Pulling Weeds, An Interview with Dr. John Carbon

April showers certainly do bring May flowers along with an abundance of weeds. With little kids playing in every inch of my yard I have forgone the various weed killing sprays and potions. If you know of a natural one please let me know! The only way to get rid of the underbrush for good, is the tried and true, old school method, my father taught me as a young boy. “Pull them up by their roots!” He would say, “if you don’t get the roots they will come back and be even stronger than before.” I can picture my dad now, in his beat up jeans, old sneakers, and ratty tee shirt on his hands and knees with the small hand tool from Sears methodically digging out each pesky weed as I followed along ‘helping’. Things do come full circle in life. Now it is me in the old dungarees, combing the landscaping for each undesirable sprout of unwanted plant life with my young son following along ‘helping’. My father’s words echo in my mind each time my motivation wanes during the process of getting to the roots of this annoying vegetation choking out our beautifully appointed suburban American yard and garden. Repeating out loud for my young boy, “you need to get them by the roots son.”

America has an invasive species of cult-like ideology branded as climate change. Much of it arrived from overseas such as Fabianism, which as intended, slowly has taken root like the buckthorn I just ripped out on the edge of my property. These false ideas are also choking economic growth in the form of environmental, social and governance (ESG) just like the crabgrass in my garden bed absorbing water and nutrients from the soil, ESG sucks up gains and profits of investors. 

I give credit to those who’ve campaigned on the narrative of man made climate catastrophe striking fear in the hearts of my generation for decades, quite successfully. These baseless and indefensible platitudes have taken over the fertile soil of the American cultural landscape. 

Hyperbolic virtue signaling about global warming or cooling has been impressive and very effective in its mission to empower governments and a handful of international elites with the moral duty to control you and your household. Because only they know what is best for you and if you don’t listen to them the world is going to end. They have somehow convinced many of my peers that it is all going to end tomorrow if you don’t do everything they say right now. Not in 5 billion years when our dying star expands and munches up the earth like Pacman eating a power pellet. Which is still only theoretical.

The goal here is to tear out the shin-tangle of this crooked climate change doctrine by its roots and let the American forest of prosperity and liberty thrive again. I sat down with one of the smartest men I know, Dr. John Carbon, to get to the bottom of this topic.

The tactic is a tale as old as time. They spread fear with non-science to control people. They do it through manipulation of facts, so wrongly educated people follow their lead. The ultimate point is to get you, your family, to surrender your God given inalienable rights and liberties to the State. 

Dr. John R. Carbon grew up in White Plains, NY, graduating from Archbishop Stepinac High School. He earned his BS from Buena Vista College in IA, majoring in biology with a minor in chemistry. His MS was earned from Long Island University in environmental biology. He earned his clinical degree, DO, from University of New England and served his residency in physical medicine/rehabilitation in the Sinai/Johns Hopkins Hospitals, Baltimore, MD. In the past he has worked for Sperry Corporation, the State of Florida, Monroe County FL, in undergraduate and graduate education and clinically as a physician in both outpatient and hospital services. He is happily married and keeps busy with his three sons.

To clear out the thicket of lies, my friend Dr. John Carbon answered a series of questions. I hope you enjoy his answers as much as I did. Dr. Carbon eradicates the left’s climate change agenda just like my father did to those dandelions on the lawn of my childhood home. And yes his last name is wonderfully coincidental to the subject at hand.

Tell me what you know about the history of planet Earth’s climate change?

This is a long history, with a long answer so let’s start at the beginning and do our best to cover it quickly.  The current  theory is that the earth condensed from gasses, dust and meteors some 6-billion years ago with the earliest life starting at about 3-billion years ago. People can follow the geological and fossil timelines and get an idea of the various changes. Both the earth and life have changed dramatically over the past 3-billion years. It is accepted that life started in the primordial oceans and eventually adapted to land. For example, flowering plants came about in the mid-Cretaceous (T-Rex days about 75 million years ago) and grasses developed after the Cretaceous extinction about 50-million years ago. We know there have been multiple ice-ages and right now we are in an interglacial period after the Pleistocene era. The fossil record shows that the Sahara desert was submerged in the ocean and ancient Egyptian art shows that people were hunting animals such as antelope, zebra and giraffes in what was a vast grass plain which is now the void of the Sahara Desert. The ancestors of the Hopi and Navajo lived in a much wetter environment only a few hundred to a thousand years ago but this also became vast deserts, which caused these people to vacate. It shows tribal migration patterns and how humans have little to do with the changes to the environments around them. We see this going on to this day in the American Southwest. The fight for water, by the states, because it is the limiting factor of growth in certain areas, has been ongoing for scores of  years.  The Great Lakes of  North America, for example, are a result of melting glaciers. There were land bridges between Europe and the British Isles, and Siberia and Alaska. We also know that coral reefs like the Florida Keys existed since the pleistocene and that at one time most of the State of Florida was under sea water and will probably be so again. I lived there and know about it. I also know that what is now “Earth” and its biota have and will continue to change and adapt to change as they always have changed and always will, even after they cease to exist as their present entities.  Mankind plays a very small part in these changes. 

