RUTHFULLY YOURS

At the July 3 Nobel laureates conference on Mainau Island, 30 of the 65 attendees signed a media-reported letter urging action against global warming.  Not reported by the media: the attendees listened to Norway’s 1973 Nobel physics laureate, Ivar Giaever, give a truth-telling “Emperor’s New Clothes” speech.  Also, the majority of the Nobel laureates refused to sign the alarmist global-warming letter.

Giaever gave a great speech.  His explanations were clear.  His graphs were persuasive.  He took the part of the boy in the Emperor’s New Clothes folktale.  The boy saw the emperor parading around naked and cried out, “The emperor has no clothes on!”  Giaever was saying that the fraction-of-a-degree differences in temperature upon which global warming theory is based are as invisible as the Emperor’s new clothes.  He said (on this video at the 6:45 mark):

To my surprise both “alarmist” and “deniers” (I guess that I’m quoted as a “denier”) measure the average temperature for the whole earth for a whole year to a fraction of a degree, and that the result is significant. Of course it’s not!

How can you possibly measure the average temperature for the whole earth and for the whole year and come up with a fraction of a degree? So, I have this cry here. I think the average temperature of the earth is equal to the Emperor’s New Clothes. There was a boy who said, you know, who cried at might, “The Emperor has no clothes on,” and I would cry out and say, “You can’t measure the temperature for the whole earth with such accuracy!”

In The Emperor’s New Clothes, the scam artists proclaim that those who can’t see the pretend clothes are so incompetent that they should be fired.  Today, similar insults are invoked in order to cower the opposition:

• The proponents of borders open to criminal immigrants proclaim that those who oppose them are “racists.”
• The proponents of trade agreements with mercantilists proclaim that those who oppose them are “protectionists.”
• The proponents of man-made global warming proclaim that those who oppose them are like “Holocaust deniers.”

Donald Trump is currently telling the truth about illegal immigration and trade agreements and is refusing to be silenced by attacks.  Ivar Giaever is telling the truth about global warming and is refusing to be silenced by insults.

There is a lot of truth in the Emperor’s New Clothes folktale.  Although attacks and insults can silence the truth, eventually a courageous truth-teller speaks out.  Then everyone looks around and sees that the emperor is parading around naked.

Howard Richman with his father and son co-authored the 2014 book Balanced Trade: Ending the Unbearable Costs of America’s Trade Deficits, published by Lexington Books, and the 2008 book Trading Away Our Future, published by Ideal Taxes Association.