ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (March 18, 2019) – The Heartland Institute is among 37 organizations and 112 individuals who signed a letter urging President Trump to strongly support the work of Dr. William Happer and his proposed President’s Commission on Climate Security. The panel would conduct an independent review of the science that underpins official government climate reports, such as the latest National Climate Assessment.
Read a PDF of the letter here.
“An unbiased, independent examination of the science of climate change by an official government body is long overdue,” said Tim Huelskamp, Ph.D., president of The Heartland Institute. “It’s only necessary because government bureaucrats have put ideology above science and excluded the wealth of data and research that undermines their narrative that human activity is the main driver of catastrophic climate change.”
“The Heartland Institute is proud to be a part of a large coalition of organizations, scientists, and climate experts urging President Trump to resist the cries of alarmists inside and outside government and allow the esteemed Dr. Will Happer to convene this commission and report back the results to the American people,” Huelskamp said.
The Heartland Institute, known globally as a leading think tank promoting scientific research showing that human activity is not causing a climate crisis, worked closely with the Competitive Enterprise Institute to collect signatures for the letter to President Trump. Dr. Happer, a world-renowned physicist, has spoken at two of Heartland’s 12 International Conferences on Climate Change, including the 2015 conference when he received the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award.
Heartland also this month released a new Policy Brief titled “Global Warming Energy Restrictions Threaten U.S. National Security,” which supports the reasons why Dr. Happer is working on this project from his post in the National Security Council. Heartland also last year released a detailed critique of the 2017 “Climate Science Special Report” by the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
The letter to President Trump states, in part:
“In our view, an independent review of these reports is long overdue. Serious problems and shortcomings have been raised repeatedly in the past by highly-qualified scientists only to be ignored or dismissed by the federal agencies in charge of producing the reports. Among major issues that have been raised and that we hope the commission will scrutinize: the models used have assumed climate sensitivities to CO2 concentrations significantly higher than recent research warrants; the models used have predicted much more warming than has actually occurred; predictions of the negative impacts of global warming have been made based on implausible high-end emissions scenarios; the positive impacts of warming have been ignored or minimized; and surface temperature data sets have been manipulated to show more rapid warming than has actually occurred. An underlying issue that we hope the commission will also address is the fact that so many of the scientific claims made in these reports and by many climate scientists are not falsifiable, that is, they cannot be tested by the scientific method.
“The conclusions and predictions made by these reports are the basis for proposed energy policies that could cost trillions of dollars in less than a decade and tens of trillions of dollars over several decades. Given the magnitude of the potential costs involved, we think that taking the insular processes of official, consensus science on trust, as has been the case for the past three decades, is negligent and imprudent. In contrast, major engineering projects are regularly subjected to the most rigorous and exhaustive adversarial review. We suggest that climate science requires at least the same level of scrutiny as the engineering employed in building a bridge or a new airplane.
“We note that defenders of the climate consensus have already mounted a public campaign against the proposed commission. We find this opposition curious. If the defenders are confident that the science contained in official reports is robust, then they should welcome a review that would finally put to rest the doubts that have been raised. On the other hand, their opposition could be taken as evidence that the scientific basis of the climate consensus is in fact highly suspect and cannot withstand critical review.
“We further note that opponents of the proposed commission have already stooped to making personal attacks on Dr. Happer. Many signers of this letter know Dr. Happer personally and all are familiar with his scientific career. We know him to be a man of high capabilities, high achievements, and the highest integrity.
To book Heartland Institute President Tim Huelskamp on your program, or to speak to another Heartland expert on climate and energy policy, please contact Director of Communications Jim Lakely at [email protected] or call/text his cell at 312-731-9364.
Jim Lakely is the Vice President and Director of Communications of The Heartland Institute.
Tim Huelskamp served as president of The Heartland Institute from 2017 to 2019.
