The less frequently published side of the climate change debate

October 31, 2023

One of the hottest issues occurring these days is the debate over whether we are harming the planet and threatening human life by burning fossil fuels and adding dangerous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

There are many people on each side of this debate, including scientists. The more frequently expressed point of view in the media is the climate catastrophe side. But to add a strong opinion to the other side of that argument, the following information from Patrick Moore is offered.

Moore is a co-founder of Greenpeace, a Canadian environmentalist who previously served as president of Greenpeace Canada and director of Greenpeace International.

In a video produced by Prager University, he presented his position. “All life is carbon based. And the carbon for all that life originates from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 

“All of the carbon in the fossil fuels we are burning for energy today was once in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide before it was consumed by plankton in the sea and plants on the land. Coal, oil and natural gas are the remains of those planktons and plants transformed by heat and pressure deep in the Earth’s crust. 

“In other words, fossil fuels are 100 percent organic, and were produced with solar energy. Sounds positively green. 

“If there were no carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, the Earth would be a dead planet. Period. Talk about catastrophic climate change. Take away CO2 and you’d have it. 

“And yet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has deemed this essential ingredient for life a pollutant. But how can something that makes life possible be bad?” 

He went on to say that “carbon dioxide is a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas which is an indispensable food for all living things. Can you have too much of it? In theory, yes. That’s what climate alarmists say is happening now: CO2 levels are getting too high.

“Are they right? Well, if we look at the big picture, we find something surprising. For most of the history of life on Earth, carbon dioxide has been present in the atmosphere at much higher levels than it is today.”

Continuing, Moore said that “From a big picture perspective, we’re actually living in a low carbon dioxide era. The optimum level of CO2 for plant growth, for example, is four to five times what is currently found in our atmosphere. That’s why greenhouse growers worldwide actually inject additional CO2 into their greenhouses.”

That certainly is not a common perspective on CO2 and the environment.

Ian Plimer is a geologist and professor emeritus at the University of Melbourne. He spoke at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Challenge, a conference for climate change deniers. According to The Australian newspaper, in closing his speech, Plimer stated that "They’ve got us outnumbered, but we’ve got them outgunned, and that’s with the truth." 

An online video produced after the conference shows Plimer saying, “No one has ever shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming. Never been shown. 

“And if it could be shown, then you would have to show that the 97 percent of emissions which are natural do not drive global warming. Game over.

“We are dealing with a fraud. That’s a scientific fraud from day one. We hear the propaganda that increases of the gas of life, a trace gas in the atmosphere, will bring a disaster. And that we will have runaway global warming. 

“Sorry, folks. We’ve known for 200 years from chemistry that it’s the exact inverse. When we drill into ice we have chemical fingerprints that tell us what the temperature was, and we have little bits of trapped air [to examine]. And we can show that when we had natural warming, some 650 to 6,000 years later we had an increase in carbon dioxide. 

“It’s not carbon dioxide that drives temperature, it’s the exact inverse. Another fraud.”

Godfrey William Bloom is a former British politician who served as a Member of the European Parliament. His position on the argument is one that often arises when governments attempt to do something that many disagree with.

“Isn’t this really just about the state being able to get its hands in ordinary people’s trouser pockets to still get more tax from them,” he asked. “Isn’t this all about political control? Isn’t all of this about politics and big business?

“The whole thing’s a sham, this bogus hypothesis, this ridiculous nonsense that manmade CO2 is causing global warming.  Enough, please, before we damage irrevocably the global economy.”

It is crucial to recognize the need for carbon dioxide to sustain life, and also that it is possible to have too much of many things. But, if it is possible to have too much carbon dioxide, how much is actually too much? And, are we really there, yet?

This argument is not going to be resolved anytime soon. Both sides of the issue have strongly held positions. And neither side seems ready to give in to the other.

But it is important to have as many different ideas about important topics as possible so that after considering all relevant points, good decisions can be made.

