More than 1,600 leading scientists from around the world have signed a “World Climate Declaration” stating there is “no climate emergency.” Calling themselves the Global Climate Intelligence Group, scientists from around the world, including Nobel Laureate Professor John F. Clauser from the United States and Nobel Laureate Professor Ivar Giaever from Norway, signed onto a letter claiming there is no climate emergency in contrast to a narrative portrayed by popular mainstream media. Climatologists, meteorologists, geologists, engineers, and physicists from a wide range of Universities, private, public, and government entities, including NASA, the USDA, and the U.S. Navy, signed onto the document which can be read in its entirety here: There is No Climate Emergency.
“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures,” the letter said.
The letter has 6 key points: natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming, warming is far slower than predicted, climate policy relies on inadequate models, CO2 is a plant food and is the basis of all life on Earth and not a pollutant, global warming has not increased natural disasters, and climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities.
Signatories to the letter say, “There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent.” But they add, “there is ample evidence that CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly.”
“There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050,” the authors wrote. “If better approaches emerge, and they certainly will, we have ample time to reflect and re-adapt. The aim of global policy should be ‘prosperity for all’ by providing reliable and affordable energy at all times. In a prosperous society men and women are well educated, birthrates are low and people care about their environment.”
The declaration is coming on the heels of many world leaders threatening to declare some form of climate emergency.
In the United States, some legislators have been urging President Joe Biden to declare a Climate Emergency. Last week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre touted the president’s accomplishments on climate change and said he has “called” climate change an emergency “since day one.”
“This is a president has — who has taken the climate crisis very seriously,” Jean-Pierre said. “He has called it an emergency since day one, saying that it is climate — climate change is one of the four crisis that he — crises that we had to deal with coming in,” she said.
Some cities have already declared a Climate Emergency. In Portland, Oregon, the city declared an emergency to show their commitment to using a new climate justice and equity-focused approach that centers Black, Indigenous, other communities of color and youth from those communities in the next chapter of climate action planning and implementation.
Portland and other cities and countries like it have embraced a “Net Zero by 2050” philosophy, which means cutting greenhouse emissions to as close to zero as possible, with any remaining emissions re-absorbed from the atmosphere, by oceans and forests as examples.
While many believe eliminating greenhouse emissions to near zero by 2050 would stop global warming, NASA says such a move won’t impact global climate. “Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, global warming would continue to happen for at least several more decades, if not centuries,” NASA wrote in their climate FAQ.
