Ms. Ursula von der Leyen
President, European Commission
Wetstraat 200 1049 Brussels

19 October 2020

Madame President,

Apocalypse? NO!

Fridays for Future recently sent a list of demands to EU leaders about global warming. In response, more than 900 clear-thinking scientists and researchers, members of CLINTEL, join their president, Professor Guus Berkhout, and me in sending this letter to remind EU governments and officials that, if they reject nuclear energy, there is no proper replacement for coal, oil and gas today. Your “energy transition” is a false prospectus.

Unlike Fridays for Future, I have not invited mere celebrities to side with us and support our cause: scientists should be heeded first. Let us be honest: what does the average star of stage and screen know about the theoretical assumptions in climate models?

Stop corrupting the goodwill and hope of the people by pressuring us with panic. Stop pretending that modest natural changes in the weather constitute an “emergency”. Stop putting the blame on the miners, refiners, motor manufacturers and electricity generators whose contributions to the improvement of life on Earth have been immeasurably net-beneficial.

The democratic, free-market civilization of the West flourishes because we uphold liberty as our highest virtue. It is a sacred accomplishment for which we ought to be grateful. We should not destroy the fruits of our philosophical, political and technological progress.

Here, then, are our requests. Unlike the campaigners, we do not make “demands”: coercion is the instrument of the totalitarian, while our objective is stimulating creativity by freedom! These are the steps essential to preserving our achievements and advancing our civilization:

  1. Stop worshipping the voices of frantic children whom you have indoctrinated into a state of eco-depression. Innocent souls radicalized and turned into terrified puppets lack the rationality, education or scientific knowledge to evaluate the real impact of “climate change”.
  2. Stop wasting outrageous amounts of taxpayers’ money on “investments” and overt or concealed subsidies that irresponsibly replace affordable base-load coal, oil and gas – in the future replaced by nuclear energy – with costly, unreliable, intermittent and environmentally-damaging “renewables”. Those who label their activism as “progressive” promote windmills – 14th-century technology to address a 21st-century non-problem. If alternative energy sources were a viable, free-market option for those to whom this regressive experiment appeals, they would and should sink or swim in open and free, unfettered and unsubsidized competition with fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Furthermore, let us not forget the hypocrisy of “environmentalists” who conceal the destructive impact of windmills on the eco-system. Fine windmill corporations heavily for each bird, bee or bat they kill per megawatt-hour generated, and heavily punish solar-panel corporations for exploiting slave and child labour in the lithium and cobalt mines. You ought to know that the environmental footprint of “renewables” is crippling.
  3. Stop incentivizing the spread of pseudo-scientific propaganda among children who are viciously misled into imagining that somewhat warmer weather constitutes a “crisis” that will destroy their future. The degree to which the temperature may increase determines the urgency of our concern. But when did the self-proclaimed “experts” ever specifically state what the ideal climate looks like? What is the optimal global mean surface temperature? Climate scientists have not asked, let alone answered, that central question at all. Without knowing what the ideal global temperature is, on what rational basis do they maintain that a little warming compared with today is a dangerous thing?
  4. Stop abusing the young generation on a global scale. Children are our future. It is a felony that ought to be pursued in the criminal courts to deceive them into promoting their own self-destruction. This deeply anti-human, suicidal narrative spits in the face of an ambitious generation of potential academics, creators and, most importantly, future parents. Stop corrupting their curriculum with false climate theories and false energy concepts. After the coronavirus misery, let us give them hope for a better future, not for a worse one.
  5. Stop creating ever-larger bureaucracies, such as those which pointlessly but expensively count what you miscall “carbon” emissions. The demonization of what you call “carbon” and what science calls carbon dioxide is a preposterous, unscientific, unnecessary and inefficient pursuit. Instead, count the difference between the absurdly large warming that your useless climate models are predicting and the modest and net-harmless warming in the real world. Ask why that difference exists. Have climate scientists, perhaps, made a mistake?
  6. Stop imposing futile “carbon budgets” on us and instead cut the price of electricity by 80% to make it accessible to everyone again. Your redundant climate policies have hiked the cost of electrical power many fold compared with what it would be without them. Even though you pride yourselves on your adherence to scientific research, you are obviously unaware of the difference between carbon, an element in the periodic table, and carbon dioxide, a harmless trace gas and plant food essential to all life on Earth. Is more carbon dioxide perhaps beneficial for a greener Earth? Is reducing greenhouse-gas emissions perhaps a big mistake?
  7. Stop making momentous policy decisions based on the bogus claims of an academic establishment that has sold out the principles of the Enlightenment for reasons of political expediency, social convenience and, above all, financial profit. Hand in hand with the censorship-infected news media that attempt to alarm the public, academe has monopolized the scientific sphere while independent, highly-educated sceptics are silenced and even expelled. That is why one glaringly obvious key scientific question is hardly ever discussed in public: how much of the total warming before 1850, the natural greenhouse effect, was not caused by feedback response to greenhouse gases but by the fact – which climate scientists’ calculations overlook – that the Sun produces a far larger feedback response? See the attached one-page brief, which shows just how large an error of physics climatology has perpetrated. Without that error, they would not have tried to pretend that warmer weather worldwide constitutes an “emergency”. We attach a one-page brief explaining and quantifying the error. If you disagree with it, ask your scientists to reply to it, and copy their reply to us.
  8. Assess fairly the real, life-giving economic and social welfare benefits of coal, oil and gas as well as the putative harms. Evaluate your globalist climate policies with a clear eye. In the past 15 years, despite trillions spent, the share of global energy consumption represented by coal, oil and gas has hardly changed at all. It was 88%, and is now 87%. You claim a transition but in reality, there is no question about a transition. One reason is that the Paris climate agreement exempts 90% of global energy consumption from all restrictions, placing an unjust, unreasonable and pointless burden on the remaining 10%. We attach a one-page brief on these stark economic facts. Again, if you disagree, tell us why.

We do not want you to inspire panic. We do not ask you to believe. We want you to think.

Yours faithfully,

Naomi Seibt                                                                                     Guus Berkhout

Attached:
One-page brief on the extravagant cost and minuscule return from climate policies
One-page brief on climatology’s large exaggeration of greenhouse-gas feedback
Full letter and attachments