Scientists, Policy Experts Support Trump’s Climate Security Committee

March 19, 2019 (EIRNS)—A letter supporting the President’s Commission on Climate Security was released on Monday, March 18, with the signatures of over 100 scientists, activists, and policy experts.

The letter opens: “The undersigned organizations and individuals write to express our strong support for the proposed President’s Commission on Climate Security. It is our understanding that this commission, which is being planned and would be directed by Dr. William Happer of the National Security Council staff, is currently being considered by your senior White House staff and relevant Cabinet secretaries and agency heads.”

“In our view,” they write,

“an independent review of these reports is long overdue. Serious problems and shortcomings have been raised repeatedly in the past by highly-qualified scientists, only to be ignored or dismissed by the federal agencies in charge of producing the reports. Among major issues that have been raised and that we hope the commission will scrutinize: the models used have assumed climate sensitivities to CO2 concentrations significantly higher than recent research warrants; the models used have predicted much more warming than has actually occurred; ... the positive impacts of warming have been ignored or minimized.... An underlying issue that we hope the commission will also address is the fact that so many of the scientific claims made in these reports and by many climate scientists are not falsifiable, that is, they cannot be tested by the scientific method.”

Considering the costs of trillions of dollars associated with proposed energy policies, a review of scientific conclusions is in order. They note that “major engineering projects are regularly subjected to the most rigorous and exhaustive adversarial review. We suggest that climate science requires at least the same level of scrutiny as the engineering employed in building a bridge or a new airplane.”

The letter denounces the attacks on Dr. William Happer, whom the signers know “to be a man of high capabilities, high achievements, and the highest integrity,” and concludes “we urge you to create by Executive Order a President’s Commission on Climate Security.”