Climate change is being blamed for wildfires in North America

August 8, 2023

The wild fires in Canada this year along with the warmer-than-normal temperatures in parts of the country have energized the pro-climate change voices.

An article on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Website noted the following: “Climate change, including increased heat, extended drought, and a thirsty atmosphere, has been a key driver in increasing the risk and extent of wildfires in the western United States during the last two decades.”

Citing a 2016 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) study, the article added that, “climate change enhanced the drying of organic matter and doubled the number of large fires between 1984 and 2015 in the western United States. A 2021 study supported by NOAA concluded that climate change has been the main driver of the increase in fire in the western United States.”

This is a compelling scenario. Wildfires in the U.S. and Canada have certainly been a problem, particularly recently. But as Paul Harvey so wisely said in his radio broadcasts, “Now, the rest of the story.”

An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal last month, authored by Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, tells us that, “One of the most common tropes in our increasingly alarmist climate debate is that global warming has set the world on fire. But it hasn’t.”

Lomborg isn’t just some “climate denier,” he is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, and is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School. He was listed as one of Time's “100 most influential people,” and Business Insider cited him as one of "The 10 Most-Respected Global Warming Skeptics."

The Copenhagen Consensus Center is the winner of Prospect magazine’s 2016 Think Tank of the Year award in the International Affairs category for think tanks based in the United States. 

Given his skepticism of the degree to which the fears of climate change have been expanded, his arguments against that mentality have been harshly received by those who promote that danger.

But he does not come to the fight unarmed, or with only words. In his column he wrote that, “For more than two decades, satellites have recorded fires across the planet’s surface. The data are unequivocal: Since the early 2000s, when 3 percent of the world’s land caught fire, the area burned annually has trended downward.” In support of that claim, there is a chart prepared by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA).

“In 2022, the last year for which there are complete data,” Lomborg continues, “the world hit a new record-low of 2.2 percent burned area. Yet you’ll struggle to find that reported anywhere.”

The area burned has decreased by 0.8 percent, showing that there has been roughly 27 percent less area burned since 2000.

Lomborg’s point is that while looking at North America tells a particular story, broadening the focus to include the entire globe tells a very different story.

Leighton Steward, who passed away last year, was a geologist, environmentalist, author, and retired energy industry executive. He had served as Chairman of the Board of The Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at Southern Methodist University, was Chairman of the National Wetlands Coalition, and was twice Chairman of the Audubon Nature Institute. He had offered environmental advice that was accepted by both the EPA and the U. S. Corps of Engineers.

Years before his passing, U.S. News’ “Washington Whispers” discussed Steward’s perspective on climate change. Paul Bedard, who authored the article, outlined Steward’s views. “Much of the global warming debate has focused on reducing CO2 emissions because it is thought that the greenhouse gas produced mostly from fossil fuels is warming the planet. But Steward, who once believed CO2 caused global warming, is trying to fight that with a mountain of studies and scientific evidence that suggest CO2 is not the cause for warming. What's more, he says CO2 levels are so low that more, not less, is needed to sustain and expand plant growth.”

Furthermore, Steward believed that if CO2 levels are cut, food production will suffer because plants grown at higher CO2 levels make larger fruit and vegetables and also use less water. He also believed that higher CO2 levels are really not harmful to humans. 

Buying into the CO2 crisis, the Biden administration is rising to the occasion by planning to limit many things that Americans need and want. Things like gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles that are affordable and dependable. Incandescent bulbs to light our homes and businesses. Stoves, water heaters, furnaces, grills and other appliances powered by natural gas and propane. All of these desired devices will be banned in favor of electric devices that will be heavily regulated, very expensive, and will create more of a demand than the electric grid can supply.

And the federal government — which has evolved from the smaller and limited entity it was designed to be into a gargantuan, too-powerful body — now enforces these political desires with rules with the force of law that have not been approved by the Congress, the law-making body in our tripartite government.