Does man made climate change exist and could you give me an example? 

Of course it does!!! (John lets out a hardy laugh) If one walks into an air conditioned building one is then walking into a manmade climate which is cooler and less humid than outside. We have all experienced this. We all know there are refrigerated railroad cars and trucks which bring food and produce to markets and this has been used for hundreds of years, since ice boxes. My maternal grandparents came from the Austrian-Hungarian Empire about 120 years ago and had an ice box and a coal burning iron stove in their Astoria Queens flat, much to my enjoyment as a kid. We also know that airborne pollutants can become dangerous and toxic in areas where there are thermal inversions, such as Los Angeles or in Salt Lake City. This is when cooler polluted air stays closer to the ground in an area like a valley and the pollutants get trapped making the ambient air toxic.  The paved areas and tarmacs at major airports absorb solar radiation and radiate heat to a much greater extent than areas covered with plants. The airport with the greatest area, in the USA, is Denver which covers 53 square miles and is about twice as large as the second airport area of Dallas-Ft.Worth. The paved areas of roadways, parking lots, cities and buildings increase the temperature in that area. For example, Denver Airport is massive. The pre-airport plants-grass and irregular surface dispersed sunlight and used it for photosynthesis. These are examples of manmade, or better yet, micro climate change. One of the big problems I have with “manmade global climate change”, which has been a relatively new topic over these past few years going from global cooling, in the 1980s to global warming in the 2000, to more recently “man-made-climate-change” IS:  what caused the ice caps to melt about 12,000 years ago? I don’t think it was caused by cavemen lighting fires in their caves to cook some meat. I don’t think that man-made fires to drive animals or clear land was the cause either. I think it was the earth’s natural cycle. 

This is why I think most (90%) of the “man-made-global-climate-change” hype is  nonsense. How did the woodlands or the great plains change to deserts? How did areas or biomes change before people ever set foot in them?  It happened then and it happens now because it all occurred before man knew how to even light a fire.  Venice was built in a swamp about 1600 years ago and will get wetter and Pompeii was destroyed by the volcano, Vesuvius.  Florida will be suboceanic again and California is going to have many earthquakes. And as always, there will be floods, blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, earthquakes, and tsunamis as there always were.  Humans are not the primary cause of these natural things,  we may be able to influence them to some degree but we do not and never will fully control nature.

How much of the atmosphere is made of carbon dioxide? 

So I will say this, I found that the answer to this question depends on whom I asked. I have been asking people this question for over 10 years.  Everyone from college students, to physical therapists, and adults of various backgrounds. When I ask, what percentage of the air is carbon dioxide, I have heard 100%, 50% but very few have said less than ten percent. But I tell them that ambient air, for instance if you go and stand in the middle of an average golf course anywhere in the country, the percent of CO2 in the air is about 0.04%. This is not 1 out of 100, nor  1 out of 1000. It is 4 molecules present out of every 10,000 molecules of air. Really 44 molecules of CO2 per 100,000 molecules of air, which is pretty low.  If you had $25,000 in quarters, $11 in quarters would be CO2. I also found it interesting how people who count CO2 as the worst greenhouse gas  “ever”, don’t realize that photosynthesis, in all land plants and aquatic algae, takes the CO2 from the air and creates all the carbohydrates, the starch, wood, cellulose and sugars from the CO2 in the air.  The most common protein, enzyme, on earth is RIBISCO (ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase-oxygenase) which is in and used by all plants to initiate the process of photosynthesis..  Horticulturists, who use greenhouses, take concentrated carbon dioxide to make plants grow bigger and quicker by using CO2 and have been doing this for over 100 years.  I have never heard any of these footprint warrior globalists explain this. At the atmospheric levels, which are present, carbon dioxide (CO2) is NOT a pollutant but is essential for all life on this planet.  My last name is “Carbon”, so I know something about this.  My paternal grandfather came to the USA from Naples, Italy, about 125 years ago.  In Italian, from Latin, carbon means coal or charcoal.

