Friday, February 28, 2020

Naomi Seibt's beliefs about climate have no scientific validity

The Heartland Institute, an extreme conservative/libertarian and free-market fundamentalist  opponent of climate science, has discovered a 19 year old German girl to put forward as right wing opponent of Greta Thunberg.

Her name is Naomi Seibt, and she has had connections with the AfD, the extreme right wing German Party.  She has made anti-semitic remarks, and quotes white supremacist Stephan Molyneaux as an "inspiration".

Seibt is a YouTuber, and there is a speech here that sets our her position on climate change. In it she makes a number of false statements about climate science, which are not worth taking the trouble to refute. It feels wrong to be debating with an unqualified 19 year old girl, but clearly the intent of the Heartland Institute is to make her a major media figure, and therefore it is necessary to look at her case. Most of her arguments are familiar man-made climate change deniers' talking points that are not worth addressing, but her basic position is that humans cannot have an effect on climate. 

Rather than engaging in the usual debate that happens with deniers, batting away the endless series of faulty criticisms that the deniers have, it is more efficient to look at the positive claims that Heartland and others must make to sustain their position.

They have to make at least one, or some, or all of the following claims:
  1. The global temperature has not increased 
  2. CO2, CH4 and other GHGs do not capture and re-radiate infra-red photons.
  3. CO2 is not the major non-condensing greenhouse gas (GHG)
  4. Humans have not increased CO2 and other GHGs
  5. Increasing global temperatures will not cause an increase in the frequency and . of heatwaves, wildfires, flooding and other weather events
All of the above claims are refuted by a very large amount of careful scientific work. 
None of them can be sustained in scientific terms.

The hypothesis of ideologically driven institutions like Heartland is disproved. It is incompatible with observations. It is false. It is a dead parrot, not sleeping, not pining for the fjords. It is a non-hypothesis. 

Therefore there is no need to give further attention of Naomi Seibt. Her position, and more importantly the position of the Heartland Institute, has no validity.



2 comments:

John Donohue said...

A "Denier" is someone who claims the Holocaust did not happen. So, I am confused. I can't see such a claim anywhere in Naomi's videos. Could you please link me to it?

DocRichard said...

"Denier" is used here to refer to people whi are in denial about the challenge posed by man-made climate change. More here: http://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/denial-and-global-warming-denial.html