Earth Hour still about propaganda
By Lethbridge Herald Opinon on March 19, 2020.
Jay Lehr and Tom Harris
The Earth Hour website tells us to “Switch off your lights for an hour on Saturday, March 28 at 8:30 p.m. your local time.” If this were just about saving energy to show our support of the 860 million people across the world who lack access to electricity, it would make sense. But it is not. While Earth Hour has expanded to encompass other environmental concerns as well, “stopping climate change” is still front and centre as a primary rationale for the event.
In promoting last year’s event, for example, the Earth Hour Australia webpage started: “Global warming, caused by carbon pollution from burning fossil fuelsÉ”
This is simply propaganda. Besides the fact that any global warming caused by fossil-fuel combustion is likely very small, they are really taking about the benign gas carbon dioxide (CO2), not carbon (which is a solid).
The person arguably most responsible for this deception is former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore. From the day Gore released his 2006 documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” the general population was told that “carbon emissions” were going to destroy our planet. Gore, more or less, coined the term “carbon footprint,” always hiding the enormity of his own footprint.
Gore and his cohorts were never actually talking about carbon, of course. They were talking about CO2, but they understood that most people recognize that they exhale CO2 and plants absorb it in order to live. Not a dark thought. So, in an unfortunately all too successful attempt to scare the populace, they seized on using the term carbon as a synonym for CO2, knowing it would conjure up visions of soot, lamp black and coal dust, none of which are warm and fuzzy. Aside from the fact that CO2 contains a single atom of carbon, it bears no resemblance to elemental carbon. It has about as much in common with carbon as lightning does with a lightning bug.
Climate change campaigners do not seem to understand that commercial greenhouse operators routinely run their internal atmospheres at up to 1,500 parts per million (ppm) CO2 concentration for a good reason. Plants inside grow far more efficiently than at the 413 ppm in the outside atmosphere. Yet there is no hint of any consequent temperature rise.
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts, a report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, cites over 1,000 peer-reviewed studies that document rising productivity of forests and grasslands as CO2 levels have increased, not just in recent decades, but in past centuries.
And increasing CO2 levels pose no direct hazard to human health. CO2 concentrations in submarines can reach levels above 10,000 ppm, 25 times current atmospheric levels, with no harmful effects on the crew.
We are actually near the lowest level of CO2 in Earth’s history. About 450-million years ago, CO2 was over 1,000 per cent of today’s level while Earth was in one of the coldest periods in the record. This is just one of many findings that indicate that the climate models’ assumption that temperature is driven by CO2 is wrong.
Activists say that there will be important pollution reduction co-benefits to CO2 emission control. Yet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency state on their website, “Between 1980 and 2017,É total emissions of the six principal air pollutants dropped by 67 per centÉ between 1980 and 2016, CO2 emissions increased by 12 per cent.”
Using climate regulations to reduce pollution would obviously be an expensive mistake.
The public has unwittingly accepted the “carbon” sleight of hand without realizing they were being manipulated toward negative thoughts about plant food. It is possibly the best example of subliminal brain washing ever.
For many, the real goal of these deceptions is summed up well by journalist H.L. Mencken, the sage of Baltimore, who once said, “the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” Global warming has been among their very best hobgoblins.
Misuse of the word carbon is not a laughing matter, however. This unsubstantiated fear is depriving the less fortunate among us of sorely needed inexpensive energy by eliminating life giving fossil fuels and the miracle molecule of life, CO2.
In the days leading up to this year’s Earth Hour, take note of how often you read the word carbon when CO2 is in fact the real subject. Capture the picture in your mind when you read it. Go back and reread it as CO2 and capture your thought again. This is not like the difference between describing a flower as pretty or beautiful. It is an intentional distortion aimed at provoking fear. We must call them on it every time.
Dr. Jay Lehr is Senior Policy Adviser with of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC). Tom Harris is Executive Director of ICSC.
19-18
can i still use carbon paper?
Oh, biff. That’s something I would say. Though, maybe I did …
If only we could help these two old rascals with another term for gas molecules that trap heat like in a greenhouse, causing global warming and disrupting the climate. If only. But what?
