Send this Atmospheric Contamination Exposé to Your Conspiracy-Minded Uncle

Some conspiracies are true.

Emily Atkin is an essential deep digger on the fossil fuel side of the global warming challenge and Heated remains a vital read. I particularly liked her latest post, which aims to frame human-driven climate change as the kind of conspiracy that might be embraced by those stuck on fakery about chemtrails and UAPs. Here’s a core excerpt, but do read the full post and, of course, subscribe if you haven’t already:

A climate script for the conspiracy-minded

You may think that the biggest climate conspiracy is chemtrails. You’d be wrong.

But climate-altering chemicals are being dumped into the atmosphere at an astonishing rate. And the government is actively trying to cover up what’s happening, why it’s happening, and who it hurts.

Airplanes aren’t the ones releasing world-changing amounts of climate-altering chemicals into the sky. Fossil fuel companies are. Fossil fuel operations are notorious for emitting massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, mainly carbon dioxide and methane. Just look at these graphs showing how much heat-trapping gas has accumulated in the atmosphere over time.

A NASA graph, since removed by the Trump administration, shows that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (blue line) has increased along with human emissions of carbon dioxide (gray line) since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

A NASA graph shows a rise in atmospheric methane concentrations since the year 1010.

The U.S. government is actively trying to cover up these numbers. Since taking office, Trump has proposed shutting down the country’s longest-running carbon dioxide monitoring station. He’s secretly directed NASA employees to draw up plans to destroy two satellites that monitor global carbon dioxide levels. And he’s moved to end the program that requires fossil fuel companies to track and report greenhouse gas emissions from more than 8,000 facilities.

The government has also been working overtime to cover up the massive harm this pollution causes. Trump has altered or deleted nearly every federal scientific report and web resource that’s come out in the last two decades showing that climate change is killing people, costing money, and making us less safe. He says it’s because all the studies are flawed and alarmist. Really? All of them? Every single one?

The real reason the government is doing this is simple: Because it’s bought and paid for by Big Oil, the most profitable and powerful industry in the world. Before the election, Trump promised oil executives he would give them whatever they wanted in exchange for campaign support, floating a $1 billion price tag. How much the industry actually gave is impossible to know, thanks to dark money and opaque PACs. But from what we can see, Big Oil spent $219 million to influence the 2024 election, with at least $75 million going directly to Trump’s campaign and affiliated PACs. Eighty-eight percent of oil and gas money went to Republicans.

And now, the government is deploying the U.S. military to help the industry dump even more of these climate-altering chemicals into the atmosphere.

Great stuff. READ THE REST:

It's time to embrace climate conspiracy

To fight the censorship side of this conpsiracy, go to George Washington University’s National Security Archive for more on what’s being scrubbed away by Team Trump: “Disappearing Data: Trump Administration Removing Climate Information from Government Websites.”

There’s also Climate.us:

Climate.us will be a nonprofit successor to Climate.gov, delivering climate data and information to promote public climate literacy and to equip people to turn knowledge into meaningful conversations and climate-conscious actions. At a moment when critical climate information is being deleted or distorted, we are stepping up to rescue key climate resources—including the U.S. Global Change Research Program's now-deleted Fifth National Climate Assessment—and to ensure the public has continued easy access to the facts. Our goal is to build an enduring, independent, and scientifically rigorous platform that the world can rely on for climate communication, education, and engagement.

On the fake conspiracies, click back to my conversation with meteorologist Matt Cappucci and weather historian James Fleming on myths and realities around chemtrails, geoengineering and weather modification:

And I have gone deeper into conspiracy world: