Hot Air — Behind the Wind

…the apocalyptic language surrounding the climate has done a deep disservice to humanity. It has led to incredibly wasteful and ineffectual spending. The psychological costs have also been immense. Many people, particularly younger ones, live in fear that the end is nigh, too often leading to debilitating depression about the future. A look at the facts would demolish those apocalyptic anxieties.

—Steve Forbes, Forbes magazine, July 14, 2023

Probably the most frequent criticism I hear at Wind Concerns is that our opposition to wind farms means we don’t care about the planet or “climate change”. The opposite is true. It is precisely because we care about our neighbors, animals, birds, and the environment that we oppose the destruction caused by industrial wind turbines. You can’t say you want to help the environment — and then support technologies that do the opposite. We realize, though, that most people are not educated on the harm caused by wind turbines. And that’s why we created this website.

On “climate change”, here again, we are interested in factual science. Unfortunately this, too, is a field riddled with ideology and self-interests that are leading to the suppression of open scientific dialogue in favor of grants and massive government subsidies.

You’ve heard what TV news anchors and pundits have had to say about “global warming.” Now, here’s what you might not have heard…

Not “settled science”

The entire push behind so-called “green energy”, such as wind farms, is the claim that traditional forms of energy, such as coal, oil or gas, are heating the planet with “carbon emissions”, pushing mankind to the brink of disaster.

However, a growing body of climatologists in the world state that claims of a “man-made global warming” crisis are based on junk science. Over 1880 researchers have signed a declaration stating that there is ‘no climate emergency.’ David Siegel, one of the signatories, declared: “It’s clear that CO2 has almost nothing to do with climate” — unlike data showing that ocean currents have more impact than the so-called “Greenhouse effect”. Swedish climate expert Dr. Fred Goldberg agrees that carbon dioxide is not the main cause of global warming and that climate change is not affected by human action but mainly by solar activity and ocean currents. Geologist Gregory Wrightstone makes a ‘massively compelling case’ that pretty much everything we have been told about climate change is the opposite of the truth.

Indeed, Facebook and an army of so-called “fact-checkers” will regularly assert the baseless claim that there is a 97-99% consensus among scientists about human-caused climate change. But a recently published survey of top-level climate scientists found that 41% do not believe in catastrophic ‘climate change.’ In fact…

Only 0.3% of science papers state humans are the cause of climate change. And when surveyed, only 18% of scientists believed that a large amount – or all – of additional climate change could be averted.

The Exposé, Janury 23, 2023; expose-news.com

Even the public has grown skeptical of the climate alarmism and dire predictions that repeatedly failed to materialize. “A recent poll conducted by a group within the University of Chicago found that belief in humans causing all or most climate change had slumped in America to 49 percent from the 60 percent level recorded just five years ago. Similar falls have been recorded elsewhere, with a recent IPSOS survey covering two-thirds of the world’s population revealing that nearly four people in every 10 believe climate change is mainly due to natural causes.”¹

Weathering the Facts…

Vijay Jayaraj, a research associate at the CO2 Coalition, notes that “Arctic summer temperatures have been not at all different from the 44-year average and that summer sea ice is above decadal averages” and hasn’t declined in over a decade.² Another paper claims that Arctic sea ice is disappearing, but not due to “global warming” but “atmospheric wind patterns.”³On that note, it’s also true that Polar Bear numbers are increasing according to Canadian Geographic — not dramatically declining, as the climate fearmongers have warned.⁴ The surface of the Greenland ice sheet has gained almost 600 billion tons of new snow since September 1, 2022. The gain has been above the 1981-2010 average during five of the last seven years.⁵ Ice core samples further show that there has been no significant warming in one of the most climate-sensitive parts of the planet.⁶

Despite this year’s drought in parts of North America, heat waves are not taking place more frequently than expected. In fact, a new paper published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) written by meteorologist William Kininmonth, a former consultant to the World Meteorological Organisation’s Commission for Climatology and former head of the Australian Government’s National Climate Centre, argues that the oceans are the “vital inertial and thermal flywheels” of the climate system. If one wants to control climate, it will be necessary to control the oceans, he argues. “Efforts to decarbonize in the hope of affecting global temperatures will be in vain,” he adds.

An Italian review of extreme weather says there is ‘no evidence’ of ‘climate crisis’ in current data, according to their paper. In fact, there has been a decrease in hurricane activity. Then there is the claim that climate is killing people when “ever fewer people die from climate-related catastrophes,” wrote Bjørn Lomborg, former director of the Danish government’s Environmental Assessment Institute. “As population has quadrupled, deaths have dropped 20-fold,” he said (see this graph). “Death risk from climate is down 99% from the 1920s.”

