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Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom
Forbes and Newsmax columnist Larry Bell exposes powerful players and agendas behind political-science premised climate alarmism. Written for the layperson by an internationally distinguished expert on space and other extreme environments, he deftly deflates overheated myths and deliberate distortions with cool-headed facts, perceptive analysis and humor.
268 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 21, 2015
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20 people want to read
About the author
Larry Bell
13 booksLarry Bell is a professor of architecture and endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston, where he founded and directs the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA). SICSA is globally recognized as a leading academic organization for research, planning, and design of habitats in extreme environments. These include orbital and planetary space facilities, polar research stations, offshore and underwater accommodations, and shelters for populations impacted by natural and man-made disasters. SISCA sponsors the world's only graduate program in space architecture. A central priority is to explore and apply sustainable design and living approaches that can prevent unnecessary extreme conditions from occurring everywhere on our planet. In this regard, Larry believes that a "Spaceship Earth" perspective is entirely realistic. Municipalities, states, and nations are beginning to realize that we are all in that tiny fragile spacecraft together. All of us depend upon the same limited support systems and share a vital mission that will determine the future of all life.
Larry and SICSA are frequently featured in national and international broadcast media and print presentations. Examples include the History Channel (Modern Marvels Series), the Discovery Channel-Canada (Daily Planet Series), NASA Select, PBS, ABC TV: Australia, the BBC TV World Business Report, the National TV Network of Italy, the Swedish Educational Network, the NECT TV Broadcast Network-Japan, Radio Moscow, and National Geographic TV-UK. Larry has been interviewed and quoted in lead Time magazine and Christian Science Monitor features. He has also written dozens of technical conference papers and professional journal articles addressing a broad range of space and terrestrial design issues, as well as written about the environment, energy, and technology for Energy Tribune, and international magazine.
Larry has cofounded several high-tech companies. One, a commercial aerospace corporation, grew to more than eight thousand professionals through various mergers and acquisitions, and was purchased by General Dynamics. A spin-off of another company he cofounded designs and manufactures drive systems for hybrid-electric buses and other vehicles that are on the roads in several cities.
In addition to NASA headquarters achievements certificates awarded to SICSA, Larry has received important international honors. Among those are the Space Pioneer Award from the Kyushu Sanyu University in Japan, and two of the highest honors awarded by the Federation of Astronautics and Cosmonautics of the Former Soviet Union - the Yuri Gagarin Diploma and the Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Gold Medal - for his contributions to international space development. His name was placed on the Russian Rocket that launched the first crew to the International Space Station. Three major professional aerospace engineering societies in the NASA Johnson Space Center Texas region jointly selected him for the Technical Educator of the Year Award in 2003.
Larry and SICSA are frequently featured in national and international broadcast media and print presentations. Examples include the History Channel (Modern Marvels Series), the Discovery Channel-Canada (Daily Planet Series), NASA Select, PBS, ABC TV: Australia, the BBC TV World Business Report, the National TV Network of Italy, the Swedish Educational Network, the NECT TV Broadcast Network-Japan, Radio Moscow, and National Geographic TV-UK. Larry has been interviewed and quoted in lead Time magazine and Christian Science Monitor features. He has also written dozens of technical conference papers and professional journal articles addressing a broad range of space and terrestrial design issues, as well as written about the environment, energy, and technology for Energy Tribune, and international magazine.
Larry has cofounded several high-tech companies. One, a commercial aerospace corporation, grew to more than eight thousand professionals through various mergers and acquisitions, and was purchased by General Dynamics. A spin-off of another company he cofounded designs and manufactures drive systems for hybrid-electric buses and other vehicles that are on the roads in several cities.
In addition to NASA headquarters achievements certificates awarded to SICSA, Larry has received important international honors. Among those are the Space Pioneer Award from the Kyushu Sanyu University in Japan, and two of the highest honors awarded by the Federation of Astronautics and Cosmonautics of the Former Soviet Union - the Yuri Gagarin Diploma and the Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Gold Medal - for his contributions to international space development. His name was placed on the Russian Rocket that launched the first crew to the International Space Station. Three major professional aerospace engineering societies in the NASA Johnson Space Center Texas region jointly selected him for the Technical Educator of the Year Award in 2003.
