Dissecting Climate Change: A Conversation with William Happer

Air Date: 11/13/2023

Guest: William Happer

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Transcription:

Rick Green: 0:12
You found your way to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders. We’re taking on those hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. That means we’re looking at whatever everybody’s talking about. We’re looking at that from, as best we can, from a biblical perspective. What’s the word of God say about it? You want to save America. The most important thing you can do is be in God’s word every day, as you’re reading God’s word, then you read the articles that are applying God’s word to what’s happening in the culture and sharing stories of times throughout American history where someone applied that particular scripture that you just read. There’s just no substitute for it. I love it. I’m going back to the Founders Bible myself again this year and sharing that on social media. If you want to follow on social media, I post every day or once a week on what the reading is going to be for that week and for each individual day, and it’ll get you through the entire Founders Bible. It’s really, really a great way to dive in Biblical perspective and then historical and constitutional perspective. What can we learn from history about that hot topic of the day? What does the Constitution say? In other words, how do you approach that issue under our particular form of government? That’s what we do at WallBuilders Biblical, historical and constitutional perspective, as we are rebuilding the walls, rebuilding the foundations of this nation Greatest nation in the history of the world folks, most powerful, most free, the wealthiest, most benevolent nation the world has ever known and there’s a reason for that. There’s a formula, there’s a secret sauce that produced that result. We’ve moved away from that secret sauce for years. Now it’s time to get back to it and that’s what WallBuilders does. My name is Rick Green. I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach and I am thrilled and honored to be serving here with David and Tim Barton. David is America’s premier historian, he’s our founder at WallBuilders. Tim’s a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders and all three of us are excited to be able to serve you through this program and through the other things that WallBuilders does to reach out and impact the culture with pastors and teachers, and you know all kinds of folks Young people you name it legislators but it’s just an honor to be here and be a part of this and we appreciate you joining us here on WallBuilders. Alright, guys later in the program. We’ve got a professor with us. I know we don’t have a lot of professors on the program because most professors are really far out there left-wing oncologists today, but there’s a few good ones left and this one is going to be really interesting, professor William Happer, and he’s actually a climatologist and he’s going to be basically debunking a lot of the nonsense out there on the climate change folks and the amount of money they want to spend, the programs they want to put in place. Man, David, you’ve been talking about this. I don’t want to age us here at WallBuilders, but for decades no kidding like testified in the US Senate on this very topic. Actually, let’s see, David, was that when they were still calling for a global freeze instead of global warming? Or was that a few years after that, and it was global warming. So seriously, you’ve been on this one for a long time.

David Barton: 2:51
Yeah, and interesting, a lot of this climate change stuff. You got to go back to 1990. And, by the way I’ve mentioned before, this is another proof of what I believe with all my heart. Being a progressive means never having to say you’re sorry, because they get stuff wrong all the time and they never admit it and they just play like they were always right and they’ve always been right and they come out with something new and absurd and all the scientists are behind it. They say and on it goes. So we’ve heard this, all the stuff about really climatologists saying oh yeah, global warming or climate change or whatever we’re going to call it. Why is it that there’s climate change for the last seven, eight years and was global warming for the first 25 or so? Well, the reason is since there has not been an increase in global temperatures worldwide since 1996. So that’s kind of a problem if you’re going to have global warming and the planet’s not getting warmer. So that’s one thing. Now let’s go back to where this starts, in 1990, you have what’s called the IPCC, that’s the international panel on climate change, and that group is out of the UN. That’s a UN group, and the UN again is something that’s worthless. They do so much more damage than any possible good. They do so much corruption associated with it. But in 1990, all this group and I think it was, as I recall, it was 2,500 scientists who just signed off on this thing and said look, because of the imminent danger of climate change, the polar ice caps are melting and the rise in water is going to destroy more than half of the Earth’s inhabitants. They will drown In the next few years. We will have a 40-foot increase in the ocean because of all the ice melting as a result of climate change. Now, remember, this is 1990 and they’re predicting just a few years. It’s going to be a dismissive amount and half the world’s going to drown because so much of the world lives along coastal areas and along the Ocean seas. Well, they came back with their second report and their third report, and the third report was probably 12 years later and they said well, actually we think it’s only going to be one or two inches and it’s not even that. So here they are. They make the splash announcement, everybody picks it up and they themselves start backing off because their claims all come out wrong. Well, let’s also talk about the fact that the Great Barrington Declaration came out with more than 17,000 climatologists and others signing that. So here you’ve got 2,500 to say here’s what’s going to happen. You’ve got 17,000 to disagree, and all the progressives and liberals go with the 2,500. Anthropogenic or man-made climate change is not happening. The climate will change on its own, and it does all the time, which is why we keep records. But being caused by human activity? No, no, no. So Professor Happer is a climatologist and he really comes at this from where the majority of these guys are, but it’s a very unheard voice today. That side that’s represented by most climatologists is not the voice you hear, and so it’s really nice to have someone who has all the credentials but who does all the information as well and actually he was a consultant with Trump on this issue, and so to have someone at his status and his standing. This is going to be a really fun interview. I’m looking forward to seeing what he’s got to say Stay with us folks.

Rick Green: 6:15
And, by the way, I said climatologists, he’s a professor emeritus of physics, physics. Yeah.

David Barton: 6:22
And, by the way, what university Princeton?

Rick Green: 6:25
Princeton, that’s elite, yeah, you know, a bastion of conservatism too right. That’s right. I mean, that’s part of what’s so surprising here. Alright, stay with us, folks, we’ll be right back. You’re listening to Walthovers? Have you noticed the vacuum of leadership in America? We’re looking around for leaders of principle to step up, and too often no one is there. God is raising up a generation of young leaders with a passion for impacting the world around them. They’re crying out for the mentorship and leadership training they need. Patriot Academy was created to meet that need. Patriot Academy graduates now serve in state capitals around America, in the halls of Congress and business, in the film industry, in the pulpit, in every area of the culture. They’re leading effectively and impacting the world around them. Patriot Academy is now expanding across the nation, and now’s your chance to experience this life-changing week that trains champions to change the world. Visit wwwpatriotacademycom for dates and locations. Our core program is still for young leaders 16 to 25 years old, but we also now have a citizen track for adults. So visit the website today to learn more. Help us fill the void of leadership in America. Join us in training champions to change the world at wwwpatriotacademycom.

Tim Barton: 7:46
This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American History. The year after the American War for Independence ended, we began addressing the issue of Muslim terrorists in North Africa who were attacking American ships and killing and enslaving American seamen. This batched John Adams and Thomas Jefferson to negotiate peace, and when they asked the Muslim ambassador the reason for the unprovoked attacks, he told them that it was written in their Quran that it was their right and duty to make war upon them whenever they could be found. 16 years of negotiations failed and in 1801, America sent its military to crush the terrorists. When that war ended, in 1805, the first American edition of the Quran was published, urging Americans to read the Quran to see for themselves that its teachings were incompatible with the safety and peace of non-Muslims. To see the first American Quran and to get more information about America’s first war on Islamic terror, go to WallBuilders.com.

Rick Green: 8:44
Welcome back. Thanks for staying with us. We have Professor William Happer from Princeton. He’s Professor Emeritus of Physics there and a former climate advisor to President Trump. Professor, thank you so much for your time today.

William Happer: 8:55
Well, thanks for your interest.

Rick Green: 8:57
Well, always interested in this topic because it just seems to be one of those that gets used by politicians to push one way or the other with very little actual science. So it’s good to talk to somebody that’s such an expert on it. Can you just start with the answer in the basic question of is this settled science? We hear that all the time, which I don’t know what that means, because I thought science meant you’re always questioning. But anyway, what do you say to people when they say the whole climate change debate is settled science?

