Open letter to Drew Faust, president of Harvard University

Dear Drew,

One of your most influential and wealthy alums, who has just struck Harvard off his donation list in disgust, has sent me a copy of the extraordinary letter you sent a couple of days ago to what you coyly describe as "the Harvard community" and even as "One Harvard."

By this open letter, I am challenging you to a public debate, on your home turf, on whether the opening sentence of your letter to "One Harvard" is true. Here is that remarkable sentence:

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"Worldwide scientific consensus …"

Whoa. Stop right there. Two grave lapses of academic rigor in just three words.

You're the Lincoln Professor of History, for heaven's sake. You're supposed to know that the founders of the scientific method – Thales of Miletus in ancient Greece, Alhazen in 11th-century Iraq – made it repeatedly and explicitly plain that, in the late Michael Crichton's neat turn of phrase, "If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus."

Consensus has no place in science. Einstein, Newton, Feynman – all would be horrified at the thought that the head of any university could utter that silly word.

Consensus is a nakedly political concept favored by the hive mind of the totalitarian left. It ought not to have appeared in a letter from the president of a once-great institution even to the agglomeration of etiolated, apolaustic, politically correct, scraggly-bearded, Democrat-voting, latte-sipping fruit-loops and panty-waists with no dress-sense that Harvard has become.

Secondly, there is no "worldwide scientific consensus."

So let me give you the facts. A recent survey of close on 12,000 scientific papers on climate (for that, of course, was the topic of your letter) found that only 64 had said recent global warming was mostly man-made. The "worldwide scientific consensus" turns out on examination to be just 0.5 percent.

Either you are claiming a consensus that you know to be non-existent or you are pretending to be certain that a consensus exists when you know no such thing. There's no way out. In those three words, one way or the other, you are not telling the truth.

In short, like the Faust of the medieval legend, you have abandoned all moral and spiritual sense in the hope of cash handouts from a Democratic administration to maintain Harvard's lavishly hedonistic lifestyle.

Here's the entire first sentence of your letter:

"Worldwide scientific consensus has clearly established that climate change poses a serious threat to our future – and increasingly to our present."

That's the motion for debate. You will propose. I will oppose.

When I issue debate challenges, one of two things usually happens. The reply (if I get one) says either "The debate is over and the science is settled" or "We will not stoop to debate a non-scientist on a scientific issue."

Well, you're not a scientist and I'm not a scientist, so I propose that we each choose two scientists to support us.

After all, if the debate were really over and the science were truly settled, you would scarcely be bothering to write a manically Messianic letter about it to everyone who is or was at "One Harvard." I cite George Will's Rule: If they say the debate is over, they're really saying two things: the debate is raging and they're losing.

Now, I don't propose to go through any more of the gaseous halations and flatulent fatuities in your letter. Readers who want any more of that stuff can get it by reading any dreary handout from Mr. Obama or the EPA or Al Gore or Sen. Boxer.

The one and only thing a president of Harvard has to be good at is raising money. That's what the job is all about. It follows that you believe that jumping on the global warming bandwagon just as the wheels are coming off will be a smart move, cash-wise.

Maybe not. Your letter says Harvard, until now massively well endowed, is going to get out of oil, coal and gas and channel its portfolio into exciting, trendy, teacher-look-at-me renewables.

Well, if you won't listen to me on science (no global warming for 17 years 8 months and counting, U.N. climate panel halving its original prediction of how fast the world will warm, no change in global sea ice for 35 years, hurricanes down, tornadoes down, so forth), perhaps you'll pay attention to just a little economics.

Bjørn Lomborg, an economist who pretends to believe in global warming because otherwise the leftist media won't publish his articles, has worked out that if you'd invested $100 in fossil fuel businesses in 2002 you'd now have $238. But if you'd put $100 in Solyndras and windmills you'd have only $28 left by now, even after the billions in subsidies Mr. Obama has been throwing at them.

Know this. If you invest in "renewables," Harvard's endowment will melt away. In the cooling climate of the next decade or so, that's about the only thing that will melt.

So, are you up for a debate or not? I guess not. Dare to prove me wrong. Otherwise you will find out the hard way that with a Faustian bargain you don't get what you bargained for.

Media wishing to interview Christopher Monckton, please contact [email protected].

