Ivar Giaever/climate

2008 quote

A quote attributed to Dr. Giaever has been widely circulated in anti-global warming circles:

I am a skeptic ... Global warming has become a new religion ... I am Norwegian, should I really worry about a little bit of warming? I am unfortunately becoming an old man. We have heard many similar warnings about the acid rain 30 years ago and the ozone hole 10 years ago or deforestation but the humanity is still around. The ozone hole width has peaked in 1993 ... Moreover, global warming has become a new religion. We frequently hear about the number of scientists who support it. But the number is not important: only whether they are correct is important. We don't really know what the actual effect on the global temperature is. There are better ways to spend the money...

This quote is from a 2008 minority report of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which cites as sources only the following links:

• http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3784
  • The strongly US-style conservative Canada Free Press, which gives a longer version of the quote (see below) and which appears to refer back to the Senate EPW Committee Minority Report page as its source; possibly they meant to link to the earlier, 2006 version of the report.
• http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/07/lindau-half-of-nobel-prize-winners-are.html
  • This blog entry is much closer to the source, which appears to be a panel held at the 58th meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany in 2008; it includes links to German-language transcriptions of the comments and a link to a video which is apparently of the actual comments but which is now unfortunately password-protected. (Giaever presented during the Monday session, but I don't know if the panel was on the same day. Highlights from the Monday session are shown here, but this does not include any footage of or mention of Giaever.)
• http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1973/giaever-bio.html
  • Giaever's Nobel Prize biography page, which includes no statements at all about climate, and from which it seems clear that he has had absolutely no known involvement in the field of climate research

The Canada Free Press's version of the quote:

First of all, I didn’t want to be on this panel. Second of all, I am a skeptic. Third of all, if I am Norwegian, should I really worry about a little bit of warming? I am unfortunately becoming an old man. We have heard many similar warnings about the acid rain 30 years ago and the ozone hole 10 years ago or deforestation but the humanity is still around. The ozone hole width has peaked in 1993.

Moreover, global warming has become a new religion. We frequently hear about the number of scientists who support it. But the number is not important: only whether they are correct is important. We don’t really know what the actual effect on the global temperature is. There are better ways to spend the money.

Some obvious points:

• He didn't want to be on the panel, so presumably he is uninterested in the subject or does not feel qualified to comment on it.
• The comment about the ozone hole reveals his ignorance. The hole began shrinking only after measures were taken to reduce ozone-depleting substances in the earth's atmosphere, exactly the sort of action being proposed in response to the global warming crisis. The shrinking and disappearance of the ozone hole is a testament to the success of such techniques and evidence in favor of the methodology which recommended them and which recommends similar actions with regard to GW.