Climate Delusional Syndrome: A Diagnostic Challenge

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Climate Delusional Syndrome 

The article below is the same as the foregoing pdf with one exception -- the Bibliography is absent from the material below.

In 1957, my family moved from a city of some 10,000 people in Western Maine to a small, rural community in north-central Maine which was less than one-tenth the size of my previous home city. The move took place in the summer prior to my entering the eighth grade.

In order to make some money, I took over a paper route that delivered the Bangor Daily News to individuals in my new rural area. The newspaper was one of the major dailies for the state of Maine.

The year after I began delivering the paper, the Bangor Daily News ran a contest for its newspaper carriers. The winners would be those individuals who were most successful in increasing the subscription base for their respective routes over a given period of time – and, I seem to recall there were five, or so, youngsters from seven or eight Maine counties who were subsequently announced as winners of the competition

To make a longer story much shorter, I was one of the winners. The winning prizes involved receiving an all-expense paid trip to Boston for a few days to attend a Boston Celtics basketball game and, thus, have an opportunity to watch a number of future Hall of Famers play, including Bob Cousy, Tommy Heinsohn, Sam Jones, Frank Ramsey, Bill Russell, Bill Sharman, Arnie Risen, and Andy Phillip.

As exciting as the foregoing aspect of the trip was, it does not play a prominent role in why the present anecdote is being transmitted. This latter dimension of the trip arrived around 2:00-3:00 a.m. in the morning following the night of the aforementioned game.

The television in the hotel room was on. We had been watching a science fiction film and the other kids had fallen asleep.

I was the only one awake when a second feature -- “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” -- began to run. I was intrigued by the movie and stayed up to watch it while the other kids were sleeping.

For those who are unfamiliar with the movie, it begins with a psychiatrist being called in to consult on a case in which an individual has an incredible story to tell, and the task of the psychiatrist is to determine whether, or not, the individual is crazy, delusional, or sane. The person being examined is a medical doctor -- Miles Bennell (played by Kevin McCarthy) – who has been living in a small California community by the name of Santa Mira.

The movie is mostly devoted to the doctor’s recounting of his story concerning the alleged invasion of his community by an alien form of life (pod plants) which, supposedly, has the ability to replace the bodies of humans and retain all the memories of the humans that are being “snatched” through this transformation process. However, the alien life forms seem to lack the capacity for certain emotions such as love.

Toward the end of the movie, when the doctor has finished his story, a doctor from the hospital privately confers with the psychiatrist who has been asked to offer a professional opinion concerning the case. They both have come to the conclusion that Miles Bennell is suffering from some sort of psychotic break with reality.

As the two doctors are about to discontinue their conversation, casualties from a highway accident are being wheeled down a corridor near to where the two doctors have been talking. One of the two doctors makes inquiries concerning what has happened.

The doctors are told that a truck had overturned on a nearby highway and had spewed the strangest looking pods all over the highway – the sort of pods about which Miles Bennell had been describing in his tale, When one of the doctors asks where the truck was coming from, they are told: “Santa Mira,” and, almost immediately, the two doctors realize the significance of what they are being told when considered in the context of the story which they just have been told by Miles Bennell.

Human beings often operate on the basis of a dynamic which is known as “consensual validation”. In other words, if a person has doubts about the nature or reality involving some aspect of experience, then, quite frequently, the tendency of human beings is to seek out the opinions of fellow human beings with respect to what the latter individuals might think concerning the nature of the experiences which are being filtered through an individual’s retelling of certain life events as allegedly experienced by the account-giver.

The two doctors who listen to the experiences that are being related by the character, Miles Bennell, proceed to subsequently arrive at their diagnosis concerning the mental state of the story teller, not on the basis of facts but, rather, on the basis of their own previously developed sense of “consensual validation” concerning the nature of reality that has been built up over the course of their lives via interactional experiences involving: Parents, siblings, relatives, neighbors, school mates, friends, work colleagues, professional people of one kind or another, processes of formal education, books read, radio programs heard, television news shows watched, and so on.

The consensual validation out of which the two consulting doctors were operating in the aforementioned movie had no room for the possibility of alien life forms (pod plants) which could take over or replace a human being. As a result, initially, they discounted the story of Miles Bennell until they were introduced to certain facts – namely, the highway accident involving a truck carrying strange pod plants coming from Santa Mira that independently appeared to corroborate certain aspects of the story which they had just heard.

Of course, if the two consulting doctors in the movie had been provided with additional script-time through which they were enabled to come into contact with new information that emerged after being told about the highway accident, and if the new data was, in some way, inconsistent with the information that had come into play at the end of the movie, then, the two doctors might have reached some conclusion other than one involving the idea that, indeed, human beings were, indeed, being invaded by alien body snatchers and which brought the movie to a close. For example, perhaps, the pod plants which seemed so strange to one person might have been common knowledge and not considered to be all that strange to someone who knew about certain kinds of exotic agricultural crops which were being grown in the area or who knew that a legitimate, plant-based industry of some kind had sprung up in the Santa Mira area relatively recently.

Alternatively, while the direction in which the ill-fated truck had been travelling in the movie might have been moving away from the area where Santa Mira was geographically located, nonetheless, there could have been any number of other routes in the area between the accident and Santa Mira which were linked to towns and cities other than Santa Mira and which fed into the highway where the accident took place. However, given that the person who has been watching the movie has been living the invasion of the body snatchers through the eyes of the Kevin McCarthy character, then, the information about the highway accident involving strange pod plants which were said to have been coming from Santa Mira tends to be interpreted by the two consulting doctors as constituting a form of confirmation of the story that the Kevin McCarthy character has been telling.

Finally, one should also leave a few degrees of freedom for the possibility that although the viewer of the body-snatcher movie has been witnessing things from the perspective of the central character in that film -- namely, Kevin McCarthy (actor) aka Miles Bennell (movie character) – and, in the process, the viewer has been led -- by the script writer and movie director -- to believe that everything being recounted by the central character is an accurate depiction of events as they happened. Notwithstanding the foregoing considerations, perhaps, one should leave room for the possibility that one is being manipulated by the script writer and director to adopt an invented worldview which, in actuality, gives expression to someone’s psychotic break with reality  (whatever that might be) and, therefore, none of what is being described by that character actually took place or didn’t take place in the way in which it is being remembered by the Kevin McCarthy character – sort of like the way in which the viewing audience is, for a time, taken for an illusory ride by Ron Howard in the movie:  A Beautiful Mind, and, as a result, one is led to believe that what the Russell Crowe character – John Nash – is experiencing in the first part of the movie actually took place in a world which has been framed or presented as having been “real” when this was not the case (the experiences were real, but they were hallucinatory delusions and had no actual counterpart in the world outside of the mind of John Nash.)

The fact that many of us tend to seek out sources of consensual validation as a way of allaying whatever doubts we might have about a given set of experiences does not mean that the process of consensual validation will necessarily give expression to the truth or help one arrive at the truth in relation to any given topic. Seeking consensual validation is a form of coping mechanism which is intended to help one deal with whatever uncertainties, reservations, anxieties, concerns, fears, and doubts that might have arisen within one in conjunction with a given set of circumstances, and, consequently, that dynamic is not necessarily geared toward uncovering the truth but, instead, is directed toward acquiring some sort of existential and/or hermeneutical stability concerning one’s relationship with experienced reality.

