Opinion: More Unraveling of the Climate Scam

If you have followed my commentaries over the last six years, you are well aware of the climate scam. But most Americans are not. True, they seem to realize that “Global Warming” has little basis in fact. Only one percent believe that we are facing a climate catastrophe, while only three percent of the young are convinced. That should doom climate superstitions. But it does not.

Too many want to hedge their bets by agreeing that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” and needs to be controlled. In other words, most want all the benefits of an industrialized society but not the beneficial byproducts. That betrays a vast ignorance of science.

What do you get when you combine water and carbon dioxide? If you or I do it, we get soda water. But if you give that same water and carbon dioxide to any plant and put it in the sunshine, you get glucose, a simple sugar that forms the basis of life on Earth. Plants then produce all manner of other sugars, carbohydrates, cellulose, starches, fats, and proteins from the glucose that allow them to grow and support a vast animal kingdom. This is the miracle of life on Earth.

Put another way, without carbon dioxide and water, there would be no life on Earth. Alarmists usually respond that the issue is not the carbon cycle but how much CO2 is ideal. That is easy to determine, because we can grow plants in greenhouses where the amount of CO2 can be controlled, either up or down from the ambient level of 420 ppm.

Plant growth typically increases with more CO2 up to 1,000 or 2,000 ppm with further increases producing no additional benefits. Below 420 ppm, crop production declines substantially and below 200 ppm plants stop growing and begin to die.

It is pure insanity to demand that we reduce the level of CO2 in our atmosphere to say 350 ppm. At that level, we would not be able to feed the nearly 8 billion people who call this planet home.

More than a hundred million years ago, the level of CO2 in our atmosphere was about 2,500 ppm and life thrived. But since then the level has declined steadily to only 150 ppm at the end of the last ice age. We know that natural processes have removed most of the CO2 in our atmosphere and stored it at the bottom of the oceans.

With only 150 ppm of CO2 in our atmosphere, life began to die back in places like the high Gobi desert in China. Without plants to hold onto the soil, the Earth experienced enormous dust storms that lasted tens of thousands of years. That coated the vast continental glaciers that kept the planet cold, turning them darker such that they melted. We can see that dust in ice cores from glaciers that are relics of the last ice age, namely those in Greenland.

Unfortunately, most people are unable to judge the validity of sturdy scientific arguments, especially when the media and political class are constantly pushing very false narratives. How then can those without scientific backgrounds decide whether or not to believe those who constantly push apocalyptic scenarios? The simplest technique is to look at their conflicts of interest. If they are obviously benefiting from the economic and political fallout from alarmism, perhaps they should not be believed.

Another way is to look for the obvious and substantial corruption that has occurred.

Unfortunately, that corruption is largely invisible to most Americans, because there are so few real scientists to ring the alarm and even fewer who are not involved in the scam. We used to be able to rely on the news media to spot and investigate. But they have been completely corrupted by politics. And the scientific bodies that should be investigating, like the US National Academy of Sciences, are not enthusiastic about upsetting an apple cart that has proved so lucrative for their members.

As with the lawlessness in our cities, failure to act against the worst perpetrators invites the situation to get worse. Happily, times may be changing.

News Flash

 University of Delaware marine ecologist Professor Danielle Dixson was found guilty by her university of fabricating the data she used to claim that ocean acidification from rising atmospheric CO2 was harming the Great Barrier Reef’s iconic ‘clown fish.’

This is a very common practice among young wanna-be scientists who are desperate to make a name for themselves and land a prestigious university job for life. We constantly see them making outrageous claims about carbon dioxide, global warming, and climate change. It gets a lot of attention and universities, such as Oregon State University, have publicity departments whose job is to make sure the press carries their “latest research.” A study of such practices shows that the magnitude of the claimed effect steadily decreases with each subsequent study until it completely disappears.

In this case, Dixson’s fraudulent research is being withdrawn, including 22 papers in various prestigious journals. Furthermore, her thesis advisor at James Cook University in Australia is coming under scrutiny for suspected complicity. Dixson was turned in by her colleagues who suspected that she was cheating. We owe them a debt of gratitude.

News Flash

Oregon’s most prominent scientist, OSU Professor of Marine Ecology Jane Lubchenco, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, a recipient of the McArthur Genius Award and 20 honorary degrees, a former administrator of NOAA under President Obama, and a co-head of President Biden’s Scientific Integrity Task Force was severely disciplined by the US National Academy of Sciences for unethical behavior that violated specific academy policies related to publishing. She approved publications where she and a relative were authors and used old data sets that were more favorable to her conclusions.

This is not what we are saying. It is what National Public Radio reported. Here is the Wikipedia summary:

“In August of 2022, the National Academy of Sciences stated, “[e]ffective August 8, for a five-year period, the NAS Council has barred Jane Lubchenco from being involved in NAS publications; serving on or participating in NAS and NRC program activities; and receiving NAS honors or awards.” The publication Axios noted, the ban “stems from section 3 of its code of conduct. It states that members “shall avoid those detrimental research practices that are clear violations of the fundamental tenets of research.”

“On February 10, 2022, three senior Republican members of the U.S. House of Representative’s Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, sent a letter to the President of the United States asking for an investigation of Lubchenco’s professional behavior and encouraging “. . . you to consider if Dr. Lubchenco should continue to be involved in developing a framework for the improvement of agency scientific integrity policies and practices when she has violated the very policies she is tasked with imposing on Federal agencies.”

But on February 25, 2022, Newsmax reported:

“As Russian troops advanced on Ukrainian cities Thursday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) sat down with some of the nation’s top scientists for a roundtable discussion on how to counter climate change denialism and delay.”

“OSTP Deputy Director for Climate and Environment, Jane Lubchenco, confirmed the discussions.”

A genius indeed!

Stayed tuned for the next exciting episode in the unraveling of the climate scam, as Europe faces economic collapse from a rapidly worsening energy crisis. Their windmills and solar panels will not keep the region running this winter, let alone warm.

Gordon J. Fulks lives in Corbett and can be reached at gordonfulks@hotmail.com. He is one of the volunteer Directors of the CO2 Coalition and holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago’s Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research. Dr. Fulks has no conflicts of interest on this subject.