Al Gore is a fraud. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that trace carbon dioxide (CO₂) is in any way a danger to public health. The Obama administration's EPA Endangerment Finding was a politically motivated response to Massachusetts v. EPA (2007). The Clean Air Act, as written, does not classify CO₂ and other “greenhouse gases” (GHGs) as “air pollutants.” Congress would have to amend the Clean Air Act to do it, but Obama decided to lean on the Chevron Deference (which no longer stands) to force the EPA to “find” evidence that GHGs are a danger to public health. Contrary to what you have been told by charlatans like Al Gore, scientists cannot say for certain whether most, or even all, of the warming observed over the last century and a half has been human-caused or not. This is for two reasons: 1⃣ The measurement of the natural radiation fluxes in and out of Earth's climate system have a larger margin of error than the global energy imbalance imposed by mankind's CO₂ emissions. 🔗nature.com/articles/ngeo1… 2⃣ Computer models used to ascribe warming to our emissions are artificially tuned such that CO₂ is the proximate cause. That is, when building their models, climate “scientists” assume Earth's climate system was in a natural state of energy balance before the Industrial Revolution. They set everything to zero and assume nothing else has changed the planet's mean surface temperature since 1850, then jack up the CO₂ until the modeled temperature curve matches the observations, then they say, “See?! CO₂ is the cause of the warming.” But this is circular reasoning because they are trying to prove what they assumed from the outset. There was a good article published in Science about this almost 10 years ago. 🔗science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… Even less compelling, scientists cannot claim with any high level of confidence that global warming—and by extension, CO₂ emissions—are in any meaningful way endangering public health and life on Earth. First, the human condition has never been better than it is today: • Average life expectancy has more than doubled on every continent since the 19th century. 🔗ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy • The total number of deaths resulting from weather-related disasters have decreased by >96% since the 1920s; that is despite a six billion-person increase in global population over that time. 🔗ourworldindata.org/natural-disast… • Global crop yields have been at all-time record highs in recent years. 🔗ourworldindata.org/crop-yields Anyone who claims that we are facing an “existential crisis” because the planet is a little warmer than it was a century ago is either uninformed OR is lying. No hard data supports that claim. Secondly, there is no scientific justification to relegate CO₂ to a “pollutant.” Recall that the EPA has, up until now, classified CO₂ as pollution because it “contributes to GHG pollution that threatens public health and welfare.” Well, by that standard, then water vapor (H₂O) should also be classified as a pollutant and regulated because, like CO₂, it is a GHG and is also a byproduct of combustion. In fact, vapor is the most abundant and potent GHG since it (a) comprises 1-4% of atmospheric volume (CO₂ is only 0.04%) and (b) it absorbs a wider spectrum of infrared wavelengths than do CO₂ molecules. However, we do not regulate water vapor because water is an essential compound for life on Earth. But, so is CO₂; it is required for photosynthesis, which forms the basis for the food chain on land and in the oceans. At the end of the last glacial maximum 20,000 years ago, atmospheric CO₂ levels were on the order of 180 parts per million (ppm). There is plenty of peer-reviewed evidence suggesting that plants were in fact carbon-starved during this period. 🔗link.springer.com/article/10.100… 🔗cell.com/trends/plant-s… 🔗pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn… As of January, the atmospheric CO₂ concentration is nearing 429 ppm. That is about half the level needed for optimum plant growth and only about a third of the concentration in the room you are probably reading this post in. 🔗gov.mb.ca/agriculture/cr… The OSHA Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL) is 5,000 ppm for an 8-hour period. 🔗fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/… Submariners in the Navy are exposed to levels that often exceed 10,000 ppm, and it has little to no impact on their mental faculties or ability to complete their assigned tasks. Some people may experience drowsiness at 10,000 ppm, but not most. Almost everyone will feel drowsy at levels exceeding 30,000 ppm, but only at levels at or above 40,000 ppm is CO₂ “immediately dangerous to life or health.” At concentrations encountered in Earth’s atmosphere (which have been as high as 7,000 ppm in the last 600 million years), there is no compelling evidence that justifies labeling CO₂ as “pollution.” And, in fact, we do not have enough fossil fuel reserves left to tap into, extract resources from, refine into petroleum products, and burn to get the atmospheric CO₂ level anywhere remotely close to 5,000 ppm. U.S. CO₂ emissions have been falling for 30 years. They will continue to fall (largely due to the phaseout of coal and adoption of natural gas, but the increase in solar and wind capacity do play a major roll) despite the rescinding of the Endangerment Finding. As it turns out, the free market has done more to reduce our emissions than government actions. Regardless, until China and India curb their emissions whatever the U.S. does will make little difference. This is nothing but rehearsed performative outrage.