If the individual (or individuals) whom one approaches during the process of consensual validation has (or have) a problematic relationship with reality (maybe, for example, they are addicts or are part of a cult or are involved in perpetrating -- in some way, such as a prank -- the very issues about which one is discussing), then, while what is said during such interchanges might alleviate the fears, anxieties, uncertainties, and so on which have arisen within one in relation to a certain experience or set of experiences one has encountered, then, one might be no closer to the truth of a matter at the end of such a conversation than one had been prior to seeking some form of consensual validation. The fact a group of people believe ‘something’ to be true does not necessarily make that something true, which is why science is not about consensus, per se, but involves a much more complex process of on-going: Observation, experimentation, methodology, instrumentation, measurement, analysis, critical reflection, and replication.

Let’s assume that you – the reader – have been called in as a consultant to make a judgment about a rather incredible story that is being told by various individuals who have come to your place of work in order to try -- like the Miles Bennell movie character -- to warn the world about an impending disaster. The individuals with whom you are speaking indicate that the world is at a tipping point which -- unless human beings collectively take the appropriate sort of corrective actions -- will lead to: Increasing atmospheric temperatures, extreme forms of weather, melting ice caps and glaciers, as well as rising oceans – all of which could lead to the destruction of much, if not most of, life on Earth, and that the apocalypse which is about to descend is the result of human-caused activity.

More specifically, so-called “greenhouse gases” – especially carbon dioxide, but including, as well, methane and nitrous oxide – are being generated to such an extent by various forms of human activity (e.g., via industry, recreation, agriculture, economics, transportation, culture, technology, as well as energy generation and consumption) that the aforementioned greenhouse gases are reaching untenable levels which already are causing considerable damage, with more to come in lethal forms of global warming, rising oceans, extreme weather, as well as playing a role in the emergence of new forms of pandemic diseases. One is being told that the situation is so dire that if constructive steps are not taken immediately to counter the aforementioned generation of greenhouse gasses, then, within ten years, human beings and much of the rest of life on Earth might well become extinct, and if not extinct, then, they will become extremely compromised with respect to the kinds of lives that might be lived by their offspring.

According to the hypothetical story that is being related to the reader, every human being has a moral responsibility to reduce his, her, or their carbon footprint – that is, the extent to which a person’s lifestyle (including: Work, entertainment, hobbies, dietary habits, traveling, energy use, and medical condition) generates either carbon dioxide or some equivalent form of greenhouse gas which, for ease of computation and establishing a common form of measurement, can be converted into a carbon dioxide equivalency figure. Furthermore, the foregoing situation is so fraught with danger for all life on Earth, that if people are not willing to freely observe their ecological responsibilities to one another, then, different forms of: Political, economic, medical, military, financial, and/or social sanctions must be used to ensure that people do the things that are necessary to save the Earth’s inhabitants, whether human or non-human, and such actions, should they be needed, will require various levels of government to: (1) Establish a one government world; (2) re-organize community life into a series of fifteen-minute cities in which one’s movements, activities, and sovereignty will be closely surveilled and severely restricted; (3) introduce central bank digital currency as a way of keeping tabs on how people spend money as well as a way of regulating how money is spent (using one’s carbon footprint as an index measure), and, consequently, will serve as the method through which to modulate the lives of those who say or do socially, politically, or medically discordant things; (4) provide forms of public health based on whatever medical procedures are deemed to be appropriate by ruling authorities in order to protect the community, and this will be done without people’s informed consent; (5) arrange an array of private-public forms of association from which most people will be excluded and which will entitle those institutional arrangements to have total authority and control over every aspect of the lives of individuals; (6) place all of the foregoing considerations under the supervision of different forms of artificial intelligence into which certain people will be assimilated, via transhumanist methods, in order to serve the needs of such a network of public-private arrangements.

At the epicenter of the conceptual earthquake which is being described is a shifting set of tectonic-like plates involving the alleged relationship between the amount of carbon dioxide which is present in the atmosphere and the purported impact of that gas’s presence on environmental temperatures. Supposedly, increases in levels of carbon dioxide lead to increases in environmental temperature, and once a certain tipping point is reached, global warming and destructive forms of climate change will – allegedly -- become unstoppable and irreversible.

What follows is the equivalent of being told that there has been an accident on the highway and some strange pod plants have been strewn about at the scene of the accident and, furthermore, the truck, supposedly, was coming from the direction of Santa Mira. The task of the reader is to try to make sense of the information which is about to be provided when considered in relation to the story that has been told about global warming and determine whether, or not, this new information is consistent with the global warming story and, in addition, whether, or not, that information lends credibility to the global warming narrative as well.

The atmosphere consists of: 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, .93% Argon, and approximately .07% greenhouse gases (that is, just 7 hundredths of one percent). 95% of the foregoing .07% greenhouse gas figure is in the form of water vapor (100% - 99.93 = .07 x .95 = .0665% of total set of atmospheric gases), and water vapor is rarely, if ever, mentioned in global warming models even though it accounts for 95% of the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.

The percentage breakdown of the remaining 5% of greenhouse gasses is as follows: 99.44% CO₂ (or .9944 x .07 = .00696% of total atmospheric gases); .47% methane (or .0047 x .07% = .000329% of total atmospheric gases); .08% N₂0 – nitrous oxide – (.0008% x .07% = .000056% of total atmospheric gases). So, according to the account being given, if the % of CO₂ were to increase – which, currently, is being measured at .00696% of the total amount of atmospheric gases –- then, this would bring about an increase in environmental temperature of some amount.

Rather than using percentages, let’s measure the amount of a greenhouse gas in terms of ppm (or parts per million). For instance, in 2017, the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere was measured to be roughly 406 ppm.

Water vapor -- which accounts for 95% of all greenhouse gases -- measures approximately 30,000 parts per million in atmospheric samples. Water has more than 70 times the effect on atmospheric temperature as does CO₂, and, yet, no one talks about the problematic nature of our “water vapor footprint” and no one has gone to the trouble of developing a trading system of water vapor credits which can be swapped among governments, companies, institutions, and individuals.

The individual who is seeking to warn people about the perils of global warming indicates that if the parts per million of carbon dioxide continues to increase, and, in the process, brings about a temperature increase of 2-3 degrees Centigrade, then we all will be faced with a runaway greenhouse effect that will have catastrophic consequences for all life on Earth. Yet, studies have shown that over the last 570 million years, temperatures were, on average, ten degrees hotter than today, and, yet, life did not disappear, and, consequently, why should one suppose that even if a 2-3 degree increase in average temperature did occur (as a function of whatever set of forces), nonetheless, there is no historical evidence to suggest that this would bring an end to life.

