An effective challenge to the climate catastrophe narrative

Sept. 16, 2025

Despite the desperate efforts of the climate catastrophe crowd, very good opinion pieces arguing against their narrative keep being released. Another one appeared in the Wall Street Journal, written by Steven E. Koonin.

The article, titled, “At Long Last, Clarity on Climate,” began: “A recent Energy Department report challenged the widespread belief that greenhouse gas emissions pose a serious threat to the nation. It likely soothed Americans irked by forced energy transitions, but you would be wrong to assume it reassured many alarmed by hypothetical climate catastrophes.” 

Koonin, who is an author and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, continued, writing that “There is a disconnect between public perceptions of climate change and climate science — and between past government reports and the science itself. Energy Secretary Chris Wright understands this. It’s why he commissioned an independent assessment by a team of five senior scientists, including me, to provide clearer insights into what’s known and not about the changing climate.”

He noted that this group has more than 200 years of research experience collectively, most of which was closely related to climate studies.

“The resulting peer-reviewed report is entirely our work, free from political influence — a departure from previous assessments,” he wrote. “It draws from United Nations and U.S. climate reports, peer-reviewed research, and primary observations to focus on important aspects of climate science that have been misrepresented to nonexperts.” 

Among the report’s key findings:

• Elevated carbon-dioxide levels enhance plant growth, contributing to global greening and increased agricultural productivity. 

• Complex climate models provide limited guidance on the climate’s response to rising carbon-dioxide levels. Overly sensitive models, often using extreme scenarios, have exaggerated future warming projections and consequences. 

• Data aggregated over the continental U.S. show no significant long-term trends in most extreme weather events. Claims of more frequent or intense hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and dryness in America aren’t supported by historical records. 

• While global sea levels have risen about 8 inches since 1900, aggregate U.S. tide-gauge data don’t show the long-term acceleration expected from a warming globe. 

• Natural climate variability, data limitations and model deficiencies complicate efforts to attribute specific climate changes or extreme events to human CO2 emissions. 

• The use of the words “existential,” “crisis” and “emergency” to describe the projected effects of human-caused warming on the U.S. economy finds scant support in the data. 

• Overly aggressive policies aimed at reducing emissions could do more harm than good by hiking the cost of energy and degrading its reliability. Even the most ambitious reductions in U.S. emissions would have little direct effect on global emissions and an even smaller effect on climate trends. 

Koonin notes that this group’s report is the first in a good while that challenges the narrative of catastrophic climate change, and that many people are surprised by it because government has failed to accurately communicate climate science.

What is commonly called “climate science” is often more like “climate crises.” The idea is to scare people about the climate so that they will comply with the narrative and the proposed actions to protect us from catastrophe. 

So many of the previous predictions of devastation have not been correct. Here are some of the many examples of false predictions and the year in which they were made:

1967: Dire Famine Forecast by 1975

1969: Everyone Will Disappear in a Cloud of Blue Steam by 1989

1970: Urban Citizens Will Require Gas Masks by 1985

1971: New Ice Age Coming by 2020 or 2030

1988: Maldive Islands will Be Underwater by 2018

1989: Rising Sea Levels Will Obliterate Nations if Nothing Done by 2000

1989: UN Warns Global Warming Will Wipe Nations Off the Face of the Earth by 2000 

2000: Snowfalls Are Now a Thing of the Past

2002: Famine In 10 Years If We Don’t Give Up Eating Fish, Meat, and Dairy

2005: Manhattan Underwater by 2015

2008: Arctic will Be Ice Free by 2018

2008: Climate Genius Al Gore Predicts Ice-Free Arctic by 2013

2009: Climate Genius Prince Charles Says We Have 96 Months to Save the World

In 2024 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website published the components of our atmosphere, and the dreaded CO2 (carbon-dioxide), the gas that is blamed for leading us to a ¬catastrophic future, makes up just .04% of it. 

Some scientists say that we need twice as much CO2 to enhance plant growth, and more plants produce more oxygen. And they say that reducing the .04% level by half would seriously endanger plant and human life. 

Others who support the global warming theory, admit that lower CO2 levels would lead to lower — perhaps much cooler — temperatures, since CO2 is credited for raising temperatures.

