When it comes to climate change alarmism, science doesn’t care (Opinion)

By Paul Alter

Bjorn Lomborg’s commentary on Feb. 20, “The current global retreat from climate alarmism is a good thing,” misses the point of anthropogenic climate change. He looks at it through the lens of politics and economics, which are certainly important aspects.

But science doesn’t care.

The physics and chemistry underpinning our understanding of human-caused climate change occur whether or not we like the economic or political implications. It’s the same science we use to understand the atom, isotopes, the electromagnetic spectrum, molecules and their bonds, the laws of thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, geology and earth’s geological history, and several other fields. It’s the same physics that allows a TV screen to work, to have an X-ray, or glow-in-the-dark ceiling star stickers for your child’s bedroom. It’s the same chemistry that gives soda its bubbles and raises the acidity just enough for your dentist to warn you not to drink too much.

It’s that basic, that well understood, and it’s all cohesive: The underpinnings of the physics and chemistry are consistent with the truly countless number of experiments that have been performed and verified over the years. Not just the climate science, but how all of these fields work together and are complementary to their understandings.

Despite what some want you to believe, climate science on earth is very well understood and accurately modeled. The science of greenhouse gases goes as far back as 1856, when Eunice Newton Foot demonstrated the solar heating properties of CO2. There’s a comprehensive essay on the history of the science and experiments behind our understanding of the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect by the American Institute of Physics. With the links and references, you can dig about as deep as you want to go. (history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm).

We know the increases in greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, primarily CO2 and methane, are driving climate change: more physics. Here’s an easy-to-read explanation by our very own NOAA that explains how burning fossil fuels is driving the increasing CO2 and resulting warming: tinyurl.com/27b6bvd2.

But haven’t all the climate models been wrong? In a word, no. Here’s a good summary of the climate models from the past: tinyurl.com/y58p7ytw. They’ve been remarkably accurate.

Where they currently have trouble is predicting specific regional or localized changes, such as how much and how quickly warming sea water is undermining massive glacier stability in Antarctica. Or how a warming climate is shifting weather patterns in certain regions. This is all pretty new territory, but those models and predictions are rapidly evolving and improving.

Lomborg is accurate that deaths from weather-related events have dramatically decreased over time, and he correctly ascribes that to “adaptation through innovation.” What he doesn’t mention is that the average number of inflation-adjusted billion-dollar weather disasters has gone from less than 10 events per year between 1980 and 2010, to an average in the teens for the 2010s, and averaging over 20 of these catastrophes per year since 2020. That’s one heck of a trajectory.

The costs in the U.S., adjusted for inflation, have gone from about $20 billion per year in the 1980s to over $150 billion per year in this decade. Globally, it’s well into the trillions per year. And remember, the advances that Lomborg is relying on largely came from weather and climate research from NCAR, NOAA and NASA, the same research programs that the Trump administration is actively dismantling.

And, yes, China’s current energy production is overwhelmingly fossil fuel based. But, China is also the world’s largest investor in renewable energy research, manufacturing and implementation, accounting for about $260 billion in 2024. China’s fossil fuel energy investment has peaked and started declining while renewables continue to rapidly grow.

Lomborg’s writings reminded me of a tongue-in-cheek New Yorker cartoon of a family in rags, sitting in a cave around a small fire, and the father saying, “Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.” Lomborg would point to that as an example of climate change alarmism. But science doesn’t care.

Paul Alter lives in Boulder.

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