By Andy May

I’ve just been made aware of a paper critical of the “consensus” view that man-made climate change is dangerous. It is by Ashutosh Sharma, Vinit Vithalrai Shenvi, and Mohit Sain of the MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology in India (or MSRIT) (Sharma et al., 2024). It was published just two months before “Carbon Dioxide and a Warming Climate are not problems,” by Marcel Crok and myself (May & Crok, 2024) and makes similar points, at least until we reach the paper’s conclusions. The paper argues that: “climate change policies impose unwarranted economic strains on nations and impede technological advancement.”

Unfortunately, like many papers, after it completely destroys the whole idea of dangerous climate change it turns around and claims the consensus is correct after all:

“The consequences of climate change are already evident in rising temperatures, melting ice caps, and extreme weather events, and if left unchecked, these effects will become increasingly severe in the future. It is crucial for policymakers, businesses, and individuals to acknowledge the reality of climate change and take proactive measures to mitigate its effects.”

I have seen this sort of nonsense in too many papers to count. First, they show there is no evidence that man-made climate change is unusual or dangerous, and then they say that future will be different, trust me. The conclusions in May and Crok are more sensible:

“The infrastructure to replace fossil fuels does not exist and likely cannot be built in a short time. Current realistic estimates of future energy use suggest that fossil fuels will still supply half our energy in 2050 and beyond. Yet no credible evidence exists that this is a problem or will become a problem. Recent research into climate change has suggested that nature plays some role, and certainly greenhouse gas emissions may play some role as well. What we do not know is how much of climate change is human-caused and how much is natural. No drastic changes to our economy are justified until we can figure this out.”

Key points made by Sharma et al.:

1. Climate change is not solely driven by anthropogenic factors. The main factor emphasized by the consensus is that increasing CO₂ emissions from burning fossil fuels will somehow create problems for mankind. While some impact from burning fossil fuels on climate is expected, it is likely minor and not dangerous (Sharma et al., 2024) and (May & Crok, 2024).
   
2. The research supporting dangerous anthropogenic climate change is based upon manipulated data, biased methodologies, and political agendas.
   
3. Renewable sources of electricity require fossil fuel backup and cannot provide a consistent and reliable source of power.
   
4. Government subsidies have driven the growth of renewables and distorted the energy market.
   
5. Government spending on renewables has diverted spending from education, health care, and infrastructure, areas that should take priority.
   
6. Trends in mid-late Holocene climate change, particularly the transition from Holocene Climatic Optimum to the Little Ice Age challenge assumptions that recent changes are due to human activities or extreme in a proper historical context. This is also a point made by May and Crok.
   
7. The Holocene period (~9700BC to the present) is a brief warm interlude in a three-million-year ice age. As this paper and May and Crok point out the warmest period in the Holocene, was not the Modern Warm Period (1850 to the present), but 6000 years ago in the Holocene Climatic Optimum. This casts considerable doubt on the man-made climate change hypothesis.
   
8. The dark side of environmental activism has had a significant effect on public perception of climate change, also see the discussion of this factor in May, Politics and Climate Change: A History, 2020.
   
9. They acknowledge that the increase in climate disaster costs in recent years is primarily due to increasing populations and affluence in vulnerable areas.
   
10. The paper accepts the reduced uncertainty in climate sensitivity in AR6, as explained by (Sherwood et al., 2020), yet this new subjective Bayesian analysis technique for deriving climate sensitivity has been successfully debunked by Nic Lewis (Lewis, 2023).
    

Conclusions

It is an awful thing to read through a good paper that lays out a very good case why there is nothing to worry about regarding man-made climate change and then watch the authors do a complete U-turn in the conclusions and push the idea of potentially dangerous climate change. The change from downplaying concern to emphasizing it is abrupt in this paper and unexpected.

But I’ve seen it many times before. Roger Pielke Jr.’s otherwise excellent book: The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell You About Global Warming does the same thing; I explain the discrepancy here. First Pielke completely destroys the argument that man-made global warming and climate change are dangerous, then he states that “carbon dioxide matters a great deal.” He never really explains why but states it anyway. Pielke is an excellent scientist and a good writer but is just as susceptible to unsupported conjecture about the supposed “dangers” of carbon dioxide emissions as most other scientists. Sigh.

Sharma et al. emphasize the importance of critical thinking and evidence-based decisions and then immediately ignore all the fine evidence they present in the earlier part of the paper that climate changes today are not unusual and are not dangerous. They go on to immediately use unsupported conjecture to proclaim that climate change is dangerous and urgent action is needed. It is truly absurd how often this logical error is found in otherwise good climate change papers.

The IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report (IPCC, 2023) is another good example. The detail chapters review the data on extreme weather and find no global increase attributable to human activities, yet in the conclusions and in The Summary for Policymakers they focus on future projections and conjecture to imply the opposite of what the data shows. Roger Pielke Jr. provides a very thorough critique of the Synthesis Report here.

Bottom line: Scientists should stick to the facts as we know them today, conjecture and predictions are fine, as long as they are clearly labeled as such. We all are susceptible to defending our ideas and conjectures, it isn’t just Sharma, et al. However, logic and common sense tell us to stick with clear evidence. Reasonable conjectures should be kept in mind but not acted upon until facts and observations support them.

Works Cited

IPCC. (2023). AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023. https://doi.org/10.59327/IPCC/AR6-9789291691647

Lewis, N. (2023, May). Objectively combining climate sensitivity evidence. Climate Dynamics, 60, 3139-3165. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06468-x

May, A. (2020c). Politics and Climate Change: A History. Springfield, Missouri: American Freedom Publications. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/POLITICS-CLIMATE-CHANGE-ANDY-MAY-ebook/dp/B08LJSBVBC/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3POS1QGAQ2C2X&dchild=1&keywords=politics+and+climate+change+a+history+by+andy+may&qid=1609414686&sprefix=Politics+and+Climate%2Caps%2C186&sr=8-1

May, A., & Crok, M. (2024, May 29). Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12579

Pielke Jr., R. (2010). The Climate Fix, What Scientists and Politicians won’t tell you about global warming. New York, New York, USA: Basic Books. Retrieved from link: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/publications/special/climate_fix/index.html

Sharma, A., Shenvi, V. V., & Sain, M. (2024). Reevaluating the Concern of Climate Change. International Journal of Environment and Climate Change , 14(3). https://doi.org/10.9734/IJECC/2024/v14i34056

Sherwood, S. C., Webb, M. J., Annan, J. D., Armour, K. C., J., P. M., Hargreaves, C., . . . Knutti, R. (2020, July 22). An Assessment of Earth’s Climate Sensitivity Using Multiple Lines of Evidence. Reviews of Geophysics, 58. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1029/2019RG000678