Conversation UPDATE: William Happer

in the spring of 2015 I went to Princeton University to interview Professor William hopper when I interviewed him I was aware that he was a CEO tool and its impact on climate contrarian mr. hopper points out carbon dioxide is in important trace gas and an integral part of the carbon cycle a biogeochemical cycle in which carbon is exchanged between the oceans soil rocks and the biosphere virtually all of life on the planet requires co2 concentrations to be above 150 parts per million the concentration of co2 in the atmosphere over the past 500 million years has been as high as 4,000 parts per million and as low as 180 parts per million since 1880 when co2 was measured at Malaya and Hawaii levels have risen from 280 parts per million to 413 parts per million as of April 20 19 mr. happer as you will hear says the impact of co2 on temperature rise has already taken effect and he points to the logarithmic scale which is a nonlinear scale often used to analyze a large range of quantities according to mr. happer you would take another 400 parts per million to affect temperature by one additional degree mr. happer is also aware of the folly of predictions and he like Freeman Dyson points to the inability of models to accurately predict climate outcomes then add in the length of day which changes by milliseconds transferring massive amounts of energy mostly into the oceans causing oscillations that according to climatologist judith curie are not considered in current climate models it begs the question is the science of climate really settled can it ever being now mr. Harper's position on climate his scientific credentials and his role in the trunk administration have made him a very large target he is a physicist who specialized in the study of atomic physics optics and spectroscopy he is the serous fog bracket professor of physics and he is the Davidson Germer Prize winner in atomic or surface physics he is not nor could he be a climate scientist because that designation is so new that UCLA for example only just launched a degree program in 2018 since this interview Greenpeace outed him in a sting operation and President Donald Trump recruited professor hopper to be a member of a Presidential Committee on climate security however in September of 2019 the unflinching mr. happer quit according to science magazine will happen may have been unflinching Trump's White House isn't so on September the 13th 2019 mr. happer resigned professor hopper as you will see in this interview firmly believes the impact of co2 has been misrepresented conversations that matter is a partner program of the Center for dialogue at Simon Fraser University the production of this program is made possible thanks to the following and viewers like you please become a patron at conversations that matter TV it's not very often that we get to talk to somebody who with your level of scientific background about climate because when it comes to the discussing climate you actually have a sense of what's going on and I frame that by saying sense because I think that the the topic of the science of climate is very complex am I right about that oh yes it's a very complicated system do you understand where we're at as far as climate is concerned are we changing as a result of human activity is human activity contributing and and if so then to what extent well of course the climate changes all the time it always has and it's warmed a little bit in the last hundred years apparently about point eight Divine's yeah yeah nobody knows whether that's got a human component or not I mean most of the warming for example was over by 1940 you know long before there was much additional co2 in the air but there was a period in the late 1980s where the temperature did spike indeed there was a warming of three or four tenths that week agree from 1982 year 2000 but there were a couple of years in there where we had an El Nino and an L mean yeah effect right did did that play a role do we know that for certain well you see El Nino is very clearly on the temperature of record whenever there's a El Nino the whole earth looks a little bit warmer that's because the Pacific gets covered with warm water that used to be all pushed together against Australia and Indonesia but during El Ninos it spreads back all the way to South America right it reverses it yeah yeah yeah and then radiates something down there was a monster El Nino in 1998 which sort of was the peak of the warming so that was a bit artificial mm-hmm but there are only Neos over four or five years you do work with the US government in helping people to understand climate when you talk to them about the way the climate is presented what are you telling them these days the government doesn't normally ask me these days but I do tell them that you know climate obviously is important it does change there's very little evidence that humans are making much impact and as far as co2 is concerned which is the major focus that's probably more good than bad now I can hear people yelling at the screen with a screen right now saying what do you mean co2 doesn't make much difference well you know I know a lot about co2 compared to most climate scientists because we make co2 lasers you know and co2 is a very interesting