And defying Al Gore and Greta Thunberg’s doomsday predictions, data shows that sea levels have not risen due to anthropogenic warming. A new research paper argues that there are other massive factors influencing sea level rise:

“Sea levels were rising at an accelerated rate between 7,000 years and 15,000 years ago, and that change in the rate of global sea level rise was not solely due to atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations. A much better explanation is that most sea level rise is a response to the interglacial period and that equilibrium of the polar ice caps has not yet been attained.” The often circulated idea that sea levels will rise between 15 and 30 feet from 2023 to 2100 is “clearly political hype and does not represent the science, even as advocated by climate alarmists.

David Legates, climatologist and professor emeritus at the University of Delaware; Daily Signal, March 13, 2024

A report authored by eminent reef scientist, Peter Ridd, using official data from all over the world, found that there is no statistically significant reduction in global coral reefs since reliable records began two decades ago. In fact, for the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s biggest reef system, a record-breaking high coral cover has been recorded.⁷

The public are constantly told that reefs are being irreparably damaged by global warming, but bleaching events, about which there is so much doom-mongering, are simply corals’ natural response to changes in the environment. They are an extraordinarily adaptable lifeform, and bleaching events are almost always followed by rapid recovery.

Peter Ridd, Physicist, author of “Coral in a Warming World – Causes for Optimism”; climatedepot.com

Perhaps most stunning is the recent work of six top climate scientists, published in Nature, who confirm what some European climatologists have been saying for years: we may actually be entering a period of cooling. The Northern hemisphere may be entering a temperature-cooling phase until the 2050s with a decline up to 0.3°C (~1.14°F). By extension, the rest of the globe will also be cooled.⁸ 

The Great Fudging

In truth, there has been a breach in ethical science. A new study at The Heartland Institute shows that 96% of climate data used to justify this climate push is flawed. (Note: it was flawed computer modelling that also drove COVID-19 pandemic hysteria). Dr. Judith Curry likewise agrees that the narrative is driven by flawed computer models and that the real goal ought to be minimizing air and water pollution, not carbon dioxide. Tom Harris, Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition, was a climate alarmist who has now reversed his position due to flawed “models that don’t work,” and is now calling the whole narrative a hoax. Indeed, one study admits that the 12 major university and government models that have been used to predict climate warming are faulty. Remember “climategate” when scientists were caught deliberately altering statistics and ignoring satellite data that showed no warming?

Indeed, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been caught several times fudging data in order to rush forward their agenda, most notably, the Paris Climate Agreement, which really has nothing to do with the environment. Rather, it’s about the redistribution of global wealth through punishing “carbon taxes”:

But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore…

Ottmar Edenhofer, IPCC, dailysignal.com, November 19th, 2011

No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change [provides] the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.

Former Canadian Minister of the Environment, Christine Stewart; quoted by Terence Corcoran, “Global Warming: The Real Agenda,” Financial Post, December 26th, 1998;
from the Calgary Herald, December, 14, 1998

This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution… It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation.

Christine Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, November 2nd, 2015; europa.eu

And Canada’s environment and climate change minister, Steven Guilbeault, admitted that Canadian households will pay more because of carbon taxes, even after rebates.

If you do the average, yeah, it’s true, it’s going to cost more money to people, but the people who are paying are the richest among us, which is exactly how the system was designed.

Interview with CTV News, April 2, 2023, theepochtimes.com

Edenholfer is right — this doesn’t sound like environmental policy. So how do you convince the public there’s a climate crisis? Well… you can simply lie.

The IPCC was caught exaggerating data on Himalayan glacier melt; they ignored that there was indeed a ‘pause’ in global warming: top climate scientists were instructed to ‘cover up’ the fact that the Earth’s temperature hadn’t risen for the last 15 years. The University of Alabama in Huntsville, considered the most reliable in gathering global temperature data sets developed from satellites, has shown that there has been no global warming at all for the last seven years as of January 2022. Climate scientists there, John Christy and Richard McNider, found that by removing the climate effects of volcanic eruptions early on in the satellite temperature record, there showed virtually no change in the rate of warming since the early 1990s.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was yet again caught exaggerating  ‘global warming’ by fiddling with raw temperature data. Several other climatologists have likewise torn apart the hypothesis of man-made global warming here while several articles examine the overall scientific fraud. No surprise, then, that there has been a run of 50 years of failed eco-apocalyptic predictions. But as King Charles has said, this is about a “window of opportunity” to change the economic order⁹ — apparently not about honest science.

