Jose Antonio Sáenz de Santamaría: “The climate is what it is, not what environmentalists say it is”

José Antonio Sáenz de Santa María He does not define himself as a denier, but as a “climate realist.” That is, it questions the “dogma of the heat scientists” that current global warming is mainly due to human action. He advocates a “more scientific and less political” approach, as he believes that there is sufficient evidence to affirm that this rise in global average temperature is not very different from that of other geological periods. His new book: «Climate Changes» (Ed. Aulamagna – Proyecto Clave), written with Enrique Ortega and Stefan Uhlig, abounds in this postulate. Climatologists, ecologists or the opposite, their testimony does not give rise to indifference.

Why this book?

Out of indignation. The climate is what it is, not what environmentalists say it is, and it evolves as the planet “decides.” The Earth has activity and development that is absolutely independent of us, so geologists are tired of this story of climate change and that the world is going to end. We are not deniers, what we deny is catastrophism because nothing-is-going-to-happen. There is not going to be any massacre nor are we going to perish roasted. Each of us is going to die when it’s time, not all at the same time. If the sea rises two millimeters a year, it only means that by 2100 it will have risen 15 centimeters. We’re not going to drown. The only thing that will conquer the sea is the lowest step of La Escalerona on Gijón beach. How to say it? The Earth is a very calm system. The events that happen happen at a very slow pace that lasts thousands of years.

Climate change…

It does not exist and I will explain why: the expression is fallacious. The Earth has not had climatic stability in 4.5 billion years. The current global temperature would have to increase 1ºC to reach the maximum of the Roman Empire, at the time of Julius Caesar, and about 3ºC to reach the temperature we had between -10,000 and -5,000 years ago. Our planet lived through a Little Ice Age (13th to 19th centuries) and, in the mid-19th century. XIX, the current warming period begins. All this occurs without any human intervention because, as we know, we began to emit CO2 into the atmosphere significantly in the middle of the 20th century. XX. That the temperature is rising? Yes, we are getting hot, but that’s okay. There is nothing to worry about. The current process is within the natural cycles of warming and cooling of the planet, which have been happening for 800,000 years. There is a cycle every 100,000 years and at least 4 of the previous cycles reached higher temperatures than the current one. In fact, we would be about 2 or 3 degrees away from reaching the maximum. Therefore, the doors of “climate hell” have not been opened, as the UN Secretary General says. What there is is a warming period that has to do with many causes and not exactly with CO2.

The scientific consensus is that there have been many climate changes, but none like this.

That is the official dogma of heatologists, nothing more. There is no consensus. What there is in any case is a journalistic and political consensus. But science does not advance by consensus. You can be right and be alone. Look at Galileo or Copernicus, when the consensus was that the Earth was flat and in the center. That was the consensus. We say that there is global warming, but we do not agree with its anthropogenic origin. And not just us. In our book you will see that there are 20 pages of scientific articles published in leading peer-reviewed journals on which we base our claim.

But large studies suggest that the main cause of current warming is humans.

First, these studies have only asked some scientists who, curiously, are interested in this being the case because they are in the running to receive grants and continue with their studies. Second, this says one thing and there will be more than 1,000 publications and 3,000 scientists saying just the opposite. But I insist: you just have to look at the graphs. The evolution of the CO2 level in the 20th century. XX has one dynamic and that of the global average temperature another that has nothing to do with it. They almost never coincide, except now that we are in a warming period and, of course, the two curves rise at the same time, but if you look at the divorce curve in Spain since the year 80, it also correlates with the temperature. Just because two physical quantities rise at the same time does not mean that they have a causal relationship. Therefore, no moderately enlightened scientist can speak of consensus. And that climate change is caused by human activity is not a fact, it is a working hypothesis. Defending something that is not proven is climate fanaticism.

Does CO2 have nothing to do with it?

The increase in temperature has to do with sunshine, celestial cycles and other planetary variables. It is curious that, when the cooling begins in the year -5,000, the proportion of CO2 begins to increase steadily. This is contrary to the theory of anthropogenic CO2, which links global warming to an increase in the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere. And, for example, during the Holocene (from 11,000 years ago to the present), the average temperature of the planet rose a lot during the first 10,000 years (about 3.5ºC), but then it stabilized for another 2,000 years and fell again for another 6,000. Meanwhile, CO2 continued to rise at its own pace, without change. CO2 rises, but there are many reasons why it does so. The basic reason is because, as the land warms, the sea also warms. Then, it releases the CO2 that is already dissolved in the water. CO2 of anthropogenic origin is nothing more than 0.0018% of all the CO2 in the atmosphere, which is 0.042%.