Moreover, although CO₂ levels climbed between 1998 and 2015, there was no increase in average global temperature during that period of time and, in fact, if anything there was a slight cooling which took place. Therefore, if an increase in atmospheric CO₂-levels is supposed to lead to higher temperatures, then, why did the foregoing 17 year period not show any increase in average temperatures given that CO₂ levels increased throughout this period.

 

Moreover, the decade between 1930 and 1940 was among the hottest periods over the last 100 years. Yet, the levels of atmospheric CO₂ were much lower than they are currently.

On the other hand, during the 1960s and 1970s, average global temperatures were going down. Nonetheless, atmospheric levels of CO₂ increased throughout this period.

In order to identify something as the cause of something else, then, whenever the former “something” is present, then, there should be some corresponding change in the phenomenon that, supposedly, is being affected by the alleged causal agent. However, the foregoing data indicates that there have been times when, on the one hand, atmospheric levels of CO₂ have increased, and, yet, average global temperatures went down, while, on the other hand, there also have been periods when the average global temperature went up despite the fact that the levels of atmospheric CO₂ went down, and, therefore, in neither of the foregoing instances is there any evidence to indicate that atmospheric levels of CO₂ have a clear-cut causal impact on whether average global temperatures will go up or down.

If one takes a step, or two, back from the climate timeline in order to get a more inclusive historical view of what has gone on for millions of years, one finds that the evidence clearly indicates that, in general, there is no long-term data which is capable of establishing that increases in atmospheric levels of CO₂ lead to increases in atmospheric temperature. In fact, the opposite tends to be true – that is, increases in atmospheric CO₂ often follow – by 800 years or so – relatively lengthy periods of elevated atmospheric temperatures.

The 800-year differential has to do with the way in which water has a high specific heat (the amount of heat which must be added to one gram of a substance in order to raise the temperature of that substance by one degree Centigrade). As a result, because of its high specific heat, water tends to heat up and cool down much more slowly than do land masses which have been subjected to naturally caused, extended periods of elevated temperatures.

The rise in ocean temperatures which recently have been recorded gives expression to an 800-year time lag following the extended period of elevated temperatures which occurred during the Medieval Warm Period (approximately 900 CE to 1300 CE). The oceans – because of their high specific heat -- have taken this long to react to, or reflect, what transpired on land (i.e., higher temperatures) approximately 800 years ago.

Over a number of years, the recent heating up of the oceans in response to the extended period of relatively elevated temperatures which occurred during the Medieval Warm Period has resulted in an increase (in addition to the carbon dioxide which is normally released by the oceans) in the amount of CO₂ which have been released into the atmosphere from the oceans.

Only a very small amount of the aforementioned CO₂ that is being released by the oceans into the atmosphere is due to human activity. Furthermore, one should keep in mind that irrespective of whatever amounts of CO₂ that are being generated through human activity and, subsequently, are being released into the atmosphere via the heating up of the oceans, nevertheless, atmospheric temperatures went down in the 1960s and 1970s despite an increase in atmospheric levels of CO₂ and there was a period from 1998 to at least 2015 in which temperatures held steady despite increases in atmospheric levels of CO₂

The absence of any increase in average global temperatures during this interval was one of the reasons why there was a transition in vocabulary which emerged during this time frame – from: “global warming,” to: “climate change.” This is because (as will soon be demonstrated) when scientific evidence is properly used, it does not support the notion of global warming, while the idea of “climate change” is a much more nebulous term that could be used to help lend a certain amount of obfuscating camouflage to problematic theories since everyone agrees that climates change over time, but there are differences of opinion concerning what causes those changes.

One might also note that ice core samples are able to introduce some interesting data which reflects some of what took place climatically during the aforementioned Medieval Warm Period (approximately from 900 CE to 1300 CE). More specifically, various ice core samples indicate that atmospheric CO₂ levels during the aforementioned 400-year interval actually declined to a level that is less than is the case today even as the overall average temperatures during that period of time increased by several degrees.

Consequently, the whole notion of referring to certain gases as being greenhouse gases is essentially misguided. ‘Greenhouses’ are relatively closed-system structures consisting of a roof and walls made of glass which trap sunlight in the form of, among other things, heat.

The Earth’s atmosphere, however, is a relatively open system in which much of the heat from the sun is reflected back into space. While some of the solar energy striking the atmosphere is retained for a relatively short period of time by atmospheric gases such as methane, water vapor, and carbon dioxide, nonetheless, this energy is eventually released.

In addition, if the aforementioned solar energy were not retained for a relatively short period of time and, in the process, translated into a certain amount of heat, then, the Earth’s average temperature would be about 28 degrees colder than it currently is (i.e., 15 degrees Centigrade versus -13 degrees Centigrade) and, as a result, life would either have had to be very different than what is presently the case or life might never have come into existence in the first place because environmental conditions would have been antithetical to life’s emergence. Consequently, referring to gases such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane as greenhouse gases is, on several levels, inappropriate and misleading.

As touched upon earlier, many of the models that are used to support the idea of global warming omit water vapor despite the fact that this gas makes up 95% of all so-called atmospheric greenhouse gases and despite the fact that it has more than 70 times the impact on atmospheric temperatures than does carbon dioxide. Furthermore, there are a number of other factors that tend not to be present in global warming models which could affect both the levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere as well as average global temperatures.

For example, many global warming models only take into account the activity of volcanoes which are visible above ground while ignoring the fact that 85% of all volcanic activity (there are approximately 1,500 active volcanoes) occurs beneath the oceans, and this underwater activity leads, eventually, to considerable out-gassing, including CO₂, as the latter gas is released from the Earth’s mantle through fissures in the tectonic plates.  Moreover, many of those global warming models don’t appear to give appropriate consideration to the way in which cosmic rays, ocean dynamics, earthquakes (there are more than 10,000 earthquakes a year which generate, among other things, CO₂), different modalities of cloud coverage (low and high cloud formations have different impacts on atmospheric temperatures), and aerosols (such as soot) affect either atmospheric temperatures or CO₂ levels, or both.

Oftentimes, a missing element from various global warming models – and is most glaring in its absence -- concerns the dominant role which the sun plays in climate formation and change. This would include the way in which orbital angles of our planet relative to the sun tend to vary over time and, as a result, affect what goes on in the Earth’s atmosphere. 

If one hopes to develop a model which accurately reflects the dynamics of climate change, then, that model needs to factor in all of the forces and phenomena which will affect climate change in different ways. By leaving out the aforementioned sorts of dynamics from a model that purports to provide an account for why global warming is allegedly taking place, then, such models can hardly be expected to yield anything but distorted and errant conceptions of what is supposedly being modeled … i.e., climate change, global warming, and what impact, if any, that increases or decreases in atmospheric levels of CO₂ are having on global warming.

Over the last 150 million years, a variety of sampling techniques have indicated that atmospheric levels of CO₂ have been steadily decreasing. Those levels have ranged from a high of 6000 parts per million to a low of 180 parts per million (and a number of scientists have pointed out that if the parts per million content of CO₂ fell below 150 ppm, plants could not survive, and if plants could not live, then, neither could a great many kinds of other life forms).

