Since the time men could write an account for someone who wasn’t there, the possibility of misrepresenting the facts has existed. With the invention of mass communication, the potential for nationwide, even worldwide, distortion became a reality. Our founding fathers experienced this first-hand in their countries of origin when church-influenced governments denigrated their beliefs. So, in response, they established free public education for everyone in the New World, hoping that an educated public wouldn’t be fooled by false communications. Unfortunately, an educated public can still be deceived by being told only part of the facts, the facts that suggest an obvious conclusion. That is what has happened with the global warming issue.
The story of global warming actually starts with the crisis of global cooling. In 1975, Margaret Thatcher, then prime minister of Great Britain, was presented with a problem by her advisers. The problem was that her country had been getting colder since 1940 with no end in sight and the voters wanted something to be done about it. Now, controlling the weather has always been a dream of mankind, but, like all governments before hers, nobody really knew how to do it. There had been limited success in seeding clouds to make it rain but that was the extent of man’s control. She seized on an unproven hypothesis by a Danish scientist that it might be possible to increase environmental temperature by increasing the level of man-made carbon dioxide (CO2). Carbon dioxide levels were known to be insignificant with respect to temperature by weather scientists but their knowledge was ignored for political reasons. Ironically, the temperature started to rise that year in Great Britain, coincident with a national coal strike. Thatcher linked these two unrelated events by suggesting that miners needed to get back to work so more CO2 would be produced from burning coal and the temperature could continue to rise. With this false association, the voters thought she could do something about Britain’s temperature. She established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, on the false premise that CO2 caused global warming. From this panel, government money started flowing into research on how to control the weather. Private industry, which knew all the facts about CO2, didn’t invest any of its research money.
I tell you this story, which is well known in Britain but not in the United States, because it is the origin of the idea that carbon dioxide emissions increase environmental temperatures. What is lost or ignored in the retelling is the fact that this effect was insignificant in changing the weather. But as the temperature continued to rise, the pendulum swung to the other extreme and then, people wanted global cooling. So the mass communication industry and political activists who were against industrial expansion latched on to this insignificant effect and declared that the globe could be cooled by decreasing carbon dioxide from automobiles and airplanes and additionally, by preventing developing countries from using their coal and oil resources to mechanize, a clear example of ignoring the facts for political reasons. Even though weather scientists knew the effect of decreasing carbon dioxide wouldn’t solve the temperature problem, that didn’t stop people like ex-vice-president Albert Gore, from starting a company that sold carbon emission credits to nations of the world. Still, there was a silver lining to this publicity. As agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (the EPA) were formed, the amount of pollutants from incomplete fossil fuel combustion was decreased because they required the automobile industry to filter engine emissions. So, people were breathing cleaner air but the temperature was still going up. That was no surprise to the well-informed. If carbon dioxide couldn’t warm the planet, its absence couldn’t cool it.
So why, after three decades of global warming hysteria, is the public still being told that carbon dioxide is the culprit? The EPA has even declared that CO2 is a pollutant, ignoring the fact that it is necessary for all plant life. As cynical reporters often say, “Follow the money, honey.” In a typical year, billions of dollars in research grants are awarded worldwide to conquer global warming, but more accurately, to predict or control the weather. To support spending that amount of money, the public needs to see a crisis. For example, in the 1980s, then president Richard Nixon alarmed the United States by declared that we needed to develop alternative clean energy sources like wind and solar energy, which cost three times more than coal or oil, because the world would be out of fossil fuels in twenty-five years. Thirty years later, nobody talks about fossil fuel depletion because we didn’t run out. We discovered a huge oil field in the coastal waters of the United States that can supply forty percent of our needs for decades. And more recently, a breakthrough in biotechnology allows cost-effective production of natural gas from decaying vegetable matter. And we still have tons of unmined coal, even though we are told using it will contaminate our environment. So, alarming the public about running out of energy is no longer needed.
Following this train of thought, have you noticed that global warming isn’t routinely in the national news like it once was? That is because the average global temperature peaked in 2016 and at the time of this writing (2019) continues to fall while carbon dioxide levels are essentially constant. After all that money has been spent, are we any closer to knowing what really causes the rise and fall of global temperature? Surprisingly, the answer is ‘Yes’. We have known for many years but it isn’t being advertised because there is nothing governments can do about it. It turns out that the frequency of sun spots, which are massive magnetic fields caused by high solar activity, is a direct indicator of historic global heating and cooling. When there are more sun spots, the globe is hot; when the globe is cold, there are less. It is known that the high solar activity indicated by sun spots impedes cosmic rays bombarding earth from space, resulting in fewer cloud formations. Less clouds means less protection from the sun’s heat and thus, higher temperatures. Put another way, clouds act as a sunscreen that results in cooler earth temperatures. So, CO2, which is only 0.054% of the earth’s atmosphere has almost nothing to do with global temperature changes.
We can’t do anything about what happens on the surface of the sun so why do we continue to advertise a crisis? It is so governments can satisfy their people that they are doing something to control, or at least predict, the weather. One day, if a real breakthrough occurs, weather control will move from the realm of science fiction into reality and people will be told that the global warming or cooling crisis has passed.
Until then, as a Christian, I would say that the best way to control the weather is to pray and hope that God has what you request in his plan. If you aren’t a Christian, you should still view every crisis with skepticism, knowing that most governments, like people, are prone to tell you only what promotes their agenda and they know that a half-truth is the most difficult lie for educated people to detect.
