William Happer: “In climate policy they use the reversed Robin Hood strategy”

The eminent American physicist William Happer was invited by CLINTEL to visit The Netherlands after he spoke at the excellent EIKE conference in Germany in November. He gave a very interesting one hour talk in Amsterdam. The following day he was interviewed by Marcel Crok of CLINTEL for an online platform called Café Weltschmerz.

In the interview they talk about the essence of the climate discussion, the greenhouse effect. Happer shows what he calls his key graph, a figure that will never be shown by the IPCC. Why not? Because the graph shows that even the doubling of CO2 has only a marginal effect on the Earthly greenhouse. Happer noted that IPCC doesn’t challenge these number, they simply prefer not to show them.

Happer, emeritus professor at Princeton University, also explains that methane and nitrous oxide are, on a per molecule basis, more potent than CO2. But their increase in the atmosphere is so much smaller (compared to the increase in CO2) that in practice they only have a negligble effect on the climate.

Happer estimates that a doubling of CO2 – for example from 400 ppm now to 800 ppm – will generate a warming of about one degree Celsius. That is considerably less than the three or four degrees that come out of the climate models of the IPCC. Happer explains where the differences come from.

That single degree of warming is no problem whatsoever according to Happer. Indeed, he assumes the positive effects of CO2 on plants will dominate: higher crop yields and a greener Earth. For the last thousands of years, plants lived in a CO2 famine.

Under Bush Sr. Happer was responsible for a 3.5 billion dollar research budget in the fields of high energy physiscs, energy and climate. He became suspicious when climate researchers were hesitant to come by in Washington and talk openly about their research. Vice president Al Gore fired him for his climate views. More recent he also served under president Trump. He tried to convince the Trump administration to set up a Red Team Blue Team analysis of climate. In the interview he explains why it didn’t happen.

Happer describes the current climate policies as a reverse Robin Hood strategy: you steal from the poor and give it to the rich, which can then by Tesla’s. He is a registered Democrat since the 60-ies and still hopes the Democrats will see the light and will change their disastrous climate policies.

We greatly enjoyed Happer’s visit to The Netherlands and hope he will stay healthy for a long time so he can visit us again in the future.

The full interview can be watched here.