molecule and a particular mode of co2 that contributes to global warming or co2 is a rod and it didn't like this up and down up and down it's that bending motion that causes the global warming but that is is such a strong absorption that is saturated now so as you add more co2 most of what you can do it's already been done there's still a little addition but not very much can you explain that to me in a little greater depth what do you mean it's already been done well if you have a barn you know and you want to paint it red you know if you put a thin paint of red paint it may not be quite Retton enough if you put two or three then it really looks red after that if you add more red it doesn't make much difference and so that's sort of what co2 is doing now that most of the easy absorption has been done and so as you add more co2 you get a little broadening you know III don't want to get too technical well no I find this fascinating yes and the reason that I find it fast is that I hear that okay we've gone from about 320 330 parts per million going back in the last hundred years now to just shy of 400 parts per million if we measure it in Hawaii right and along the way we've heard predictions of different catastrophic outcomes as right push our way through different right maximums yeah yeah I haven't seen them happening even though people will attribute some weather change to that you're saying that if we push through 400 and get to 500 you'll the the difference between 350 and 400 is greater than that between 4 and 500 is that though there's an interesting thing about co2 which is unique to co2 it's not true for example of water vapor methane and that is that if you get one degree of warming from doubling co2 so going from say 400 parts per million person plus 80 to 800 that mmm-hmm suppose that causes one degree of warming then to get another degree of warming you have to double 800 so you have to go to 1600 so you have to double it again so it gets harder and harder to warm technically they call that the logarithmic dependence on temperature rise on co2 concentration it was first guest at really by Svante Arrhenius you know who did some of the earliest work on global warming he thought it was good you know he was all for global warming but he was first one point out this doubling property of co2 though nobody quite knows how I guess it is correct because he wasn't using computer models I mean it was before quantum mechanics you know you didn't even know about spontaneous emission it was before plot but nevertheless he guessed it correctly it's quite valuable isn't that a guy yeah conversations to matter is brought to you by Adam brown a client focused investment firm that starts client relationships who is straightforward conversations focused on you your aspirations and your investment priorities Adlon Brown has been a supporter of conversations that matter from the day we started this show their only condition was that we provide a non biased conversation with people from all sides of all sorts of issues and of course we couldn't produce this show without the support of Oldboy productions if you're looking to produce a show like this one I suggest you reach out to oh boy they can help you produce it and they can help you build your audience and we also need your support I ask you to please pledge $1 per show by going to conversations that matter TV slash donate because those dollars add up and play an important role in helping us produce this show now back to the show so co2 you know quite a bit about it yeah is it all negative and if not then what are the benefits well I think the main benefit of co2 is it's the food for plants plants really need three things they need light for photosynthesis they need water and they need co2 plants or made of carbon you know when I hear about carbon pollution you know we're only the carbon plants are made of carbon people made of carbon you know your hamburgers made of carbon but co2 is used by plants if you go to a corn field for example in midsummer and you measure co2 it's about half what it would be at night because the corn plant has suck so much co2 out of the air that it's now limited on how fast it can make you sugar and grow by the amount of co2 so if you double the co2 the corn can grow better there's more of it there it doesn't suck it down so quickly so that's number one is an essential plant food and the other thing is it's it gives drought resistance to plants because it has this problem that when it gets co2 it doesn't suck it out from the roots it has to open up little holes in its leaf and so if co2 molecule bounces around and other air molecules gets into the hole for every co2 that goes into this hole a hundred water molecules may use out from the interior of the planet so the plant is squandering water as it's trying to you know make food you know from photosynthesis so if you look at say a gram of sugar to make her grandma's sugar takes a hundred grams of water you know so there's huge amounts of water used in photosynthesis now more than should be because we're essentially in a co2 famine if you look at where co2 famine famine we have too little co2 so we had 400 parts per million homes are still too small yeah yeah if you look at the geological history of the world you