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The planet has been cooling and warming (think ice ages) since it came into existence. The effects of human activities plays a minuscule role.

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Ooh, how fun! It looks like they're prepping us for the acceptance of spraying aerosols in the air, from planes, to save the planet from global warming. Then, once the general public accepts the need, they'll admit that, yes, they've been doing it for years, to save the planet.

Of course, anyone who's pointed out these streaks of white emissions that have been trailing behind planes for the past 20+ years and spreading across the skies for hours afterwards were calling them "chem-trails". Anyone who dared to believe our lying eyes were conspiracy theorists. How silly of us, we just didn't have the right terminology!

The gas-lighting that the general public has received, in the claims that these things simply don't exist (or were just the same condensation trails that have always trailed behind planes) will now turn into the gas-lighting of, "of course we've been doing everything we could to save the planet, we've never denied that!"

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I do not care what this article says, just please stop the "Save the Planet" headlines. Either utterly meaningless or worse, plain stupid.

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Please don’t fall into the nonsensical “consensus” Rupa, you are simply advancing a theory, it’s not “known”.

There are much better fits out there, including the most likely scenario that sun activity driving variations of the solar wind is affecting how many galactic rays reach our atmosphere in turn affecting the extent of cloud cover.

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In summary, a “cleaner” atmosphere is naturally warmer and dryer. And a warmer and dryer climate is more susceptible to wildfires that serve to stimulate regrowth. It’s almost like it was designed that way and the hubris of man doesn’t have as much impact as we’d like to think. 🤔

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Actually, the prevalence of wildfire, both numbers and area burned has been decreasing worldwide. That along with the undeniable greening of the planet in the last 50 years means more fuel so when inevitable dry years happen you get a bad fire year, exactly what happened in canada last year.

This year will be same somewhere else.

Guess what, this year it’s wet and getting wetter here, the umpteenth big system since March is drenching us again, and there is very little wildfire activity. I was up north fishing a few weeks ago and didn’t smell smoke even once.

But of course that doesn’t prevent our Prime Idiot Trudeau from defending his carbon tax by blathering about how the country is burning.

No it isn’t.

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Wow, Free Press readers are pretty rightwing!

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Yeah, I noticed that too.

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Can either of you point to the comments you think are a problem and explain why?

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While I agree, much of the time they are quite intelligent with good points.

This article's comments are one of the exceptions.

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Can either of you point to the comments you think are a problem and explain why?

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I think Wikipedia has become a political entity, left leaning. It should be neutral, of course. If there are many sides to a statement, present them all. It would serve us all, readers and writers as well.

Lynn Silton

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Debating the value of pollution is about as sick as saying heartattack's are good.

As for mankind changing the climate of earth I've yet to see any proof. The pollution is the exception though, the higher the population the worse it get's.

The most destructive part of a warmer ocean's is the birth of major storms. The hotter it is the bigger they are.

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All the data shows no increase in hurricane numbers, size or strength.

Same with tornados

So you’ll be fine

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Our cities are cleaner than they were decades ago. Pollution and CO2 are not the same animal. In fact, we produce CO2 when we exhale, and it's really good for plants, which produce oxygen.

Storms are not getting worse. That's just propaganda. What we have is a media paid to beat their collective chests every time there's bad weather somewhere. Which there always is, always was and always will be.

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It also causes an uptick in wayward apostrophes.

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A few years back a group, of British scientists looked at whether global warming was responsible for a noticeable uptick in hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. Basing their studies on Houston, they actually discovered through public records that the hurricane level had simply returned to pre-industrial levels, while cloud cover had significantly decreased after the onset of clean air regulations.

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There has been no uptick in hurricanes

It’s a sinusoid based on ocean cycles and there is no pattern of increase or decrease.

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How about that "duck and cover" campaign in the 60's? I remember hiding under my school desk to protect myself from an atomic bomb..... We have followed the science for a long time.

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I just can't even with this post.

Good grief.

