By John Huppenthal |

Dr. Thomas Patterson’s “Climate Change Alarmism Is Not Supported by the Facts” on April 28 was very well done, accurately summarizing the Climate Change movement as an issue distracting us with predictions of catastrophe.

Citing published experts, the column rebutted critical points of the climate movement’s argument: forest fires, hurricanes, malnutrition from agricultural damage, the threat to polar bears, and the economic impact. Patterson pointed out that forest fire losses are much lower now than in the past, hurricane landfalls are fewer, not more; polar bear populations are at their highest levels in 60 years, and the economic damage predicted from global warming is tiny.

That’s all we need to know—the essence of the argument proving the entire premise of doom false. You can get lost in the weeds focusing on too much. But no matter how powerful, a single column doesn’t do this subject justice. The climate movement is massive and dangerous. Composed of four different strands:

1. Some in the movement see climate as the tool to advance our journey to a communist state.
2. Some, like Ted Turner, exemplify a “biocentric” strand with his desire to reduce the world population by 7.5 billion.
3. Another group sees the movement as an opportunity to gain power and money. 
4. A final group genuinely believes the global warming crisis will destroy humanity.

We’re in a four-front war. All intend to impoverish our families if we take their words at face value. Others want to see us and our children dead or at least gone.  

The climate movement has endless stories to fuel its “narrative.” For example, in 2012, drought hit Missouri hard, with corn production down 42 percent. Stories like this happen every year. It’s the nature of the weather. So, we must relentlessly supply the counter-narrative, one based on facts. Geological records show that, long before the industrial CO2 era, the Sahel region in Africa suffered a drought that lasted for hundreds of years. Climate change and weather have always been with us. In this instance, we can also point to United Nations data showing that current world cereal crop production (corn, wheat, soybeans, barley, oats, rye) is at a record. Fewer people are starving than ever before.

Further, it’s possible that not even a shred of the Green House Gas theory is correct. The idea: added Carbon Dioxide traps more solar radiation, further warming the oceans. Added ocean warming then releases more water vapor which also traps heat, amplifying the Green House Gas effect of CO2. NASA is testing this theory. At a cost of over $8 billion, we have put seven highly sophisticated measurement devices into orbit around the earth, devices called CERES. These devices began measuring solar radiation and the earth’s reflected radiation in 2000. We have over twenty years of measuring incoming and outgoing radiation to determine the theory’s correctness. Result? Not as the climate movement predicted and believes. Outgoing radiation is not only ever so slightly higher than incoming radiation, but the trend is also further negative at a time when CO2 emissions have been increasing rapidly and significantly. We are cooling—slightly. At least that’s what the $8 billion CERES instruments say.

Those instruments say we are losing heat, not gaining heat. Outgoing radiation is higher than incoming radiation, and the difference is trending even more negatively. The opposite of what the Green House Gas theory predicts. Based on these measurements, we need more CO2, not less.

So, where is the heat coming from? We know where it comes from in Maricopa County. With a population of over 1.7 million households and over 2 million tons of asphalt and 40 million tons of concrete, we have effectively eliminated winter by creating an urban heat island—an island that has made us the number one population growth county out of over 3,000 counties in the U.S. Urban heat islands have also rendered temperature measurements worldwide questionable. But, even with this huge effect, our record temperature remains 1990: 122 degrees—33 years ago. And March 2023 was our coldest March in 30 years.

Another big issue: is CO2 a pollutant? We know from experience and experiments that CO2 is not toxic to human beings. Crews live in submarines and the International Space Station for many months, with CO2 levels above 4,000 ppm CO2. By comparison, we won’t be up to 1,200 ppm for 300 years at current trends. They’ve even done experiments with CO2 at 40,000 ppm for weeks. They saw no ill effects in their measurements. The OSHA standard is 5,000 ppm. From a health standpoint, CO2 is not a pollutant, even though the climate movement would like us to confuse it with deadly carbon monoxide.

Just how completely wrong is the climate movement? Numerous research studies show the benefit of higher levels of CO2 for crops and forest growth. Because CO2 is essential for photosynthesis, below 150 ppm, all plant and human life would end. CO2 accelerates plant growth as it increases from 150 ppm until it hits 1,200 ppm, a level our atmosphere won’t see for 300 years at current trends. These benefits are immense. The CO2 growth dividend at 1,200 parts per million is an extra 150% over preindustrial levels of 280 ppm. That’s a lot of corn, wheat, barley, oats, and rye.

The climate movement is not going to quit without a fight. An estimated $630 billion is now being devoted worldwide to climate change spending on an annual basis—$60 billion for research alone. Not satisfied, the climate movement is looking at a bigger pot of loot, the so-called carbon tax. But it’s not a carbon tax. That always was a falsehood. It’s a tax on gasoline and electricity. They call it a carbon tax because they don’t want the middle class to know that they intend to increase taxes on them, a lot. The U.S. average price of gasoline stands at $3.71. But the average price in Europe is $7.67 per gallon. That difference of $3.96 per gallon applied to U.S. sales is a wallet-busting $500 billion per year out of the pockets of people making less than $40 per hour and into the pockets of people making more than $50 per hour.

This is going to be the proverbial fight to the death.

John Huppenthal was the Arizona Superinterndent of Public Instruction from 2011-2015. Prior to this role, John served as a member of the Arizona State Senate and the Arizona House of Representatives. You can follow him on Twitter here.