Exclusive -- IPCC Expert: Earth 'Thriving,' 'Greening' with Global Warming, Increasing CO2

Gregory Wrightstone, geologist, author, and expert reviewer for the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told Breitbart News on Sunday that rising global temperatures and increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere are contributing to a greener planet with benefits for humanity.

The Earth is experiencing a “modest warming trend” that began “more than 300 years ago,” Wrightstone (pictured) said on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday with host Joel Pollak. The warming trend began “long before we started emitting CO2,” he added.

“I see this warming trend — combined with increasing CO2 — leading to an Earth that’s thriving, prospering, and greening, and humanity is benefiting by almost every metric that we look at,” Wrightstone continued. “The earth’s ecosystems are improving and humanity is benefiting. It’s just completely opposite what we’re being told.”

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He warned that the Biden administration’s proposed Green New Deal — with a stated goal of halving the volume of America’s carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 — would require restrictions on human freedom far beyond lockdowns and shutdowns ostensibly issued to reduce  COVID-19 transmission.

“I see no way [to halve carbon dioxide emissions by 2030] without just horrifically onerous impositions on the American public,” Wrightstone stated. “We just went through more than a year of COVID lockdowns, where we basically shut the economy down, and you know what it’s done to carbon dioxide emissions? Not one darn thing.”

He added, “We see carbon dioxide in the atmosphere … accelerating at the same rate as it was before the COVID lockdowns. So we would have to even go through even more stringent changes.”

Political calculations are corrupting the scientific study of climate with predeterminations over the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions global temperatures, Wrightstone held, reflecting on his role an IPCC expert reviewer.

“I’ve really had very, very little input and nor do they want my input,” he shared. “I’ve talked to other skeptical scientists and have done this over the number of years, and they all — everyone that I’ve talked to — has resigned out of frustration. They only want one viewpoint. The scientific process should not work that way.”

Wrightstone emphasized the role of the scientific method for interrogation of hypotheses and theories to gain understanding. He said the IPCC is undertaking quality research, but applications of its findings are badly politicized.

“The scientific process should be opened to all science, whether it agrees with their foregone conclusions or not,” he remarked. “The IPCC, let me just say, there’s a lot of good science that’s in there. … The problem becomes when the politicians get in at the late stages. Nobody reads these voluminous reports. They go to the summaries for policymakers that aren’t written by scientists, but rather by politicians that condense the science of the IPCC.”

He added, “It’s not a pleasant experience. We get silenced all the time. We’re not allowed to speak up.”

The Green New Deal and related ostensibly environmental policy proposals seek to artificially increase the costs of fossil fuels through taxation, Wrightstone observed. He said the Biden administration seeks to impose “either a carbon tax or carbon-trading scheme” to increase the cost of electricity provided by fossil fuels “in order to artificially make it appear that the so-called green energy of wind and solar [appears] to be economically competitive.”

The Biden’s administration’s “green energy” proposals will reverse America’s energy independence and benefit China’s geopolitical position if implemented, Wrightstone held. 

“The week Joe Biden was inaugurated was the first week that America — since 1985 — did not import one barrel [of oil] from Saudi Arabia. After decades and decades of us striving to become energy independent, we finally have become energy independent in terms of oil, and what [Joe Biden] wants to do [is] turn us from a dependency on the Middle East for oil — which we just got rid of — to a dependency on China.”

He concluded, “China controls some 80 percent of these elements and minerals that are needed to create the batteries, the solar panels, [and] the wind turbines that are needed for this great electrification campaign. … You have to know that President Xi over in China is rubbing his hands together in glee. … We’re self-destructing with these policies that are being proposed.”

Gregory Wrightstone is the author of Inconvenient Facts: The science that Al Gore doesn’t want you to know.