More than 1,100 scientists and professionals worldwide have signed a World Climate Declaration (WCD) stating that there’s no climate emergency.
“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific,” the summary reads. “Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming.”
CLINTEL was founded in 2019 by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and science journalist Marcel Crok to promote knowledge and understanding of climate change in forming climate policy.
Crok said the WCD project began in 2019 and that the power is in its message, brevity, and accessibility.
“The message is plain and clear: There is no climate emergency. Very important: This is true, even if you accept that CO2 is the main driver of the current climate change,” he told The Epoch Times in an email.
“We simply state that all evidence so far indicates that the increase in CO2 and the increase in temperature [are] not harmful for us or for nature and therefore the climate hysteria surrounding the topic is totally unjustified [and] that the ‘cure’—getting rid of fossil fuels asap and replacing them with renewables—probably will be worse than the ‘disease’ [climate change].”
Crok said the CLINTEL document has produced significant pushback from climate activists.
He said the organization sent many open letters to organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.N., and the World Economic Forum asking for a high-level meeting with CLINTEL scientists.
“So, they have two general ways to attack the WCD. They say that only a few [signatories] are active climate scientists and many are retired. Both are true and very understandable.”
He said if a working climate scientist dependent on government money signs the WCD, they face the risk of getting fired.
“We have some brave enough to speak out nevertheless, but that means you will have to face a lot of criticism and attempts to discredit you,” Crok said.
Direct engagements with the activists are rare, he said.
“They simply dominate the media, and if they feel our WCD has some impact, they will arrange that it gets discredited in the media and the social media.”
In recent weeks, CLINTEL has received increased attention and new signatories, many of whom have worked in academia.
The WCD states that the science of climate change is far from settled and that the geological archive shows Earth’s climate has been in flux for as long as the planet has existed.
“Therefore, it is no surprise that we are now experiencing a period of warming. Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming. The world has warmed significantly less than predicted [based on] modeled anthropogenic forcing,” it reads. “The gap between the real world and the modeled world tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.”
The WCD also states that climate models have “many shortcomings” and are unsatisfactory policy tools.
“They do not only exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases, [but] they also ignore that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial,” it reads. “CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. More CO2 is favorable for nature, greening our planet.
“Additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also profitable for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.”
The Texas-based company Navigator Heartland Greenway recently announced plans to build a carbon capture network across five states in the U.S. Midwest to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The company held public meetings on potential land takings to make way for the project earlier this year.
The proposed Heartland Greenway pipeline would span 1,300 miles across South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois to nearly 20 recipient points. CO2 would be converted into liquid form and buried underground.
“CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth,” the declaration reads. “There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts, and suchlike natural disasters or making them more frequent. However, there is ample evidence that CO2 mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly.
“There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050.”
The declaration states to European leaders that climate policy should “respect scientific and economic realities.”
“To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in,” the WCD reads. “This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central.
“Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. Should not we free ourselves from the naive belief in immature climate models?”
Crok said the document’s main goal is to make clear that even if you accept most of the claims of the IPCC, you can still conclude there’s no climate emergency.
“In this respect, our WCD should be uncontroversial,” he said.
