Skepticism about climate change has resurfaced, as some experts claim the exact causes of global warming remain unclear and that the policies addressing it are motivated more by money than by science.
Richard Lindzen, Professor Emeritus of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has spent decades studying atmospheric science. He told the Daily Mail that the public hysteria surrounding global warming isn’t actually based on realistic data.
Climate change is the term used to describe Earth’s warming, mainly as a result of human activity, such as burning coal, oil and gas.
Scientists and climate activists have warned that this extra warmth could cause more extreme storms, rising seas that flood cities, and hotter summers that make it harder to grow food worldwide – all within the next 25 years.
However, Lindzen said the financial implications of controlling the multi-trillion-dollar energy industry have been the true motivation for politicians to support flawed research that argues small temperature increases will lead to immediate disasters.
‘The fact that you have a multi-trillion dollar industry and you have an opportunity to completely overturn it had a great appeal to a lot of politicians,’ he explained. ‘They go wild on it. Another half degree and we’re doomed, and so on. The public knows this is nonsense.’
Lindzen explained the basic math behind what he called ‘climate alarm.’ He said the emphasis on lowering specific emissions like carbon dioxide (CO₂) simply doesn’t produce the worldwide temperature changes advocates say it will.
The scientist noted that the planet’s temperature has fluctuated significantly throughout recorded history and science still can’t definitively prove what the exact cause of both extreme warming and cooling events has been.
‘We don’t understand the glaciation that occurred in the 15th century. You know, so what was going on then? Inadequate CO₂?’ Lindzen said of the event in the Northern Hemisphere known as the Little Ice Age.
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