know we started getting good fossils about 550 million years ago Cambrian you know since that time co2 levels have averaged thousands of parts per million not a few hundred parts per million you know much much higher factors a 4 5 10 even and so planets really evolved when there was a lot more co2 to eat in now they don't have enough and you can see lots of evidence for that there's certain plants for example that they're called c4 plants that are adapted to the low co2 levels we have now there typically are in hot regions of the earth sugarcane is an example corn American corn base is another example but most of our agriculture plants use the old-fashioned photosynthesis which is called c3 and that's a more efficient way to operate if you have plenty of co2 but there isn't plenty of co2 anymore there's not enough so as co2 levels have been going up the old fashioned c3 plants and that includes soybeans and wheat and cotton actually most plants or c3 mm-hmm they're doing very very well I mean we've been increase in sea degrees and co2 very very noticeable it's a huge effect you know it's worth hundreds of billions of dollars every year in agricultural productivity it's so when people talk about the social cost of carbon it's absurd you know the social cost is negative of co2 now yeah because it's a net contributor contributor to agricultural productivity that's not you shouldn't confuse that with real pollution from the coal plant you know coal plant if you don't build it right it scatters fly-ash all over everybody it may have sulfur and you know all sorts of horrible things can come out but the co2 is actually good we're not paying attention to these days to that coal plant so much yeah so much of our focus seems to be on manmade global warming yeah yeah and do you think that we're missing our the the appropriate target right now yeah I mean it's another one of these sort of mass hysteria is that have gripped humanity since it began you know in our country in America we had a sort of similar case of mass hysteria with prohibition well there were a few cautious people who said maybe you know prohibition isn't a good idea you know might increase organized crime for example you know everything they said was right and yet you know when the amendment for prohibition was put to the vote every state except one Rhode Island voted for prohibition and not one of them intended to honor it you know it was just what everybody else did you know how could you be in favor of daemon Rama you know daemon co2 so these things happen you know a more sinister are these movements in Europe you know the the fascists you know the Communists they were mass hysteria - mm-hmm well and with true catastrophic concept indeed yes yes any movement can be captured by uh by thugs and that's what's happened so you've talked about the benefits of co2 mm-hmm is it or a downside because there has to be when we listen listen to the level of discourse about this how can there not be some downside I don't think there are any real downsides I mean if you look at the argument convinced the initial argument was there's going to be this rapid global warming it hasn't happened it's very clear that the models have enormous ly exaggerated the warming potential why has that happened what is it about the models that when you simulate it works and you say well they're well I mentioned the saturation of co2 you know if you think the barn red if you put another coat it's not any redder than it was before and they noticed that early on that co2 has this problem that you know it's disappointing that it doesn't seem to make much difference if you had so they invented all sorts of feedback mechanisms that wouldn't amplify the effect of additional co2 water vapor clouds all sorts of things were supposed to be triggered by the co2 they don't seem to be happening but water vapor is a dominant gas any water vapor is the the main greenhouse gas water vapor and clouds it is the greenhouse gas isn't it yeah seventy percent maybe yeah I have talked to somebody else who is a climate scientist and said no clouds aren't in the equation but how can they not be in the equation well it depends on the model I mean the most professional modelers the those trying to do the most honest job do try to put in clouds but it's very primitive you know it's a rough estimate there's nothing my own journey was trying to understand climate science started when I watched Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth yeah mr. gore says that if you take water vapor out of the equation and he says it rather casually if you take water vapor out of the equation co2 makes up 30% of greenhouse gases and I went holy smokes so I started to do some investigation and went ok well he's right about that hmm but well you can't take water vapor out of the equation and you can't and I and if you do are you then not negating the dynamic interaction between co2 methane water vapor in it yeah the other greenhouse gases that that are that are involved yeah no of course you can't take water vapor out and you should always be careful to say water vapor and clouds and clouds so that's a big big deal how come what makes them a big deal well if you just go to space and look at the earth you don't see the ground over big fractions of