Dear Cooler Heads and Allies,
You are invited to sign the joint letter pasted below to President Trump urging him to appoint a President’s Commission on Climate Security. The details are explained in the letter. The deadline for signing is Thursday, 14th March by 12 noon EDT.
You may sign as an organization or as an individual. Organizations and the person signing on their behalf will be listed first and organization logos will appear on the left margin of the letter. Individuals will be listed after all organizations.
Please follow the instructions carefully. Just replying to me with “I’m on” will not do it.
Please send the information requested by hitting Reply All to this e-mail or, which is the same thing, by addressing Myron.Ebell@cei.org andRichard.Morrison@cei.org. You will receive confirmation by return e-mail within a day that your e-mail has been received and that you are listed on the letter.
The letter will be sent to President Trump at the White House, to several key staffers in the White House, and to the signers at the same time. It will then be released to the media and the public. All signers are invited to post the final joint letter on their web sites, send it around, and publicize it.
The deadline for signing is 12 Noon EDT on Thursday, 14th March.
Thanks, Myron.
For Organizations:
____Yes, please sign my organization to the joint letter to President Trump in support of creating a President’s Commission on Climate Security.
Name of Organization:
Name of person:
Title:
E-mail address:
For Individuals
____Yes, please sign me on to the joint letter.
____I understand that any affiliation listed will appear in parentheses. For example: Isaac Newton (Trinity College, Cambridge). There will be a note that affiliations are for identification purposes only. But if you don’t want to list an affiliation, then you may want to put something else like: Truth or Consequences, New Mexico;
Name:
Title or degree optional:
(For example: Professor, Ph. D., State Senator, former Member of Congress, etc.)
Affiliation or other ID:
E-mail address:
Deadline: 12 Noon EDT, 14th March 2019.
Send to: Myron.Ebell@cei.org and to Richard.Morrison@cei.org.
DRAFT
Dear President Trump,
The undersigned organizations and individuals write to express our strong support for the proposed President’s Commission on Climate Security. It is our understanding that this commission, which is being planned and would be directed by Dr. William Happer of the National Security Council staff, is currently being considered by your senior White House staff and relevant Cabinet secretaries and agency heads. The commission, consisting of a dozen or so leading atmospheric scientists, would be charged with conducting an independent, high-level review of the fourth National Climate Assessment, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report, and several other official reports on climate science and would be subject to the transparency requirements of the Federal Advisory Committees Act.
In our view, an independent review of these reports is long overdue. Serious problems and shortcomings have been raised repeatedly in the past by highly-qualified scientists only to be ignored or dismissed by the federal agencies in charge of producing the reports. Among major issues that have been raised and that we hope the commission will scrutinize: the models used have assumed climate sensitivities to CO2 concentrations significantly higher than recent research warrants; the models used have predicted much more warming than has actually occurred; predictions of the negative impacts of global warming have been made based on implausible high-end emissions scenarios; the positive impacts of warming have been ignored or minimized; and surface temperature data sets have been manipulated to show more rapid warming than has actually occurred. An underlying issue that we hope the commission will also address is the fact that so many of the scientific claims made in these reports and by many climate scientists are not falsifiable, that is, they cannot be tested by the scientific method.
The conclusions and predictions made by these reports are the basis for proposed energy policies that could cost trillions of dollars in less than a decade and tens of trillions of dollars over several decades. Given the magnitude of the potential costs involved, we think that taking the insular processes of official, consensus science on trust, as has been the case for the past three decades, is negligent and imprudent. In contrast, major engineering projects are regularly subjected to the most rigorous and exhaustive adversarial review. We suggest that climate science requires at least the same level of scrutiny as the engineering employed in building a bridge or a new airplane.
We note that defenders of the climate consensus have already mounted a public campaign against the proposed commission. We find this opposition curious. If the defenders are confident that the science contained in official reports is robust, then they should welcome a review that would finally put to rest the doubts that have been raised. On the other hand, their opposition could be taken as evidence that the scientific basis of the climate consensus is in fact highly suspect and cannot withstand critical review.
We further note that opponents of the proposed commission have already stooped to making personal attacks on Dr. Happer. Many signers of this letter know Dr. Happer personally and are familiar with his scientific career. We know him to be a man of high capabilities, high achievements, and the highest integrity.
It has been reported that some officials within your administration have proposed an internal working group as an alternative to an independent commission subject to FACA. Insofar as an internal working group would consist of federal career scientists reviewing their own work, we think this alternative would be worse than doing nothing.
Although an independent commission of distinguished scientists would have high credibility, we do not mean to imply that its report should be the end of the matter. We therefore suggest that the National Academies of Science and Engineering would be appropriate bodies to conduct an initial review of the commission’s report.
Mr. President, you have made a number of comments in recent years expressing doubts about the global warming consensus. Many of the signers of this letter have been similarly skeptical. Without prejudging the results, we think that a review of climate science produced by an independent, high-level commission would be a fair test for your views (and ours): either it would provide a sound basis for revising your views or it would confirm your views and confound your critics.
For these reasons, we urge you to create by Executive Order a President’s Commission on Climate Security. Thank you for considering our views.
Sincerely,
Myron Ebell
Director, Center for Energy and Environment
Competitive Enterprise Institute
1310 L Street, N. W., Seventh Floor
Washington, DC 20005, USA
Tel direct: (202) 331-2256
Tel mobile: (202) 320-6685
E-mail: Myron.Ebell@cei.org
Stop continental drift!