The foregoing data establishes several points of reference. First, notwithstanding the existence of a high level (6000 parts per million of atmospheric CO₂) which occurred at some point during that 150 million year period, life did not end due to the presence of such elevated levels of CO₂. Therefore, when various individuals today busy themselves with issuing apocalyptic pronouncements concerning humanity’s future because the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere is 400-plus parts per million and increasing somewhat, then, such pronouncements need to be tempered with some degree of emotional moderation which comes from the realization that during the last 150 million years, there was a period of time when atmospheric CO₂ levels were more than 15 times greater than conditions today and, yet, all manner of life did not come to an end.

The second point of reference to be established in relation to the foregoing considerations is that levels of CO₂ go up and down over time as a result of a variety of factors – many of which are not even represented in many, if not most, of the global warming models. The levels of atmospheric CO₂ which exist today (400-plus parts per million) are substantially below the much higher levels of atmospheric CO₂ (6000 parts per million) which existed tens of millions of years ago and which did not lead to the end of life on Earth, nor is there any indication that such high levels of atmospheric CO₂ were related to near-extinction level events.

The climate.gov web site stipulates that there was an increase of 2.8 parts per million which took place between 2022 and 2023. The aforementioned web page also indicates that this is the 12^th successive year in which the increase in atmospheric CO₂ has increased by more than 2 parts per million.

In 2017, the measured amount of atmospheric CO₂ was 406 parts per million. Therefore, if one were to add in the increases in atmospheric CO₂ that took place between 2017 and 2024 (and lets be generous and say that atmospheric levels of CO₂ increased by 3 parts per million per year), the atmospheric levels of CO₂ are now 427 parts per million, and, so, the moral of the government story is what?

There is no moral to the government story that is based on science. Given the aforementioned historical realities, documenting data concerning slight increases in atmospheric levels of CO₂ is relatively meaningless.

As shown previously, the atmospheric levels of CO₂ (irrespective of their source) CANNOT be causally tied to increases in global atmospheric temperature. However, increases in atmospheric temperatures CAN be demonstrated to be causally related to subsequent increases in levels of atmospheric CO₂, and, therefore, the 2-3 parts per million increases in CO₂ levels that are being noted by the government climate web page might well be the effect of increases in atmospheric temperature which are due to something other than elevated levels of atmospheric CO₂.

Furthermore, considerable scientific evidence exists which indicates there have been times when levels of atmospheric CO₂ were 15 times higher than presently is the case. Yet, all manner of organisms (both simple and complex) continued to live in the presence of such historically high levels of atmospheric CO₂.

In addition, scientific evidence has shown that during the last 400,000 years, average atmospheric temperatures have been measured to be anywhere from 9 degrees Centigrade colder than the average global temperatures of today, to 3 degrees Centigrade hotter than the average global temperatures of today. Moreover, scientific evidence also has indicated that the foregoing range of temperatures have been cycled through every 100,000 years, or so, during which time there have been four ice ages lasting some 50,000 years, or more, each, and that our current average global temperature is about 3-5 degrees Centigrade less than higher temperatures which were reached on five separate occasions previously during that 400,000 year period, and none of these latter periods of elevated temperature led to extinction level or near-extinction level events.

Moreover, when considered in the context of the last ten thousand years, the average atmospheric temperature of today is 1-2 degrees Centigrade cooler than the average atmospheric temperature for the rest of that ten thousand year period. To be sure, there are short periods of time during the last thousand years for which evidence exists that indicates how atmospheric temperatures have been slightly warmer than other periods during the modern era. Nevertheless, none of what is taking place currently falls outside the natural variability in atmospheric temperature that can be observed across thousands of years and which have extremely little, or nothing, to do with the levels of atmospheric CO₂ that might be present at any given time.

The “official” investigation into the issue of global warming began in 1988 with the emergence of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC began with a biased mandate.

More specifically, the IPCC’s understanding of “climate change” was tied arbitrarily – by members of the United Nations -- to the way in which human activities (especially in relation to the issue of atmospheric levels of CO₂) supposedly were altering the character of the Earth’s atmosphere. As a result, IPCC researchers and scientists were only permitted to pursue the topic of climate change from the limited perspective of human activities related to greenhouse gases and were not permitted to investigate natural, non-human dynamics which might be contributing to changes in the properties of the atmosphere that were affecting climate in various ways, and, this is why – as noted previously – IPCC and global warming climate models are often missing – to the detriment of those models -- considerations involving natural phenomena such as: Solar cycles; earthquake dynamics; cosmic ray effects; volcanic activity; natural aerosol contributions – such as soot; orbital angles of the Earth relative to the sun; as well as the chemistry and physics associated with ocean dynamics.

 The first report of the IPCC was released in 1995. After seven years of research involving many researchers and scientists (as noted earlier, the IPCC began in 1988), the initial report stipulated that although the climate was changing in various ways, nevertheless, there was no hard evidence to suggest that such transitions in climate could be traced to human activity.

Unfortunately, an ethically challenged and politically motivated member of the IPCC who had been given the responsibility to write a summary of the final report deviated substantially from what researchers had actually discovered and stated. Without providing evidence to back up such claims, this individual claimed there is a growing body of data which is demonstrating that human activity (in the form of greenhouse gases and sulfur aerosols) is responsible for certain changes in climate activity that were being observed.

Similar sorts of data manipulations, disinformation, and misinformation “tricks” have been performed in conjunction with the attempt to induce people to believe, for example, that a consensus of scientists or 97% of all scientists agree that on-going climate changes can be directly tied to the activities of human beings involving the generation of greenhouse gases. The foregoing 97% figure and associated “Consensus”-meme is based on four reports: (1) Naomi Oreskes -- “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change: How Do We Know We’re Not Wrong?,” (2005); (2) Peter T. Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman -- “Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” (2009); (3) William Anderegg, et. al., -- “Expert Credibility in Climate Change,” (2010); (4) John Cook, et. al., -- “Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature” (2013).

In 2014, a non-profit Canadian organization, Friends of Science -- whose membership consisted of retired earth and atmospheric scientists -- released a 51 page report entitled: “97% Consensus? No! Global Warming Math Myths & Social Proofs”. Among other things, this study contained a critical examination of the four “Consensus” reports mentioned earlier in this essay.

The Friends of Science report provided a detailed analysis of how each of the four reports noted previously suffered from fatal methodological flaws that failed to properly reflect the views of a considerable number of individuals who were seriously engaged in climate research. In fact, on the basis of one, or another, questionable sampling or methodological decision, the four reports (each in its own manner) either failed to take into account, or significantly underrepresented, the views of climate scientists who were skeptical of the global warming claims and, as a result, the perspective of the latter researchers tended not to be properly represented in the aforementioned reports and, consequently, a distorted understanding of climate science was advanced through those four reports.

In short, the aforementioned Friends of Science study indicated that none of the four reports being critiqued had put forth credible data or evidence which was capable of tenably demonstrating: (a) There was a consensus among scientists concerning the alleged anthropogenic cause of global warming, or (b) the claims concerning the idea that 97% of scientists had agreed that global warming was being caused by human beings were justified … in fact, while there are researchers and scientists who do believe that global warming is caused by human activity and that such warming is due to the quantities of CO₂ which allegedly are being released into the atmosphere by that activity, nonetheless, the actual percentage of the foregoing sorts of researchers and scientists is far, far smaller than the aforementioned 97% figure.