Badly needed: A more balanced approach for environmental policy

A few months ago, a new proposal to save the world from environmental catastrophe burst forth. The plan was designed to eliminate the threat, or at least reset the End of the World Clock that is counting down the final 10, or maybe 12, remaining years of life on Earth.

Called the Green New Deal (GND), it would turn life in the United States upside down by eliminating some things that we want and need, like fossil fuels and nuclear energy, 99 percent of motor vehicles, air travel, meat, and some other equally radical things.

In addition to all the inconvenience and misery the GND would cause, its price tag is trillions of dollars we don’t have. 

The GND’s narrative of impending doom, burdened with weaknesses and dangers, is just the latest of dozens of prior such predictions. One list contains 42 of them, 27 for which the Competitive Enterprise Institute provided sources, such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the Washington Post, The Guardian, Brown University, Time magazine, and the Associated Press.

Here are some select excerpts of predictions issued between 1967 and 2014, categorized, and each preceded by the year of the prediction:

* Ice Age: 1971 - New Ice Age Coming By 2020 or 2030; 1972 - New Ice Age By 2070; 1974 - Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast

* Flooding: 1988 - Maldive Islands will Be Underwater by 2018; 1989 - Rising Sea Levels Will Obliterate Nations if Nothing Done by 2000; 2005 - Manhattan Underwater by 2015

* Warming: 2008 - Arctic will Be Ice Free by 2018; 2013 - Arctic Ice-Free by 2015; 2000 - Children Won’t Know What Snow Is

* Famine: 1967 - Dire Famine Forecast By 1975; 2002 - Famine In 10 Years If We Don’t Give Up Eating Fish, Meat, and Dairy

* Diverse problems: 1969 - Everyone Will Disappear in a Cloud of Blue Steam By 1989; 1970 - Urban Citizens Will Require Gas Masks by 1985; 2004 - Britain will Be Siberia by 2024; 2014 - Only 500 Days Before ‘Climate Chaos’

If you do not buy into the catastrophe warnings, you are deemed a “science denier” by the climate alarmists. However, you have evidence on your side. The history of predictive catastrophic environmental science is poor.

Despite this horrid record, however, we are told that in 12 years it’s all over. And even though hundreds of scientists dispute the doomsday scenario, we are told it is the unquestionable truth.

Attempting to persuade the powers that be at the United Nations of its erroneous outlook, a group of 500 prominent scientists and professionals from around the globe has produced the European Climate Declaration, and submitted it to officials at the UN. 

The group is led by CLINTEL (Climate Intelligence Foundation) co-founder Guus Berkhout of The Netherlands, and includes America’s noted Richard Lindzen, Ph.D., a professor of meteorology and member of the National Academy of Sciences. Both men are among the Declaration’s “ambassadors” from 14 different countries who signed the communication to the UN.

The September 2019 document makes seven major points: 1. There is no climate emergency; 2. Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming; 3. Warming is far slower than predicted; 4. Climate policy relies on inadequate models; 5. CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth; 6. Global warming has not increased natural disasters; and 7. Policy must respect scientific and economic realities.

Two major fallacies exist in the “science” behind climate catastrophe predictions these scientists say: First, political considerations infect the scientific process, and second, the climate models that predict catastrophe are biased.

Climate models use quantitative methods to simulate the interactions of the important drivers of climate, including atmosphere, oceans, land surface and ice. The results of a climate model are a product of the data provided. 

The Declaration offers the following comment on climate models: “Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. Moreover, they most likely exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases such as CO2. In addition, they ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.”

Further, it notes: “CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crop worldwide.”

And the seventh and final point: “There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. If better approaches emerge, and they certainly will, we have ample time to reflect and adapt. The aim of international policy should be to provide reliable and affordable energy at all times, and throughout the world.”

The introductory letter written by the ambassadors suggests that the UN “organize with us a constructive high-level meeting between world-class scientists on both sides of the climate debate early in 2020,” and recommends a full and fair discussion of the issue. 

That seems to be a sensible plan.