William Happer: 9:28
Well, of course that’s nonsense. I mean, science is never settled. We’re still investigating things that Isaac Newton thought were two hundreds of years ago, and so that’s the nature of science, is that you have to continually be skeptical about your own findings and those of others. With respect to climate, it’s pretty clear that the establishment narrative on climate is completely wrong. The warming of the earth has been much smaller than predictions of computer models, and so there is no real worry about climate. It is changing as it always has. It’s been changing as long as the earth has existed. It will continue to change, and it doesn’t matter how many laws Congress passes. It will continue to change.

Rick Green: 10:30
You know, professor, I expect politicians to manipulate data and manipulate things. But in the scientific community and as a professor, when you’re talking to colleagues and you’re going to conferences and you’re around, I mean, do you find that in the scientific community this issue is as manipulated or do you guys, when you all sit around behind the scenes you’re going? I can’t believe they keep using our papers in the way that they are. Does that question make sense?

William Happer: 10:58
Well, you know, they will tell you that in private but they’re unwilling to break ranks in public. So it’s a little bit like Omerta, you know, and the mafia, you know, you just keep quiet because it might affect next year’s funding. You know from granting agencies.

Rick Green: 11:17
Yeah, that’s well, that’s a topic in and of itself, right? How much government funding, can you know, actually negatively affect actual science because it’s manipulating the outcome.

William Happer: 11:30
Well, you know, you know people are always saying you know that people like myself are in the pay of oil companies. Actually, that’s completely false. I’ve never taken a nickel from oil companies. But the people who are pushing the alarmist agenda are completely conflicted because their entire income depends on maintaining alarmism.

Rick Green: 11:55
Yeah.

William Happer: 11:56
And so you know there is a conflict of interest, for sure, but it’s on the side of the alarmist.

Rick Green: 12:02
Yeah, yeah, I know that makes perfect sense. One of the things that seems most worrisome to me and we of course saw it play out with COVID where you’re not allowed to have an opposing view and we’ve always you know, patrick Henry, even all the way back to give me liberty, give me death speech started. That speech, saying according to the magnitude of the subject, ought to be the freedom of the debate. That’s the only way you get to the truth and it just man. The fact that we silence people that have an opposing view seems very dangerous to me. What do you say to people on that subject?

William Happer: 12:35
Well, you know, George Orwell talked about this in his novel 1984. There was something called the Thought Police. We’re rapidly developing a Thought Police and there were thought crimes, you know. So being skeptical about anything nowadays risks branding you as a thought criminal.

Rick Green: 12:55
Yeah, yeah. Doesn’t that make it harder to have actual science and an actual review of what’s going on?

William Happer: 13:03
Yeah, you know. I think that real climate science has probably been set back by 50 years by. You know, the focus on CO2 and greenhouse gas is it’s clear that they’re not very important. You know they cause some warming, but it’s not enough to worry about. And furthermore, you know CO2 is tremendously benefiting agriculture and forestry, so everything about it is good. You know, not only the convenience, the accessibility, but the fact that it’s making the earth a greener and more more verdant place than it used to be. Wow.

Rick Green: 13:44
Yeah, and yet that’s, that’s been what has been, you know, demonized, and then you end up with policies that from the government that become economically, I would argue, catastrophic and we end up getting rid of things that were actually benefiting people exactly backwards.

William Happer: 14:00
No, you’re right, some of the policies they’re really suicidal, yeah, and you know of course they’re not going to work, but in them they can do a lot of damage, for people finally realize that we gotta junk this stuff. So it’s better to junk it earlier than later.

Rick Green: 14:16
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what? Tell me a little bit about your thoughts on on how we turn this thing around, because we do almost have a religious fervor on this, on this issue. It’s it’s been so, I guess, inculcated in the education system from a very young age that a lot of kids come out of college believing this, with a, a zealotry. I mean they literally it’s like a religion to them and it it doesn’t matter how many studies you put in front of them, it doesn’t change their mind. So so what do you do culturally to try to turn the tide on this?

