Temperature Data Witchcraft: Globalists Who Promote ‘Net Zero’ Carbon Dioxide are Manipulating the Public for Dark Ends. By Lance D. Johnson
The temperature data that is used to sell the need for "net zero CO2" and all the accompanying climate change hysteria is based on a mass deception, a manipulation of temperature data, a misrepresentation of historical trajectory of natural weather phenomenon. Climate scientists are increasingly waking up to this evil climate change agenda and exposing the fraud and deception of climate engineering and CO2 suppression.
Key points:
Ice-core records covering several glacial cycles show temperature typically rising first, with CO2 following hundreds of years later.
Over hundreds of millions of years, CO2 and temperature have often moved independently or in opposite directions.
The global mean temperature record is an average of scattered station data, and the roughly 1-degree Celsius rise since 1900 is small next to normal local swings.
CO2 has diminishing warming effects, while water vapor and clouds dominate Earth's greenhouse effect.
CO2 is plant food that has contributed to global greening and higher crop yields.
Energy policy built on net-zero goals has already produced turmoil in Germany, Sri Lanka and the Netherlands.
The chain of inference nobody checksEvery alarming headline about a warming planet begins with a single number: the global mean surface temperature anomaly. According to a 2020 paper published by the CO2 Coalition, it is only one link in a fairly long chain of inference leading to the claimed need for worldwide CO2 cuts. The authors are hardly fringe figures. Richard Lindzen is an MIT professor emeritus, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a lead author of the scientific volume of the UN IPCC's third assessment report. John Christy directs the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and has served as Alabama's state climatologist since 2000. He and Roy Spencer built a satellite temperature data set that earned NASA's Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.
Their argument is that the public treats the anomaly as a direct instrument reading, when it is really an average of widely scattered station data. Those individual readings fall almost evenly between large positive and negative values. The average is what remains after the swings cancel, the old problem of "small differences of large numbers," as the paper puts it, echoing a warning from the late Stan Grotch of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory three decades ago.
Consider what the number means on the ground. If one station had recorded the entire global increase, its annual range of minus 10 to 40 C in 1900 would now run from minus 9 to 41. People, crops and weather there would struggle to tell the difference. The charts that frighten the public look dramatic only because they omit the range of the original data and stretch the scale. Running averages of 5 to 11 years smooth away the noise, and they can smooth away meaningful features too. Meanwhile, Americans already live with annual swings of about 25 C in Miami and 55 degrees in Denver. Against that, a 1.2-degree rise over 120 years is easily manageable.
Ice cores, saturation and a greening planetThe causation story fares no better in the deep past. A CO2 Coalition video (now taken down) walks through the geological record and reports that over hundreds of millions of years, CO2 and temperature have often moved independently or even in opposite directions. In ice cores spanning the last several glacial cycles, temperature typically rises first and CO2 follows hundreds of years later. That sequence runs opposite to the cause-and-effect story the public is sold.
Physics adds another problem for the climate change alarmists. The video explains that additional CO2 produces diminishing warming because the relevant infrared bands are already saturated, while water vapor and clouds dominate the greenhouse effect. Geologist G. Shanmugam of the University of Texas at Arlington, writing in the Journal of the Geological Society of India in 2023, notes that the climate has changed naturally over the past 600 million years without a single ton of human fossil fuel emissions. Warming and cooling periods came and went long before humans arrived. In his view, the ultimate driver of climate is the Sun - and this is way beyond human control or influence. Using calculations based on the work of Van Wijngaarden and Happer, he projects only a trivial rise in CO2 and temperature by 2100, one that would hinder neither population growth nor economic growth.
Meanwhile, it should be stated from the get-go that CO2 is not a pollutant but a plant food. It has contributed to global greening and higher crop yields, a benefit almost never mentioned by the same institutions that demand its elimination. Worrying about climate and the end of the world, or attempting to engineer the climate and weather, or controlling CO2 levels for some desired planetary result is foolish.
The real-world costs of the crusade are already visible. Shanmugam points to Germany's retreat to coal after the energy crisis that followed Russia's February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and to Sri Lanka's 2022 bankruptcy, which he attributes to an ESG-driven ban on chemical fertilizers. He also cites the 2023 provincial election victory of the Dutch farmers' party BBB, which opposed a government plan to cut livestock numbers by 30 percent to reduce nitrogen emissions. His conclusion is blunt: resources spent fighting global warming should be redirected toward eliminating global poverty.
A skeptical public is entitled to ask why a policy that would upend energy, farming and food supplies rests on a temperature record its own critics say is misleading, and on a causal story the ice cores appear to contradict. Demanding that evidence be examined is not denial. It is the oldest discipline in science.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/09/22/co2-and-temperature-climate-chronicles/The CO2 Coalition is honored to present this Climate Issues in Depth paper by two of America's most respected and prolific atmospheric physicists, MIT professor emeritus Richard Lindzen, who is a longtime member of the Coalition, and University of Alabama in Huntsville professor John Christy.
Professor Lindzen has published over 200 scientific articles and books over a five-decade career. He has held professorships at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. He is a fellow and award recipient of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union. He is also a member of the National Academy of Science and was a lead author of the UN IPCC's third assessment report's scientific volume. His research has highlighted the scientific uncertainties about the impact of carbon dioxide emissions on temperature and climate more generally.
