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Yesterday, the New York Times and other media outlets repeated the falsehood that I am a climate “denier”.
I usually ignore such potentially libelous statements, otherwise I’d be defending myself every week.
So, to set the record straight, here’s what I believe… I’ll let you decide whether I’m a climate “denier”.
- I believe the climate system has warmed (we produce one of the global datasets that shows just that, which is widely used in the climate community), and that CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning contributes to that warming. I’ve said this for many years.
- I believe future warming from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would be somewhere in the range of 1.5 to 2 deg. C, which is actually within the range of expected warming the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has advanced for 30 years now. (It could be less than this, but we simply don’t know).
As people who frequent this blog well know, I have held these views for many years. I routinely take other skeptics to task for believing such things as “there is no greenhouse effect”, or “it’s impossible for a cold atmosphere to make the Earth’s surface even warmer”.
So, Why Is Roy Spencer Called a Climate Denier?
In the case of global warming, alarmists apparently insist that you must believe that global warming is a “crisis” or an “emergency”, or else you will be thrown under the bus.
They claim we must embrace expensive (and ineffective) sources of alternative energy. But, like Bjorn Lomborg (who actually believes the alarmist predictions of future warming) and many others, I believe it will be much worse for humanity if we abandon fossil fuels before alternative technologies are abundant, affordable, and practical.
Human flourishing requires access to affordable energy, which is required for almost all human activities. It is immoral to deny fossil-fueled electricity to the world’s poor, and its replacement in even the richest countries still destroys prosperity, especially for the poor.
For believing these things, I am declared evil, apparently on par with a Holocaust denier (thus the rhetoric).
Here’s some of that rhetoric from the Daily Kos yesterday, which covered the firing of White House skeptical scientists Dr. David Legates and Dr. Ryan Maue (emphasis added):
“The bundle of boring and basic denial myths compiled to appease the deadly denial of the Trump administration was published first, it appears at least, by U-Alabama Huntsville’s Dr. Roy Spencer, who contributed a chapter. His post about the flyers was then bounced around the deniersphere, where the same audiences who gobble up unhinged conspiracies about voter fraud or satan-worshipping Democrats can eagerly read the climate denial versions of those violent fantasies.”
This is apparently what happens when you take frustrated creative writers and give them jobs as journalists.
Given recent political events it appears there is now a renewed efforts to have dissenting voices silenced through “cancel culture”, removal of websites, public ridicule, censorship, etc.
Unity in our country will, apparently, be achieved, because once dissenting voices are silenced, “unity” is all that is left.
