By Dr. Jay Lehr & Tom Harris——Bio and Archives--March 7, 2020
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"Global warming, caused by carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels…"This is propaganda, pure and simple. Besides the fact that the amount of global warming caused by fossil fuel combustion is likely very small (or none at all—see later in this article), 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 Vice President Al Gore. From the day that 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, that is. 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.
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"Whereas the reports of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warn of a dangerous human effect on climate, NIPCC concludes the human effect is likely to be small relative to natural variability, and whatever small warming is likely to occur will produce benefits as well as costs."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 so doing, society is subjected to further government control, thereby reducing individual freedom, moving our country closer to socialism and away from capitalism. 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 Advisor with of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC). Tom Harris is Executive Director of ICSC.
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Dr. Jay Lehr is Senior Policy Analyst with of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute which is based in Arlington Heights, Illinois.