If there is “climate fanaticism”, what objective does it pursue?

It’s a business. They are charging us an air tax. There are CO2 emission rights that a company has to buy to emit and that we are all paying because they make, for example, European companies produce more expensive steel than Turkish steel. So with everything. And what happens? Inflation. We import cheap products from abroad… All this climate nonsense is leading to the destruction of our industrial fabric and our primary sector in exchange for nothing, because CO2 is going to continue rising. 10 years ago we were emitting about 25 gigatons of CO2. Now we emit around 40 and it is estimated that in 2050 we will emit 60. No one is going to stop it, because 80% of our global energy consumption is gas, oil and coal.

Who is interested in the European Union losing competitiveness?

There are obvious political, economic and even social objectives. But I am a scientist, not a political scientist; I can only point out that we have a problem of environmental fanaticism. The concept of “saving the planet” only exists in the EU, which emits 9% of all CO2 in the world. Spain emits 0.7%. Well, we who issue the 9 are destroying our economic system, and while China issues the 35, India the 10, the United States the 25… Do you understand? They have successfully passed the Paris Agreement. In other words, we are installed in the most absolute nonsense. We are shooting ourselves in the foot. And, on top of that, even if we managed to eliminate all the CO2 we emit, global warming would not stop because one thing has nothing to do with the other.

Do you trust the 2030 Agenda?

What the 2030 agenda tries to do is for the world to develop, for there to be no hunger, for there to be hospitals, sanitation, jobs, blah blah blah. Well, all that means is increasing the GDP, so to speak. This is not going to happen in any other way than by increasing the consumption of oil and coal accompanied by an increase in emissions, and that is absolutely unavoidable.

Have you ever written that “climate change” is a smokescreen, why?

Look at the DANA. The President of the Government says that climate change is to blame. Let’s see. The Consell de Valencia has recorded 27 major floods since 1321. Of them, 13 took place during the Little Ice Age. This is the only one produced during a time of clear increase in temperature. Therefore, the truth is that the magnitude of this and other disasters is due to poor political management, not to climate change, which is always the great excuse. Why are you interested in using the topic politically? Well, because they have not done what had to be done, which was to clean the channels, laminate with weirs, create dams to withstand the floods and not build in flood-prone areas. It is not just a problem of the current Executive, it is what should have been done politically in the last 40 years.

Because of that rule of three, you will not be very satisfied with the management of the current Ministry of Ecological Transition.

The first thing Sara Aagesen, the new minister, has to do is lift the closure of the nuclear plants. Nuclear energy is in some way a guarantee of 20% of electricity production and that prices do not rise, because wind and solar technologies are more expensive than nuclear and gas technologies. Once that is done, it would have to open lithium, cobalt, vanadium, tungsten mines… which we have in Spain and which are necessary raw materials for the “ecological transition”, instead of buying minerals abroad. That’s what Aagesen should be doing. It won’t, obviously, but oh well. Another thing must be said, and that is that all this money that is being spent wildly on eliminating CO2 was better used on eliminating the real pollution, that of plastic waste, or on improving the sanitation network to save water.

Are your postulates summarized in…?

Tranquillity. We have to get rid of that burden, that kind of climate anxiety that has been placed on us by hammering away at the climate crisis. The planet has the dynamics it has; It’s very slow. Nature does not generate global catastrophes. We can witness harsh atmospheric phenomena in some parts of the world because nature is like that: raw. But we are not going to stop those processes regardless of what we do. What we can do is evaluate the geological risks of each area to create or adapt infrastructure to those risks. See where a railway line is laid, where a house is built, study the need for storm wells, laminating flood zones, etc. Do what man has always done: adapt.

Climatic realist and scourge of heating science

Geologist from the University of Oviedo in 1977, Sáenz de Santamaría is Scientific Director of the Spanish Group of Strategic and Critical Raw Materials of the Engineering Institute of Spain. He was president of the College of Geologists of Asturias. After 40 years in oil exploration, coal mining – for companies such as Campsa or Hunosa – and in the construction of tunnels for High Speed ​​railway lines (Adif), he retired in 2014. Since then he has focused in scientific dissemination, co-founding the Association of Climate Realists, writing articles and giving conferences.