Trump's Potential Science Adviser Will Happer: Carbon Dioxide Demonized Just Like "Poor Jews Under Hitler"

authordefault
on

President Donald Trump is on the look-out for a chief science adviser, but who toย choose?

If his most recent appointments are any indication of the future, then, on climate change at least, Americans should expect the president to tap a climate scienceย denier.

So it is little surprise then that one personย reportedly in the running is 77-year-old Princeton atomic physicist William Happer.

Happer has for more than a decade rejected all the credible evidence on the risks of human-caused climate change. He is often described as an โ€œexpertโ€ on climate change, yet his record of publishing research on the issue in peer-reviewed scientific journals is almostย non-existent.

So who isย he?

Happerโ€™s expertise is in atomic physics. He served in the George H.W. Bush administration as a scienceย director.

But since the late 90s, Happer has become known for his outspoken and often offensive views on climate change and climate scientists, whom he has described as being โ€œmore like aย cult.โ€

โ€œTheyโ€™re glassy-eyed and they chant. It will potentially harm the image of all science,โ€ he told The Guardian.

He has also claimed that the โ€œdemonizationโ€ of carbon dioxide is like the โ€œdemonization of poor Jews underย Hitler.โ€

In recent times Happer has been associating with conspiracy theorists and other oddballs as he rolls out the same talking points that have been his staple forย years.ย 

Since the mid-2000s, Happer was involved with the George C. Marshall Institute, a think tank that concentrated heavily on pushing claims that global warming concerns had been over-hyped. Happer was a former chair of the institute โ€” one of many to take cash from oil giantย ExxonMobil.

Happer is now the president of the CO2 Coalition โ€” a group created after the Marshall Institute folded โ€” with the tagline that carbon dioxide (CO2) is โ€œvital forย life.โ€ย 

In 2015ย Happer was caught in a sting by Greenpeace activistsย when he offered to write a report on the benefits of carbon dioxide for a fake fossil fuel client. He offered to find a way to hide the funder of the report by asking for the payment to go to the CO2ย Coalition.

Happerโ€™s position is shown to be wrong by all the credible evidence and scientific institutions across the world. His claimsย can also be easilyย checked.

So what are hisย claims?

In December 2016, Happer repeated his long-debunked talking points in an interview with Stefan Molyneux (himself an odd character who has had to fend off accusations that he is running a cult-like group through his FreeDomainRadioย enterprise).

In the interview, Happer talks about a geological period known as the Phanerozoic eon which started about 540 million years ago and stretches to theย present.

Happer says that over this periodย CO2 has been much higher, suggesting that everything was all fine and, by implication, it would be fine again if levels of carbon dioxide in the air got up to 1,000 parts per million orย more.

Dr. Nerilie Abram, a climate scientist at Australian National University specializing in understanding the ancient past, toldย me:

The Phanerozoic covers an enormous amount of Earthโ€™s history โ€” the last 541 million years. If we were to think about that time period as a single day, complex life first evolved at midnight and the age of the dinosaurs (252-66 million years ago) lasted from just after midday (12:49 p.m.) through to 9:04 p.m. Modern humans only evolved at 11:59 p.m. (0.2 million yearsย ago).

So even though the Earth was able to support the slow evolution of life when it had carbon dioxide in the parts per thousand level, sea levels more than 100 meters higher than today, and land masses that were completely different to the countries we currently live in, that planet was certainly nothing like the one that humans have ever livedย upon.

Happer also tells Molyneux: โ€œThere was no danger from ocean acidification โ€ฆ all of the other scare stories you read about. They just didnโ€™tย happen.โ€

That depends if, when you say there was โ€œno danger from ocean acidification,โ€ย you donโ€™t think the extinction of 90 percent of all marine species is anything to write homeย about.ย 

Research published in the journal Science in 2015 found that ocean acidification from massive injections of carbon into the atmosphere was the cause of a โ€œmass dyingโ€ about 250 million years ago which, according to Happer, โ€œjust didnโ€™tย happen.โ€

Happer also ignores how warmer conditions in the ancient past have generally coincided with the melting and collapse of ice sheets at the poles, pushing sea levels roughly 30 feet (ten meters) or more higher than they areย today.

Many of Happerโ€™s arguments ignore how quickly the climate is changing now compared to theย past.

โ€œThe speed of current climate change doesnโ€™t have an analogue in Earthโ€™s past,โ€ saysย Abram.

โ€œWe are able to directly measure the carbon dioxide level of Earthโ€™s atmosphere over the last 800,000 years because of the bubbles of ancient air trapped within Antarctic ice cores. The fastest natural changes in the past occurred as the world warmed out of the ice ages, and saw CO2 levels increase by around 35 parts per million over 1,000 years. So far this century we have added an equivalent amount of CO2 to Earthโ€™s atmosphere โ€” 35 parts per million โ€” in just the last 17ย years.โ€

What else does Happer getย wrong?

He claims a well-established climate mechanism, known as the water vapor feedback, โ€œdoes not seem to workโ€ and that this means future warming might not be so bad. Water vapor feedback is the mechanism where adding extra carbon dioxide causes warming, which then enables the atmosphere to hold more water vapor โ€” another key greenhouse gas โ€” that in turn causes moreย warming.

โ€œThereโ€™s time enough [gone by] to see if it works and it doesnโ€™t seem to work,โ€ saysย Happer.

Unfortunately for Happer, the opposite seems to be true. As challenging as it is to measure, scientists have been using instruments on satellites, weather balloons, and aircraft and have found that water vapor is indeed increasing.

Perhaps Happer would know this if he had been hanging out with leading scientists at genuine academic gatherings, rather thanย spending time with some genuineย oddballs.

As I wrote on The Guardian, in December 2016 Happer was a speaker at a gathering in Arizona organized by G. Edward Griffin and his Freedom Force Internationalย organization.

Griffin is a serial conspiracy theorist who thinks the HIV virus is not real, that there is some sort of international plot to spray the planet with chemicals (thatโ€™s right, heโ€™s a chemtrailer), and that climate change is aย hoax.

Will any of this convince Donald Trump to look elsewhere for his advice onย science?

Given Trump is reportedly taking tips from another conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, the likely answer to that question would beย โ€œno.โ€

Main image: Will Happer at the 2016 FreedomFest in Las Vegas, Nevada. Credit: Gage Skidmore, CC BYSAย 2.0

Related Posts

on

Victoria Hewson called the 2050 ambition a โ€œhuge own goalโ€ while working for a Tufton Street think tank.

Victoria Hewson called the 2050 ambition a โ€œhuge own goalโ€ while working for a Tufton Street think tank.
on

Ahead of a city council vote, Resource Works launched an influence campaign with stock submissions for restaurant owners, hospitality workers, and residents.

Ahead of a city council vote, Resource Works launched an influence campaign with stock submissions for restaurant owners, hospitality workers, and residents.
on

Ahead of the November 29 election, dairy producers tell Irish government to step off the โ€œtreadmillโ€ of unsustainable milk production โ€“ and share a more holistic vision.

Ahead of the November 29 election, dairy producers tell Irish government to step off the โ€œtreadmillโ€ of unsustainable milk production โ€“ and share a more holistic vision.
on

The head of the CO2 Coalition tells DeSmog that Wright agrees carbon dioxide is โ€œnot the demon molecule, itโ€™s the miracle molecule.โ€

The head of the CO2 Coalition tells DeSmog that Wright agrees carbon dioxide is โ€œnot the demon molecule, itโ€™s the miracle molecule.โ€