Hurricanes and the IPCC report crank up climate catastrophe talk

The devastation resulting from this year’s hurricane season has once again spurred the climate change faction into action. Combined with a new report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), these horrible storms regenerated the predictions of doom and gloom from that group of scientists who get paid lots of money, green money, and work overtime to convince us to ignore the substantial contrary scientific data that the end is going to come, and now it is even closer than the last time they cranked up the Scare Machine.

The IPCC report suggests that a 2-degree Celsius increase in global temperatures over the next 22 years would be catastrophic. The New York Timestook this to mean that we face “a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.”

Weighing in on this renewed crisis, political commentator Ben Shapiro addressed it in his column “No, Global Warming Isn’t The End Of The World. Here’s Why,” last week.

“The report urges a 45 percent reduction in carbon emissions from 2010 levels by 2030 in order to prevent that imminent doom,” he wrote. “The report finds that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require ‘rapid and far-reaching’ transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities.” 

Shapiro added that the consequences of this approach would be devastating. “Some of those changes could include an attempt to direct 5-10 percent of global capital revenues toward investment in public works projects, plus a $27,000 tax on each ton of carbon by 2100 – equivalent to roughly $250 per gallon tax on gasoline.”

All of which made Eric Holthaus and other confused socialists break out the champagne. Holthaus, of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, cheered the dismantling of capitalism that will follow this really foolish idea: “If you are wondering what you can do about climate change: The world's top scientists just gave rigorous backing to systematically dismantle capitalism as a key requirement to maintaining civilization and a habitable planet. I mean, if you are looking for something to do.”

Imagine that: a creature of academia that wants to do away with capitalism! 

Some interesting data addressing emissions is the “BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2018” chart showing the ten countries with the largest reductions of CO2 emissions and the ten countries with largest increases in CO2 emissions.

Leading the world in reductions in CO2 emissions in 2017 is – wait for it – the United States with more than 40 tons of reductions. The next three are the Ukraine, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. At the other end the four with as much or more in increases as the U.S. had in reductions are:
* the European Union - 40+ million tons

* Turkey – 40+ million tons

* India – 90+ million tons

* China – nearly 120 million tons

America leads the world in CO2 reductions, but four contributors each negate America’s efforts. One contributor produces twice as much as we reduced, and another produces four times what we reduced. And yet, America must do more, they say. 

The Earth has been heating and cooling for thousands, probably millions, of years; warming and cooling periods are not unusual. The terms “global warming” and “climate change” do not adequately illustrate how the Earth’s global temperature behaves. 

To provide some understanding, a chart produced by climatologist Cliff Harris and meteorologist Randy Mann covering temperatures from 2500 B.C. up to the present and looking ahead to 2038 A.D. shows the warming and cooling cycles, and should assist in understanding what is happening. 

In this 4500-year period, there have been at least 75 major temperature swings, the chart explains. The warmest temperature occurred in 1100 B.C., and the coolest temperature, by far, occurred in The Little Ice Age sometime near 1600 A.D. The warmest “recent” temperature occurred in about 1300 A.D. For most of the 4500 years, no numbers are used to indicate temperatures.

The normal temperature is 57°F. The warmest temperature using actual numbers was 58.3°F in 1998, and the coldest was estimated at 54.3°F in The Little Ice Age in 1600 A.D. The recent temperature span indicated by these two data points was approximately 4°F.

On the chart, the projected high temperature in 2038 is approximately the same as the high temperature in 1100 B.C., but is not represented by a number.

“Why shouldn’t we be quite as worried,” Shapiro asks, “as the Left would argue about global warming? Because people are good at adapting. The changes that we’re talking about don’t happen overnight – they happen over the course of decades. And that means that the impact is spread out over the course of decades, too, and against a backdrop of global growth.”

Certainly, this information must be willingly received and considered. But given the strong scientific data challenging the catastrophic predictions, the past manipulation of data and the “green money” influence enjoyed by the climate change scientific community, and America’s world-leading record of CO2 emission reductions, any sacrifice needed to combat climate change must come from other nations.