Wall Street Journal: In 10 Years, No Sign of Global Warming

World temperatures have remained virtually unchanged in the past 10 years despite predictions of global warming and America’s mildest winter in decades, Princeton physics professor William Happer contends.

Weather patterns worldwide over the past few months were very similar to those in 1942 when the continental United States basked in a warm winter at the same time that Alaska and Asia were slammed with severe weather and “General Frost” stalled the German army’s advance into Russia, Happer wrote in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed.

And any changes that have occurred should not be attributed to a rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Happer, a prominent opponent of climate change theory, wrote in an article headlined “Global Warming Models Are Wrong Again.”

“CO2 is not a pollutant,” he wrote. “Life on earth flourished for hundreds of millions of years at much higher CO2 levels than we see today. Increasing CO2 levels will be a net benefit because cultivated plants grow better and are more resistant to drought at higher CO2 levels, and because warming and other supposedly harmful effects of CO2 have been greatly exaggerated.”

Global temperatures have increased by around four-fifths of one degree Celsius since the “Little Ice Age” of the early 1800s, he wrote. “Some of that warming has probably come from increased amounts of CO2, but the timing of the warming — much of it before CO2 levels had increased appreciably — suggests that a substantial fraction of the warming is from natural causes that have nothing to do with mankind.”

Recent severe tornadoes in the United States also prove nothing, Happer wrote. “Like winter temperatures, the numbers, severity and geographical locations of tornadoes fluctuate from year-to-year in ways that are correlated with the complicated fluid flow patterns of the oceans and atmosphere, the location of the jet stream, El Niño or La Niña conditions of the tropical Pacific Oceans, etc.

“As long as the laws of nature exist, we will have tornadoes,” he added. “But we can save many more lives by addressing the threat of tornadoes directly — for example, with improved and more widely dispersed weather radars, and with better means for warning the people of endangered areas — than by credulous support of schemes to reduce ‘carbon footprints,’ or by funding even more computer centers to predict global warming.”

Happer has become one of the most outspoken skeptics of global warming. He told Congress in 2009 that the increase in carbon dioxide “will be good for mankind.” The same year, he likened those who believe carbon dioxide is causing climate change to Nazis. “This is George Orwell. This is the ‘Germans are the master race. The Jews are the scum of the earth.’ It’s that kind of propaganda,” he said.

“What used to be science has turned into a cult.”