Carbon War 'Net Zero' Would Starve Half the Planet, Experts Say

That victory Dutch farmers just won in provincial elections might have saved the world

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That victory Dutch farmers just won in provincial elections might literally save the world.

After massive demonstrations against government targeting of nitrogen fertilizers to fulfill a UN zero carbon agenda, the BBB (BoerBurgerBeweging or “Farmer-Citizen Movement”) party picked up a significant bloc of senate seats.

It was a major rejection of Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s environmental policies, as Reuters reported in “Dutch farmers’ protest party scores big election win, shaking up Senate.”

According to a final tally reported by Eva Vlaardingerbroek on 19 March, the number of seats gained was 17, more than enough to turn back environmental directives that would destroy the Dutch farming sector. 

But the significance is far greater than just farmer livelihoods in the Netherlands.

Nitrogen fertilizers are crucial to sustaining the world’s food supply, and banning their use as part of “net-zero” carbon goals could literally starve half the world.

That’s the warning of a new report called “Challenging ‘Net Zero’ with Science,” compiled by two longtime pre-eminent climates scientists, William Happer, Professor of Physics, Emeritus, of Princeton University, and Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science, Emeritus, of MIT.

The report was released by co2coalition.org.  It says that extreme goals of the so-called “green energy” movement are built on decidedly unscientific premises.

And they make no bones about the disastrous consequences that would result from following a course that continues to try to phase out the use of nitrogen fertilizers:

“As to the disastrous consequences of eliminating fossil fuels, it ‘is estimated that nitrogen fertilizer [derived from fossil fuels] now supports approximately half of the global population.’3 As one of us (Happer) has made clear, without the ‘use of inorganic fertilizers’ derived from fossil fuels, the world ‘will not achieve the food supply needed to support 8.5 to 10 billion people.’

The authors cited Sri Lanka as a cautionary example of how devastating this one facet of the “zero carbon” agenda is already playing out:

“The recent experience in Sri Lanka provides a red alert. ‘The world has just witnessed the collapse of the once bountiful agricultural sector of Sri Lanka as a result of government restrictions on mineral fertilizer.’5 The government of Sri Lanka banned the use of fossil fuel derived nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides, with disastrous consequences on food supply there. If similarly misguided decisions are made eliminating fossil fuels and thus nitrogen fertilizer, there will be a starvation crisis worldwide.” 

Deceptive Goals, Corrupted Science

The report details various ways in which climate activists have pervasively distorted actual science to further an ideological agenda. 

The authors break down a number of ways that pseudo-science has been employed to create a false narrative surrounding Carbon.

Among the tactics:

1. Fabricating Data or Omitting Contradictory Data

2. Relying on Models that Do Not Work

3. Relying on IPCC Findings, Which Are Government Opinions, Not Science 

4. Omitting the Extraordinary Social Benefits of CO2 and Fossil Fuels

5. Omitting the Disastrous Consequences of Reducing Fossil Fuels and CO2 to “Net Zero”

6. Rejecting the Science There is No Risk of Catastrophic Global Warming Caused by Fossil Fuels and CO2

Each of the tactics are examined in the paper in detail, with accompanying examples.

Referencing research by Steven Koonin in his book Unsettled (2021), in addition to research by the report authors themselves, they demonstrate how climate activists have pushed multiple deceptive narratives.

In the section on “Fabricating Data or Omitting Contradictory Data,” for example, the authors delve into highly misleading tropes about heat waves and global warming.

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One graph that made news stories involved selecting a ratio of record high to record low temperatures in the U.S. over a period of time to give the impression that alarming warming was occurring.

But in fact, a graph of average temperature data over the same period would have shown that overall temperatures were not rising over the given period.

Here are the two graphs:

In other words, cherry-picked data that could produce an alarming looking graph was used to paint a deceptive narrative that was then peddled to the the press, and political bodies formulating policies.

Analogous games are played with narratives and data surrounding wildfires, hurricanes, tornados, and the trendline of annual financial losses from extreme weather.

Concerning sea level rise, the report argues the level of rise is substantively within historical variations, and, importantly, not remotely threatening any catastrophe. Again citing Koonin, they note:

 “The CSSR and other assessments discussions of sea level rise

omit important details that weaken the case for the rate of rise in recent decades being outside the scope of historical variability and, hence, for attribution to human influences. There is little doubt that by contributing to warming we have contributed to sea level rise, but there is also scant evidence that this contribution has been or will be significant, much less disastrous.”

(As background, he explained in his book that data on sea levels over large periods of time show repeating episodes where the sea level rises 400 feet and falls 400 feet. Since the Last Glacial Maximum 22,000 years ago, sea level has risen about 400 feet.) 

In a section on Computer Climate models, the report provides specific analysis on how the dominant modeling system used, CMIP, including its most recent version, “did not reliably predict observations in detail, and thus would not be used in science:”

“An analysis of 267 simulations run by 29 different CMIP6 models created by 19 modeling groups around the world shows that they do a very poor job [1] describing warming since 1950 and… [2] underestimate the rate of warming in the early twentieth century [1910-1940].” 

“Comparisons among the [29] models [show]…model results differed dramatically both from each other and from observations…[and] disagree wildly with each other.”

“One particularly jarring failure is that the simulated global average surface temperature …varies among models…three times greater than the observed value of the twentieth century warming they’re purporting to describe and explain.” 

Starving Humanity to Save it?

The unmistakable picture that emerges from the overall analysis is that the field of climate science has been hopelessly hijacked by a deceptive and dangerous agenda. 

Regarding attempts to drastically reduce nitrogen fertilizers, the authors detail history and data that shows just how important this technology has been over the last hundred years in feeding a growing world population.

In one graph they show how nitrogen fertilizer currently supports the food supply of about half of the global population:Based on that, the authors argue “Accordingly, it cannot be overemphasized that eliminating fossil fuels and implementing ‘Net Zero’ policies and actions mean the elimination of fossil fuel-derived nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides will result in about half the world’s population not having enough food to eat.” 

Regarding politicized omissions of the benefits of fossil fuels, the authors detail four “extraordinary social benefits,” including:

1. Burning Fossil Fuels Creates More CO2 and Thus More Food

2. Fossil Fuels are Essential to Making Fertilizers

3. Fossil Fuels are Essential to Making Key Pesticides

4. Fossil Fuels are the Most Reliable, Low-Cost Source of Energy

Summing up the state of climate “science” and predictions of catastrophic global warming, Lindzen says:

“‘Misrepresentation, exaggeration, cherry-picking, or outright lying pretty much covers all the so-called evidence’ marshalled in support of the theory of imminent catastrophic global warming caused by fossil fuels and of the urgent need to achieve ‘Net Zero’ fossil fuel and other human CO2 emissions by 2050.6”

Climate Alarmism a “Virtue Flag” For Implementing Radical Goals 

Radical causes need radical reasons. In the case of pushing a zero-carbon agenda, climate activists have succeeded in creating a narrative that the earth is doomed if radical action isn’t taken to drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels and transition to so-called “green” and “clean” energy technologies.

The cases where extreme predictions by supposed experts and ardent activists have fallen flat are a running joke at this point. Greta Thunberg, a useful tool to sell a new generation on deprivations required to “save the earth,” was the latest to be caught in that web.

She was outed attempting to delete an inconvenient tweet from 2018 where she highlighted a claim that global warming would wipe out humanity in five years unless drastic action was taken.

Even a 16 March AP “fact check,” which spent nearly 800 words trying to defend Thunberg with a tortuous “missing context” analysis of the controversy, had to admit:

“Thunberg did delete a 2018 tweet about the urgency of addressing climate change, she did not say the world would end in 2023. Her tweet included a quote from an article that said an influential scientist warned climate change ‘will wipe out all humanity’ unless fossil fuel use was ended ‘over the next five years.”

Maybe the AP should have spent a bit of time doing actual reporting about Thunberg’s astroturfed rise, off the back of a billionaire funded organization called Global Coalition, complete with ties to the WEF.

A recent investigation by Dr. Simon Goddeck provided salient details. (nod to thedailyfetched.com story, “Top Journalist Exposes Greta Thunberg’s Ties to Klaus Schwab and WEF,” which featured the info.) 

Needless to say, if there is no climate emergency, then the public would be much less inclined to support or passively accede to radical climate initiatives.

“Challenging ‘Net Zero’ with Science” provides ample details and examples of why the claims like the one by Thunberg in 2018 tend to go down in flames.

If saving the earth isn’t really the goal of climate activism, the question becomes, what is the goal?

The Trends Journal has been reporting on the conflicted financial interests of many leading “green energy tycoons” like Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Al Gore and others.

But we’ve also detailed a darker agenda, involving DeGrowth, and human depopulation.

Elites want to profit via green energy investments and gaming regulations and initiatives of political bodies to favor those investments.

But ultimately, the most radical initiatives seek to instigate human degrowth, via means that will force crises on the world, including spiraling food shortages, to provide excuses for even more radical and restrictive actions to further that degrowth agenda.

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