by Gregory Wrightstone

To no one’s surprise, Facebook continues to reject any and all scientific data that does not support their “consensus” narrative of man-made catastrophic warming by rejecting an ad placed by the CO₂ Coalition, Arlington, Virginia.

The ad is based on well documented and widely used satellite data published by the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) as part of a project with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Information is “gathered by advanced microwave sounding units on NOAA and NASA satellites to get accurate temperature readings for almost all regions of the Earth,” according to the university website. “This includes remote desert, ocean and rain forest areas where reliable climate data are not otherwise available.

“The satellite-based instruments measure the temperature of the atmosphere from the surface up to an altitude of about eight kilometers above sea level. Once the monthly temperature data is collected and processed, it is placed in a ‘public’ computer file for immediate access by atmospheric scientists in the U.S. and abroad.”

The ad featured a CO₂ Coalition graph that matched satellite temperature data from 1978-2021 with the record of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is compiled at the Mauna Loa (Hawaii) Observatory of NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory. Also noted on the graph is the occurrence of El Niños, a phenomenon of ocean currents known to warm the atmosphere. The ad’s text reads as follows:

“Since the beginning of the satellite era of temperature measurements (1979), there were two very large spikes in temperature. Both were associated with very strong El Niños.

“Between each of these, little to no warming was observed, yet CO₂ continued increasing in a nearly linear fashion. This stepwise increase in warming was not predicted nor has it been explained by those promoting the theory that CO₂ is the primary driver of modern warming.

“We are currently in a cool La Niña phase that is expected to end soon. It will likely be followed by another El Niño that will be used by the Climate Industrial Complex to promote more unfounded fear of runaway CO₂-driven warming.”

Temperature source: UAH Global Temperature Update (2023)

CO₂ Source: Tans P (2023) Trends in Atmospheric CO₂, ESRL

So, the ad displayed publicly available data from government sources and suggested an interpretation of the information. Readers are free to dispute our analysis. However, to be denied access to it is contrary to the founding principles of the United States of America – mainly the freedom of speech and thought.

Nonetheless, Facebook, an American creation and a subsidiary of Meta with a market capitalization of more than $500 billion, found that the ad “does not comply with our Advertising Policies.”

Well, this humble geologist finds Facebook’s policies anathema to everything noble about 3,500 years of western civilization. That puts us on the side of people as diverse as Socrates, John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, William Blake, Mark Twain, Ayn Rand, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Martin Luther King and Winston Churchill.

This isn’t our first encounter with censorship. Last summer, I was permanently banned by LinkedIn. The offending material were two charts: One showed that carbon dioxide levels were nearly 6,000 parts per million (ppm) 600 million years ago when many animal life forms first appeared in the Cambrian Era. Another illustrated a 140-million-year decline of CO₂ levels — from 2,500 parts per million (ppm) to the current 420 ppm.

The target of these assaults is our communications countering the false narrative of a climate emergency rooted in the warming effect of carbon dioxide, which in fact is a beneficial gas essential to life on Earth.

One of the two principles of natural justice recognized in the law of the English-speaking countries is Audiatur et altera pars— “Let both sides be fairly heard”. Given that on this, as on many issues, Facebook and their allies in the media no longer allow the skeptical side of the case to be heard, fact-based information like that provided in this post will continue to be censored.

Attacks on those standing for honest scientific inquiry into climate issues have become so common that one might be inclined to shrug them off. However, the purveyors of climate doom are not likely to go away on their own as might some pesky gnats. Whether their motivations are money, power or some perverted, religious regard for Earth untouched by humanity, the climate cult’s ambitions are too much of a threat to our way of life – and lives – to dismiss.

This commentary was first published at BizPac Review, March 10, 2023, and can be accessed here.

Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist; executive director of the CO₂ Coalition, Arlington, Va.; and author of “Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know.”