Nobel Physicists - 281

You may have seen this last week in the WNBPA. Let's delve a little deeper. First, the title needs to be corrected. Two Nobel Prize winners, John Clauser and Ivan Glaever of Norway, signed the "No Climate Emergency" declaration. John Clauser is an 81-year-old physicist whose field is "foundation of quantum mechanics." Ivan Glaever is a 93-year-old physicist whose fields are "solid-state physics and biophysics." Their work in physics is brilliant, but they have no track record in climate science. While these two are renowned physicists, their "opinions" about climate change within the climate science community are considered ignorant. I will come back to this again. 

 

To better understand the "No Climate Emergency," declaration, let's examine who else signed it. DeSmog* examined the 1609 signatories to the declaration and found it includes a commercial fisherman, a retired chemist, a cardiologist, an air-conditioning engineer, and several retired geologists. Of the 800 "scientists, scholars, and professionals" that signed the declaration, the signatories have "conducted little to no climate research."

 

Politifact also examined the declaration for veracity and referred to it as "Mostly False," noting, "Several signatories were in fields including engineering, medicine, law, economics and psychology. Some did not list any background in science. Some were deceased." 

 

 In September 2022, Agence France-Presse** analyzed the previous version of the “No Climate Emergency” document published in 2020, when it had 1,200 signatories. Many signatories were scientists of various kinds, including 40 geophysicists and 130 geologists. Then, only 10 of the signatories described themselves as climatologists or climate scientists. About 200 signatories were engineers. Other professionals were mathematicians, medical doctors, and agricultural scientists. Six signatories were deceased.

 

Several signatories had links, either mentioned on the list or documented elsewhere, to U.S. climate-skeptic free-market groups with ties to the oil industry, like the Heartland Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Cato Institute. According to donor and tax documents published by Greenpeace, these groups each received money from oil giant ExxonMobil. 

 

While the number of signatories in the declaration who identified themselves as climate experts is slim, even if all the signatories were legitimate, 1609 signatories worldwide are miniscule. I would never submit support for a petition making a bold claim with such a meagerly low number of professionals in the field I was challenging. 

 

In 2015, a NOAA atmospheric scientist and I sent letters to the editor of the Marquette Mining Journal regarding another misleading declaration. Our LTEs shined the light of truth on a ridiculous declaration called the Oregon Petition. It claimed to have 32,000 legitimate signatures. On examination, it had signatures from only 39 climate scientists. 

 

In 2015, I wrote that we have a choice. We can create an opinion based on a single questionable document signed primarily by people with little knowledge, or we can search out what the most reputable science organizations tell us.

 

That was my goal when I became interested in climate change. It took me a few months, but I came away confident my newly formed opinion was accurate. Here is the shortlist of the science organizations I examined: The National Academy of Science, the Royal Society, the American Meteorological Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the American Institute of Physics, the American Chemistry Society, the American Geophysical Union, the World Meteorological Organization, the Royal Academy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which takes scientific input from all National Academies worldwide. 

These organizations inform us climate change is real, caused primarily by humans, and dangerous. 

 

But do not take my word for it. Send them through computer search engines. When were they established? Who founded them? Who do they represent? Who funds them? What do their position papers say about climate change?

 

The organization that compiled the "No Climate Emergency" is Climate Intelligence (CINTEL). It was founded by former Shell Oil engineer Guus Berkhout in 2019. Since its inception, the goal of Cintel has been to create doubt in the general public's mind about our scientists. One of the ways is to put together bogus declarations. To make up for the fact that Guss cannot convince many currently practicing climate scientists, at least none of any stature, to sign his petition, he recruited two politically motivated Nobel Prize-winning physicists. 

 

It is easy for us to fall for this. We have the incorrect belief that there is uniformity in scientific understanding. There are an incredible number of different fields. It is even more diverse than medical doctors. Do you visit a foot doctor (podiatrist) to combat severe sinusitis? Even with a stuffy nose, you may be starting to smell something foul.

 

I like how Former New Scientist correspondent Peter Hadfield explained that scientists are only experts on some topics. His quote regarding the discredited Oregon Petition: 

 

"In between Aaagard and Zylkowski, the first and last names on the petition, are an assortment of metallurgists, botanists, agronomists, organic chemists and so on. ... The vast majority of scientists who signed the petition have never studied climatology and don't do any research into it. It doesn't matter if you're a Ph.D. A Ph.D. in metallurgy just makes you better at metallurgy. It does not transform you into some kind of expert in paleoclimatology... So the petition's suggestion that everyone with a degree in metallurgy or geophysics knows a lot about climate change, or is familiar with all the research that's been done, is patent crap." 

 

This applies to the two physicists who signed the Clintel sponsored Declaration.  

 

In a democracy, it is a citizen's duty to search for the truth and defend it. If the citizens cannot, the nation will fail. When Clintel used two physicist’s signatures to strengthen their public appearance, they revealed the declaration as a weak and shallow effort at deception. 

 

*DeSmog was formed in 2006 to address misinformation eroding public understanding.

**Agence France-Presse is a French international news agency headquartered in Paris, France. Founded in 1835 as Havas, it is the world's oldest news agency. With 2,400 employees of 100 nationalities, AFP has an editorial presence in 260 cities across 151 countries.