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May 15, 2017
Recently, I read a report that a group of ex-NASA scientists and engineers have offered to provide guidance to the Trump administration for policy changes with regard to the Climate Change question and that their offer has been accepted. This team consists of ex-Johnson Space Center employees, who have all been part of the manned space missions since the inception of the Apollo program. They have the requisite expertise in physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology, biology, data analysis and interpretation, and complex systems modeling and have collective academic training and experience of 40 - 50 years, working in the space program. The key point is that they are strong critics of the Climate Change orthodoxy and the IPCC position. They are of the view that the scientific validity of the climate computer models is deep in question. Since all the policy prescriptions for the next hundred years by IPCC is based on these computer models, their validity should be questioned as well. The author of this book has the same beliefs and goes on to explore the issues in detail.
At a philosophical level, the author sees ‘Climate Change’ as consisting of all the unscientific characteristics of a modern-day religion. He has invoked some powerful words of Dr.Michael Crichton to drive home this point. Crichton said in 2003,
”Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths. There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment”.
The author makes the proposition that the whole issue is a conspiracy by environmentalists, left and liberal governments in the Western world, the EPA, establishment scientists and the renewable energy companies and their lobbies. I wouldn’t go into his arguments on conspiracy because it is always almost impossible to prove such things conclusively. Still, I think there is a lot of merit in the author’s other arguments to show that ‘the science is far from being settled’, as the Climate Change believers contend. Some of the arguments questioning the ‘CO2- global warming links’, the validity of the computer models, ice melt in the Arctic ocean, global sea-level rise and the contradictions and past failures of scientists in the prediction of humanity’s long-term future are all worth one’s attention. We shall look at some of them here.
Temperatures on Earth have risen and fallen without correlation to CO2 levels in the atmosphere. 600 million years ago, the atmosphere had 7000 ppm of CO2 (as against 400 ppm today). 480 million years ago, it was 4000 ppm and average temperatures were steady at 72°F. Then, the CO2 levels rose to 4500 ppm, which is 11 times that of today, but the temperatures dropped to the estimated average today, which is 57.2°F. Around 438 million years ago, CO2 levels plummeted to 3000 ppm but the temperatures rose to 72°F again. When modern life evolved 500 million years ago, CO2 levels were ten times as they are now. Still, life flourished. So, earth’s temperatures rise and fall regardless of atmospheric CO2 levels. Especially when 97% of CO2 emissions are due to natural causes, putting caps on man-made emissions is not the answer.
Climate computer models have failed in many areas. They failed in reproducing the observed temperatures since 1850. They could not duplicate temperatures observed in the Arctic. They are unable to predict El Niño events. Since greenhouse gases are supposed to cause warming, virtually all climate models predicted a hot spot in the atmosphere some 10 kms above the earth’s surface in the tropics. Weather balloons and satellites haven’t been able to find it since looking for it from 1979. They predicted continuous warming since the 1990s but we now know that there has been no increase in the Earth’s temperature since 1997 till 2014, when the book was written. The reasons advanced by the author for these failures are as follows:
The climate computer models, used by IPCC, are theoretical in nature and do not factor in many influences on Earth’s climate. In any case, most of the influences are poorly understood by the scientists even as of today. Scientists do not know enough about the complexities of the interaction between the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the biosphere and the cryosphere to model them without uncertainties or errors. Based on such limited understanding, one cannot predict the long-term future with sufficient degree of confidence. It is difficult to say whether it will be cooler or warmer in the long-term future. We cannot even say for sure whether ‘warmer’ or ‘cooler’ will be good or bad for humanity. In a similar vein, there is no valid scientific data to support the view that extreme weather events are any more frequent or severe now than at any other time since the Industrial revolution. Therefore, there is little truth in saying that we have the worst hurricanes or floods now compared to the past.
All the hue and cry now about Arctic ice disappearing could be much ado about nothing. In 1923, there was no ice in the Arctic up to 81 degrees latitude. Even then, there was the prediction of a substantial sea level rise due to the ice melt. It was predicted that most cities would become uninhabitable. However, none of that ever came to pass and the Arctic regained ice cover in the course of time. These warming trends could be indicative of relatively short-term weather pattern variability and not of long-term climatic changes.
