Source: Fox Business
URL: http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4097599281001/political-assault-on-climate-skeptics
Date: 06/03/2015
Event: Richard Lindzen on anti-CO2 measures: "the whole thing is fairly absurd"
Credit: Fox Business
People:
Stuart Varney: Back to the assault on climate change sceptics. Listen to this quote - it's from the Wall Street Journal op-ed written by MIT Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen. Here's the quote: "Individuals and organizations highly vested in disaster scenarios have relentlessly attacked scientists and others who do not share their beliefs. The attacks have taken a threatening turn". Richard Lindzen, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT, joins us now. Professor, it's great to have you with us. In the interests of saving time and getting on with this, I want you to tell our audience, real fast, how were you - I've used the word "persecuted" - how were you persecuted?
Richard Lindzen: Well, I don't know if "persecuted" is the right word, there's - "harrassment" is more like it -
Stuart Varney: Grijalva - what did he want from you?
Richard Lindzen: Well, I mean, a ton of information, almost all of which is in the public domain. So he was clearly trying to just make work for people and make them feel it's inconvenient to buck his view on this. I think, in fact, the professional societies acted appropriately, given that he shows people, simply on the basis of their scientific position on this subject, it was inappropriate, and I think widely recognised.
Stuart Varney: I just got this in, this just crossed on our wire services, it's from Vice President Biden, telling the Huffington Post - quote - this is from Vice President Biden - "denying climate change is like denying gravity". Your comment, Professor.
Richard Lindzen: He's absolutely right. I mean, climate has been changing for four and a half billion years, and on all time scales.
Stuart Varney: Yeah, but what he means by climate change is gloom and doom. I mean, he thinks of it - you know, I mean -
Richard Lindzen: Well, this is the problem. In other words, these guys think saying climate changes - or it gets warmer, it gets colder, a few tenths of a degree - should be taken as evidence that the end of the world is coming. And it completely ignores the fact that until this hysteria, climate scientists used to refer to the warm periods in our history as optimum. So here we're, you know, demonising a chemical - a molecule, essential to life, CO2 - we're declaring doom, based on things we used to like, and somehow we're supposed to overturn our whole economy in order to deal with this purported disaster.
Stuart Varney: Professor, hold on for a second, I just want you to listen to this exchange - it's between Jeff Sessions, in Congress, and EPA Administrator Gena McCarthy.
Jeff Sessions: Would you acknowledge that over the last 18 years, that the increase in temperature has been very low and that it is well below - a matter of fact, 90% below - most of the environmental models that showed how fast temperature would increase?
Gina McCarthy: I do not know what the models actually are predicting, that you are referring to...
Stuart Varney: Well, there were several occasions in the exchange there, where the Administrator of the EPA simply couldn't - would not - answer questions about whether there's more hurricanes or more droughts - she would not answer. What's your take on this?
Richard Lindzen: Well, you know, obviously I don't think it matters to Mrs McCarthy - she has a political aim, she has her marching orders and they're the orders, regardless of what the underlying science is.
Stuart Varney: Do you think that we should be taking the measures which we are taking against carbon emissions? Should we be doing this?
Richard Lindzen: Obviously, I don't think so, for a variety of reasons. No matter what you believe about climate, none of them will have any impact on climate. They do make energy more expensive, less available, less useful. They do hurt the poor, they raise prices. It's hard to see what the upside is, except for the people who get the subsidies for renewables or for big farmer - farms getting use of ethanol mandates, which make your cars less efficient and burn more gasoline. I mean, it's - the whole thing is fairly absurd. But you know, there's so much bucks - so much money changing hands.
Stuart Varney: We're going to leave it right there, with your expression - "the whole thing is fairly absurd". And you are an Emeritus Professor from MIT, an atmospheric scientist. We'll take that. Professor, thank you very much indeed for joining us. Come again soon, okay?
Richard Lindzen: Thanks - bye bye.