Dr. Judith Curry was at one point a darling of the “global warming” crowd — until she realized the data was wrong and even fraudulent. The climate change narrative, she says, is nothing short of a “manufactured consensus.”¹⁰ Dr. Curry points out that the doomsday scenarios that extreme emissions are associated with alarming projections of 4-5^oC of warming by 2100, are no longer accepted:

These extreme scenarios have been dropped by UN Conference of the Parties to the UN Climate Agreement.  However, the new Synthesis Report [of the IPCC] continues to emphasize these extreme scenarios, while this important finding is buried in a footnote: “Very high emission scenarios have become less likely but cannot be ruled out”… Clearly, the climate “crisis” isn’t what it used to be… The IPCC Reports have become “bumper sticker” climate science – making a political statement while using the overall reputation of science to give authority to a politically manufactured consensus.

“UN’s climate panic is more politics than science”, March 28, 2023, judithcurry.com

The Global Greening

In his critique of the “climate narrative”, nuclear physicist Dr. Wallace Manheimer refutes the utterly false claim that carbon dioxide is somehow a pollutant. On the contrary, CO2 is the primary carbon source for life on Earth, essential for plant life. Studies show that it increases vitamins and mineral output in plants as well as their medicinal properties. The more carbon dioxide, the greener the planet, the more food there is.

The emphasis on a false climate crisis is becoming a tragedy for modern civilization, which depends on reliable, economic, and environmentally viable energy. The windmills, solar panels and backup batteries have none of these qualities. This falsehood is pushed by a powerful lobby which Bjorn Lomborg has called a climate industrial complex, comprising some scientists, most media, industrialists, and legislators. It has somehow managed to convince many that CO2 in the atmosphere, a gas necessary for life on earth, one which we exhale with every breath, is an environmental poison. Multiple scientific theories and measurements show that there is no climate crisis. Radiation forcing calculations by both skeptics and believers show that the carbon dioxide radiation forcing is about 0.3% of the incident radiation, far less than other effects on climate. Over the period of human civilization, the temperature has oscillated between quite a few warm and cold periods, with many of the warm periods being warmer than today. During geological times, it and the carbon dioxide level have been all over the place with no correlation between them.

Journal of Sustainable Development, February 2015

A peer-reviewed study recently published in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation underscored that “global greening is an indisputable fact” and has accelerated over the past 20 years across over 55% of the globe.

In a paper for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Dr. Indur Goklany, who has previously represented the United States on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says that the rising level of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere “is currently net beneficial for both humanity and the biosphere generally”.

Carbon dioxide fertilizes plants, and emissions from fossil fuels have already had a hugely beneficial effect on crops, increasing yields by at least 10-15 per cent.

Dr Indur Goklany, October 12, 2015, paper: “Carbon Dioxide: the good news“

Physicist Freeman Dyson states:

…there are huge non-climate effects of carbon dioxide which are overwhelmingly favorable which are not taken into account. To me that’s the main issue–the Earth is actually growing greener..it’s increasingly agricultural yields, it’s increasing forests, it’s increasing all kinds of growth… That’s more important and more certain than the effects on climate.

tomnelson.blogspot.com, April 6, 2016

A study in Nature has found that “woody vegetation cover over sub-Saharan Africa increased by 8% over the past three decades… These results confirm global greening trends, thereby bringing into question widely held theories about declining terrestrial carbon balances and desert expansion.”¹¹ The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association reported a study in 2018 showing “Global plant growth surging alongside carbon dioxide.”¹² NASA’s mapping shows “that the world is greener than it was in the early 1980s.”¹³ Boston University’s study found “significant greening of something between 25% and 50% of the Earth’s vegetated land.”¹⁴ Moreover, such greening actually cools the earth.¹⁵ There’s more studies along this same vein, but you get the picture.

