Greenpeace owns the CO2 Coalition and the Heartland Institute.

by Dr. Ed Berry

In what may be the most significant takeover of conservative climate leadership in America, the CO2 Coalition and the Heartland Institute chose a former Greenpeace professional to help lead them.

The CO2 Coalition and the Heartland Institute stupidly gave control of their organizations to Patrick Moore, a far-left Trojan Horse, who has wasted no time in deballing these once conservative organizations and turning them into liberal WEF puppet groups who no longer stand for climate truth.

Patrick Moore,

became Chairman of the Board of Directors of the CO2 Coalition in May 2019 and also a leader of the Heartland Institute.

A tiger like Moore does not change his stripes. He is an alpha who controls the CO2 Coalition and Heartland Institute and intimidates university types. He will never agree that Assumptions (1) and (2) are false and the CEP is true because those truths contradict Moore’s beliefs, which Moore thinks prevail over the scientific method.

The CO2 Coalition and the Heartland Institute now promote climate policies that resemble the climate policies of the IPCC, Our Children’s Trust, and WEF.

President Trump must quickly realize that this significant takeover is an imminent threat to his climate actions.

Trump’s hidden enemies will seek to undermine him in court. (I saw this happen in Montana.) WEF has already taken the first step to undermine Trump by making sure the DOE selected Koonin to lead the DOE climate report.

Moore built his reputation on his claim that human CO2 saved planet Earth and all living creatures from CO2 starvation. While this is a good story for a disaster movie, Moore is not about to let the truth about climate science damage his reputation or business. In 2019, he told his Twitter followers that Berry was a fraud.

Patrick Moore made the following public proclamation referring to Berry’s publications that threaten Moore’s beliefs:

I am sorry to see this fraudulent argument continuing. Humans are responsible for most of the CO2 increase since large-scale use of fossil fuel began.

In a bit more than 100 years human emissions have bumped it back up to 400+ ppm, restoring a balance the global carbon cycle.

The vast majority of new carbon going into the atmosphere as CO2 is from fossil fuel combustion and cement production, with other minor components. Very little new CO2 is added from natural sources.

Human CO2 emissions are entirely beneficial and in fact have saved life on Earth from any untimely demise due to declining CO2 which would eventually have dropped to levels that were below the threshold for plant survival.

One thing we do know is that only about 50% of our annual emissions, all of which go into the atmosphere, remain in the atmosphere as measured by the annual increase in atmospheric CO2.

What I know is there is no other new source of CO2 being added to the atmosphere anywhere near as large as human emissions.

Patrick Moore is wrong on all six of his claims. Here’s my rebuttal to Moore’s proclamations:

• Berry and others have already shown that humans are not responsible for most of the increase in CO2, and no one has shown that this proof is wrong. It’s time for the CO2 Coalition to wake up to the true physics of climate.
• Berry and others proved that human CO2 emissions have not caused most of the increase in CO2. Moore is 8 years out-of-date.
• Data show the inflow of natural CO2 into the atmosphere is almost 33 times the human CO2 inflow.
• Beneficial, yes, but Moore has presented no evidence that human CO2 saved life on Earth, except in his lectures, where he violates the scientific method.
• The CEP shows that human CO2 flows out of the atmosphere as quickly as natural CO2, but Moore denies it.
• Natural CO2 emissions increase with temperature. Freshwater is a new source.

Here’s Patrick Moore’s arrogant 2021 public email against Berry’s proof that CEP is true and Assumption (1) is false in a well-attended email debate:

From: Patrick Moore <pmoore@ecosense.me>
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2021, 10:19 AM
Subject: Re: [GWR] Origin of Atmospheric CO2: Answer to Ed

Please take a hike Ed. I am beyond tired of your gobbledegook. This, for example, “I do not need to provide you with evidence to explain how nature caused most of the CO2 increase”.

What is there in science beyond “evidence”, leading to deduction, leading to conclusions?

Your invocation of Einstein is pure conceit.

Sayonara.

Cheers, Patrick Moore

Moore argues that Berry can’t prove an assumption is false without providing an alternative assumption, which shows Moore disagrees with the scientific method.

Moore calls that “pure conceit” the fact that Berry mentioned that Kemeny learned the scientific method when he worked as a mathematician for Albert Einstein.

Berry agrees with Marilyn vos Savant: What is surprising is not that most scientists are wrong, but in how fiercely they defend being wrong.

Below are comments by three CO2 Coalition members in a 2022 email debate about Berry (2021), followed by my rebuttals. The CO2 Coalition has people who try to prove Berry’s work is wrong when they are flat-out not competent enough in physics to understand Berry’s work.

Greg Wrightstone: 

The water level in a tub of water with equal large inflows and outflows will remain the same (analogous to the natural CO2).

If we add a small, additional anthropogenic inflow, the rise in the water level will be entirely due to the additional anthropogenic inflow.

Congratulations, Greg. You understand my definition of the balance level, but if we add inflow numbers to your argument, we would find that the human inflow is too small to account for the 33% increase in CO2.

Roy Spencer:

I can’t believe there are still people who don’t realize that humans can theoretically be responsible for 100% of the CO2 rise, while the fraction of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere remains quite small.

It’s because of the huge surface reservoir combined with very large natural fluxes in and out of the surface.

The residence time of a single CO2 molecule can be very short, yet all of the rise of total atmospheric CO2 be due to anthropogenic emissions.

If you have a very large tub of water with water flowing in and out at exactly the same rate, the water level remains the same. But if then you add another, much weaker source of inflow, the water level will rise, even though over the long term most of the actual molecules of water you added went down the drain. It’s not rocket science.

Dear Roy, you are way off on your physics when you claim human CO2 can be responsible for 100% of the increase. You simply do not understand the physics that proves this cannot happen.

