• Salomon B Kroonenberg.
• Technische Universiteit Delft, afdeling Geotechnologie Delft. s.b.kroonenberg@tudelft.nl
• Ned Tijdschr Geneeskd. 2009 Jan 1; 153: A1518.

AbstractEnergy policy and climate policy are two different issues and should not be treated as if they were the same. Whether the climate gets warmer or colder, saving energy and developing sustainable forms of energy production remain of paramount importance because fossil hydrocarbons are likely to be exhausted soon. But climate policy is a fallacy: it is human arrogance to think we can control the climate by reducing emissions and by storing CO2 underground. In spite of rising CO2 levels, the climate has cooled down slightly over the past decade. Since the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) did not predict this, it is questionable whether they can reliably predict warming. Other factors such as solar activity are probably more important for climate than greenhouse gases. The danger of coupling energy policy to climate policy is evident: if the climate cools down, people will lose belief in the greenhouse effect and therefore also lose interest in saving energy.

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