Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #609

To make the current craze of demonizing carbon dioxide even more absurd is that carbon dioxide is essential for photosynthesis, the mechanism by which green plants grow, and become the food source of all complex life on Earth - By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)

...Yet, the popular political belief in western Europe, North America and the anglicized world is that carbon dioxide, essential for photosynthesis, is a pollutant that will kill life on Earth.

Atmospheric scientist Richard Lindzen gave a blunt assessment of this absurd belief in a speech...his address 

“Hopefully, we will awaken from this nightmare before it is too late. 

In modern history there are several examples of political movements claiming a scientific basis. 

From immigration restriction and eugenics (in the US after WWI) to antisemitism and race ideology (in Hitler’s Germany) and communism and Lysenkoism (under Stalin). 

Each of these claimed a scientific consensus that allowed highly educated citizens, who were nonetheless ignorant of science, to have the anxieties associated with their ignorance alleviated. 

Since all scientists supposedly agreed, there was no need for them to understand the science. 

Indeed, ‘the science’ is the opposite of science itself. 

Science is a mode of inquiry rather than a source of authority. 

However, the success that science achieves has earned it a measure of authority in the public’s mind, and this is what politicians frequently envy and attempt to appropriate...