David Wojick: 

The huge natural CO2 flux causes roughly 25% of the atmospheric molecules to be replaced every year, including our emitted molecules. Thus, the percentage and mass of our molecules is indeed small compared to that of the total CO2 increase since 1750.

However, it does not follow that our emissions have not caused that increase, especially since the annual increase is considerably smaller than our annual emissions. It could just be that our molecules first cause the increase then are replaced by natural molecules in the great flux.

I am not saying we have caused the increase, just that it is possible, and this study does not change that.

Dear David, you say that human CO2 can account for the entire CO2 increase, since the total annual increase is smaller than our annual emissions. That is not a logical argument because you are mixing human CO2 with natural CO2.

Dave Burton wrote in 2022 (summarized because Burton’s details change nothing):

Human inflow since 1958 = 180 ppm. Total CO2 increase is 80 ppm.

Nature removed 80 ppm. Therefore, nature could not have caused the CO2 increase, because it was busy removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

Dear Dave, this is an old argument that fails the test of physics because it does not separate the human carbon cycle from the natural one. The total CO2 increase and total removal you refer to include both human and natural carbon. Yet you assign all the increase to human carbon and all the decrease to natural carbon. There is nothing in your argument that proves anything. Your argument only shows that you first assume your conclusion is true.

In December 2024, the CO2 Coalition published its special report, “The human contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide,” by Engelbeen, Hannon, and Burton (hereinafter EHB).

EHB is not a peer-reviewed publication. It is a CO2 Coalition publication.

Gordon Fulks, a Coalition board member, informed Berry in 2025 that EHB is the CO2 Coalition’s formal critique of his papers (2019, 2021, and 2023) and his Climate Equivalence Principle (CEP).

Fulks later criticized Berry’s work on his Global Warming Realists (GWR) email group. When Berry responded, Fulks blocked Berry’s comments. GWR, like the CO2 Coalition, censors scientists who disagree with Patrick Moore and the CO2 Coalition.

EHB does not mention Berry, quote Berry, or reference Berry’s publications. Normally, when you write a rebuttal to a scientific article or claim, you reference the article or claim. This CO2 Coalition omission is so unusual that it is obviously done on purpose to censor any mention of Berry’s name and professional papers.

The CO2 Coalition approves EHB’s junk climate science.

Berry reviewed EHB, wrote a draft rebuttal, published it on his website, and allowed the EHB authors full freedom to defend their arguments. The debate has over 4000 comments. LINK

We learned in this debate that the CO2 Coalition’s Board of Directors, including Patrick Moore, Will Happer, and Richard Lindzen support Dave Burton‘s and EHB’s junk science.

This is an amazing revelation because it shows that the Coalition is eight years out of date on climate science and unable to defend itself against Berry’s papers.  

EHB’s arguments violate basic science.

EHB says there is a high correlation between annual human CO2 emissions and the CO2 increase, which EHB says “proves” human CO2 causes all the CO2 increase.

But EHB does not detrend the time-series data before doing its correlation, making its claim meaningless. They also violate the scientific method by claiming they can prove an assumption is true. Properly detrending the data shows the correlation is near zero. When there is no correlation, there is no cause-and-effect relationship.

EHB argues that “multiple lines” of “extensive evidence” “conclusively” prove Assumption (1) is true – thereby violating the scientific method.

EHB claims it proves Assumption (1) is true, but that is impossible according to the scientific method.

EHB supports IPCC’s claim that human CO2 flows out of the atmosphere more slowly than natural CO2 and therefore causes the CO2 increase, a claim that contradicts the CEP

EHB formulates human and natural carbon inflows and outflows in a single equation, then claims its calculations conserve carbon mass for human and natural carbon separately. But to conserve carbon mass separately for human and natural carbon, you need to write separate equations for each.

EHB changes a human carbon atom into a natural carbon atom when human carbon moves from the air to land or oceans. This loses track of human carbon mass.

EHB argues that a new CO2 molecule has a 2.4-year half-life, then changes to a 30-year half-life, and later returns to a 2.4-year half-life if it remains in the atmosphere.
This claim says that CO2 molecules of different ages, at the same time and place, flow out of the atmosphere with different half-lives, which is impossible.

EHB proves the CO2 Coalition pushes junk physics.

By Contrast, here are comments by the late Richard Courtney, UK professional reviewer and climate scientist, to well-attended email conversations.

Richard Courtney wrote on June 22, 2020,

Please note that the importance of the “physics model” of Ed Berry is that it removes the need for knowledge of the rate constants operating in the carbon cycle. I again say I think this is a breakthrough in understanding, which other workers and I failed to make.

Richard Courtney wrote on February 26, 2021,

The attribution model study we reported in 2005 is a caution to all IPCC recommendations because it demonstrates the rise in atmospheric CO2 may be entirely natural and suggests it is mostly natural.

We and others failed to confirm the conclusion above because we did not know the rate constants governing the carbon cycle.

The ‘Physics Model’ by Ed Berry overcomes the need for knowledge of the rate constants in the carbon cycle, and this is a breakthrough in understanding of the cause of the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration.

Richard Courtney wrote on September 13, 2021,

Importantly, Ed Berry builds on a finding in my paper to make a breakthrough in understanding (which I and others failed to make).

This has enabled him to assess the data in a way that quantifies the natural and anthropogenic contributions to the cause of the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration measured at Mauna Loa since 1958. 

Courtney’s key point is that Berry’s CEP and resulting carbon-cycle model are the most important climate-science breakthroughs since 1980.

The point of this post is that Patrick Moore, the CO2 Coalition, and the Heartland Institute have rejected Berry’s work in climate physics, and they censor all discussion of Berry’s work.