For example, 31,487 scientists and researchers signed a 2007 petition which gave expression to an initiative that was seeking to counter the idea of human-caused global warming. Among other things, the foregoing petition stated that there is no credible evidence which has been brought forth within the scientific community that is capable of demonstrating how human-generated greenhouse gases -- such as carbon dioxide and methane – have caused, or will cause (in the future), catastrophic increases in atmospheric temperatures or bring about problematic changes in climate dynamics.

In 2008, The U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee published a Minority Report. Among other things, the foregoing report took issue with a claim which had been made in an earlier report prepared by the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming that there was a consensus among scientists with respect to the idea that human activity was causing an increase in greenhouse gases which was causing global warming to an extent that was capable of destroying the world. 

The Senate Minority Report indicated how claims made with respect to the idea that a consensus existed among scientists concerning the manner in which human beings were responsible for the global warming that was capable of destroying the world were false. For example, the Minority Report pointed out that the contention of the IPCC that a consensus existed among scientists about the human cause of global warning was actually based on the activity of just 52 individuals who had engaged in a series of disinformation campaigns which used propaganda techniques to create the impression that their view was the view of most of the climate researchers and scientists in the world.

The Senate Minority Report countered the propagandized disinformation of those 52 individuals with the views of more than 650 international scientists and researchers who rejected the IPCC position that global warming existed or that human beings were responsible for having created something that did not exist. Many of the 650-plus individuals referred to in the Minority Report were neither Republicans nor Democrats, but, rather, they were scientists and researchers from countries such as: Japan, India, Canada, Russia, Norway, as well as from a number of other nations.

Furthermore, in 2012, 49 former employees of N.A.S.A. sent a letter to the foregoing agency indicating that a number of the agency’s decisions were being made on the basis of climate models which were flawed in fundamental ways and, as a result, were leading to predictions that had turned out to be incorrect. Chances are that the reason why the foregoing 49 individuals felt sufficiently free to attach their names to such a letter is precisely because they were “former” employees rather than current employees because current employees who might have wanted to criticize their employers in conjunction with the climate models being used by N.A.S.A. that were leading to incorrect predictions might very likely have found themselves becoming former employees for voicing their professional opinions on matters that stepped on politically vested interests rather than scientific toes.

Finally, the previously mentioned Friends of Science report that was critical of the contention that there is anything remotely approaching a consensus concerning the cause of alleged global warming also indicated that there was a fundamental theme missing from each of the consensus articles as well as from many other studies which sought to demonstrate that human beings were the primary cause of global warming. More specifically, the studies to which reference was being made in the 2014 Friends of Science report seemed to be completely devoid of any understanding of, or insight into, the principle that the primary driver of climate change on Earth is the Sun, not humans, nor CO₂, nor other so-called greenhouse gases.

Another analytical report on the issue of consensus with respect to the issue of alleged human-caused global warming was released just prior to the 2014 Friends of Science study. This critical analysis was entitled: “Climate Consensus and Misinformation” and was authored by David Legates et. al.

Among other things, the Legates report indicated that following a review of the abstracts for nearly 12,000 scientific articles that had been published over a 21 year period (1991 to 2011) and which dealt with climate-related issues, only 3/10ths of one percent of those publications indicated any kind of support for the ideas that global warming had been taking place since 1950 and that such climate dynamics were caused by human activity. The foregoing data suggests that the 97% consensus figure might be overstated to a considerable degree, and, as such, gives expression to the property of agnotology – that is, the manner in which systemic ignorance tends to give expression to not only a basic lack of knowledge with respect to a given topic but tends to exhibit the dynamics of willful blindness as well as acts of intentional deception.

One might note in passing that issues of: Reliability, credibility, and validity do not occur only in conjunction with climatology. Similar sorts of problems exist in other fields as well, including virology (see Follow the What? - An Introduction, by Anab Whitehouse) and medicine.

For example, Marcia Angell served as the first woman editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. She has stated that: “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.”

Consequently, politics, money, ideology, and ego have corrupted many areas of research. The IPCC is only one small part of the problem.

The aforementioned “97%-consensus” notion resonates with two additional meme-like promotions that have played important roles in several other crises that temporally overlap, somewhat, with the global warming issue. Like the “97%-consensus” idea, these two other meme-like ideas give expression to perspectives that are constructed in deceptive, if not untrue, ways.

First, consider the following sentence: “The rate of addiction for patients who are treated by doctors is much less than 1%.” The foregoing words were voiced by Alan Spanos, a medical doctor, during an advertisement for OxyContin.

That statement is based, in turn, on a four sentence ‘letter-to-the-editor’ which appeared in a 1980 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. The letter had been written by Dr. Hershel Jick and Jane Porter in reference to an informal study that had been conducted through the Medical Center affiliated with Boston University and which indicated that there had been only four cases of addiction-related issues associated with opioid usage among 12,000-plus patients who had been prescribed opioids by a doctor.

There are several problems with the way in which Purdue Pharma used information contained in the aforementioned four sentence letter. To begin with, whatever opioid medications were being prescribed through the Boston University Medical Center prior to 1980, those medications were not OxyContin (which hadn’t, yet, been “invented”), and, therefore, there was no evidential basis for implying – as Purdue Pharma did in some of its promotional material -- that people would respond to OxyContin in the same way that the people who had been treated elsewhere had responded to opiates that were not OxyContin.

Secondly, the dosage of the opiates being prescribed for patients being treated through the Boston University Medical Center is unknown. Purdue Pharma, on the other hand, was manufacturing products that ranged in dosage from 10 mg up to 80 mg.

Therefore, one does not know what role, if any, dosage level played in the Boston University Medical Center report. Consequently, one is in no position to conclude that such dosage levels were comparable to the Purdue Pharma array of product dosages and whether, or not, products containing 20 mg, or more,  in the Purdue Pharma line of products would have led to addiction issues.

So, when a television commercial for OxyContin has a medical doctor say that Purdue Pharma products “should be used much more than they are for patients in pain,” such a statement is irresponsible. The foregoing statement is completely irresponsible because the basis of comparison which supposedly underlies the claim that the alleged “much less than 1% addiction” rate can legitimately be tied to Purdue Pharma OxyContin products is devoid of any evidence which can be shown to be clearly rooted in empirically demonstrated facts.

Thirdly, the aforementioned four sentence letter-to-the-editor was not making reference to a formal, double blind, control group study that had been conducted in relation to prescribed opiate use at the Medical Center affiliated with Boston University. However, even if that letter had been referring to the results of such a formal study, nevertheless, Pharma Purdue would have had to run a separate series of controlled studies to justify being able to make claims that its own line of opioid products was also less than 1% addictive, but Purdue Pharma never carried out such studies.  