William Happer: 14:48
Well, I don’t think there’s much you can do because, as you say, for many it’s very much like a religious cult and and you don’t mess with a person’s religion. So I think the what will stop it is if we could encourage some unfortunate country or state to do everything that’s demanded, you know, by the I’m at fanatics, the environmental fanatics, and let the rest of the world watch and horror and stop before they make the same mistakes. So I you know, often that’s what causes the end of human folly. It’s not to a reason, it’s because you see the results of the folly and you finally realize that you don’t want to do that.

Rick Green: 15:38
Very interesting thought. Very interesting thought literally. We need a nation to be the lab where all of these the crazy climate policies are are implemented to their fullest extent, and then get to, and then everybody else can, it can observe, which I thought would happen.

William Happer: 15:55
Right, right, I mean, it could be Germany or it could be the state of California.

Rick Green: 15:59
You know there are lots of candidates. Right, right, no kidding, no kidding. Yeah, I was hoping that would happen with COVID, but it seemed like everybody adopted the bad policy so you didn’t get to see a place where it was, where it was normal. I just man, I’m so thankful that we got a rational voice in you and I’m wondering what, how you would. And this would just be not scientific, necessarily, unless you know, maybe, a way to do that, but your your guess as to how the scientific, the, the climate scientific community overall breaks down. I mean, is this a 50-50 split on on on where we really are on this issue and where there are not. Public policy decisions can change climate change versus those who want to, you know, spend trillions of dollars on this, because we always hear the entire scientific community agrees on this and yet then I see lists of thousands of people like you saying no, we don’t agree on this.

William Happer: 16:57
Yeah, it’s. It’s hard to say. You know there’s some people who are just so religiously against you know Republicans, or you know white males, you name it that if, if they happen to be right about climate, it doesn’t matter. You know they would rather go after them and and do all these stupid things about climate. Then Then stop and think and realize that you’re you’re really harming everyone in the world by pushing these you know insane policies. I don’t know what to do about it. It’s, you know, it’s human nature. I’m really good with differential equations and instruments, but I’m not real good with humans.

Rick Green: 17:48
Yeah, it sounds like almost. You know. We called it trump deragement syndrome. They’ve, they’ve got you know, any kind of conservative derangement syndrome or political party drinks. They can’t think straight because because they’re so blinded by their hatred of the other side Politically and therefore not even willing to come forward with what they actually believe the science is doing. That’s an interesting oh what. Yeah, what a phenomenon. How do you turn that around? Professor, what a treat. Been a pleasure to have you on the program today. Thank you so much for what you do and thanks for spending some time with us.

William Happer: 18:17
Okay, keep, keep up your good word.

Rick Green: 18:19
Thank you, sir. Stay with us. Folks will be right back with David and Tim Barton.

Tim Barton: 18:30
Hey guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have, at WallBuilders, called the American story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that’s just not known or not told today. And, we would say, very providentially, in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not not the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we’re against everything that America was built on and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There’s so many things attacking America. Well, is America worth defending? Well, what is a true story of America? We actually have written and told that story, starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln. We tell the story of America not as a story of a perfect nation or a perfect people, but the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It’s a story you want to check out. WallBuilderscom the American story.

Rick Green: 19:33
Welcome back to Expert Sting with us here on Wild Billers. Thanks to Professor Happer for joining us as well. Back with David and Tim and man. David, I wish you you should tag team with him next time he goes to testify at the Senate. That’d be kind of fun. You guys would just decimate the left together.