the earth all you see is clouds you take a look at the earth a beautiful blue bubble or marble in space its marble cause the white part of the marvelous clouds but but that that image that's on Al Gore's book yeah yeah isn't show so much cloud cover as a result of of global warming well yeah that bought a towel so we airbrushed a lot of the clouds out you know if you look at the original papers they have many more clouds I mean I can show you if you like you taste been airbrushed out yes and what about the ice on the on on the caps of the of the earth both the Antarctica are and party guys is probably growing you know it's it's a big complicated continent West Antarctica maybe there's a little decrease but over most of Antarctica it's increasing well I've seen Isis increasing and Brownson Antarctica yeah that's not supposed to happen you know according to the model but it is happening and what's happening in the Arctic well there's a good website I think it's called cryosphere or something at the University of Illinois and if you google on it you'll find it biosphere cryosphere and they're pretty honest I think and so you can look at the ice this year last year and you know it fluctuates up and down there's a lot of ice now because we're just coming out of the Arctic winter and a particularly cold one - yes yes yes but the other thing to remember about the Antarctic it's it's all water it's completely different from the South Pole you know you've got this arctic ocean up there which lets heat come in by warm water from the Atlantic in particular mm-hmm and so much of what's happening in the Arctic is really determined by ocean currents not by the air temperature or things like that so over the course of the Earth's history ocean cycles and flow have played a significant role in the temperature still do yeah so here's one of the things that I hear when people try to explain the pause increase in temperature yeah ah well it's because the Earth's oceans are absorbing that extra heat and of course it is now circulating through the flow of the oceans and this is why we're seeing melt not only in the Arctic but in particular in Greenland and yet I read a report just last week released by NASA that said nope the deep ocean temperatures haven't changed at all it's hard for the deep ocean temperature to change much because you know the heat has to be convected down there mmm-hmm conduct you know much too slow so the only way to change the deep ocean is from water that is sinking up off Greenland or off itself of the South Pole yeah and those are very slow measured currents that slowly slowly move and so it's it's extremely difficult to to heat all of the ocean it's quite easy to heat the first few inches you know you know first few meters you know down to the thermic line but it's much harder to get below that so that has to be done by currents which the other answer you should give when people say that is well if that's the case why is it all these 70 models or whatever it is you know expensive computer models didn't predict that you know you know they all promised they would predict what would happen to the temperature you know none of them got it right not only did they not get it right they got it wrong by a huge amount you know factors three four you have any sense of why that how they could be so many models can be so far off well they do they yes yeah I mean it was group think the models never looked at at the world they looked at other models and so they they used to say look how good we are and we're all getting the same answer must be right you know we're green with each other but then if you look at the models they've all got different parameters they've all been coded in different ways and the reason they're giving the same answer is they look at each other and say oh I just as parameter in this one and now it gives the same battery so as we look to the future are you hopeful that the world is going to continue to be a safe place that we will do the things that are necessary to protect this precious planet but that climate is not gonna be the the overwhelming catastrophic catastrophic event that some people proclaim that it might be yeah I don't think there's anything to worry about them more co2 I'll say it again that I think more co2 be good for the world that our great great town children will look back and say thank god we've got all this co2 you know what foresight people our ancestors worker I think it is true that you can mess up the world very easily you know the American rivers used to be a disgrace when I first went to New York City you know Hudson River was an open sewer and it's clean now their salmon running up the river a shed every spring you know so that's the type of environmentalism that works in this good for us and that's what we ought to be working on clean cleaning up real things that make a difference well thank you very much for your time I really appreciate this thank you [Music] you

Channel: Conversations That Matter

Views: 204,122

Keywords: carbon dioxide, carbon, co2, princeton university, environment, climate change, global warming, donald trump, greenhouse gas, biosphere, biology, carbon drought

Id: pHCCE-sw_Sc

Length: 25min 9sec (1509 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 25 2019