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Global Warming: Fact or Fiction? Featuring Physicists Willie Soon and Elliott Bloom

Independent Institute · Youtube · 1 HN comments
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Youtube Summary
Is global warming real? Have any such predictions been established scientifically? Would massive “carbon” taxes and other controls put America and the world—especially the poor—at great risk?

At this special event, geoscientist and astrophysicist Willie Soon separates fact from fiction in the global warming debate. He explains why the forecasts from CO2 climate models have been so wrong—and why solar influences on clouds, oceans, and wind drive climate change, not CO2 emissions. Stanford University physicist Elliott Bloom then comments.

“The whole point of science is to question accepted dogmas. For that reason, I respect Willie Soon as a good scientist and a courageous citizen.”
—Freeman J. Dyson, Professor Emeritus of Physics, Institute for Advanced Study; Templeton Prize Laureate

“I am writing to express my deep admiration and respect for Dr. Willie Soon, a fine astrophysicist and human being.... As Willie has shown in many ways, observational facts do not fit the CO2 dogma, and an enormous amount of evidence points to the Sun as a much more important driver of climate.... Willie was right—whatever the cause of changing temperature, the main driver cannot be the concentration of atmospheric CO2.”
—William Happer, Chairman, Presidential Committee on Climate Security; Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics Emeritus, Princeton University; Member, National Academy of Sciences

Willie Soon is a geophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He received his Ph.D. (with distinction) in aeronautical engineering from the University of Southern California, and he has been Astronomer at the Mount Wilson Observatory; Senior Scientist at the George C. Marshall Institute; Senior Visiting Fellow at the State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science at Xiamen University; and Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Putra Malaysia. The author of 90 scientific papers, he has IEEE received the Nuclear & Plasma Sciences Society Award, Rockwell Dennis Hunt Award, Smithsonian Institution Award, Courage in Defense of Science Award, Petr Beckmann Award for Courage and Achievement in Defense of Scientific Truth and Freedom, and Frederick Seitz Memorial Award.
http://www.independent.org/aboutus/person_detail.asp?id=4035

Elliott D. Bloom is Professor Emeritus in the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) at Stanford University and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He was a member of the SLAC team with Jerome I. Friedman, Henry W. Kendall and Richard E. Taylor who received the Nobel Prize in Physics. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology, he is the author of numerous scientific papers, and he is the recipient of the Senior Scientist Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
http://www.independent.org/aboutus/person_detail.asp?id=4033

For further information on and to order copies of the Independent Institute book, "Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Debate," by geophysicist S. Fred Singer, please go here:
http://www.independent.org/store/book.asp?id=42

The Independent Institute is a non-profit, non-partisan, public-policy research and educational organization that shapes ideas into profound and lasting impact. The mission of Independent is to boldly advance peaceful, prosperous, and free societies grounded in a commitment to human worth and dignity. Applying independent thinking to issues that matter, the Independent Institute creates transformational ideas for today’s most pressing social and economic challenges. The results of this work are published as books, the quarterly journal, "The Independent Review," and other publications and form the basis for numerous conference and media programs. By connecting these ideas with other organizations and networks, Independent seeks to inspire action that can unleash an era of unparalleled human flourishing at home and around the globe.

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For reference, here's the spreadsheet with the screenshotted link [0], I've copy-pasted the climate change deniers and corresponding sources below.

Anastasios Tsonis https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-who-deny-climate-...

Elliot D. Bloom https://www.independent.org/aboutus/person_detail.asp?id=403...

Patrick J. Michaels https://climateinvestigations.org/patrick-michaels-climate-d...

S. Stanley Young https://errorstatistics.com/2014/12/13/s-stanley-young-are-t...

David Randall https://undark.org/2018/04/18/national-association-of-schola...

David Theroux https://blog.independent.org/2012/10/27/its-official-no-glob...

Peter Wood https://undark.org/2018/04/18/national-association-of-schola...

Overall, I'm mostly underwhelmed by the evidence he presents. Anastasios probably falls into the climate change denier camp, though I know him from my time in UWM's math department and I believe he's a genuine skeptic acting in good faith. On the other hand, I turned up an awful lot of unscientific nonsense peddled by Elliot Bloom in my short time looking into him [1].

I haven't looked into the rest other than by following links above, which again are off-putting but not completely damning. I will add that the National Association of Scholars does appear to publish a lot of articles on climate change by clear climate change deniers and authors with significant links to the oil and gas industry [2], including:

- Leo Goldstein, whose website makes such claims as "CO2 in a greenhouse does NOT warm it. 'Greenhouse gas' is a misnomer.", "Higher CO2 concentrations in atmosphere do warm the surface, but only insignificantly.", and "Of all potential global dangers conceivably related to human activity, nothing has been studied better and found more harmless than anthropogenic CO2 release." [3]

- Edward Reid, who has at least 26 years of experience in the natural gas industry [4] and "fifty years of experience in the energy industry".

- David Legates, who according to Wikipedia "is a senior scientist of the Marshall Institute, a research fellow with the Independent Institute, and an adjunct scholar of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, all of which have received funding from ExxonMobil." [5]

[0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/136FNLtJzACc6_JbbOxjy...

[1] For example, the graphic at 1:17:08 of https://youtu.be/1zrejG-WI3U?t=4628 is based on the same data as the graphic in http://archive.is/qlqA8, which is debunked here https://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/02/roy-spencers-latest-dece... and in the follow-up linked at the top of that page

[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20180921133012/https://www.nas.or...

[3] https://defyccc.com/summary-of-science/

[4] https://www.therightinsight.org/Ed-Reid

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Legates

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