PARIS — Climate alarmism and its war on beneficial carbon dioxide has become a dangerous new religion that threatens individual liberty worldwide, said award-winning chemistry professor István Markó at the “counter-COP21” climate summit in Paris. It must be exposed and stopped, he added.

In a video interview (see below) with The New American after his presentation at the anti-alarmism summit in Paris, Professor Markó also slammed the bogus “science” underpinning the new religion. Numerous summit attendees and experts from across France and beyond referred to the “climate religion” as “climatism.”

“All the conclusions being reached by the IPCC [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] are actually flawed conclusions,” said Dr. Markó, who serves as a professor at Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and co-authored The Bankruptcy of Climatism.

In short, the IPCC is wrong and cannot be trusted, he said, echoing numerous other experts — including some who worked with the IPCC — at the summit.

His speech at the summit was entitled: “The Nostradamuses of Climate and Their Erroneous Prophecies.” It was a big hit among attendees.

Pointing out that carbon dioxide is not pollution but rather an essential molecule that provides food for plants and oxygen for people, Dr. Markó told The New American that plants were currently starving for more CO2. That is why, for example, greenhouses growing plants are pumped full of CO2 at concentrations far, far higher than those currently found in the atmosphere.

“The worst thing that can happen is decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the air,” continued the expert, who has spent considerable time studying the essential molecule.

There is also not a shred of real evidence showing that humanity's release of CO2, known as the gas of life to scientists, “has any effect whatsoever on the temperature of our earth,” he added.

“This is almost like a religion, you know, you have the original sin, the original sin is carbon dioxide, and the one who committed it is the human being,” Dr. Markó continued. “So we all have to repent. This is basically the message [of the UN COP21 in Paris]. It's a new religion going on; we call it climatism around here.”

Of course, Markó is hardly the first to make the comparison. MIT Meteorology Professor Emiritus Dr. Richard Lindzen famously compared the alarmist movement to a “cult” for refusing to adjust its beliefs based on the evidence. Even disgraced ex-UN IPCC chief Rajendra K. Pachauri admitted that climate activism was actually his “religion.”

Forcing everyone to pay indulgences for their CO2 emission sins — and remember, humans exhale CO2 — is not the only agenda behind climatism, though. “It's the slow erosion of your own individual liberty, that's what is at stake with COP21,” Professor Markó added, citing multiple examples of the assaults on freedom such as European Union schemes to restrict meat consumption.

His message to Americans was simple: Fight for your liberties and do not surrender them.

Aside from the price tag in lost freedom, Dr. Markó also highlighted the economic cost. The 1997 UN “climate” regime known as the Kyoto Protocol was costing the world some $150 billion per year, he said. But UN agencies have calculated that every person in the Third World could be guaranteed running water, electricity, food, and education for a mere $70 billion to $80 billion annually — about half the cost of the previous UN climate regime.

“The choice between the two is quite simple,” Dr. Markó said. “I would rather give my money to help people come out of poverty and live by modern standards than to throw the money to people who do nothing to solve a problem which does not exist.”

In the interview, Professor Markó, a leading international expert in chemistry, offered some insight into how some scientists had been brought on-board with the alarmist movement, and why others remain silent despite knowing better. “If you want research grants [from government], you have to abide by the current dogma,” he said, adding that the silent majority of scientists does not yet have the courage to speak out.

As for how non-scientists can discover the truth for themselves, Dr. Markó said the “first rule of thumb is never believe the United Nations, and never believe the IPCC.” Secondly, he said, the world has been through far warmer periods — the Medieval Warm Period or the Roman Period, for example — during which civilization flourished.

“There is absolutely nothing to worry about,” he said, referring to climate, before noting that there are indeed many real environmental problems that should concern humanity.

The French counter-COP21 summit, which took place amid the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) United Nations summit in Paris, brought together various prestigious European experts and scientists to blow the whistle on global-warming alarmism. From physicists and geophysicists, to philosophers and diplomats, to members of the French National Academy of Sciences and even IPCC expert reviewers, the lineup was impressive.

Other experts and scientists who spoke with The New American at the summit also emphasized the IPCC's lack of credibility, the major and increasingly obvious flaws in the man-made global-warming theory, the benefits of CO2, and the need for scientists around the world to speak out in defense of the truth and common sense.

Unsurprisingly, despite the presence of thousands of journalists from around the world in Paris for the UN summit, the national and international media was conspicuously absent from the realist event. Several American climate skeptics were also in attendance.

The counter-COP21 summit was organized by the French Climate Realist Collective, or Collectif des Climato-Réalistes, a growing network of climate realists in France and across Europe determined to expose what its members view as a dangerous false religion. After the event, attendees told The New American that they would continue working to raise awareness of the climate hoax.

While France Televisions' ex-chief meteorologist Philippe Verdier was reportedly unable to attend the French counter-COP21 summit in person due to work commitments, he was a veritable celebrity there. His recent book blowing the whistle on climate hysteria, Climat Investigations, was prominently displayed, alongside coffee mugs reading “I [heart] CO2” and other books on the climate issue. Verdier was promptly fired by French authorities after blowing the whistle, confirming one of the key theses in his book, but his influence around the world has only grown since then.

The day before the counter-COP21 summit, another skeptic conference was also held in Paris, with the Heartland Institute bringing in prestigious scientists from around the world to debunk the UN's increasingly discredited climate dogma. The New American interviewed many of them, and some of the videos are now available online. Essentially, the experts said there is no climate crisis, but that the UN and the alarmist movement will cause real devastation if they get their way.

For more on the UN climate summit, the skeptic summits held in Paris during the COP21, climate science generally, the policy implications of it all, and much more, please see the related articles below.

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is currently based in Europe. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.

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