Lindzen’s Reflections on Kyoto, 1997

Excerpts from Richard Lindzen, op-ed in Los Angeles Times, 1997.

Reflections on Kyoto

In many ways, the science was irrelevant to the outcome. However, it is worth remembering that even the IPCC could not hide the immense uncertainties concerning such an elementary process as the greenhouse effect.

The negotiations present an unseemly picture of diplomats desperate for some treaty at any cost, industrial interests asking that any treaty, however bad, be applied to the developing world, and environmental advocates insisting dishonestly and absurdly that all scientists agree with the most lurid scenarios. The last follows an ignominious tendency of the 20th century to invoke the perceived authority of science in behalf of policy, however evil. In the case of global climate change, there was a blatant attempt to coopt the science through the establishment of a politically led international panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), allegedly ‘representing’ science. The present head of the IPCC is currently at the World Bank. He has never contributed to our understanding of the physics of climate, but has publicly declared that binding emissions restrictions are essential.

(Emphasis is mine.)