The book is severe on the hubris of science to make long-term predictions for mankind’s future. James Hansen, who is a cheerleader for global warming now, had predicted in 1977 that fossil fuel dust could shield sunlight to the extent that global temperatures could drop by 6 degrees. Another scientist, Rasool, followed it up saying that it could trigger a new ice age. John Holdren, the Obama administration’s science czar recently, had written back in 1971 that a global cooling is imminent and this new ice age will result in widespread agricultural disaster. He also predicted in 1986 that CO2-induced famines could kill a billion people by 2020. Another prediction by him in 2006 was that sea levels could rise 13 feet by the end of the century. In reality, sea levels have risen 7 inches per century since the Little ice age ended in 1850. In a similar vein, Dr.Paul Ehrlich of Stanford, wrote in 1968, that the battle to feed all of humanity is over and that hundreds of millions will starve to death in the 1970s and 80s. He advised that India should be allowed to slip down the drain because its population growth is colossal, agriculture hopelessly antiquated and government incompetent.
Throughout the Earth’s history, its Climate has always changed, often dramatically and abruptly. So, changes in climate are very much in the essential nature of our planet and not something rare. The computer models of IPCC serve only a political agenda and not the scientific one. Since the recommendations of the climate alarmists are political and ideological and not scientific, they impose unwarranted economic burdens on poor nations which are ill-equipped to bear them. It is better to be more humble about the current limits of our knowledge and exercise restraint in forecasting probabilities for the real world for the next hundred years. This is the essential message of this book.
The book is a trenchant critique, quite polemical in content and covers the social, political and business implications of IPCC’s crusade. It does not contain any new and original research output, but mostly summarizes the vast amount of work by critics of the Climate Change Orthodoxy. Worth a read if one has an open mind on the issue.
At a philosophical level, the author sees ‘Climate Change’ as consisting of all the unscientific characteristics of a modern-day religion. He has invoked some powerful words of Dr.Michael Crichton to drive home this point. Crichton said in 2003,
”Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths. There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment”.
The author makes the proposition that the whole issue is a conspiracy by environmentalists, left and liberal governments in the Western world, the EPA, establishment scientists and the renewable energy companies and their lobbies. I wouldn’t go into his arguments on conspiracy because it is always almost impossible to prove such things conclusively. Still, I think there is a lot of merit in the author’s other arguments to show that ‘the science is far from being settled’, as the Climate Change believers contend. Some of the arguments questioning the ‘CO2- global warming links’, the validity of the computer models, ice melt in the Arctic ocean, global sea-level rise and the contradictions and past failures of scientists in the prediction of humanity’s long-term future are all worth one’s attention. We shall look at some of them here.
Temperatures on Earth have risen and fallen without correlation to CO2 levels in the atmosphere. 600 million years ago, the atmosphere had 7000 ppm of CO2 (as against 400 ppm today). 480 million years ago, it was 4000 ppm and average temperatures were steady at 72°F. Then, the CO2 levels rose to 4500 ppm, which is 11 times that of today, but the temperatures dropped to the estimated average today, which is 57.2°F. Around 438 million years ago, CO2 levels plummeted to 3000 ppm but the temperatures rose to 72°F again. When modern life evolved 500 million years ago, CO2 levels were ten times as they are now. Still, life flourished. So, earth’s temperatures rise and fall regardless of atmospheric CO2 levels. Especially when 97% of CO2 emissions are due to natural causes, putting caps on man-made emissions is not the answer.
Climate computer models have failed in many areas. They failed in reproducing the observed temperatures since 1850. They could not duplicate temperatures observed in the Arctic. They are unable to predict El Niño events. Since greenhouse gases are supposed to cause warming, virtually all climate models predicted a hot spot in the atmosphere some 10 kms above the earth’s surface in the tropics. Weather balloons and satellites haven’t been able to find it since looking for it from 1979. They predicted continuous warming since the 1990s but we now know that there has been no increase in the Earth’s temperature since 1997 till 2014, when the book was written. The reasons advanced by the author for these failures are as follows:
The climate computer models, used by IPCC, are theoretical in nature and do not factor in many influences on Earth’s climate. In any case, most of the influences are poorly understood by the scientists even as of today. Scientists do not know enough about the complexities of the interaction between the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the biosphere and the cryosphere to model them without uncertainties or errors. Based on such limited understanding, one cannot predict the long-term future with sufficient degree of confidence. It is difficult to say whether it will be cooler or warmer in the long-term future. We cannot even say for sure whether ‘warmer’ or ‘cooler’ will be good or bad for humanity. In a similar vein, there is no valid scientific data to support the view that extreme weather events are any more frequent or severe now than at any other time since the Industrial revolution. Therefore, there is little truth in saying that we have the worst hurricanes or floods now compared to the past.