Let me back up.  I ask people what is air made up of? I get many different answers from many educated people, but I know this from earth science class. It is roughly  80% nitrogen and 20 % oxygen. The biggest greenhouse gas is water vapor (H2O).  When it is humid, outside, water vapor can rise to 4% of the total air.  In addition, water vapor  is a “greenhouse gas”.   It retains heat and if you camp out in the desert you know it can be 100 degrees in the day and very cold (50 degrees) at night. But in a jungle it can be 100 in the day but 85 at night since the air is humid. Water vapor has what is called a high “specific heat”. I don’t know what  Mr. Gore would suggest but  he might recommend covering the Pacific Ocean with cellophane wrap!   However, I don’t think an approach like that would be practical. Taxing carbon and the “carbon footprints”  is also not practical and would be a complete scam in my opinion.   Here is another scam.  I recently heard and read that environmental wackos want to get rid of methane gas use for home stoves. Methane is cheap, it is a great fuel and guess what?  The byproduct of methane (CH4) combustion with oxygen (O2 (burning) is CO2 and H2O (carbon dioxide and water).  If anyone thinks that CO2 and H2O in these low concentrations are harmful, I recommend that he or she take an advanced high school or college course in chemistry, physics or meteorology.

Will electric cars save the planet? 

No! In the Republic of Congo the Chinese have come in and enslaved a big part of the population to mine for rare earth minerals. A large portion of this mined ore is for use in such things as car batteries.  The US is dependent upon China for components for such batteries. Cars, trucks, vehicles which are run by batteries are 30-50% heavier than comparable gas vehicles. They are heavy, cause fires and the batteries do not last long. How many times and how long does it take to recharge an EV (electric vehicle) on a cross country trip if an EV is used?  I bet, a lot longer than 10 minutes, as it does for gas fill-up.  In addition, a gas vehicle continues to become more efficient because the gasoline is used up and the vehicle becomes lighter.  This does not occur in an “EV”. Where do you think the energy comes from which charges these EVs?  The energy comes from the electricity generated by fossil fuel!  People in California don’t have the stations to charge their cars now and increases in electrical “brown outs” are reported in CA. I know  that all this EV hype is basically nonsensical and not environmentally nor economically sound.  Economic free-will and markets will drive this “energy crisis” and do it far better than totalitarian dictates and forced nonsensical programs. Back in the day of New England whaling, in the late 1700s through the late 1800s, there was a depletion or killing off of whales. I know I used to live in NE also.  Whale oil was used for lubrication and for lamp lighting. The USA federal government did not put economic nor dictatorial edicts out to “save the whales”.  The finding of cheaper petroleum (petrous oleum or rock oil) ended whaling.  I even heard Kamala Harris touting that all military vehicles should be electric. I can just picture an E-Abrams tank, waiting for a charge-up in the middle of the gobi desert.  We should appreciate her genius and sell her ideas to China.

In my home state, whale deaths down at the Jersey shore have brought bipartisan attention to the dangers of offshore wind. Are solar, wind and other ‘clean’ energy sources stacking up to all the hype?

I think the “jury is still out” on this topic.  However, placing these large windmills off shore in the ocean is ridiculous.  If the logistics of cost of maintenance and repair and overall safety of boat versus truck access are compared, there should be no doubt which location of these windmills (wing generators) should be preferred.I suggest that those interested lookup the sources of electrical energy production in the USA.

According to the US Energy Information Administration electricity was generated in 2021 from about: 36% petroleum- diesel, 32% natural gas- methane, 11% coal and  8% nuclear. The remaining 12% is comprised of about: 27% wind, 20% hydroelectric- dams, 12% solar. Biomass consisting of biofuels (plant/animal matter and oils) and wood, make up about the remaining  40% of the energy sources described as “reusables”.  You can see that solar comprises 12% of 12% which is roughly 1.5% of the total source of electricity, indeed a trite amount not even an iota!  The “cleanest” and most economic fuels are methane, hydroelectric, windmills and nuclear.  I had a brother-in-law who was a nuclear health physicist, who worked for Bechtel engineering company.  He worked at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, PA and lived close by in Middletown with his family for years doing his “clean up” job successfully, with no problems.

Anyway, at this point, solar cells seem to be an economic, logistical and an overall practical failure for a number of reasons.  Solar cells do not work during cloudy days and at night which is about 50% of the time in most areas of the USA. The electricity which is produced needs to be stored in something like a battery which is impractical and very costly.  So even though the political geniuses in states like California are requiring increased dependency on these things, it is already a failed system, at this point.

How much of the United States is undeveloped land?

Basically, roughly 45-50% of the land area of the 48 continental US states is undeveloped or is not inhabited. There are about 3150 counties, parishes or districts in the USA including Alaska and Hawaii.  Consider this: roughly  50% of the USA’s population is in 4% of those counties or in about 125 of them. Most of the land is for grazing, or open space, or forest, there is not a density problem in 96% of the counties in the United States. There are different degrees of development, whether is it agrarian, or pasture, for instance but if a tower is installed on a hill top does that mean now it is not pristine land and is developed? I do not know the details. Hamilton County NY, where BSA Camp Sabattis is, has an area of close to 2,000 square miles. It is larger than the state of Rhode Island but has a population of about 5,000 people. Aroostook County, Maine has an area of about 6,800 square miles and is larger than the states of RI, DE, CT, and HI but has a population of about 67,000 people.

Will the sea level rise threaten the mansions of our coastal elite, and why do they spend so much money on these properties if it is truly such a threat?

The answer is Yes.  In all likelihood, as I outlined before, geologically speaking, sea, rain, water, all erode land. My family recently took a break on the Charlestown Beach in RI, in a house on pilings about 20 ft up. A friend who visited us and grew up in the area said the first row of houses were wiped out, 50 years ago. The elites who live off our tax money can recover the losses. I just do not think God will favor Nantucket. A famous politician most of us have heard of has a house there on Nantucket  and Hawaii. If one is lost or destroyed by a storm, he has another one or two.  Water wears down even granite rocks. The smart people I know who have beach front property, have a chain link fence and pull up a camper then move it away, they bring in their own stuff, water and if a storm comes there is no loss since they just drive away. The ones in the 2 million dollar houses fund FEMA so they don’t care and will get a check for their loss paid for by you and me. 

Misinformed people through the school system and politicized social science have taught people what to think, how do you think we can get back to teaching people how to think for themselves?

Our Constitution was made to protect the States and the people from an ever growing and abusive Federal Government. Ratified in 1789, The Constitution defined and put limits of what the newly made federal government can do and what it can not do.  The USA’s federal government was made, created, by the states.  The protection of individual freedoms, written down, defined and written  into place, was a great idea.  Before full ratification, the first ten amendments, The Bill of Rights, were added. One of these, the 1st Amendment, gives the citizens the right to peacefully assemble, freely speak, and prohibits the federal government from “establishing” its own religion.  We now have people who are not taught in the Socratic manner. They are instead taught the socialist catechism of what to believe. This is wrong. If a person questions the prevailing thought of the federal bureaucracy it puts his/her livelihood, family and others at serious risk.  People are being taught dogma, the politically correct nonsense and not how to ask questions, formulate  and think for themselves.  About 10 years ago I asked my 3 sons… “ who is smarter, someone 400 years ago or people today?”  They all said we are because of computers.  I then asked them “who is smarter, a sailor who has GPS, radar, a radio and an engine,  or a sailor of 400 years ago who uses currents, flotsam, clouds, birds, the sun and stars to find his way’?  They saw the light.  Every bit of our current technology has grown from the ideas and findings of our predecessors.  An education is understanding the knowledge of the past, the successes and the failures, the good and the bad and then growing from the better choices. The responsibility to help a student to formulate a thought to find a solution is what education was and needs to be again. There are probably many things wrong with the Federal Department of Education when the USA students are close to the bottom of  “advanced countries” in basic mathematics and in the real sciences (physics, chemistry & biology).

Students must enjoy what they are doing as we have an inquisitive nature as students but you have to challenge them. If you teach down to satisfy a lower level, it will hurt others. What is the most important point is figuring things out, not just being told to believe in what you are told. The founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, PhD, quit.  He left his own organization since it was all politicized to get money and grants, it has nothing to do with Environmental Science anymore. Many organizations exist by pushing false or erroneous premises and live off  tax dollars and donations, to push an agenda. I bet any group or foundation wants a researcher who gets grant $-money to support the agenda of the group, whether the agenda is right or wrong.  There should be mandatory courses in science, teaching at a broad basic level so as students mature they can ask questions and figure out how to advance. We are hurting, over a quarter of million communist party of China students are in America. Most of whom are from affluent Chinese families, are here attending schools and on the contrary only about 300 American students are in China.  I know that China’s population is about 4 times larger than ours but something seems very slightly out of place.

Is there any hope for a better future for America in regards to turning back this destructive climate change agenda?

Yes there is but we first have to recognize it. I disdain the word “issue” when the correct term should be “problem”. The saying is: “if you have an issue, I’ll give you a tissue.  A problem can be solved”.  The point is- a problem can not be solved until it is recognized and defined.  Governments of all levels throwing $-money at issues such as: education, infrastructure, “supply chains” and companies like Solyndra, etc is a waste of time and money. Wasting time and taxpayers hard earned $-money in bogus claims of man-made-climate-change and ignoring the real and present problems we face is not only a disservice (for those in “public service”) but

is also magnifying or worsening the real problems by ignoring them. Ex-president Ronald 

Reagan was correct when he said that the government does not solve problems, it “is the problem”. Another good point to consider is “if you ever think you can trust the federal government, ask an American Indian what  he thinks”. We are citizens and the country of The USA is us!