Professor Christy, the director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, began studying global climate issues in 1987. He has been Alabama's State Climatologist since 2000 and a fellow of the American Meteorological Society since 2002. He and CO2 Coalition member Dr. Roy W. Spencer developed and have maintained one of the key global temperature data sets relied on by scientists and government bodies, using microwave data observed in the troposphere from satellites since 1979. For this achievement, they were awarded NASA's Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.
The purpose of this paper is to explain how the data set that is referred to by policy-makers and the media as the global surface temperature record is actually obtained, and where it fits into the popular narrative associated with climate alarm.
Executive SummaryAt the center of most discussions of global warming is the record of the global mean surface temperature anomaly—often somewhat misleadingly referred to as the global mean temperature record. This paper addresses two aspects of this record. First, we note that this record is only one link in a fairly long chain of inference leading to the claimed need for worldwide reduction in CO2 emissions. Second, we explore the implications of the way the record is constructed and presented, and show why the record is misleading.
This is because the record is often treated as a kind of single, direct instrumental measurement. However, as the late Stan Grotch of the Laurence Livermore Laboratory pointed out 30 years ago, it is really the average of widely scattered station data, where the actual data points are almost evenly spread between large positive and negative values.
The average is simply the small difference of these positive and negative excursions, with the usual problem associated with small differences of large numbers: at least thus far, the one-degree Celsius increase in the global mean since 1900 is swamped by the normal variations at individual stations, and so bears little relation to what is actually going on at a particular one.
The changes at the stations are distributed around the one-degree global average increase. Even if a single station had recorded this increase itself, this would take a typical annual range of temperature there, for example, from -10 to 40 degrees in 1900, and replace it with a range today from -9 to 41. People, crops, and weather at that station would find it hard to tell this difference.
However, the increase looks significant on the charts used in almost all presentations, because they omit the range of the original data points and expand the scale in order to make the mean change look large.
The record does display certain consistent trends, but it is also quite noisy, and fluctuations of a tenth or two of a degree are unlikely to be significant. In the public discourse, little attention is paid to magnitudes; the focus is rather on whether this anomaly is increasing or decreasing. Given the noise and sampling errors, it is rather easy to "adjust" such averaging, and even change the sign of a trend from positive to negative.
The common presentations often suppress the noise by using running averages over periods from 5 to 11 years. However, such processing can also suppress meaningful features such as the wide variations that are always being experienced at individual stations. Finally, we show the large natural temperature changes that Americans in 14 major cities must cope with every year. For example, the average difference between the coldest and warmest moments each year ranges from about 25 degrees Celsius in Miami (a 45-degree Fahrenheit change) to 55 degrees in Denver (a 99-degree Fahrenheit change). We contrast this with the easily manageable 1.2-degree Celsius increase in the global mean temperature anomaly in the past 120 years, which has caused so much alarm in the media and in policy circles.
https://co2coalition.org/publications/200-years-of-fossil-fuels-and-climate-change-1900-2100/The geologic record shows that the Earth's climate has always been changing naturally during the past 600 million years in terms of CO2 and temperature, without CO2 emissions from Fossil Fuels by humans. There were both warming and cooling periods prior to the appearance of human beings on the Planet Earth. The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is attributed to the Industrial Age that commenced in 1760 in the Great Britain and later in the USA. The principal driver behind the Industrial Revolution has been Fossil Fuels (i.e., Oil, Natural Gas, and Coal).
Since 1900, Fossil Fuels have been the single most important driver of the modern human civilization. If the Net–Zero CO2 policy were to be implemented, large numbers of people would die and the modern human civilization would come to a sudden halt, and humans left alive would have to revert back to the lifestyles of the Neanderthals who lived 40,000 years ago without the benefits of Fossil Fuels. The failure of the Net–Zero policy is already evident by (1) the Germany's shift back to coal from unreliable wind to face the energy crisis caused by the Russia-Ukraine War on 24th February 2022, (2) the bankruptcy of Sri Lanka in 2022 caused by the ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) policy that banned chemical fertilizers, and (3) the major victory by the Dutch pro-farmers party (BBB) in the 2023 provincial elections in opposition to the Dutch government's climate policy to eliminate nitrogen emissions by reducing 30% of livestocks in the Netherlands. A climate-change model for 200 Years (1900-2100) is proposed based on four basic parameters, namely, CO2, Temperature, Population, and GDP per capita. The model shows a steady increase in all four parameters from 1900 to 2100. In this model, calculations based on the Max Planck's Curve by Van Wijngaarden and Happer (2020), an increase in CO2 and Temperature by 2100 would be trivial and that would not hinder either the population growth or the GDP growth. Therefore, Climate Change is not an existential threat. The proposed roadmap for the future is to continue to use the Fossil Fuels as usual.
The ultimate driver of the Earth's climate is the omnipotent Sun, not humans. The CO2 in the atmosphere helps not only to modulate the Earth's Temperature suitable for human survival, but also to enhance Global Greening. Therefore, we should shift our resources and attention away from Global Warming and aim towards eliminating Global Poverty.
