Opinion

The Energy Secretary Is Right On Climate Change

REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Tom Harris Executive Director, Climate Science Coalition
Font Size:

Energy Secretary Rick Perry did a remarkable thing last week: he expressed skepticism about the causes of climate change in a TV interview and, even after howls of disapproval from environmentalists and the press, he did it again a few days later before a major Senate committee. Red GREEN and Blue, “a part of the Important Media network of blogs,” wondered, “Rick Perry on climate change – is he crazy, or is he playing Trump?

In reality, Perry’s candor is a refreshing change that politicians from across the political spectrum should strive to emulate. Here is what happened.

Appearing on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on June 19, Perry was asked by anchor Joe Kernen, “do you believe CO2 is primary control knob for the temperature of the Earth and for climate?”

Perry responded:

No, most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in. The fact is this shouldn’t be a debate about, ‘Is the climate changing, is man having an effect on it?’ Yeah, we are. The question should be just how much, and what are the policy changes that we need to make to effect that? This science, this idea that science is just absolutely settled and if you don’t believe it’s settled then you’re somehow another Neanderthal, that is so inappropriate from my perspective. I think if you’re going to be a wise, intellectually-engaged person, being a skeptic about some of these issues is quite alright.

Calling Perry’s answer, “pretty good,” Kernen laughed, “You’ve really got to be careful. I don’t know what the actual penalty is for not believing…It’s heretical.”

That is an understatement. Climate activists and many media were outraged by the Secretary’s answer. The Houston Chronicle reported, “Perry’s comments drew attacks from environmental groups, which called the former Texas governor a ‘climate denier.’”

“Rick Perry’s outrageous comments are the latest indication that this administration will do everything in its power to put polluter profits ahead of science and public health,” said Sierra Club Climate Policy Director Liz Perera.

“Perry has the science exactly backward,” complained Shaye Wolf, climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Far from being climate change’s key cause, the world’s oceans are actually another victim of greenhouse pollution,” Wolf asserted in The Washington Post.

In a story headlined, “Rick Perry Denies Climate Change Role of CO2,” InsideClimate News labeled the energy secretary, “the second of President Donald Trump’s cabinet members to go on television to publicly dismiss the importance of CO2 in global warming, ignoring the scientific evidence.”

Dozens of others reported the same. For example:

EcoWatch’s Climate Nexus headlined their June 20 story, “Head of Energy Dept. Denies CO2 Is Main Cause of Climate Change.”

Labeling Perry’s comments “anti-science,” Mashable, a prominent on line media company, entitled their coverage, “Rick Perry just said CO2 isn’t the leading driver of climate change, even though it is.”

In “CNBC allows Rick Perry to spout nonsense on live TV without any fact checking,” Dr. Joe Romm, wrote, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry denied basic climate science Monday.”

Writing in the Houston Chronicle, Washington Energy Correspondent, James Osborne condemned Perry for questioning “one of the fundamental tenets of climate change.”

On and on went the attacks from Associated Press, Salon magazine, Toronto Star, Market Watch, etc. Media outlets that reported uncritically on Perry’s comments were few and far between.

At least two open letters were sent to Perry about his supposed mistakes:

In their June 21, 2017 open letter to the Secretary, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) lectured Perry: “it is critically important that you understand that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the primary cause [of recent global warming]… Skepticism that fails to account for evidence is no virtue.”

Congressman Earl Blumenauer (OR-03) sent Perry “educational materials outlining the basic established science behind climate change,” telling the Secretary, “You too need to read the enclosed reports.”

Most politicians would have responded to the onslaught by quickly issuing a mea culpa press release, pledging allegiance to political correctness on climate change and then never again questioning the United Nations’ position on global warming. But not Perry. Only three days later, in response to intense questioning by Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) at the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee hearing about President Trump’s 2018 energy department budget request, Perry asked, “Don’t you think it’s OK to have this conversation about the science of climate change…What’s wrong with being a skeptic about something that we’re talking about that’s going to have a massive impact on the American economy?”

Predictably, media howled again.

Yet Perry’s points about climate change, in both the TV interview and his Senate testimony, are justified. For example, being a skeptic about such a complex and uncertain field, especially one with expensive policy ramifications, is indeed “quite alright.” Besides being necessary for science to advance, skepticism is the duty of our elected officials when activists demand the allocation of vast sums of public money to their causes.

Perry was also correct when he said on CNBC that it is “inappropriate” to label people Neanderthals because they do not agree with the global warming science promoted by the U.N. Dozens of open letters and other public lists show that many experts do not support the hypothesis that we face a man-made climate crisis. The Climate Scientists’ Register (http://tinyurl.com/2es3rqx) assembled by the International Climate Science Coalition is perhaps the simplest document of its kind. In only a few days in 2010, over 100 experts from 22 countries agreed to the following statement:

We, the undersigned, having assessed the relevant scientific evidence, do not find convincing support for the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing, or will in the foreseeable future cause, dangerous global warming.

And referring to the hypothesis that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are accelerating global warming as “one of the fundamental tenets of climate change,” as did the Chronicle’s Osborne, makes no sense. The UN’s point of view on climate change is not an irrefutable truth, like the tenets of a religion, or at least it shouldn’t be. Scientific hypotheses, even scientific theories, are merely the educated opinions of experts based on their interpretations of observations and so can be, and often are, wrong. Philosophers since ancient times have understood that observations cannot prove truth. This is especially the case in climate science, a field that University of Western Ontario applied mathematician Dr. Chris Essex calls “one of the most challenging open problems in modern science.”

Concerning the open letter to Perry from the AMS, Dr. Tim Ball, an environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba, responded: “These are completely false statements. The only evidence in support of the CO2 as the primary cause of global warming are the outputs of the computer models used by the U.N’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which have been wrong in every forecast or scenario they produced since 1990. If your forecast is wrong then your science is wrong. Even strong advocates of these models, including Michael Mann, concede that they have failed by consistently overestimating their forecasts and by failing to predict the 20+ years with no global warming.”

When it comes to climate change, tolerance of alternative perspectives, a much-vaunted hallmark of liberalism, vanishes. They should welcome, not condemn, questioning the status quo. Effective science and public policy-making needs skeptical enquiry, not mere acquiescence to fashionable thinking. Perry’s approach is a breath of fresh air. Bravo, Mr. Secretary!

Tom Harris is executive director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel