We, as public health and medical professionals, reiterate our commitment to address climate change on behalf of our patients and communities.  We know that the health of every American is threatened by climate change.  This statement articulates our agreement on the urgency of addressing climate change to protect human health.

So begins the error-riddled statement "A Health Professionals' Declaration on Climate Change," issued by a group of health care organizations on April 25, 2018 and signed by thousands of doctors.  The trouble is, they don't know what they are talking about, as the last sentence shows.

Taking action to cut carbon pollution and other greenhouse gases will help the U.S. mitigate climate impacts, and [sic] lead the world in our global climate efforts.

They confuse carbon, a solid, with carbon dioxide (CO2), a gas.  They refer to other greenhouse gases (GHG) but don't specify.  The facts are that the most important GHG by far at 95% of the total, is water vapor; methane (CH4) is only 0.36% of the GHG and 0.00017% of total atmospheric gases.  They must know that CO2 is essential to plants and they produce oxygen, which is essential to health and life, their patients! 

They claim that the reduction of CO2 will help people's health, but at what price?  As Bjorn Lomborg explains:

The climate impact of all Paris INDC promises is minuscule: if we measure the impact of every nation fulfilling every promise by 2030, the total temperature reduction will be 0.048°C (0.086°F) by 2100.

Because of the impact on jobs and the economy, the U.S. Senate voted 95-0 not to vote on the Kyoto Protocol, the forerunner to the Paris Agreement.  What would a reduced economy do to the health and welfare of the people?  These health professionals must know that it is much more damaging.

Societies change through paradigm shifts. American physicist Thomas Kuhn defined them as "a fundamental change in approach or underlying assumptions."  The most significant one of the 20th century was environmentalism.  It was a necessary shift because it does not make sense to soil your nest.  However, like all paradigms, there is a sequence of adaptation.

Environmentalism was ideal because it transcended national boundaries and therefore required a global government.  It also gave them the moral high ground.  They cared about the environment while the rest of us, especially capitalists and industrialists, didn't.

A major objective of the environmentalists was to co-opt as many people as possible by proselytizing and using groupthink.  The plan was to legitimize their ideas as the belief of the majority, argumentum ad populum – the consensus argument.  It is false in any form, but especially science.  As Dr. Michael Crichton said, "There is no such thing as consensus science.  If it's consensus, it isn't science.  If it's science, it isn't consensus.  Period."

The claim that 97% of climate scientists agree is meaningless, but it fools many people.

The second tactic used another major form of argument, argumentum ad verecundiam, or an appeal to authority.  They chose to persuade the leaders of professional science societies to get their members to adopt the anthropogenic (man-made) global warming (AGW) message.  As AGW promoter Peter Gleick, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, asked, "[c]limate-change deniers versus the scientific societies of the world: Who [sic] should we listen to?"

The British Royal Society instigated the plan, using its power as the progenitor of all other national science societies.  Lord May led the campaign as leader of the society.  The only society that rejected the AGW claim was the Russian Academy, led by Yuri Israel.  As a member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he knew what was wrong with the science.  Israel was publicly attacked at a conference for his position.

The Russian scientist was immediately and disrespectfully admonished by the chair and former IPCC chief Sir John Houghton for being far too optimistic. Such a moderate proposal was ridiculous since it was "incompatible with IPCC policy.

A few other scientists protested what the leadership was saying on their behalf without consulting members.  For example, the late Harold Lewis, emeritus professor of physics at the University of California and former member of the American Physical Society (APS), understood and managed to get some public attention.  He resigned from APS in a devastating letter:

It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.  Anyone who has the slightest doubt that this is so should read the Climategate documents, which lay it bare.  I don't believe that any real physicist, any scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion.  I would almost make that word revulsion a definition of the word scientist.  So, what has the APS, as an organization done in the face of this challenge?  It has accepted the corruption as the norm and gone along with it."

Perpetrators of climate change pseudoscience and some of their supporters continue to try to maintain the fraud.  The April 25 statement from the health professionals is proof that Abraham Lincoln was wrong: you can fool most of the people most of the time; even those who should know better.  It is likely that few, if any, of those who signed the Declaration know anything about global warming science.  They should have heeded Mark Twain's advice:

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.

Dr. Tim Ball is an environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba.  Tom Harris is executive director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition.