Greenhouse Gases are making Our Lives Wonderful

By John Coleman, Meteorologist, founder of the Weather Channel

After more than two decades of study I am convinced that life here on Earth has been getting better and better for the billions of we people who make this little blue marble our beloved home.

The “tons and tons of carbon we are spewing into the atmosphere every day” as Al Gore puts it are actually a good thing. In his rants that the Earth will become uninhabitable former Vice President Gore is referring the carbon dioxide gas being released into the atmosphere as we power our civilization with fossil fuels. However, it turns out that as the “greenhouse gasses” we release combine with nature’s carbon dioxide to make the planet greener and greener.

Yes, the increased carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere causes our forests and grasslands to spread out and grow bigger and stronger and the CO2 also causes our food crops to grow faster and better increasing the food supply for people and animals. And these gasses are also warming the planet a little bit decreasing the impact of winter’s deep freezes, ice storms and blizzards. As a result life is better for all of the people and animals living on Earth, and it particularly better for the billions of people in live primitive lives in the undeveloped third world.

There are at least three reasons.

First of all, for at least 20 years ALL of our schools and our Universities have taught the students that carbon dioxide is pollutant and powerful greenhouse gas. Every person has been taught that as a result of our use of fossil fuels which exhaust carbon dioxide into the atmosphere our climate is going to become unlivable. How did this become the accepted position in our schools? Well it started as it became the position of the United States Government thanks to the work of Senator Al Gore who had written a book about the threat of global warming and used it to get elected to the United States Senate. There he pushed his theory through Congress. There was no organized opposition to his campaign and only a few lonesome skeptics tried but failed to be heard in opposition. Scientific papers supporting this theory were widely published in scientific journals. With a powerful Democrat politician advancing the theory and over 90% of college professors Democrats, the tendency was to accept the theory. First thing we knew the theory was in all the text books and presented as a fact in every class room. So classroom teachers and College Professors had accepted the theory about CO2 being a super “greenhouse gas” the Algorian position was totally accepted in the educational system. It would have been very difficult for a teacher or professor to look into an opposing position and very few did.

Second, saying I was wrong and I have changed my mind is a very rare event. Only the strongest persons can do it. I only know of a couple of professors who have had the strength to look into the climate change frenzy theories skeptically and come to the conclusion that they are scientifically unproven and then ventured into the skeptics papers and articles and seen the light. I suspect there are dozens or even hundreds of others who have seen the light but don’t have the strength to say so. To face your wife, your boss, your friends, your former students and say I was wrong and have changed my mind takes far more strength than most people possess.

Third, the power of money keeps the Algorian climate change theory firmly in place. Money is the second most powerful force in our civilization and our government now supports climate change with about 20 billion dollars a year. Dozens of Universities depend on that money. Research organizations are also heavily dependent. Everyone on the faculties and staffs have to toe the line without reservation. This process funds dozens of supportive research papers a year. Those papers lead to web posts and journal articles. Those articles lead to news stories in papers, on websites and on TV and Radio stations. This keeps the Algorian frenzy about the supposed climate threats in everyone’s mind.

I am in contact with a large skeptical group of Ph.D. climate scientists, attorneys, researchers and other well educated students of science such as me. We all devote a great deal of time each week to try to reach the public and elected officials on climate change. We are pleased that the President withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord. We want very much to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency Endangerment Finding that classifies Carbon Dioxide as a pollutant. There are numerous meetings being held, contacts being made, petitions filed, letters written and legal actions being undertaken or considered. My heroes at Heartland Institute continue their intense efforts to organize and support our activities. I wish I could shout it out in the halls of the Washington swamp, GREENHOUSE GAS IS MAKING OUR LIVES WONDERFUL.

I hasten to add in closing, I am an environmentalist. I ask for no compromise in our efforts to provide an Earth of clean air and clean water. Carbon Dioxide is not a pollutant. It is invisible (it is not responsible for any haze in the air), it is odorless and tasteless. Scientists and engineers have done wonders in the last 20 years to clean our fossil fuels and the internal combustion engines and power plants they fuel. Our air is the cleanest it has been in a century. Solar and wind energy is still far from the task of powering our civilization. We would have to give up our cell phones, computers, airplanes, air conditioning and heating to live without fossil fuels at this time. Science breakthroughs come along every year. I predict that in 40 years we will be able to shut down our power plants and retire the internal combustion engines. That will be a great day.

While most of the media is busy bashing President Trump and all that, quietly important bureaucratic changes that will impact future Federal Government policies are underway. There is exciting new news from the Environmental Protection Agency, the agency that essentially validated the global warming/climate change frenzy during the last eight years as it classified carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a result of man-kinds use of fossil fuels as a pollutant. Scientific America published a little seen report on the EPA activities. That article was write from an Algorian point of view. I have cut those biased bits from it so I can share the important news from we climate skeptics. Here is the edited article:

Climate skeptics may soon join a key science advisory panel at U.S. EPA.

A number of people who reject the findings of mainstream climate science are being considered by the Trump administration for spots on EPA’s Science Advisory Board, a voluntary but influential panel that reviews science used in environmental regulations.

