{"id":415827,"date":"2025-12-03T11:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T10:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=415827"},"modified":"2025-12-03T11:00:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T10:00:18","slug":"should-i-worry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=415827","title":{"rendered":"Should I Worry?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From The CO2 Coalition Substack<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Daniel Nebert, M.D.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Journalism fearmongering has been alive and well for more than a century. In 1918, the American journalist, critic and satirist H. L. Mencken is credited with saying:<\/strong> \u201cThe whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety), by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Op-Ed article [below<\/em>] was first published by Professor Emeritus Daniel W Nebert in The Cincinnati Enquirer<\/em> in May 2015; immediately afterwards, several newspapers located in the southeastern United States asked permission to reproduce the article in their own newspapers. Today, more than a decade later, this article is just as relevant, or even more relevant, than ten years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Should I Worry?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The media constantly strives to increase newspaper and magazine circulation; also, the number of radio listeners and television, and online viewers. One effective way to achieve this goal is to exploit the theme:<\/strong> \u201cShould I worry?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, after World War II was the \u201cflying saucer scare.\u201d Worry about an invasion from outer space certainly sold more newspapers and magazines and increased television news-watching. This concern also led to the government-funded program, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1940s-50s some were convinced that fluoridation of drinking water was a \u201ccommunist conspiracy.\u201d Fearmongering has remained sufficiently strong even today in some communities so that fluoride is still not added to city water supplies \u2014 despite medically-proven benefits that children drinking fluoridated water (containing very low levels of fluoride) have fewer dental cavities due to strengthened enamel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the late 1940s began the fright of \u201cnuclear winter,\u201d propagated over the next four decades by Russian KGB, Carl Sagan and others. Explosions of multiple nuclear bombs, causing numerous city-firestorms and excessive atmospheric dust, might block sunlight and lead to serious climate cooling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1960s was \u201czero population growth,\u201d endorsed by Paul Ehrlich and others. By 2000, if Earth\u2019s population continued to increase, the planetary food supply was predicted to become depleted;<\/strong> some followers of this political movement actually decided on having fewer children because of this fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between 1950 and 1970, cooler weather prevailed in the U.S., Europe and China, compared with the 1930s-40s. \u201cGlobal cooling\u201d became a concern. Major articles in Time <\/em>(1974) and Newsweek<\/em> (1975) magazines proposed that Earth might be entering a new \u201cIce Age.\u201d Yet, by 1978, the cooling trend of 1945-75 had disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1975 <\/strong>Wallace Broecker, geochemist at Columbia University in a Science<\/em> journal article, was credited with first using the term \u201cglobal warming.\u201d In 1988 the United Nations\u2019 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) held its first meeting, which marked the beginning of global warming hysteria. Satellite measurements of extremely accurate worldwide bulk temperatures of the atmosphere began in late 1978, which did show warming of several tenths of a degree, until 1997;<\/strong> this coincided with the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize awarded jointly to Al Gore and the IPCC for \u201ccreating awareness of global warming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 18 years, however, no further statistically significant increases in global surface temperatures have occurred \u2014 while fear-mongering of \u201crising carbon dioxide levels\u201d and \u201cclimate change\u201d has continued to this day as political agenda in the media. Wind and solar power, heavily subsidized by governmental funds because they are not otherwise cost-effective, have been championed by environmentalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then came the \u201cY2K Bug,\u201d fear that all computers worldwide would simultaneously crash, when changing from December 31, 1999, to January 1, 2000. \u201cThe computer glitch that scared the world\u201d \u2014 never materialized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are other topics of concern. Childhood vaccinations causing autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Consumption of commercially-prepared food, or food containing preservatives, rather than \u201corganic\u201d foods, resulting in cancer. Exposure to genetically modified foodstuff causing cancer. All of the above, and many other things, are proposed to be responsible for dramatic increases in childhood ASD, ADHD, asthma, and obesity seen today in Western societies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a daily basis in the media, each of us is free to choose:<\/strong> \u201cShould I worry?<\/strong>\u201d or \u201cShould I ignore all the hype?\u201d Perhaps being aware of these issues is acceptable. Being consumed with panic over these issues is not healthy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Daniel W. Nebert is professor emeritus, University of Cincinnati Medical Center, Ohio.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s New!<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Happy Thanksgiving from the CO2 Coalition! Here is a video for you:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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