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Pollution is bad and we should reduce pollution that makes the air and water cleaner. But, CO2 is not a pollutant. It may be a greenhouse gas but it's not pollution. If it is then we need to cull the human race. Each and every one of us is a CO2 factory.

The other sticking point is the fallacy of any kind of global temperature. Where on the Earth do we stick the thermometer? There is no such thing as a global temperature. There is no such thing as measurable atmospheric temperature. It's absurd to think like this. You can measure temperature in spots but the atmosphere will be at different temperatures even within its different layers.

It's like saying the United States as a whole has a temperature. There isn't even a temperature of any given state. I live in Georgia about 35 miles northeast of Atlanta. There is normally a 5 degree difference between here and the city. Does the Atlanta metro area have a temperature? I'm from Chicago and lived in the suburbs for decades. The temperature at the lakefront is cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. A few miles away from the lake and the temperature is 5 and sometimes 10 degrees different. Does the Chicago metro area have a temperature? It's all so ludicrous.

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I want to relate to you a small piece that I once happened upon in the NYT, roughly around 2005-2008 or so. In this two-paragraph tidbit it was related that scientists had struggled to find why Antarctica was cooling during a period of what was then called "global warming."

The second paragraph said the answer had been found: using computer models, it was found that all the places in Antarctica that weren't being measured actually were warming.

(In 2002 the Ozone hole was thought to be the reason for Antarctica's cooling, which would correspond well with this article - that aerosols cool the atmosphere. By 2009 satellite data "showed conclusively" that all of Antarctica was indeed warming, and the idea that it had ever been cooling was "debunked."

I think these people just know a whole lot less about it than they say they do.

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Ludicrous is right - It’s the left right to gaslight us into believing any crap that appears on MSM or digital media(social media). It’s like the story of farting cows have you heard that bullshit!

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I recall that when I was a kid, we were going into a new ice age... We are arrogant in thinking we really know and that the science is settled, it is never settled there is always a twist...

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I say this with love--this is about the silliest piece I've ever read. What it does more than anything is show just how little is known about the made-up catastrophes of "climate change." The absurdity of declaring a year, "the hottest on record" has been going on for a lot of years--and you can look back and see that some previous years were hotter than the one currently thought to be. And the piece literally ends with the most horrific statement to come out of Covid: "The general consensus in the scientific community..." Seeing that line should make us run from the article's thesis altogether.

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Yip head for the hills,these bastards at the moment in power, are coming for us again. COVID was their first attempt and we know how that turned out. We have got to put an end to the Democrats once and for all in November, just do it get rid of them!

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This shows the connection between pollution and climate policy is not a simple binary. No we shouldn't pollute to "cool", just like we should be very skeptical of geo-engineering attempts.

What is a potential large source of aerosols in the atmosphere? Volcanoes. We know some of the effects. Read about 1816 - the year without a summer. Caused by Mount Tambora in 1815. Then go back to about 536.

Consider the Tonga volcano in Jan. 2022. The largest explosion in the 21st century. It did something different, instead of creating aerosols, it sent water into the stratosphere. Just when we think we have it all figured out; we don't.

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James Hansen was discredited long ago as a 'scientist'. Any scientist that thinks the planet is warming due to man's actions is not a scientist: they are money grifters, nothing more.

Like Margaret says below, water vapor is a much larger 'warming' gas. Burning clean fossil fuels like natgas and even gasoline through a catalytic converter helps the environment by adding the fuel of life: CO2.

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Okay, so you're calling me a grifter then? Well you come off as a mindless hack to me. Honest suggestion, try reading scientific articles themselves as opposed to media interpretations where they strip the nuance, or better yet simple summaries of the science from neutral sources. Information coming through the filter of media warps everything and changes the arguments and the scientific points being made.