“Climate policies must balance the risks of climate change against a response’s costs, efficacy and collateral effects,” Koonin wrote. “Reports like ours may draw a lot of anger but our work accurately portrays important aspects of climate science. Acknowledging the facts is essential for informed policy decisions.”

Given the large number of climate catastrophes that have been predicted, and that have not occurred, and given the relatively moderate current atmospheric conditions, perhaps we should relax on this topic.

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.

An Associated Press story provides some things to think about

April 11, 2023

The recent horrible weather events that have killed and injured hundreds of Americans and destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses have gotten well-deserved attention.

In addition to tornados like those seen this year in America, through its many decades the country has experienced many severe weather events, like hurricanes, floods, draughts, blizzards, ice storms, wildfires, bomb cyclones, the polar vortex and other weather horrors.

These weather phenomena were addressed last week by the Associated Press (AP) in a story by Seth Borenstein titled, “Why the US leads the world in weather catastrophes.”

Borenstein, noting that the “United States is Earth’s punching bag for nasty weather,” said that we can blame geography for the serious weather we experience.

“Two oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains, jutting peninsulas like Florida, clashing storm fronts and the jet stream combine to naturally brew the nastiest of weather,” he wrote.

According to North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello, our weather problems start with “where we are on the globe. It’s truly a little bit … unlucky.”

Borenstein noted that when we add to that man-made aspects that complicate our locational problem -- like what, where and how we build things -- the situation gets worse. “The U.S. is by far the king of tornadoes and other severe storms,” he wrote. 

Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini commented that “It really starts with two things. Number one is the Gulf of Mexico. And number two is elevated terrain to the west.”

Describing our recent outbreak of tornadoes, Borenstein warned that more could be coming. “Dry air from the West goes up over the Rockies and crashes into warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, and it’s all brought together along a stormy jet stream. 

“In the West, it’s a drumbeat of atmospheric rivers. In the Atlantic, it’s nor’easters in the winter, hurricanes in the summer and sometimes a weird combination of both, like Superstorm Sandy.”

The way forward to reduce the hazards of these storms is not to stop using incandescent light bulbs, gas stoves, gas-powered and diesel-powered vehicles and toilet paper, as championed by the Climate Change camp. 

Susan Cutter, director of the Hazards Vulnerability and Resilience Institute at the University of South Carolina, told Borenstein, “One of the ways you can make your communities more resilient is to not develop them in the most hazard-prone way or in the most hazard-prone portion of the community.”

“The insistence on building up barrier islands and development on barrier islands, particularly on the East Coast and the Gulf Coast, knowing that that sand is going to move and having hurricanes hit with some frequency … seems like a colossal waste of money,” she said.

One factor is that in the south more manufactured housing is being used, and it is “more vulnerable to all sorts of weather hazards,” Cutter said. 

Where we build and how we build contributes greatly to the deaths, injuries, and destruction resulting from the weather phenomena that our Earthly location brings to us. Given that we cannot control the weather that occurs naturally in the U.S., we should be even more aware of where and how we build structures.

If the United States as a whole has it bad, the South has it worse, according to Marshall Shepherd, a Georgia meteorology professor and former president of the American Meteorological Society.

“We drew the short straw (in the South) that we literally can experience every single type of extreme weather event,” Shepherd said. “There’s no other place in the United States that can say that.”

Some states, like Florida, North Carolina and Louisiana, stick out in the water, so they are more prone to being hit by hurricanes, some of the experts noted.

This AP story provides a factor affecting our severe and often deadly weather that many or most of us have not known of thought about previously. While those who argue against the catastrophic claims of climate change are generally ridiculed, this factor tends to lend them a significant element of defense.

And those dire warnings of catastrophe in the past decades that did not materialize seem even more crazy than before.

Comedian George Carlin many years ago pointed out that our planet has been here 4.5 billion years. Humans, by contrast, have only been around for maybe 200,000 years, a very small percentage of that time. And we have been involved in heavy industry and other things that so many believe may destroy Earth for only about 200 years. He said that “the planet has been through a lot worse than us.” 

Of course, George Carlin is not a climate scientist, and how humans do things can have very negative consequences. But maybe things aren’t as bad as some think. 

The natural factors that the AP story highlights must be a part of how we think about weather and climate change. And maybe we can moderate our attitude regarding doing away with fossil fuels by forcing the end of their use prematurely and unnaturally, given that our Earthly location is a primary factor in our weather. 

