MORGANTOWN — A WVU professor would like people to think differently about climate change — and all the costly efforts being made to accelerate green energy.
Dr. Bo “Larry” Lan has degrees in physics and business administration, and a doctorate in supply chain management. He teaches supply chain management at WVU.
Climate change is a hypothesis, he said, and the prevalent hypothesis right now. But it’s bad science to insist it’s the only legitimate hypothesis.
Science is a system of knowledge based on a group of hypotheses, he said. No one can say, “My science branch, every theory, every concept, every statement must be true 100%. No one can say that. … All the laws in physics are hypotheses.”
For instance, the asteroid-impact hypothesis is the prevalent explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs, he said. But there are other theories out there. One involves worldwide volcanic activity. No one knows for sure what the true explanation is.
“For all of the scientific hypotheses we should keep an open mind,” he said. We should try to listen to other opinions, other hypotheses.”
And quantity of agreement doesn’t make a hypothesis correct, he said. Before Copernicus (1473-1543), the scientific truth was that the heavens revolved around the earth.
“Climate change is just one of the hypotheses provided by scientists,” he said. “You can’t say it’s completely true and every other hypothesis is wrong.”
So massive spending on an abrupt green transition seems misguided. “How should we spend hundreds of millions of dollars to promote such green energy every year? I’m a scientist. Without comprehensive proof we should not waste money for green energy. We cannot kill the economy of the United States or West Virginia.”
He clarifies that he’s not denying climate change directly. He’s a physicist and supply chain expert, not in the climatology field where he can set up experiments to prove a climate hypothesis.
Lan’s conversation with The Dominion Post came on the heels of our report on a local state delegate returning from the COP28 climate change conference in Dubai.
The conference yielded the “world’s first ‘global stocktake’ to ratchet up climate action before the end of the decade — with the overarching aim to keep the global temperature limit of 1.5°C within reach,” the official conference release said
The stocktake, the release said, “calls on parties to take actions toward achieving, at a global scale, a tripling of renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency improvements by 2030. The list also includes accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power, phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, and other measures that drive the transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, with developed countries continuing to take the lead.”
But, Lan said, other ideas are emerging. He cited a new study published in the journal Climate. The report on the study published in CERES-Science indicates it was performed by 37 researchers from 18 countries.
The study notes that cities are warmer than the surrounding countryside, and while urban areas only account for less than 4% of the global land surface, many of the weather stations used for calculating global temperatures are located in urban areas. This suggests that global warming estimates may have been contaminated by urban heat island effects — up to 40% of the warming since 1850.
The report also says the study indicates that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) likely underestimated the role of the sun in global warming since the 19th century.
When the authors analyzed the temperature data only using the IPCC’s solar dataset, they could not explain any of the warming since the mid-20th century. But when they repeated the analysis using a different estimate of solar activity — one that is often used by the scientific community — they found that most of the warming and cooling trends of the rural data could actually be explained in terms of changing solar activity.
The report quotes the study’s lead author, Dr. Willie Soon: “For many years, the general public has been assuming that the science on climate change is settled. This new study shows that this is not the case.”
On another topic, Lan addressed the increased occurrence of extreme weather events, which is frequently cited as evidence of global warming and climate change. Those occurrences aren’t necessarily proof, he said. Global weather is a complex system and unstable, so there may be other causes, other reasons.
Lan wants people to consider Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring,” which exposed the dangers of the insecticide DDT and led to the creation of the EPA. Carson was a single voice who overcame widespread opposition and attacks to turn the tide of environmental protection.
Likewise, he said, minority voices on climate issues, like his, deserve to be heard, he said.
He poses an as-yet-untested idea on the dangers of propagating wind energy. Using a formula developed by another scientist, Brian Hurley, he estimates that the windmills needed to supply all of the U.S. with wind power in 2040 would cover 41% of the nation’s land surface.
(Back in 2021, then-Rep. David McKinley learned something along the same lines regarding AEP’s John E. Amos 2,933 MW coal-fired power plant in Putnam County. Working with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, he determined it would take about 4,250 windmills to replace that single plant; and the spacing requirements for windmills mean that a single wind farm would take up 850 square miles. For comparison, Monongalia County covers 360 square miles; Preston covers 649.)
Lan then poses the idea that the volume of wind needed to turn those windmills could actually deplete wind energy and contribute to temperature change by affecting such things as cloud movement and rainfall and shifting heat from hotter areas to cooler areas.
He says in a brief paper he wrote, “I want to raise the awareness of our society to make a more comprehensive analysis of some new techniques before we run them into a massive scale to avoid a ‘Silent Earth’. Further research by scientists of engineering and meteorology may be necessary.
“It is essential to establish national energy security policies for a mixture of new energy and traditional energy, e.g., coal, natural gas, oil, which would bring more opportunities to improve the economy nationally and beyond,” he wrote.
Lan concluded his discussion with The Dominion Post: “We have to protect freedom,” meaning scientific freedom. “Keep an open mind.”
EMAIL: dbeard@dominionpost.com