They do not “trap heat like a greenhouse.” A greenhouse works primarily by preventing convection due to the solid roof. There is no solid roof on the atmosphere. In the atmosphere, heat is absorbed by some molecules, CO2 being one of them, and then re-radiated in all directions, including back down, which gives us the greenhouse effect. However, the atmosphere is nearly saturated from a CO2 heat absorption point of view so there is little direct warming possible as CO2 continues to rise. The hypothesis of dangerous CO2-caused warming only works if you have positive water vapour (the main GHG) feedback and it is not clear that the net water vapour feedback is not negative.
If the CO2 effect was saturated, adding more CO2 should add no additional greenhouse effect. However, satellite and surface measurements observe an enhanced greenhouse effect at the wavelengths that CO2 absorb energy. This is empirical proof that the CO2 effect is not saturated.
As water vapor is directly related to temperature, it’s also a positive feedback – in fact, the largest positive feedback in the climate system. (Source “The Radiative Signature of Upper Tropospheric Moistening” Brian J. Soden1 etal., Science 04 Nov 2005)
How much does water vapor amplify CO2 warming? Without any feedbacks, a doubling of CO2 would warm the globe around 1°C. Taken on its own, water vapor feedback roughly doubles the amount of CO2 warming. When other feedbacks are included (eg – loss of albedo due to melting ice), the total warming from a doubling of CO2 is around 3°C. (Source “WATER VAPOR FEEDBACK AND
GLOBAL WARMING” Isaac M. Held and Brian J. Soden, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
lol fes – they are carbon copies of one another.
if we cannot agree on the greenhouse analogy, perhaps we can acknowledge we have created an outhouse?
Fescue needs to conduct a little experiment by getting into a car on a sunny day. Feel the heat and then open the windows. That could help with understanding greenhouse heating from solar energy. Thanks Tom. We need more mechanical engineers involved in helping us understand climate change.
You do know why they call them ‘greenhouse’ gases, don’t you?
Sure the glass contains the heat (like the lower atmosphere) but the energy is trapped by the carbon dioxide. Greenhouse gases are transparent to radiation, but absorb the infrared (heat) energy reradiated by material objects the light warms. This is amplified by water (humidity) in the air. Warm air holds more water, hence more heat being trapped.
As an experiment, suck all the air out of your car on a sunny day, creating a vacuum. Tell me how hot it gets.
We really don’t need more Tommys in the world.
In this case the surfaces in the car are heated by the solar radiation coming through the windows, Fescue. In turn those surfaces transfer energy to the air in the car by convection and heat it. Remember, we are talking about an actual greenhouse here – not the so-called greenhouse effect. Essentially the same mode of heating as the simple car example. These mechanisms also play a major role in heating earths atmosphere, although radiation is the ultimate phenomena transferring energy to and from the earth from outside our atmosphere.
The “Man made” climate change propaganda machine knows no limits Jay, and according to some of these wackos we are all doomed in 12 years.
I think they are saying 11 now.
“And soon it will be just ten” (Naomi Klein, On Fire, p.25)
Dr. Lehr left Heartland almost a year ago – see https://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=976&Itemid=2. He is now with ICSC.
ICSC is independent of Heartland, although I act as a policy advisor on rare occasions so you are mistaken there.
Heartland is not engaged in climate change denial. They question the causes, of course, but no sane person denies climate change, so you are wrong there too.
Three major mistakes in one posting – sheesh.
my sharp math skills will go so far as to predict another year on again and we will be down to 9 years (did it without a calculator, too).
as for the car in summer analogy, windows down in summer is my favourite option (how can we roll down the windows of planet earth?), but on highways, as much as i do not like air conditioning, open windows can get too noisy and windy, and air conditioning will help mitigate the greenhouse effect should we keep the windows closed (at least in terms of our perception).
fes – the timmy and tommy made me laugh! so, too, your referencing them as rascals lol
i like your entry, badenoff
I do wonder why the Herald hosts these comment threads where those of agenda lurk to vandalize sincere cogent letters intended to bring up new points or new ways of looking at a current issue. Like hall moniters in grade school, trying to shut down discussion by yelling loudly.