A world renowned astrophysicist says the IPCC’s climate warnings cannot be taken seriously and that climate models use tricks to put the blame on CO2
Pierre Heumann at Weltwoche has a feature story on renowned Israeli astrophysicist, Nir Shaviv, professor at the Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Hebrew University astrophysicist, Prof. Nir Shaviv. Image cropped from Science Bits.
Over the years the extraordinarily talented astrophysicist has fallen out of favor among the academic world because he holds a very different view on what drives the earth’s climate. Weltwoche’s Heumann describes how “the academic world treats him like a leper with whom all contact should be avoided” and that his applications for publications or research funding have regularly receive rejections.
But the astrophysicist, accustomed to viewing things on very long-term timescales, is confident history will prove him correct, in large part because the science behind CO2 as a climate driver is so shoddy.
Forbes/Bloomberg cave to political correctness
Earlier Bloomberg refused to publish an interview with Shaviv about the causes of climate change. Then Forbes magazine followed, caving in to political correctness, and removed its interview on climate change with the Israeli scientist from its site,
Gifted scientist
Shaviv already as a young teenager was a “highly gifted” academic.
“At the age of 13 he was already studying at the Technion in Haifa, one of the world’s leading technical universities, which is comparable to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or ETH Zurich,” reports Heumann. His parents were environmentalists and lived in a solar home designed by his architect mother.
Troubles began after following science, not politics
The academic political struggles for Shaviv, began when “He could prove that much of the global warming was not the result of civilization.”
In Shaviv’s view, man-made CO2 plays only a minor role in climate change and the majority of global warming is due to solar activity and so there is “no reason to panic.”
“Cosmic rays effect climate on time scales ranging from 100s of millions of years, to the 11-year solar cycle,” he writes at his site Science Bits.
Gore’s “misleading”, IPCC models fail
“Al Gore is misleading,” he tells Weltwoche. “Most climate scientists don’t want to admit that the sun’s activities have a major impact on the climate.” The thrust is to pin the blame on CO2.
Naïve science
When it comes to the climate models, the mild mannered professor says it’s naïve to believe the climate is influenced by only one factor. The models ignore solar activity and use tricks to put the blame on CO2. “The climate models have not passed the reality test,” Shaviv told Weltwoche.
“Governments have invested billions of dollars, euros and formerly Deutschmarks in climate research over 40 years – and now they have no more clarity than when they started their research.” Shaviv says. He studies have shown that climate sensitivity is “at the lower end of the range, between 1.5 and two degrees.”
According to Shaviv, one only needs to look at the earth’s history to see that today’s climate change is not unusual. The IPCC even mentioned this in its first two reports. “But from 2001 onwards, this reference suddenly disappeared.”
The IPCC only wants to support support its pre-established narrative, says Shaviv. This means scientists with a different view are automatically shut out by the government-funded IPCC.
Shaviv doesn’t take IPCC’s warnings seriously
The University of Jerusalem professor also tells Weltwoche that he believes the warming “will be modest” and that he “doesn’t take the IPCC’s latest warning of melting ice caps and rising sea levels seriously either.”
He believes society ought to move away from fossil fuels, but to do it rationally. He supports nuclear energy: “It is cheap, clean and has a small ecological footprint.”
Consensus means nothing
“The fact that he is in the minority with his climate opinion does not bother him scientifically.” reports Weltwoche. “Science is not a democracy: ‘Even if one hundred per cent of all scientists hold a certain thesis, one person who has good evidence for the counter-thesis can still be right.'”
Though the Weltwoche report is from October, 2019, it is as relevant as ever today. (What’s 15 months in terms of astrophysics?)
Must….fight…..global…..warming…..
https://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2021/01/Screen-Shot-2021-01-28-at-8.20.13-PM.png?w=1160&ssl=1
…..gasp.
I seem to recall that there was a hearing attended by Nir Shaviv in the German Bundestag, to do with the Climate Change Conference in Katowice. The rude treatment he was subjected to along with the pseudoscientific diatribes put forward by his opponents were rather disappointing, but perhaps not unexpected.
Regarding the use of fossil fuels. They will be needed for several more decades and there is a moral, economic and social case to support this. Technology has come a long way which means that we are able to utilise the waste streams which arise from this. One interesting example of this is the use of coal ash and sludge as ingredients in brick making.
I too support nuclear energy and believe that it’s a crucial source of energy owing to it’s superior flux-density and huge array of applications. There is room for improvement, as is the case with everything that we do, and there have been some interesting developments in this sector over the past couple of decades.
Nir Shaviv’s Bundestag appearance was a little over 2 years ago, and a little backstory.
https://motls.blogspot.com/2018/11/nir-shaviv-in-bundestag.html
Also, from his website…
https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/580504/2b96f368c0a785e5e4a09bb1d9797449/19-16-143_fachgespraech_cop24_prof_nir_shaviv-data.pdf
Shaviv is a genius, thats why he is a world.leading physicist. On the other hand,climate studies do not require much brains, in fact all one needs to become a climatologist is just shout Manmade global warming, get a degree in the subject while enjoying tax-funded research such as the effect of global warming on the poisonous pygmy red ants of the Amazon and how they’re going to become extinct etc etc, and hey presto, you are a climatologist. Who needs brains when one can shout GLOBAL WARMING?.
This is why I’ve mused a few times that I’m actually becoming concerned that we may be headed for a complete systemic civilizational collapse, like the one that ended the Bronze Age c. 1177 B.C. You can’t waste resources on nonsense like “climate change” without diverting them from activities that are actually useful AND actually net-value-add; all the green cr*p is net-value-subtract, and obviously you just can’t do that for very long.
The best guess is that the Bronze Age collapse was due to internal rebellions against detached (both literally and figuratively) elites in the various power centers. Why does that sound familiar?
And while the Bronze Age collapse doesn’t seem to have been based on a kooky, self-destructive religious cult (which is what the whole “climate change” thing is), the Easter Island collapse apparently was. The whole society went insane, squandering all its resources on colossal-but-useless religious artifacts (the famous “Moai” of Easter Island). That kind of exuberant irrationalism can destroy a society – and one can’t help but wonder if those giant wind thingees are the Moai of today…
[…] are reasons why in 2019 renowned astrophysicist Nir Shaviv told a Swiss news magazine that the warnings of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) could not be […]
“Al Gore is misleading,” he tells Weltwoche.
Gore be blowed. It was Margaret Thatcher who pushed the Man-mad Global Warming story into international politics, in her UN speech.
No-one paid any attention to Gore until then.
[…] are reasons why in 2019 renowned astrophysicist Nir Shaviv told a Swiss news magazine that the warnings of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) could not be taken […]
good article thanks for this