All the hue and cry now about Arctic ice disappearing could be much ado about nothing. In 1923, there was no ice in the Arctic up to 81 degrees latitude. Even then, there was the prediction of a substantial sea level rise due to the ice melt. It was predicted that most cities would become uninhabitable. However, none of that ever came to pass and the Arctic regained ice cover in the course of time. These warming trends could be indicative of relatively short-term weather pattern variability and not of long-term climatic changes.
The book is severe on the hubris of science to make long-term predictions for mankind’s future. James Hansen, who is a cheerleader for global warming now, had predicted in 1977 that fossil fuel dust could shield sunlight to the extent that global temperatures could drop by 6 degrees. Another scientist, Rasool, followed it up saying that it could trigger a new ice age. John Holdren, the Obama administration’s science czar recently, had written back in 1971 that a global cooling is imminent and this new ice age will result in widespread agricultural disaster. He also predicted in 1986 that CO2-induced famines could kill a billion people by 2020. Another prediction by him in 2006 was that sea levels could rise 13 feet by the end of the century. In reality, sea levels have risen 7 inches per century since the Little ice age ended in 1850. In a similar vein, Dr.Paul Ehrlich of Stanford, wrote in 1968, that the battle to feed all of humanity is over and that hundreds of millions will starve to death in the 1970s and 80s. He advised that India should be allowed to slip down the drain because its population growth is colossal, agriculture hopelessly antiquated and government incompetent.
Throughout the Earth’s history, its Climate has always changed, often dramatically and abruptly. So, changes in climate are very much in the essential nature of our planet and not something rare. The computer models of IPCC serve only a political agenda and not the scientific one. Since the recommendations of the climate alarmists are political and ideological and not scientific, they impose unwarranted economic burdens on poor nations which are ill-equipped to bear them. It is better to be more humble about the current limits of our knowledge and exercise restraint in forecasting probabilities for the real world for the next hundred years. This is the essential message of this book.
The book is a trenchant critique, quite polemical in content and covers the social, political and business implications of IPCC’s crusade. It does not contain any new and original research output, but mostly summarizes the vast amount of work by critics of the Climate Change Orthodoxy. Worth a read if one has an open mind on the issue.
February 19, 2016
The real inconvenient truth
Anyone who seriously studies global warming, climate change, or whatever chicken little scare tactic title is being used this week will see it all for what it really is; A method to promote and usher-in a one-world communist government to be ruled by an elite set of the world's wealthiest. The IPCC is undoubtedly corrupt with an agenda to bring down western civilization. This book does a fine job of illustrating just how corrupt the IPCC is, the fabricated "science" being touted as genuine, and the players behind this epic swindle. This is a great introductory read that will compel the reader to further research the great hoax.
Anyone who seriously studies global warming, climate change, or whatever chicken little scare tactic title is being used this week will see it all for what it really is; A method to promote and usher-in a one-world communist government to be ruled by an elite set of the world's wealthiest. The IPCC is undoubtedly corrupt with an agenda to bring down western civilization. This book does a fine job of illustrating just how corrupt the IPCC is, the fabricated "science" being touted as genuine, and the players behind this epic swindle. This is a great introductory read that will compel the reader to further research the great hoax.
November 14, 2017
Interesting book. The most fascinating things are the quotes from various parties in the Climate Industry. People are making a ton of money and gaining political by keeping the climate debate raging. Some interesting things in the book such as Enron's role in getting CO2 classified as a pollutant. Clearly they did it for the money. So it looks like much about what's going on now is more about political science than climate science. It's a good read.
December 21, 2015
Clear Proof that Climate Change is a Huge Hoax
Brilliantly exposes the pseudoscience and socialist manipulation behind the biggest load of rubbish since everyone believed the Earth was flat.
Brilliantly exposes the pseudoscience and socialist manipulation behind the biggest load of rubbish since everyone believed the Earth was flat.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews