The Story Beneath the Climate Story — "A Half-Truth Is the Worst of All Lies Because It Can Be Defended in Partiality."

Most of the lies hollowing out our world contain some distorted kernel of truth — they often only become lies as they are stripped of their broader context and bent to fit a dominant narrative. As ancient Greek philosopher Solon once said, “A half truth is the worst of all lies because it can be defended in partiality.” 

There's no better example of this than the nonsensical climate propaganda that has been relentlessly pushed onto society by our academic institutions, by the media, and by our political elite. In this article I am going to share a few heretical examples from my new book (Plunderers of the Earth (link to Amazon.com#Commissions Earned)) to illustrate how cartoonish oversimplifications about our ever-changing climate are not only wholly wrong despite containing kernels of truth, but that by flooding the world with this false narrative we have become blind to a much larger and much more complex story unfolding right beneath our feet, with profound implications for the future of our civilization.

Let's start with some of the easy stuff on our way towards the bigger underlying story.

1.

Is CO2 a greenhouse gas? Yes.... but its effect is so small that it's essentially inconsequential to the climate. The first few parts per million helped warm the Earth (a tiny bit) in the early days of our planet's 4.5-billion-year history. But as is so often the case wherever the "Law of Diminishing Returns" comes into play, after the initial bump produced by the first few ppm, the ability to absorb additional infrared radiation from the Sun drops off so fast as to be meaningless, as shown in the image below.

But that's only a tiny part of the boondoggle. The first oceans formed on our planet around 3.8 billion years ago. Ever since then, vast quantities of water are continually evaporating from the oceans to accumulate in our atmosphere as water vapour. And that water vapour absorbs the same wavelengths of infrared radiation as CO2 does. Thanks to that overlap in wavelengths, the greenhouse effect from CO2 is utterly irrelevant as long as there's water vapour in the atmosphere. 

This fact has been known since at least 1941 when the US Dept of Agriculture published a book called Climate and Man: Yearbook of Agriculture, 1941. The book states that "Much has been written about varying amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a possible cause of glacial periods. The theory received a fatal blow when it was realized that carbon dioxide is very selective as to the wave lengths of radiant energy it will absorb, filtering out only such waves as even very minute quantities of water vapour dispose of anyway. No probable increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide could materially affect either the amount of insolation reaching the surface or the amount of terrestrial radiation lost to space. [my emphasis]."

A great example to illustrate the importance of water vapour even as it exposes the irrelevance of CO2 comes from comparing the climate in humid Florida to that of the dry Sahara Desert, which are at roughly the same latitude and which both have the same amount of CO2 in the air. On those hot, humid summer nights in Florida, sweltering nighttime temperatures barely dip as water vapour traps heat that has built up over the course of the day. Meanwhile, with very little moisture in the air above the dry Sahara to insulate the ground from the baking Sun, daytime temperatures soar far above the hottest temperatures seen in Florida during the daytime, only to immediately plunge to well below freezing as soon as the Sun goes down. Without enough water vapour in the air, the ground is exposed to the full force of the Sun during the daytime and then, as night falls, the day's accumulated heat quickly escapes back out into space without water vapour to trap that heat. Water vapour matters. CO2 does not. 

As you'll soon see as the broader arc of this story unfolds, any factor (natural or human-caused) that affects the amount of water vapour in the air plays a prominent role in shaping both the local and the global climate because, unlike CO2, water vapour has an enormous impact on how much solar radiation can penetrate through our atmosphere to reach the surface of our planet and how much of that heat gets trapped instead of radiating right back out into space as soon as the Sun goes down. 

The idea that "carbon dioxide is the control knob on the climate" is a colossal public deception. In reality, what drives climate on both short- and long-term timeframes is a dizzyingly complex and dynamic mix of forces: solar cycles, ocean currents, water vapour, wobbles in our planet's orbit, cyclical changes in cloud cover, continental drift, cosmic radiation, and so on, all of which are covered in detail in my new book as I piece together the fascinating puzzle that shapes our ever-changing climate. Carbon dioxide is all but irrelevant within that dynamic mix. However, what sets carbon dioxide apart is that, unlike all these other forces, shining a big spotlight on CO2 made it politically useful.

After the oil crisis of the 1970s, followed by the coal miners' strikes in Britain in the 1980s, politicians (beginning with Margaret Thatcher) began pouring vast amounts of public funds into climate research (with a specific focus on highlighting the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide) as a deliberate strategy to push society away from fossil fuels and towards nuclear power — the primary goal of this push was to break the dependency on colluding Middle Eastern oil suppliers and on socialist-sympathizing labour unions in the British coal mining industry. What began as a convenient narrative to shepherd society towards one deceptive political purpose has since mutated into something else altogether as countless others have found new ways to adapt that narrative to suit their own agendas... and to profit from it both politically and financially. Just because an idea isn't true doesn't mean it isn't useful to a lot of people. Nor does it necessarily mean that Thatcher and her peers knew they were promoting baloney — it is all too human to glom onto and champion any idea that confirms our biases if those ideas seem to take us towards our goals.

Ever since Thatcher and her peers in other Western governments helped put the climate crusade on the map through their speeches and by pouring vast public funds into research institutions, climate science has fixated on that one tiny slice of the overall picture (CO2) at the expense of all the important factors driving our climate. As the cheeky internet meme so deftly points out, "97% of scientists agree with whoever is funding them." The enduring climate fairy tale has nothing to do with reality but has everything to do with securing lucrative government funding and promoting political agendas. Fear sells. And governments have been eager to continue to promote this illusion because the idea has morphed into a useful "noble lie" to coerce society into accepting the further centralization of power and the expansion of bureaucratic institutions at the expense of individual and local autonomy. 

How many of those caught up in this crusade are true believers blindly running with the herd as they distort their own perception of reality to avoid falling out with the manufactured consensus versus how many of them know they are deliberately "massaging" reality is anyone's guess — in reality it's probably a volatile mixture of both. Cults tend to gravitate towards extremism as the true believers crowd out the rest.

2.

Is there a link between CO2 and temperature? Again, yes. But in that relationship, temperature is the horse while CO2 is the cart. The cart does not control the direction of the horse. CO2 dissolves in water, but its solubility decreases as water temperature increases, as shown in the chart below. What this means is that as oceans warm up after an ice age, they necessarily begin to degas CO2 in the same way that CO2 bubbles out of a soda as the soda warms up. Likewise, as global temperatures cool, the oceans cool in lockstep and begin to absorb CO2 back out of the atmosphere. CO2 follows temperature — basic chemistry makes it impossible to be the other way round.

Thanks to this relationship between CO2 solubility and water temperature, we can see over the past few million years that atmospheric CO2 decreases to around 180 ppm during ice ages, and then rises back up to around 280 ppm as oceans warm up during warm interglacial periods. CO2 lags temperature by around 800 years because it takes that long for deeper levels of the ocean to warm up after the climate warms. Warming or cooling that much "soda" takes time.

The fictional narrative that "carbon dioxide is the control knob on the climate" emerged by reversing cause and effect. It is a whole lie built on yet another half-truth.

3.

Is human activity changing our climate? Again, yes, but not in the way that it is popularly portrayed — those changes have nothing to do with fossil fuel emissions but have everything to do with how our activities are impacting local water cycles.

Two of the most important ways in which humans change their local climates are through:

Deforestation: As forests are cut down, rainfall decreases, which causes local climates to get drier. The most obvious example of this phenomenon is the well-known story of what happens to the local climate after the Amazonian rainforest is cleared to make way for soybean plantations, but the drying of local climates happens everywhere that forests are cut down. 

For example, contrary to Al Gore's claims, Mt. Kilimanjaro's glaciers are not shrinking because the global climate has gotten warmer, but because the local climate got drier as locals deforested the perimeter of the mountain. Without lush forests to shield the soil and pump water vapour into the atmosphere through evapotranspiration, the region got drier, less rain and snow fell on the mountain, and the increasingly dry air increased sublimation rates as the dry air turned ice on the mountain back into water vapour. And, to make matter worse, as the air got drier, there was less water vapour in the air to shield the icy mountaintop from the full intensity of the Sun, just like in my earlier example from the Sahara. 

Once again, the important part of the story is not temperature, it's aridity — water vapour. All around the world, there is a direct link between deforestation, aridification, and desertification. By destroying at least one third of the planet's historic forests over the past few centuries, we have completely reshaped countless local climates.

Soil erosion and humus losses: Sod protects soil from evaporation. And carbon (humus) in the soil acts like a sponge to capture and absorb moisture during a rainfall. Thus, any human activity that strips soil of its vegetative cover and erodes and/or oxidizes carbon in the soil will cause soil to get drier and the plants growing on it to become more vulnerable to water shortages. In other words, soil erosion makes the local climate more vulnerable to drought even if rainfall stays the same. 

All over the world, our impact on the land is fueling colossal rates of soil erosion, which lead directly to desertification. According to UN estimates, we are losing around 24 billion tons of fertile cropland soil to erosion every year. Over 1.5 billion hectares of formerly productive land have already been lost to desertification... and that number is growing by an additional 12 million hectares per year! But contrary to popular claims, this desertification is not caused by CO2 — it's purely the result of how we are (mis)managing the land, which is causing the land to dry out.

As for those 1.2 billion climate refugees that the United Nations predicts will be migrating north to escape a warming climate by 2050... although many really are fleeing rapidly deteriorating local climates, in reality they are fleeing desertification caused by local deforestation and local soil erosion, not changes to the global climate. But would borders be flung wide open to receive them if it was widely recognized that they were fleeing local land management problems instead of the alleged consequences of CO2 belching out of SUVs in rich countries? 

Even if noble lies have good intentions, they are no less destructive than malicious ones because you cannot solve problems if you misdiagnose the causes. And the righteous moral busybody is often even more relentless than the self-serving tyrant in his efforts to deny individuals the autonomy to solve their own problems. 

By blaming CO2, we are ensuring that the true underlying causes of this slow-rolling ecological collapse are completely misunderstood. By consequence, the solutions imposed by both governments and local land managers are destined to be completely ineffective at fixing the problems (or even make the problems worse) because they fail to address the root causes.

Not only is "green colonialism" undermining the ability of developing countries to solve their own problems as Western institutions dictate to poor countries how they should (and shouldn't) develop their economies, but the CO2-obsessed bureaucratic institutions of the neo-liberal West are also busily demonizing and even banning all of the most important yet deeply misunderstood tools that land managers all over the world have at their disposal to reverse the processes of soil erosion and desertification — such as grazing livestock, low-intensity controlled wildfires, and a host of other strategies that are essential to create and sustain fertile drought-resistant soils, all of which are discussed in detail in my book.

4

This brings us to one of the great paradoxes in the climate story. Drought, falling stream levels, and drying aquifers are a sad and undeniable reality all around the world. And yet, this breakdown in the water cycle is happening against a backdrop of increasing precipitation all around the world!?! Yes, you read that right. Despite local variations in rainfall and despite everything we are told by the media, official records show that overall rainfall trends are increasing. The four-part chart below shows precipitation trends in Canada over the last 65 years — precipitation has increased across all four seasons. Some version of this trend towards increasing precipitation repeats all over the world.

Anyone familiar with the geologic record is well aware that past climates follow a simple rule of thumb: hot and humid, cold and dry. But why? Intuitively we think that deserts should expand as it gets hotter, but the opposite is true. Why do deserts expand whenever the climate cools, while rainforests and lush vegetation expand whenever the global climate warms?

The simple explanation for this paradox is that more than 70% of the planet's surface is covered by water. Evaporation increases over the oceans as the planet warms, which increases global humidity levels, which in turn increases rainfall over land as trade winds push that extra moisture over the continents.  Peer-reviewed research referenced in my book has shown that a mere "10% increase in humidity levels increases rainfall by two to three times." 

And so, paradoxically, despite the fact that temperatures and thus global humidity and rainfall are increasing, deforestation and soil erosion are nevertheless causing many local regions to suffer from drought, falling stream levels, and declining aquifers. Our destructive impact on our local ecosystems has damaged the moisture absorbing capabilities of our soils, increased runoff rates as the extra rainfall washes away as floods instead of absorbing into the soil, and increased soil evaporation rates by removing the sod and vegetative cover that once shielded the soil from the Sun. 

Even here in British Columbia, there's a direct link, described in detail in the book, between soil mismanagement, drought-stressed trees, pine beetle infestations, and the dangerous high-intensity wildfires that have plagued so many communities in Western Canada in recent years. The underlying causes have nothing to do with CO2 or global warming but have everything to do with how we are mismanaging our fields, grasslands, and forests. In effect, we are manufacturing drought (and suffering its consequences) despite an overall trend of increasing precipitation. Well done! 😠 

5

We have been fortunate over the past century to enjoy one of the most favorable climatic periods in history. But the past century is not the norm. The droughts of the last century have been nothingburgers compared to the vicious droughts that routinely happened during the long dry phases of our ever-changing cyclical climate. 

If the soil erosion we have caused over the past century has been so severe that it is causing streams and aquifers to decline during periods of increasing rainfall, imagine what will happen when the climate really does turn drier during the next dry cycle? 

The chart below shows a reconstructed history of California's climate. 200-year-long megadroughts are normal in this part of the world — the droughts of recent years don't even come close in terms of severity or duration. Indeed, the past 500 years have been unusually stable, mild, and wet — it has been a godsend for growing bountiful commodity-scale agricultural crops, but imagine how California, with its overtaxed soils, will fare when (not if) the next real multi-decade or multi-century drought begins. 

Megadroughts are not existential threats to ecosystems as long as soils are healthy. Plant growth decreases and animal populations shrink as rainfall levels decline, but the geological record clearly shows that these megadroughts did not trigger full-scale ecosystem collapses before humans came along because the plants and animals in these arid regions evolved strategies to cope with these natural long-term climate cycles. Cyclical climate variations only become an existential threat to an ecosystem when you remove the sod, erode the soils, remove the animals that formerly kept the sod and soil healthy, and exhaust the carbon (humus) in the soil, thus robbing the ecosystem of all its natural defences to withstand these long-duration cyclical changes in temperature and rainfall.

Decades of deforestation and/or soil erosion have made our local ecosystems increasingly brittle, yet during periods of abundant rainfall that increased brittleness remains invisible. The increased brittleness is only exposed when the next dry phase of the cyclical climate begins, and the ecosystem suddenly and catastrophically begins to fall apart. 

For example, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, settlers busted the sod of the Great Plains with their plows. Everything was fine and everyone enjoyed bountiful crops until the 1930s when then the climate shifted towards a natural dry phase caused by cyclical changes in ocean currents off the Pacific Coast. The denuded soils, stripped of their protective sod and depleted by decades of intensive cultivation, were left utterly defenseless against the dry conditions, and so the entire Great Plains ecosystem suddenly collapsed in the greatest man-made ecological disaster in North American history. Entire soil horizons were carried away as dry winds swept across the plains from the West even as plagues of locusts and jackrabbits consumed any specs of greenery that hadn't already been turned to dust by the dry winds. It is but one of many stories featured in my new book. 

6.

With so many parts of the cartoonishly oversimplified climate narrative falling apart, is it at least true that the climate is getting hotter, as we are constantly being reminded by the media and by activist-scientists? Well, yes, sort of — once again, context is everything. 

On his highly recommended YouTube channel, geologist and climate historian Tony Heller (@TonyClimate on Twitter) does an amazing job documenting how an alarmist narrative is being manufactured in direct contrast to the raw data that tells an entirely different story. I will only touch briefly on the topic of warming temperatures while encouraging you to explore his video library on his channel.

"Warming" is a loaded term — if you dig beneath the scary headlines, a much more nuanced story emerges. The U.S. government's Fourth National Climate Assessment and NOAA's State Climate Summaries both demonstrate that heat waves in recent decades have become less frequent and less intense even as winters and nights are becoming warmer, as shown in the three charts below. So yes, the climate is warming — slightly — but milder summers, milder winters, and warmer nights doesn’t have quite the same alarmist ring to it, does it? It kind of makes you think the world is becoming more, not less suitable for plants. 🤔 

7.

While deforestation, soil erosion, and desertification are all bad news stories, rising CO2 is beneficial to plants as an essential fertilizer element — many commercial greenhouses even pump CO2 into their greenhouses to raise CO2 to more than double current atmospheric CO2 levels in order to boost plant growth. Rising atmospheric CO2 also helps plants conserve moisture because they don't have to open their pores as widely to absorb the CO2 they need from the atmosphere. 

But does all this mean that rising CO2 is a good news story can be disregarded — a fortunate beneficial side-effect of our use of fossil fuels? Once again, there’s so much more to the story. While increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere are undeniably beneficial to plants, once you understand the real reasons why atmospheric CO2 is rising, it soon becomes apparent that it's not a good news story at all. 

The "consensus narrative" alleges that most (78%) of CO2 comes from fossil fuel emissions. But the economic slowdown caused by Covid lockdowns punched a giant hole in that narrative. As NASA reported in 2021, "the most surprising result is that while carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 5.4% in 2020, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere continued to grow at about the same rate as in preceding years." This isn't what should have happened in a straightforward case of cause-and-effect. Whenever there's a loose thread in a story that everyone assumes to be an undeniable fact, you have to test your assumptions by giving that loose thread a good pull to see what falls out.

A further controversy erupted in 2022 when a study by Skrable et al. looked at carbon isotopes in the atmosphere (C-12 vs C-14) to try to directly measure (rather than assuming) what proportion of the atmospheric gas mix comes from fossil fuels. Their results were nothing less than heresy — if the authors of the study had lived in the year 1600, they most assuredly would have been burned at the stake along Giordano Bruno for his then-heretical claim that the Earth orbits the Sun. Skrable et al found that only 12% of the CO2 in our current atmosphere can be traced to fossil fuel emissions. 

12%, not 78%!

But is that a plausible finding? If not from fossil fuel emissions, then where does it come from and why is CO2 building up in our atmosphere instead of topping out at around 280 ppm like it did during previous warm interglacial periods?

As you'll discover when you dive into my new book, pulling on these loose threads led me to stumble across the most important scientific and political detective story of our century. What emerged as the many pieces of this story came together is a complex tale about soil, about global biomass, about land management, about ecological crises, and ultimately about the perverse incentives created by central planning, which not only hollow out civilization but also the ecosystems upon which civilization is built. 

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” ― John Muir

8.

I won't spoil the journey of discovery laid out in my book by giving away too many spoilers. Besides, it's much too big of a story to fit into a short article or social media thread — it really does take the full journey down the cookie crumb trail to be able to see what has been hiding in plain sight, and to understand the magnitude of its implications.  

Instead, I invite you to check out my new book, Plunderers of the Earth: the erosion of civilization, the mad crusade to control the climate, and the untold stories of soil and CO2, available now in print and e-book on Amazon #CommissionsEarned. 

The Kindle version on Amazon.com is currently the #1 New Release in the Environmental Science, while the paperback version is currently the #1 Best Seller in Soil Science on Amazon.ca. 

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