Highlighted Article: The Imaginary Climate Crisis: How can we Change the Message? A talk by Richard Lindzen

From: Clintel.org

Date: April 5, 2021

The Imaginary Climate Crisis: How can we Change the Message? A talk by Richard Lindzen

"The Irish Climate Science Forum (ICSF) in cooperation with CLINTEL hosted a lecture by the world-renowned climate scientist Richard Lindzen. The online lecture was attended by around 200 people from around the world (including a group of climate activists who disturbed the talk. The recorded talk can be viewed here.

Professor Lindzen kindly agreed that his written speech could be posted here at CLINTEL. It follows below.

Richard S. Lindzen, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences, MIT

For about 33 years, many of us have been battling against climate hysteria. We have correctly noted

The exaggerated sensitivity,
The role of other processes and natural internal variability,
The inconsistency with the paleoclimate record,
The absence of evidence for increased extremes, hurricanes, etc. and so on.

We have also pointed out the very real benefits of CO2 and even of modest warming. And, as concerns government policies, we have been pretty ineffective. Indeed our efforts have done little other than to show (incorrectly) that we take the threat scenario seriously. In this talk, I want to make a tentative analysis of our failure.

In punching away at the clear shortcomings of the narrative of climate alarm, we have, perhaps, missed the most serious shortcoming: namely, that the whole narrative is pretty absurd. Of course, many people (though by no means all) have great difficulty entertaining this possibility. They can’t believe that something so absurd could gain such universal acceptance. Consider the following situation. Your physician declares that your complete physical will consist in simply taking your temperature. This would immediately suggest something wrong with your physician. He further claims that if your temperature is 37.3C rather than between 36.1C and 37.2C you must be put on life support. Now you know he is certifiably insane. The same situation for climate (a comparably complex system with a much more poorly defined index, globally averaged temperature anomaly) is considered ‘settled science.’"...

The Imaginary Climate Crisis: How can we Change the Message? A talk by Richard Lindzen