previously 29 years in the Air Force with assignments in engineering, satellite control, and launch operations, taught at the Air Force Academy, and an Air Force Fellow at The Brookings Institution
Dr. Tracy C. Miller, Ph.D. (Economics), Associate Professor of Economics, Grove City College, Grove City, PA; author of working papers published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; fellow for economic theory and policy with The Center for Vision & Values
Dr. Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D. (Meteorology), Principal Research Scientist in Climatology, University of Alabama, Huntsville, since 2001; U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (the source of satellite global temperature data) flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite; former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center; recipient of NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for global temperature monitoring work with satellites
Dr. David Wells, Ph.D. (Theology), Distinguished Research Professor, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, MA
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,
- 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.
- We call on local, state, and federal policymakers to speak out against and refuse to endorse any global agreements that require such policies.
- 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.
1McKitrick, 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.
2Feynman, R., 1965, The Character of Physical Law (London: British Broadcasting Corporation), 4, emphasis added.
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