James Poirier
Name: James Poirier
Country: United States
What is your background?
I am a retired meteorologist for the U.S. DOC/NOAA/National Weather Service, working from 1979 to 2012. I received a B.S. degree from Cook College, Rutgers University, New Brunswick in 1978, and I pursued graduate studies in Atmospheric Science at SUNY Albany, in 1979, and also at Rutgers University in Environmental Sciences in 1995/96. My duty stations in the NWS included Memphis, New York and Mount Holly (New Jersey). In addition to working as a shift forecaster tasked with issuing routine weather forecasts as well as warnings of severe weather (Journeyman/General Forecaster, Lead/Senior Forecaster), I also had ancillary duties: Fire Weather Forecaster; Warnings and Preparedness Meteorologist; Technical Program Leader; Assistant NEXRAD Program Leader; Winter Weather Program Leader; and Assistant Outreach Program Leader.
Since when and why are you interested in climate change?
I have been intrigued by the issue of climate change since seeing climate model output from a former Rutgers classmate who was then working at the U.S. DOC/NOAA/GFDL in Plainsboro in 1987, which showed enhanced warming at the Earth’s poles through 2100 based on CO2 doubling.
How did your views on climate change evolve?
My views on climate change have become more sceptical that greenhouse gases have any outsized effect on the climate since I began looking at academic research papers concerned with cyclic activity, as I’ve been aware of cycles in weather and climate since early in my education. In fact, I’ve personally researched historical north eastern U.S. winter weather to see if there was any cyclicity that could be discerned.
Is climate change a big issue in your country and how do you notice this?
Yes indeed, of course the subject of climate change has become a huge issue in the United States, at least in certain quarters such as academia, the media, and government. Polls, however, seem to indicate that the public at large does not regard human-caused climate change as a large issue. My former employer has brought a large lens to this issue by issuing various products to the media, and thus by extension, to the public. NWS/NOAA adjustments of past weather data (especially Surface Air Temperature, SAT), whether justifiable or not, have greatly contributed to perceptions of negative climate change effects. In addition, US-based scientific journals have published works from academic institutions that heavily favour, or even exclusively offer, human-caused activities as the major contribution to negative changes in climate, and even catastrophic consequences, in not just the near future but even present times.
How would climate policy ideally look like in your view?
Since human-induced climate change is primarily through Urban Heat Island (UHI) effects, and a minor contribution to overwhelmingly natural cyclical effects (solar, oceanic, and atmospheric), adaptation over time to any changes that the world’s climate brings about would seem to me, or to any reasonable person, to be the prudent course of action.
What is your motivation to sign the CLINTEL World Climate Declaration?
The absolute waste of trillions upon trillions of dollars, euro’s, yuan, and rupees over the next several decades that would result from the rapid, unnecessary, and exceedingly harmful transition of energy sources from reliable and affordable fossil fuels to unreliable and overly-costly intermittent sources of energy (e.g. solar, wind) is a mistake of historic proportions, which must be stopped. At best, the world would undergo a ‘Great Reset’ which would see a wrenching degradation of living standards and loss of freedoms. At worst, the loss and tragic misuse of these resources will be disastrous for hundreds of millions and possibly billions of people who would go hungry and possibly starve, and/or die from cold over the next century. It is an unassailable fact that power generation from petroleum, natural gas, coal, and fission-nuclear energy have led to the greatest growth of civilization ever witnessed. And, since there is no climate emergency or crisis, and no danger of a runaway global warming, the modest warming of our world since the end of the Little Ice Age has been a tremendous boon to the biosphere. The appropriation of a non-existent climate crisis for political purposes by those who wish to change governmental systems, is one of the most outrageous attempts to attain control over people that the world has ever been witness to.
What question did we forget?
The question that must be asked is: what needs to be done to defuse the fictional climate crisis, such that it cannot be used to retard global standards of living, and so that a possible nefarious and malicious appropriation and consolidation of political power cannot be effected?
My answer to the above question is: those of us who believe there is no climate crisis need to amalgamate. We need to oppose the tsunami of junk science that permeates academia and the media. We need to contact (mail/e-mail, telephone) those institutions which relay and espouse this incorrect information. We also need to physically display our opposition to these egregiously incorrect ideas by attending conferences and meetings, and facing our political and gatekeeper institutions to voice our scientifically valid conclusions.