In 1992, Time magazine published an article entitled “Less Pain, More Gain” which referred to the Boston University Medical Center report on opioid addiction as being a “landmark study.” Yet, Dr. Jick -- who referenced the foregoing informational exercise in his (and Jane Porter’s) four sentence letter to The New England Journal of Medicine -- has difficulty remembering much about how the Medical Center report was put together, and, therefore, one can’t help but wonder about the evidential basis for, or credibility of, the Time magazine claim that the aforementioned Medical Center report or study was landmark in some way.

The New England Journal of Medicine acknowledges that the foregoing letter-to-the-editor has been cited at least 400 times. Google Scholar indicates that the four sentence letter-to-the-editor had been cited more than 1,200 times.

For what is the aforementioned letter-to-the-editor being cited? Who is doing the citing and have any of those individuals actually engaged, and, then, critically examined, the data contained in the original report or study or whatever it was in relation to the opioids being prescribed to 11,000-plus patients at the Boston University Medical Center?

The less than 1% addiction rate being used in conjunction with OxyContin is like the 97% consensus figure being used in relation to global warming. Neither has any relation to real science, but both percentages are being cited as if the information to which they give expression is true, and, in the process, a lot of people’s lives are being (and have been) either destroyed or are being upended in fundamental ways.

The 97% consensus figure in relation to the claim that the greenhouse gases being generated by human activity is causing global warming also resonates with another meme-like three word sentence: namely, “HIV causes A.I.D.S.”. At one point during his career, Kary Mullis -- who had been awarded a 1993 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his invention of the PCR protocol -- was tasked with writing an article about HIV and A.I.D.S. and, as background for the paper, he began asking all manner of scientists and medical doctors about where one might find an article, study, or reference which demonstrated that HIV causes A.I.D.S. because he wanted to begin his paper with such a statement and be able to provide an appropriate citation.

The list of people whom he asked for such a reference (i.e., one which showed that HIV caused A.I.D.S.) included a future, fellow Nobel laureate, Luc Montagnier, who had been honored in 2008 for his alleged, earlier discovery of HIV. Montagnier couldn’t provide Mullis with a reference concerning the alleged relationship between HIV and A.I.D.S. and, according to Mullis, Montagnier actually got upset with the question and abruptly walked away.

Later on, Montagnier appeared to distance himself from the idea that HIV caused A.I.D.S. . Instead, he adopted a fallback position which maintained that HIV must combine with some other, unknown, factor in order to bring about A.I.D.S., but this other, unknown co-factor has never been found, and, therefore, no one has been able to provide Kary Mullis with a citation or reference indicating that HIV causes A.I.D.S. .

Yet, despite a complete lack of evidence to justify making such a statement, the sentence – “HIV causes A.I.D.S.” – is ubiquitous throughout the world. Similarly, statements to the effect that: “There is a 97% consensus among scientists that global warming is caused by the way in which human activity is generating increases in greenhouse gas emissions (such as CO₂), and this activity is contributing substantially to global warming” are ubiquitous throughout the world despite the fact there is no actual evidence which is capable of demonstrating that claims concerning a 97% consensus figure among scientists in conjunction with climate change are true.

In 2009, person, or persons, unknown hacked into the e-mail system for the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. More than a thousand e-mails were made public.

The hacked e-mails entailed considerable evidence indicating that various members of the IPCC (including members of the CRU at the University of East Anglia) were attempting to fraudulently convince the world that a consensus of scientists supported the claim that human activity was responsible for increasing the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The narrative being manufactured by such people indicated that human-caused increases in greenhouse gases (especially CO₂) were inexorably leading the world toward an irreversible tipping point that would result in an apocalyptic future in which: Atmospheric temperatures would shoot-up precipitously and lethally; ocean levels all over the world would rise and inundate coastlines where the majority of the world’s population live; extreme weather events (floods, hurricanes, droughts, tornadoes, blizzards) would become the norm and wreak havoc on civilization everywhere.

The hacked e-mails also contained evidence that various members of the IPCC were attempting to make sure that opposing viewpoints would not find their way into professional publications – that is, they were engaged in an array of activities that were directed toward censoring anyone who disagreed with the aforementioned “consensus narrative.” In addition, those same members of the IPCC also were involved in attempts to make sure that any information which might have the potential to undermine their consensus-narrative would not become accessible to the public.

For instance, to accomplish data hiding, they talked about using “Mike’s trick” in conjunction with various issues involving climate change. The “Mike” to whom reference is being made in the previous sentence, is Michael Mann, who, at the time, was on staff at Penn State University, and the “trick” to which reference is being made is the manner in which Professor Mann had decided to leave out tree ring data from 1961 onward that were inconsistent with his perspective (i.e., such data actually showed a decline in temperature) and, instead, replaced that data with thermometer readings which tended to be consistent with his position (i.e., that temperatures were rapidly increasing).

Professor Mann had used various statistical methods when preparing a 1999 paper which contained a graph in which average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were shown to be sharply rising within a very short period of time in the 20^th century. Supposedly, this sharp rise in average temperatures was taking place before our very eyes and was occurring following a thousand year period in which available data (from indicated that average global temperatures had been fairly steady despite being interspersed, here and there, with occasional, slight upticks or downturns in average global temperatures.

The graph which Mann presented resembled, to some degree, a hockey stick in which the long handle part of that stick was a relatively horizontal straight line running along, but above (on the y-axis), the x-axis (representing time elapsed) which gave expression to a period of relatively stable temperatures. The stable temperature part of the hockey stick was, then, linked -- a short while later on the y-axis -- to the blade portion of the stick which rose sharply upward and represented, supposedly, a rapid increase in average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere.

However, within the first three or four years that kicked off the 21^st century, Richard A. Mueller, a professor of physics, later revisited Mann’s original research and concluded that there were a number of problems with the statistical techniques and forms of analyses which were present in the Mann paper, and that Professor Mann’s conclusions did not follow from the data he was using. In short, Professor Mueller indicated that while he agreed that the Earth had been going through a warming period for the last 100 to 150 years, nonetheless, this already had been known since 1980 and, therefore, Mann had not actually demonstrated anything new or different in this regard, and, perhaps, most importantly, Mann had not demonstrated that average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere had risen in the way in which Mann claimed had been the case in his 1999 paper.

Furthermore, one might want to keep in mind that there are various problems inherent in the process of gathering raw data in relation to the issue of determining average global temperature. People in different locations go about measuring temperatures in different ways with different kinds of instruments, and, consequently, determining where, how, and under what circumstances such measurements are made will affect what sorts of meanings, significance, or weight can be assigned to those measurements.

For instance, if one takes temperature measurements near sources that are likely to radiate high heat – such as is generated through the urban heat island effect or in proximity to an airport where jets are taking off and landing all day long -- then one has to try to separate out the heat which is being generated by those sorts of surroundings from the heat that is being naturally generated as a result of climate. In addition, while there are proxy forms, or indirect modes, of measuring temperature -- such as when one uses data from, for example, ice cores, lake sediments, stalagmites, coral, glaciers, and so on to try to find temperature-related forms of data which are, to varying degrees, independent of one another and, therefore, can be used to either discount or corroborate other kinds of temperature measurements -- nonetheless, the downside to such proxy forms of indirect measurement is there can be considerable variability in how different people go about measuring and/or interpreting the significance or value of those sorts of proxy measurements.

Furthermore, there are some 40,000 temperature measuring stations around the world. If one is using only some of those stations, while ignoring measurements from other locations that might be inconsistent with the station measurements one is using, this, obviously, raises questions about the reliability of whatever conclusions one arrives at based on an unduly limited and/or biased sampling of those 40,000 stations.

There have been a number of attempts to replicate Mann’s 1999 work and, as well, there have been claims that quite a few of those attempts at replication have been successful and, as a result, some individuals have concluded that Mann’s “hockey stick” research has been vindicated. Professor Muller indicates, however, that he (i.e., Professor Muller) was a referee on a National Research Council (National Academy of Sciences) panel which studied a variety of issues entailed by Mann’s work, but the panel had come to the conclusion that none of Mann’s original research claims have been validated or corroborated.

In addition, as noted earlier, Professor Mann’s findings were inconsistent with tree-ring data which appeared to indicate there had been a slight downturn of temperature at the same time that Professor Mann’s graph indicated temperatures were rising precipitously. The “trick” which had been performed involved – as noted earlier -- eliminating data which was inconsistent with Professor Mann’s perspective and replacing that data with readings from other kinds of measurement which were more favorable to the perspective which Mann was trying to advance.

However, let’s assume that Professor Mann’s claims were true – namely, that we have entered into an era of extraordinary climate warming (and Professor Muller stipulates that the National Research Council panel of which he was a member had found that Professor Mann’s foregoing claim was not warranted). Even if one were to grant the foregoing conclusion, nevertheless, none of Professor Mann’s presentation is capable of demonstrating that such warming had been caused by anthropogenic activity involving increases in the generation of greenhouse gases.

Six, or so, months ago, I watched a movie on PBS entitled “The Trick” which provided a dramatization of some of the problems that arose in conjunction with the hacking of e-mails at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. Phil Jones – who was the head of the CRU at the time of the hacking episode – was depicted in the movie as someone who seemed to be so outraged and incensed by the allegations being made in conjunction with the hacked e-mails that he couldn’t bring himself to talk about the issue other than to say that he had done nothing wrong.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, the sorts of information that were being disclosed through the hacked e-mails indicated that quite a few things were being done by various members of the IPCC which did not seem to be ethical or in the spirit of real science. At the end of the aforementioned movie, indications were given that the actions and perspective of Phil Jones, head of the CRU at the University of East Anglia, supposedly had been fully exonerated of any wrong doing.

Yet, I am having difficulty reconciling the idea of such exoneration with the manner in which various members of the IPCC were acting. They were actively engaged in: Trying to censor anyone who disagreed with them; or, were attempting to prevent people from being able to have papers published that dissented from the views of the CRU or the IPCC; or, were engaged in discussions that entertained methods for hiding relevant data; or, were resistant to the idea of sharing scientific data and information with individuals who held different views on climate change from the CRU and the IPCC; or, were referring to “Mike’s trick” as if it were a legitimate form of objectively rigorous science rather than a way to ensure that one’s conclusions would already be aligned, before the fact, with the data which was being selected.

Before the events of November 2009 had unfolded via the hacked e-mails of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, Judith Curry had been chairperson of the Schools of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She was a climatologist with interests in, among other things, climate and atmospheric modeling, and she had written over a hundred papers that were published in peer-reviewed journals.

She indicates that prior to November 2009 she had believed that there was a consensus among scientists concerning the issue of human-caused global warming. However, after she had an opportunity to peek behind the Oz-like curtain which had been made possible through the November 2009 e-mail hacking of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and, as a result, she learned about the unethical and unscientific activity which was taking place through the IPCC, she realized that prior to the 2009 Climategate scandal she had been operating in accordance with a group think sort of mentality in which a person simply adopts a conceptual perspective without having exercised due diligence simply because one had been induced to believe, based on false testimony, that such a perspective was the consensus of thousands of scientists and researchers when, in fact, this was not the case.

Judith Curry was not the only individual who had to escape from an atmosphere of IPCC-oriented group think. Many other individuals – whether due to the revelations of the 2009 Climategate scandal or as a result of trying to resolve various issues related to climate research – also began to question the narrative which was being promulgated through the IPCC that human beings were responsible for global warming as a result of so-called greenhouse gases that collectively were being generated by humanity.

For example, Klaus-Eckert Puls – a German physicist who specializes in meteorology – indicated that, for a time, he had been a member of the IPCC choir with respect to singing the praises of the man-made global warming cantata. Nonetheless, at a certain point, he began to engage in some independent research and critical reflection concerning the IPCC perspective and discovered that much of what the IPCC was proclaiming to be true was irreconcilable with a great deal of scientific data, especially in conjunction with the alleged relationship between CO₂ and the problematic notion of global warming.

Two years after the initial, 2009-release of hacked e-mails involving the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, a second batch of hacked e-mails was unleashed upon the world. This time around, there were more than 5,000 e-mails which were being disseminated (nearly five times as many e-mails as the first go around), and what was being revealed through this second batch of e-mails concerning the unethical and unscientific activities of various members of the IPCC were described as being even more unsettling than the first batch of hacked e-mails had been.

The communications in the second batch of e-mails indicated that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was a United Nations agency, was continuing to be deeply involved in a process of deception concerning the claim that human activity – in the form of so-called greenhouse gases such as CO₂ – was not only the predominate shaping force in the emergence and development of global warming which required immediate action if the world was not to be destroyed. Yet, despite the damning evidence concerning the manipulation of data, the censorship of opposing views, and the attempt to discredit anyone who opposed the IPCC position that was contained in the released e-mails, nevertheless, politics and money trumped science. As a result, the underhanded, duplicitous activities of various members of the IPCC were covered up and buried, and a massive propaganda program continued to be implemented which was intent on inducing people everywhere – scientist or non-scientist – to submit to the claim that human beings were the cause of global warming and that unless radical, dire actions were immediately undertaken, human beings would be in jeopardy of apocalyptic consequences.

One might point out in passing that the IPCC (which is an agency of the United Nations) is pushing an agenda which dovetails with the activities of another agency that is closely associated with the United Nations but is not actually an UN agency -- namely, the World Health Organization. The latter group’s current full-court press activities are seeking to impose a draconian set of public health requirements and restrictions on the rest of the world through the amendments to the International Health Regulations (amendments which entail degrees of freedom that will enable climate change to become a public health issue over which the W.H.O. has control).

Despite the fact that the group within W.H.O. (the International Negotiating Body) which is responsible for developing the amendment process has not abided by its own stated rules and, as a result, has failed to give nations sufficient advanced notice concerning amendment issues, the foregoing amendments are to be: Discussed, if not voted on, and, possibly, passed, during a forthcoming set of meetings (77^th World Health Assembly) in Geneva that is taking place during the last few days of May 2024 as well as during the first few days of June 2024. Both the IPCC and the W.H.O. are seeking – each in its own manner -- to help establish a one-world government form of health religion, and the 77^th World Health Assembly is part of that dynamic.