Indeed, Antarctica was once covered with palm trees. “Though scientists think the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at the beginning of the Eocene period 55 million years ago were as high as 1000 parts per million, trumping today’s value near 400 parts per million,” writes Smithsonian Magazine, “they’ve not quite worked out what triggered this lurch.” A study in 2023 shows that Antarctica gained 661 billion tons of ice during 2009-2019 vs. a prediction of a 20,000 billion ton loss¹⁶ and is 8 times thicker than the last 8000 years.¹⁷ The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is experiencing melting, but three studies reveal that it is underwater volcanic activity, not surface melting causing the decline.¹⁸

Disastrous Statistics

And then there is the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). The newly-released 2022 “Disasters in Numbers” report from CRED is even more dishonest than its 2021 report, claims retired associate professor of physics Dr. Ralph Alexander. The most egregious statements are said to involve the death toll from weather-related disasters. CRED removed the 50 largest disaster events from the data in order to show a skewed trend that weather-related mortalities are increasing (See Figure B. below). However, with all data intact, it reflects a 98% decrease over the past century (see Figure A.), as Bjørn Lomborg also reported above. “Misinterpreting statistics could be harmful if it supports a discourse minimizing the importance of climate change,” states the report. So it’s better to simply lie to support a narrative rather than state the inconvenient truth?

Such subterfuge is both dishonest and statistically flawed… the only way to present any trend honestly is to include all the data.

Dr. Ralph Alexander, April 19 2023, The Daily Sceptic

Calling a Spade a Spade…

We live in strange times where some believe that fraudulent behavior and lying to the public are somehow defensible if not virtuous. Few know that in 2013 in the United States, where much climate disinformation is born, then-President Barack Obama signed into law the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act (H.R. 5736). It made it legal for government-produced media—such as was broadcast overseas by Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other outlets throughout the Cold War—to be directed toward U.S. citizens themselves. It is now perfectly legal to propagandize (ie. lie to) the American public.¹⁹

But fortunately, not every environmentalist is playing along with climate propaganda. Nobel laureate, Dr. John Clauser, is unequivocal on the climate narrative:

The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people. Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience… There is, however, a very real problem with providing a decent standard of living to the world’s large population and an associated energy crisis. The latter is being unnecessarily exacerbated by what, in my opinion, is incorrect climate science.

May 5, 2023; C02 Coalition

Dr. Steven Koonin, Ph.D. is one of America’s most distinguished scientists, with decades of experience, including a stint as undersecretary of science at the Department of Energy in the Obama administration. He found himself “shaken” by the misuse of climate science after examining carefully the “global warming” narrative.

I supposed that humans were warming the globe, carbon dioxide was accumulating in the atmoshphere causing all kinds of trouble — melting ice caps, warming oceans, and so on. And the data didn’t support a lot of that. And the projections of what would happen in the future relied on models that were, let’s say, shaky at best… Projections of future climate and weather events rely on models demonstrably unfit for the purpose.

Dr. Steven Koonin, Ph.D., “Hot or Not: Steven Koonin Questions Conventional Climate Science and Methodology”, Hoover Instituteion, August 21, 2023; youtube.com

What some might consider a surprising opponent of this climate narrative is Dr. Patrick Moore, a former member and founder of the environmental group Greenpeace.

We do not have any scientific proof that we are the cause of the global warming that has occurred in the last 200 years…The alarmism is driving us through scare tactics to adopt energy policies that are going to create a huge amount of energy poverty among the poor people. It’s not good for people and it’s not good for the environment… In a warmer world we can produce more food.

Dr. Patrick Moore, Fox Business News with Stewart Varney, January 2011; Forbes.com

Dr. Moore left Greenpeace when it became radicalized or, in his words, ‘hijacked’ (much like climate “science”). Climate change, he says, is based on a ‘false narrative.’ 

Climate change has become a powerful political force for many reasons. First, it is universal; we are told everything on Earth is threatened. Second, it invokes the two most powerful human motivators: fear and guilt… Third, there is a powerful convergence of interests among key elites that support the climate “narrative.” Environmentalists spread fear and raise donations; politicians appear to be saving the Earth from doom; the media has a field day with sensation and conflict; science institutions raise billions in grants, create whole new departments, and stoke a feeding frenzy of scary scenarios; business wants to look green, and get huge public subsidies for projects that would otherwise be economic losers, such as wind farms and solar arrays. Fourth, the Left sees climate change as a perfect means to redistribute wealth from industrial countries to the developing world and the UN bureaucracy.

Dr. Patrick Moore, P.h.d., co-founder of Greenpeace; “Why I am a Climate Change Skeptic”, March 20th, 2015, Heartland Institute

Driving the fever to eliminate traditional forms of energy and fossil-dependent vehicles, appliances, etc. is the idea that we must reach carbon emissions of “net zero”. But as Steve Milloy, founder of junkscience.com explained at The Fifteenth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC), “net zero” is impossible (video below). In fact, Dr. Moore recently warned “that if we actually achieve net zero, at least 50% of the population would die of hunger and disease” particularly with governments attempting to eliminate nitrogen fertilizer (and even culling fart-producing cattle, I might add).²⁰

2023 – Proof of “global warming”?