David Barton: 19:46
Well, no, because you can’t get people to not believe a lie if they want to believe a lie. So evidence has never been the solution, because these guys have more evidence than they can shake a stick at and they don’t care because it’s their religious beliefs. And you know, he talked about that and they said these guys are like a religious cult. And he’s exactly right. And he has so many phrases in there that I thought were really, really interesting. His note that real climate science has been set back 50 years by this climate alarmism that is a strong, strong statement. But I think it’s true because instead of looking for things they should be looking for, they’re trying to prove what these things they have. And then he was talking about how the government of funding it affects the scientific findings and outcomes. And so our friend Phil King, senator in Texas, saw that and saw that groups that came before testified before the Senate. If they were there being paid by some entity to do research, then they pronounced the findings that were consistent with what they’d been paid to find. And so instead of having true science, it’s just giving them facts. They’re giving them skewed facts, and so they passed the law. They said look, if you’re going to come testify before us on science. If you’re getting paid anywhere for what you’re doing, you’ve got to let us know, because that’s a bias. So for Professor Happer to talk about that, that it’s an industry that is. Really. Their entire income is based on maintaining alarmism. That’s how they make money by doing alarmism. And as he was saying that, I was reminded of Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address. Dwight Eisenhower, as he’s going out, he has some really strong statements to say in his farewell address. The one that he dealt with was don’t let the government get into funding scientific research. And I just want to read that part of what he said. He said today, the solitary inventor Tinkering and his shop has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists and laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research, partly because of the huge cost involved. A government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. That’s what Happer was saying when you get money, you lose the intellectual curiosity. You’re not trying to find the truth, you’re trying to prove a point, eisenhower continues. He says the prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. That, and holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy itself could become the captive of scientific, technological elite. And that’s what’s happened. It’s the paid people that are paid to do this stuff and our sides have become captive to that. And he finishes this way he said it is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system, ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society. What these guys are doing is not producing a free society, it’s producing a controlled society. So Eisenhower’s warning there was really really good, and I think what Professor Happer was saying just really is kind of like a moderate restatement of what Eisenhower’s warning is about way back 50 years ago.

Rick Green: 23:10
David, I’ll just remind our viewers that have been through Constitution Alive, you and I talk about this. It’s in Article I, section 8. It says to promote the progress of science and useful arts comma by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings of discoveries, in other words Eisenhower’s right. We’re not supposed to be funding them, we’re just supposed to be protecting their inventions once they make those inventions. But it’s not government’s job to promote the progress of science and useful arts by doing all this other stuff. It literally specifically says in the Constitution the only way to promote it is by protecting the inventions once they’re made. That’s very different from picking winners and losers and funding these different pet projects.

Tim Barton: 23:51
Well, that’s one of the other things he said that struck me. He identified some of the models they’re using and one of the things that certainly we have heard over time is how flawed these models are and we’ve actually been able to see that over the last several decades some of their predictions and how inaccurate the predictions are. But it reminded me when we had our recent legislators conference. We had a couple of experts come in and they were talking about AI, artificial intelligence, and we’ve even seen with some of these AI programs whether it be a chat, gbt, some of these different options that are out there from these companies that are making their own AI they’re able to program them in a certain way that they’re able to have a desired outcome with a certain filtering of information. And this is also where, if we’re talking about science and how that happens, when you are now programming your algorithms, programming your models, programming your AI in a certain way to make sure that it’s going to produce a certain outcome, and you get funding to do this, it totally makes sense why people are saying, no, look what the models are showing us. No, I get, that’s what the model shows, but somebody had to program that model and what we are learning more and more are the people that are programming some of these models or some of these AI’s. They’re not doing it without bias. They’re doing it based on a belief system that they have and certainly they’re chasing the money, because the more they can show it’s a problem. There are literally groups of organizations that say we will fund you if you can find this, and that’s all they’re doing. They are following where the money is and they’re creating these different algorithms or in some cases it could be AI or it could be these climate models to show a certain result for the desired outcome. But, as we heard today, that’s really not what the science is showing, regardless of what the model is telling them.

Rick Green: 25:51
Our folks. Thanks for joining us today on the Wallbottom Show. You can get more of our programming at our website, wallbottomislivecom. There’s an archive section there. If you enjoyed today and you want to just go grab some of the previous programs from a few months back, you can listen to some good news Friday programs, foundations of Freedom, thursdays, and then Monday through Wednesday we have great interviews, just like we did today. And then also consider signing up as a constitution coach and hosting some of our classes in your home or in your living. You know, right there in your house is, I think it’s the best place to do it, but you can also do it at your church fellowship hall or local library or wherever you like. Just get people educated folks. We have all got a role to play in this and if you want to be a constitution coach, we give that away to you for free. You can do that today at ConstitutionCoach.com.