The selection of any of those researchers would be the beginning of a very different advisory board that would bear the hallmark of the Trump administration’s position on climate change, said Steve Milloy, an attorney and longtime EPA foe who worked on President Trump’s transition team for the agency.

Heartland Institute spokesman Jim Lakely said in an email: “We applaud any effort by Administrator Pruitt to bring qualified non-alarmist scientists onto the EPA’s advisory boards. There is a vigorous debate over the causes and consequences of climate change, and it’s vital that EPA acknowledge that fact and have a more balanced approach to the agency’s rule-making.”

The deadline for public comment expired Sept. 28. After that, EPA boss Pruitt has final approval on the candidates. The board has 48 member slots, 15 of which expire at the end of the month. It’s not clear how many positions will be filled.

Here are some of the skeptical nominees under consideration:

Joseph D’Aleo, a certified consultant meteorologist and co-founder of the Weather Channel: He has run climate skeptic websites and has appeared as a speaker at Heartland conferences. D’Aleo said his priority on the board would be attacking the endangerment finding, the legally binding document that holds that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases harm human health and must be regulated by the executive branch. He said he wants to challenge the finding because it could otherwise be used later to build back Obama-era environmental regulations.
“We’re going to push for reconsideration, start from scratch and put together the best science,” he said. “If CO2 is not a serious pollutant, let’s focus the attention of the EPA on other issues.”

Edwin Berry, a meteorologist and atmospheric scientist: He has funded his own climate research and says human carbon dioxide emissions do not cause climate change. He has compared those who believe in human-caused climate change to “Aztecs who believed they could make rain by cutting out beating hearts and rolling decapitated heads down temple steps.” On his Twitter account, he has called Islam “a death cult” and has encouraged motorists to drive into protesters. Berry, who confirmed that he and a number of other skeptics were nominated by Heartland, said he wants to use his position on the board to show that humans barely contribute to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, which he claimed are mostly driven by natural factors. “Let’s get over this whole thing about climate change being an important thing, because in fact we humans have a negligible impact on climate,” he said. “And if we had the Paris Agreement and everything else, it wouldn’t do any good anyway.”

Alan Carlin, a retired EPA employee who is affiliated with Heartland: He fought the agency’s crafting of the endangerment finding. Carlin, an economist, was at the center of a political firestorm under Obama after he produced a widely criticized 93-page report comprising cherry-picked scientific data and blog entries concluding that regulating carbon dioxide was “the worst mistake that EPA has ever made.”

Kevin Dayaratna, a statistician at the conservative Heritage Foundation: His report was cited by Trump as a reason to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. It claimed that the agreement could shrink U.S. gross domestic product by $2.5 trillion within two decades (though Trump stated the impact as coming within a decade). The report was criticized by some as being misleading, because that amount is less than 1 percent of the aggregate GDP over that period and the report did not account for the cost of taking no climate change action. Dayaratna was invited to attend Trump’s withdrawal announcement in June in the White House Rose Garden.

Craig Idso, a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute: He has researched the benefits of atmospheric carbon dioxide. His work has centered on highlighting how increased carbon dioxide will benefit plants.

Paul Driessen, a senior policy adviser at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a libertarian environmental think tank: His organization handed out leaflets at a climate protest this year in Washington, D.C., that said, “CO2 is not the ‘control knob’ of the climate.” He also co-founded Climate Exit, or “Clexit,” which criticized the science behind the Paris climate agreement and holds that spiking levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide benefit the Earth. “The world must abandon this suicidal Global Warming crusade,” the group stated in its founding statement. “Man does not and cannot control the climate.”

Gordon Fulks, a physicist and adviser to the Cascade Policy Institute, an Oregon-based libertarian think tank: He has denied that net sea ice melt is occurring and that the Earth is warming. He has said those who express concern about climate change are like a “societal pathogen that virulently spreads misinformation in tiny packages like a virus.”
Anthony Lupo, another founding member of Clexit: He has received support from the Heartland Institute and helped in the unsuccessful fight against the endangerment finding in court.

Leighton Steward, a former energy company executive and a founder of groups that promote the rise of carbon dioxide as a benefit: He has also encouraged the United States to drop out of the Paris climate accord and says that natural warming is raising the temperature of the Earth.

David Legates, a professor of climatology at the University of Delaware: He has denied that human-caused climate change could have catastrophic consequences and has co-authored climate research claiming polar bears are not harmed by human-caused climate change that was quietly funded, at least in part, by Koch Industries Inc.

Republican lawmakers and other conservatives have long wanted to revamp the board.

Pruitt seems determined to leave his mark on EPA’s advisory boards. In April, EPA dismissed about half of the 18 members of its Board of Scientific Counselors. That board is largely tasked with technical and management reviews of EPA research programs.

…..

Since Joe D’Aleo was a key employee of mine when I was on “Good Morning, America” and when we founded The Weather Channel, I am very excited that he is included in this group.  He is a Meteorological power house.  Yeah.

Read much more here: http://ift.tt/2ibM1JS