Happer, Koonin, and Lindzen: Exhibit A

On March 21, 2018, the US District Court, Northern District of California, San Francisco Division granted William Happer, Steven Koonin, and Richard Lindzen “leave to submit presentation in response to the court’s tutorial questions.”

Somehow, through the magic of law, they were able to file their 26-page document on March 19, 2018. We reproduce the court document here because their Exhibit A is a very good readable summary of climate cause and effect.

Granted, no scientific document can remain perfect forever because science changes with time. I highlighted the changes that should be made in their 2018 response to Question 7, on pages 19 and 20. Based on Berry (2019, 2021, 2023) and papers by Harde and Salby, the following highlighted sentences are now known to be incorrect.

Human activities currently add 8.9 PgC each year to these closely coupled reservoirs (7.8 from fossil fuels and cement production, 1.1 from land use changes such as deforestation). About half of that is absorbed into the surface, while the balance (airborne fraction) accumulates in the atmosphere because of its multi-century lifetime there. Other reservoirs such as the intermediate and deep ocean are less closely coupled to the surface-atmosphere system.

The natural land and ocean sinks have kept pace with human emissions, maintaining the airborne fraction at about one half.

Growing human emissions have increased the atmospheric concentration of CO2, from about 280 ppm in 1900 to just over 408 ppm today. The long atmospheric lifetime of CO2 and the roughly constant airborne fraction mean that this concentration growth is proportional to the cumulative human emissions.

Note also that because climate is influenced by the concentration of CO2 (and hence cumulative emissions), rather than emissions themselves, it is challenging to mitigate human influences by reducing emissions. For example, CSSR Figure ES.3 shows that all global emissions must cease beyond 2075 if human influences are to be stabilized at allegedly “safe” levels.

Steven Koonin’s book, Unsettled, promotes this scientific error (page 68).

Carbon dioxide is the single human-caused greenhouse gas with the largest influence on the climate. But it is of greatest concern also because it persists in the atmosphere/surface cycle for a very long time. About 60 percent of any CO2 emitted today will remain in the atmosphere twenty years from now, between 30 and 55 percent will still be there after a century, and between 15 and 30 percent will remain after one thousand years.

The simple fact that carbon dioxide lasts a long time in the atmosphere is a fundamental impediment to reducing human influences on the climate. Any emission adds to the concentration, which keeps increasing as long as emissions continue. In other words, CO2 is not like smog, which disappears a few days after you stop emissions; it takes centuries for the excess carbon dioxide to vanish from the atmosphere. So modest reductions in CO2 emissions would only slow the increase in concentration but not prevent it. Just to stabilize the CO2 concentration, and hence its warming influence, global emissions would have to vanish.

Berry (2021, 2023) shows the truth.