Heat wave warms political rhetoric and motivation

 

It’s been a bit warm lately in most of the U.S., and very hot in some places. Another climate crisis is upon us, and we are told to act soon.

Why is it that virtually each and every time an “out-of-the-ordinary” weather event occurs, the climate mania folks cry “It’s the end of humanity if we don’t do radical things immediately?” Too many hurricanes in a year: the end is nearing. Above normal heat and dry conditions: we must stop using fossil fuels.

However, if you look back at the history of catastrophic climate warnings over the last 50-plus years, they were embarrassingly wrong. In this space on June 28th, there were listed seven examples of incorrect predictions of climate doom dating from 1974 through 2018.

Yet, a couple of additional hurricanes, a dry spell, or today’s heat wave sends the eco-mania left into another round of catastrophic predictions of imminent doom

Last week, Fox Business Network’s Larry Kudlow featured theoretical physicist Dr. Steven E. Koonin on his 4:00 p.m. program. Koonin is the author of the bestselling book “Unsettled: What climate science tells us, what it doesn’t, and why it matters.”  His credentials also include being former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University, and he served as Undersecretary for Science in the US Department of Energy under President Barack Obama.

Koonin gets slammed by the pro-climate-catastrophe crowd due to his view that the world is not nearing its end because of CO2 and other climate threats. 

Discussing an official government report from 2018 on the Kudlow program, Koonin said, “The graphs are there; they show warmest temperatures are not greater than they were in 1900, nor are the heatwaves more common than they were in 1900.”

“What we see with heat waves is weather. It happens on time scales or changes of a few days. Heat waves are not going to last more than a few days, either in the US or in Europe. Whereas climate is the many-decade average of weather: temperature, winds, humidity, extreme events, and so on,” he continued. 

“And so, people have a tendency — the news media certainly does — to focus on what happens today. That’s news. But it’s kind of boring to say things have changed by x, y or z over the last 30 years.” 

Kudlow asked, “so what’s the real story here on climate change?” Koonin’s response: “We’ve seen heat — warming — since the 1600s. We had what’s called ‘the Little Ice Age,’ and [Earth’s temperatures have] gone up in the last century, let’s say, by about 2-degrees Fahrenheit. That’s globally averaged. It’s gotten warmer more rapidly in some places, in the poles, for example, and it tends to get warmer in the evening, compared to getting warmer in the daytime. There are changes. Nevertheless, it’s gotten warmer.”

“Now the real question is, are humans going to be able to, or will humans influence the climate enough so that the warming accelerates?”

“I think we understand that greenhouse gases, mostly CO2, exert a warming influence on the climate. Some human activities … exert a cooling influence on the climate. But on balance, we expect human influences to warm the climate somewhat. And the real issue is, how much is it going to warm, and the best estimate now is that it might warm another 2- or 3-degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. And then, of course, what can we do about it?”

So, Koonin, Obama’s former Undersecretary for Science, agrees that warming has occurred, and that it likely will continue to occur, but does not believe that the end of life on Earth as we know it is in the foreseeable future. Therefore, radical alterations are not called for.

Given the catastrophic predictions over the last half-century that were catastrophically wrong, perhaps Koonin’s forecast of the future is more on target.

The U.S. should reduce its burning of fossil fuels as the development of sources that can equal the demand filled by fossil fuels occurs. The U.S. should not try to force ending fossil fuels that the country’s needs, but be sensible enough to recognize that such transitions take time, and rushing the change only hurts the people, with little or no benefit.

Currently, so-called green sources, such as wind and solar, are incapable of not only matching the level of electricity and vehicle fuel currently needed, but also to do that at a cost that is commensurate with the costs — not the current high level — to which American consumers are accustomed.

President Biden and the rest of his administration would be well advised to focus on the immediate serious problems his policies have brought upon the American people. He should undo the restrictions he placed on domestic energy production, address the sky-high inflation under which people are suffering, and stop the ridiculous levels of dangerous illegal entry into the country that his foolish policies have created, for starters.

It was not an accident that the country was in far better shape under the previous administration than now, even with the scourge of Covid. Biden’s focus must be to help the American people, not to help the political left.