On the Need for Fossil Fuels

The September article “Pariah or Partner?” on Nawaf al-Sabah ’94 failed to mention the scientific messages presented in 2023 and 2024 by Princeton physicist Will Happer *64 and the Conservative Princeton Association: There is no climate crisis. Carbon is the basis of all life on earth; if atmospheric CO2 dipped below 150 parts per million, plant life would cease to photosynthesize and all life would eventually starve. Greenhouses pump in carbon dioxide up to 900-1,100 parts per million to increase plant growth. Data over epochs show increases in atmospheric CO2 follow, not precede, global increases in temperature. As in former benign interglacial warming periods, temperatures increase at the poles and temperate latitudes, giving longer growing seasons welcomed by northern farmers. The planet has greened 15% since 2000 and deserts are receding. Humanity may continue to burn fossil fuels freely and know our CO2 emissions benefit the expansion of Earth’s leafy green mantle.

Academia has, in my opinion, mesmerized itself into accepting as truth a fantasy of crisis based not on data but on media fanfare for a computer-model-based consensus of “climatologists” dependent for grant funding on following a party line invested in solar panels and wind turbines and benefiting China.

Decrees not to burn fossil fuels appear naïve not only to us American ranchers and farmers, but to African villagers who need fossil fuels to cook, heat, and drive farm products to market — in short, to develop and prosper as did America.