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link to video: Prof. William Happer – Climate Scare Is Based on Lies
Excerpt: Transcript in italics with my bolds and added images (HS is interviewer Hannes Sarv, WH is William Happer)
HS: If you read about climate in the newspapers or some talk about climate on television, it will be very, very far from the truth. We’re told that climate change is a direct consequence of human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels. Year after year, you are seeing the dramatic reality of a boiling planet.
And for scientists, it is unequivocal. Humans are to blame, we’re led to believe the climate is boiling. And the accumulated amount is now trapping as much extra heat as would be released by 600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding. That’s what’s boiling the oceans. Which will have disastrous effects.
But is there really a scientific consensus on man-made climate change? Over a thousand scientists dispute the so-called climate crisis. Many of them are high-ranking experts in their fields. Among them, Dr. William Happer, a respected physicist with decades of groundbreaking research, an emeritus professor at Princeton University, and a leading expert in atomic and molecular physics. He has deep expertise in the greenhouse effect and the role of CO2 in climate change. Dr. Happer argues that the role of human activity and CO2 in global warming is based on flawed science and misinterpretations.
“You know, it’s dangerous to make policy on the basis of lies.”
In this interview, we’ll explore the evidence he believes has been overlooked and why it could transform our understanding of climate change.
HS: As we can see, Professor, you are still working daily in your university office. So what is it? Are you consulting younger colleagues or still involved in some research projects?
WH: Well, yes, I try to stay busy and I’m working now with a former student from Canada who’s a professor there now, William van Wijngaarden. And we’re working now on how water vapor and clouds affect the Earth’s climate, the radiation transfer details of those.
HS:So still very much involved in climate science.
WH: Well, you know, climate is very important. It’s always been important to humanity. It’s not going to change. I think it’s been having hard times the last 50 years because of this manic focus on demonization of greenhouse gases, which have some effect on climate but not very much.
HS: We’re going to absolutely get to that. But I wanted to start from actually, I was listening to one of your speeches and presentations you held back in 2023 at the Institute of Public Affairs. And what really I think resonated with me was that you started from the notion that freedom is important. And every generation has their own struggle for freedom and freedom is not free. So I actually wanted to start by asking you what is the state, the current state of freedom in your opinion in the world today?
WH: I think it’s really true that every generation has to struggle to maintain freedom, you know, because every generation has lots of people who don’t like freedom, you know. They would like to be little dictators, you know, and that’s always been true if you read history. And it’s not going to change.
And so I think it’s important that we educate our children to recognize that humans are imperfect and there will always be attempts to get dictatorial control over society. And, you know, our founding fathers in America represented recognize that. They just assumed that their fellow Americans would be not very perfect people, you know, with lots of flawed people, and they tried to design a system of government that would work even with flawed people. Some German philosopher put it right, you know, out of the crooked timber of mankind, no straight thing was ever made. So that’s the problem that we will always face.
HS: What about academic freedom in today’s world? I’m not only speaking about climate science, but in general.
WH: Well, you know, I think academia has always had a problem with groupthink, you know, because you’re typically all together in one small community, and your children and wives interact with each other. And so the temptations, the pressures to all think the same are very great. You know, if you don’t think the same, your kids suffer, your wife suffers, and that’s nothing new. It’s always been like that. You know, there’s a famous… American play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? But it’s about this topic and it goes back many, many decades, you know, long before the current woke problems that we’re having in America.
HS: So as we all know currently, there is a new administration in the United States. So what will happen now? Will the situation, in your opinion, improve or is it just, you know, the challenges are going to remain?
WH: Well, you know, we’ve just elected a new president, and he’s very vigorous and has lots of ideas, and I think that’s a good thing. We’ll see how successful he is. But, you know, our society and our government is designed to be cumbersome and unwieldy. That’s to prevent crazy things from happening too quickly. And so the president will have to deal with that. And if the Americans support him, if the Congress supports him, he’ll be successful.
HS: Let’s move to climate science. Is there any honest discussion left? It has become so political, in my opinion, that it is really hard to have an open, a normal discussion about it.
WH: Well, I think if you go to a seminar, for example, at Princeton on climate, It’s often pretty good science. It’s not alarmist. But this is professors and students talking to each other. The further you get away from the actual research, the more alarmist and crazy it becomes.
So if you read about climate in the newspapers or listen to some talk about climate on television, it will be very, very far from the truth. And it won’t be the same thing that the professors at universities normally are talking about. But that said, you know, I think there’s been a lot of corruption because of all of the money available. You know, there are huge funds if you do research that supports the idea that there is a climate emergency which requires lots of government intervention. And if you don’t do that, you’re less likely to be funded, you know, you can’t pay your graduate students. So it’s a bad situation. It’s been very corrupting to this branch of science.
HS: Exactly how long has it been going on, this kind of situation?
WH: Well, I think it really got started in the early 90s. I was in Washington at the time as a government bureaucrat, and I could see it getting started. It was being pushed by Senator Al Gore and his allies. There were, at that time, still lots of honest scientists in academia who didn’t go along with all of the alarmism, but they’ve gradually died off and they’ve been replaced by younger people who’ve never known anything except, you know, pleasing your government sponsor with the politically correct research results that they expect.
HS: So basically, they are not in a position, if they want to achieve anything in academia or make a career for themselves, they are kind of unable to stay honest even?
WH: They try to be honest, but it’s very difficult because you have to plan to educate your children. You have to maintain your family, and so that means you need money. And the only way to get money is to agree to this alarmist meme that has dominated climate scientists now for several decades.