We can argue all day about the politics of climate change, and should, because you're not wrong that there are grifters out there, but the underlying reality of whether or not the planet is warming and whether or not our actions are contributing is not in question by anyone who is even mildly understands the physics of it (not you I'm guessing?). What to do about it, how extreme is our impact really? Definitely room for debate, but are we contributing in any measurable and significant way? Yes. Yes we are that's been measured. I'm exhausted by the left's 'my policy preference is scientific fact' as I'm sure you are. But I'm also exhausted by the maximalist "they aren't totally right, so therefore they are totally wrong" bs partisan crap like your comment above. You make the rest of us who are also critical of the climate change narrative look like fools.

There are plenty of valid ways to push back on the climate change narrative, your way is a failure, please up your game because we need to be better at this. It just come off as dumb and conspiratorial, and we need more rational people to push back on the excesses and warped agenda of the climate change movement, not whatever your comment was. You hurt your case more than help.

As far as your facts, water vapor is a greenhouse gas, good job, but are we massively increasing the balance of water in the atmopshere? No. And yes co2 is good for plants, awesome, still not great for us humans as weather patterns shift and our infrastructure doesn't.. Your facts are irrelevant to your argument, and I'm being generous with the argument.

Here is an example of how true facts can lead to false conclusions when they are partial information, like your comment above: The ocean releases much more Co2 than humans emit, did you know that?! climate change must be a hoax! But wait, the other half of the equation is that the ocean/atmosphere boundary is a flux and the ocean also absorbs co2. The ocean actually absorbs more co2 than it emits, totally refuting the conclusion you'd make if you only knew the first half...

So it's not that your facts are wrong, it's that your understanding of the issue is incomplete (you're not alone, same goes for you opponents!). But that matters, what you don't know is the difference between your conclusion being correct or wrong. Maybe try getting a base level of understanding on the issue before mouthing off and insulting those of us who do.

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Learn how to take a partial joke, buddy.

I am a practicing mechanical engineer of 28 years and fully - well, nobody knows everything about a subject including you and I - understand that we have an impact on our environment. As a kid being asphyxiated by auto emissions sitting in winter traffic in St. Paul in 1976 I fully understood we had a problem. A legitimate problem along with oxidized air cause by industry around the great lakes causing acid rain.... et al.

We logically found solutions for these issues that didn't radically alter our way of life. Our gasoline powered cars were emitting very little NOx's and CO by the mid 90's. We are no longer doing solving problems logically.

Solar, wind, and the rest of proposed 'solutions' are nothing more than grift by subsidized power companies that have been bribing land owners with our own money to expand these failed 'industries'. Grift compared to a cheap LNG powerplant that has been effectively outlawed by government entities.

I prefer to follow the likes of Bjorn Lomborg than criminals like Hansen or any of the other grifters at the IPCC, et al.

After Climategate of 2009 many things came into focus. You cannot use Chrome to open this as they have much to hide with their censorship. Please read>

https://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/climate-change/climategate-emails.pdf

These are the people who make the 'movement' look foolish. Expensively foolish.

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Well said!

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Of course there's a lot of anger about scientists pushing the warming narrative. Our children are terrified. They worry that the world is coming to an end, just like the Mayans with their calendars.

This climate religion has done enormous harm and is now a threat to our future. Our economies are being destroyed and every time there's bad weather somewhere, scientists and the media claim it's proof of something that just isn't happening.

Yes, temperatures have risen a little since the '70s. It's possible CO2 is part of the cause. But how much? Probably almost none of it. Calling CO2 a greenhouse gas is just propaganda. That's not how greenhouses work.

The scientists pushing the alarmist narrative are not honest people. We've seen how they've "adjusted" the temperature record, trying to eliminate evidence that the 1930s were warmer. We've seen them manipulate long-term data, trying to eliminate evidence of the Medieval Warming Period. We've seen them put weather stations in places that make the most of urban heating. Grift is a huge industry, and if you study this yourself, you have to understand why this makes us so angry and destroys the credibility of what is called "climate science" but is more accurately just green religion.

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Exactly Danimal!

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