Both the IPCC and the W.H.O. have many, rabid, cult acolytes in different countries that are assisting the two aforementioned agencies in unethical and unscientific ways to realize their goal. This goal is rooted in a desire for world conquest and domination, and if one pays attention to what the IPCC and W.H.O. are doing, then, one can clearly see the presence of oppressive and tyrannical inclinations in their activities that are directed toward controlling, if not abolishing, the God-given sovereignty with which every human being is born.

Before bringing this essay to a close, a few words should be devoted to the strange fascination which many proponents of climate alarmism seem to have with the number 10. For instance, before global warming was the buzz word, there was concern about the issue of global cooling (which also was being blamed on CO₂ emissions).

Thus, during his 1970 observance of Earth Day, Dr. Kenneth Watt predicted that if chilling trends present at that time continued to assert themselves, then, one not only would witness a 4 degree drop in average global temperature over the next twenty years, but, there would be a further 7 degree plunge in average mean temperatures around the world during the ten year period between 1990 and 2000. Neither of the foregoing predictions turned out to be true.

In June of 1989, the New York director of the U.N.’s Environment Program declared that the governments of the world had just a ten-year period within which to successfully resolve the climate crisis or nations would be destroyed as a result of the consequences of global warming. To date, not one nation on the face of the Earth has suffered such a fate.

Approximately six months later, on December 5, 1989, the Dallas Morning News claimed that making certain predictions for the next decade (1989-1999) would be easy to make. The paper proceeded to indicate that the advent of global warming during that ten year period would “rekindle interest in cooler climates,” but the prediction turned out to be more problematic and difficult than originally had been believed to be the case.

Meryl Streep served as host for a 1990, 10-part PBS series entitled: Race to Save the Planet. The program maintained that the average mean temperature of the world would increase by four degrees during the next ten years, and, spoiler alert, the prediction turned out to be incorrect to a considerable degree.

In the spring of 2001, CNN analysts claimed that the nine South Pacific islands of Tuvalu would all be beneath water in just ten years as a result of global warming. Nearly 17 years later, not only were the Tuvalu islands still above water but there was evidence to indicate that the surface area of the coral atolls had expanded in size.

ABC News jumped onto the ten-year meme bandwagon in 2007. It claimed that “we have ten years” to avert a global warming catastrophe. Once again, the prognostications turned out to be incorrect.

None of what has been said in the foregoing pages should be construed as indicating, suggesting, or implying that there are not a plethora of serious environmental problems which are threatening human existence as well as threatening the ecological systems where we participate in the gift of life. One major contributor to such environmental problems are the militaries of every single country on Earth, each of which claims to exist for the protection of the people but, in reality, all of them exist for the protection of financial institutions, corporations, and other vested interests that are antithetical to human sovereignty, and all of them are major sources of pollution and release of hazardous, toxic materials.

Another major contributor to environmental problems are the manufacturers and consumers of the many electronic devices, satellites, and systems of dirty electricity which have created an electromagnetic smog that envelops the Earth and is responsible for undermining life – both human and non-human. To the former modality of ubiquitous pollution, one can add the issue of micro-plastics which have seeped into nearly every facet of life on Earth (a recent study found that one liter of bottled water contains a quarter of a million nano-sized plastic materials).

Furthermore, increasingly, both the medical system and those who are pushing a transhumanist agenda are involved in projects and activities which are flooding life on Earth with all manner of: Meta-materials, bio-convergence dynamics, so-called synthetic biological processes, molecular communication, optogenetic forms of control, directed energy devices, self-assembling systems of nanotechnology, and energy harvesting protocols which, without informed consent, are polluting, interfering with, attacking, destroying, undermining, transforming, exploiting, and/or jamming, the biofields of human beings. The aforementioned biofields are sovereign expressions of human existence, and, as such, should be treated with sanctity rather than with experimental arrogance, indifference, curiosity, and/or self-indulgence.

Having made the foregoing observations and critically reflecting on a number of considerations relevant to those observations, let’s return to the point from which this essay was launched – namely, the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie. Or, more accurately, let’s return to the problem which faced the two doctors who were listening to the tale being related by the Miles Bennell character played by Kevin McCarthy.

The problem that was initially raised is what are the two doctors to make of a narrative which is warning that humanity is at risk? Is Miles Bennell psychotic, delusional, or sane?

The nightmare of the Miles Bennell character ends when a highway accident provides evidence which, to some extent, appears to corroborate his story. Thus, the aforementioned movie offers an artificially scripted way of resolving questions concerning issues of psychosis, delusion, or sanity.

In the present essay, the Miles Bennell character is being played by an unnamed proponent of the idea that anthropogenic-caused global warming (due to greenhouse gas-generating forms of activity) is bringing the world to the brink of destruction. The lengthy discussion during the current essay parallels, to a degree, the information which was received toward the end of the aforementioned movie when the two doctors who were tasked with the decision of deciding whether, or not, Miles Bennell was sane and/or telling the truth were informed about some strange pod plants that had been carried by a truck which was travelling away from Santa Mira.

The reader and I are comparable to the two doctors in the movie who were being required to make a decision about the mental status of the individual who has just related a fantastic story as well as whether, or not, that story was true. The reader, of course, will have to arrive at that person’s own decision concerning the problem being posed in this essay.

However, I feel free to state my professional judgment that the individual whose story the reader and I have been considering appears to be suffering from a rather severe case of: Climate Delusional Syndrome which requires some sort of corrective treatment. However, I feel that the prognosis for such a diagnosis is uncertain because the person who has been relating the story is, like Miles Bennell, convinced that the events being related are true and, therefore, such a person is likely to interpret my diagnosis as evidence that global warming deniers have been able to snatch my awareness and replace it with an alien form of understanding.

The very nature of a delusion is that it gives expression to a false belief or false set of beliefs. Removing oneself from a delusional system of thought is an extremely difficult challenge, and, unfortunately, not everyone is able to successfully resolve such a conundrum because one comes face to face with a fundamental question: What and/or whom should we trust … and this issue of trust even extends to one’s own hermeneutical and epistemological activities.

At one point during the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie, Dr. Miles Bennell says: “In my practice, I've seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happened slowly instead of all at once. They didn't seem to mind... All of us - a little bit - we harden our hearts, grow callous. Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us, how dear.”

What does being human entail? Raising, critically engaging, and seeking to resolve the issues given expression in this essay and doing so in a tempered, judicious, balanced, reflective, and wise manner is, one might assume, part of what is meant by the idea of being human.

However, there appear to be an array of forces at work within us and around us which are seeking to deny us this right to be human. This sounds frighteningly like the scenario being presented through the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie in which there are alien, non-human entities which are seeking to infiltrate and take control of the essential sovereignty of human beings, and, if so, then, as unsettling as it might be to realize, then, perhaps, the Miles Bennell character might well have been correct as he was trying to warn the people who were driving past and becoming annoyed with him as he yelled to them in desperation while bouncing from car to car: “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”