In 2018, Greta Thunberg tweeted yet another dire prediction:

Five years later, the Editor in Chief of Forbes rebuked Thunberg’s alarmism:

…the apocalyptic language surrounding the climate has done a deep disservice to humanity. It has led to incredibly wasteful and ineffectual spending. The psychological costs have also been immense. Many people, particularly younger ones, live in fear that the end is nigh, too often leading to debilitating depression about the future. A look at the facts would demolish those apocalyptic anxieties.

Steve Forbes, Forbes, July 14, 2023

But wait, aren’t the heatwaves and wildfires of 2023 proof that Thunberg is a climate mystic, a global warming guru?

In truth, you can never look at single weather events but have to consider trends. But that hasn’t stopped the mainstream media and even the United Nations from a campaign of climate disinformation.

For instance, heat waves have been far less frequent and severe than they were in the 1930s.²¹ But others claim that the vast wildfires of 2023 are proof enough that anthropogenic global warming is real. However, the fires in Greece, Quebec, Alberta, Nova Scotia, Yellowknife, Kelowna, Spokane, Louisiana, Italy, New South Whales, Kaʻū and Maui, have been connected to numerous acts of arson and/or common lightning strikes and incompetence.

And then there is the claim that July was the hottest month — ever. But NOAA’s July temperature data revealed yet another average month, despite the heatwaves.

Nonetheless, despite these inconvenient facts, the United Nations seized the moment to declare: “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.” The rest of the press release is outrageous, you can read it here. It’s just a good thing that PBS has their “climate psychology therapist” on hand for all the terrorized viewers.

What’s rather interesting is that UN Secretary-General António Guterres was rather silent when 700 inches of snow fell in California’s Sierra Nevada, it’s second most snowiest season breaking a 40-year record. Or when two snowpack records were broken in Wyoming, including a record-breaking blizzard, all taking a heavy toll on wildlife. Or when there were record-breaking cold temperatures in New England. Or when snow fell again in Cairo (which it has only done once before, ten years ago, in the last century). You get the point. I doubt the Secretary-General cares either that where I live in Alberta has been a rather mild if not cooler summer than usual.

But it gets worse.

NASA data shows that June 2023 was cooler than June 1998, despite 66% more industrial era CO2; ²² data shows no warming in almost 8 years with August 2022 the same temp as August 1998.²³ And according to the US Climate Reference Network temp stations, there has been no warming in the past 18 years.²⁴

Crickets.

The point of this article is not to settle the argument on whether there is anthropogenic “global warming” endangering the planet. Rather, it is to expose the fact that not only is the science not settled, but the rush to replace existing energy infrastructure with harmful and unreliable technologies like wind turbines is reckless and driven by unfounded fear.

And fear is a terrible advisor.

We have been told nearly every year for the past 50-plus years that we have only ten years to live.

“Climate Doomsday Predictions Have Not Aged Well”, Becket Adams, National Review, March 26, 2023

Watch the new documentary:

1. April 27, 2023, lifesitenews.com[↩]
2. see here and here and here[↩]
3. August 31, 2023, Science[↩]
4. see also “The Myth That the Polar Bear Population Is Declining“[↩]
5. Junk Science, twitter.com[↩]
6. dailyscetpic.com[↩]
7. Feb. 16, 2023, climatedepot.com[↩]
8. cf. “Top climate scientists predict decades of global cooling in study ignored by mainstream media”, lifesitenews.com[↩]
9. October 23, 2021, nydailynews.com[↩]
10. cf. Renowed Climatologist Exposes ‘Manufactured Consent’[↩]
11. June 11, 2018, nature.com[↩]
12. noaa.gov[↩]
13. earthobservatory.nasa.gov[↩]
14. April 25, 2016, BBC[↩]
15. nasa.gov[↩]
16. notrickszone.com[↩]
17. tc.copernicus.org[↩]
18. plateclimatology.com[↩]
19. cf. libertarianinstitute.org[↩]
20. cf. August 17, 2023, BizNews[↩]
21. cf. climateataglance.com[↩]
22. twitter.com and here[↩]
23. twitter.com and here and here[↩]
24. twitter.com[↩]