Let’s finally clean the air on hysterical claims that switching from CO2-emitting fossil fuels to anemic and intermittent so-called “renewable” energy sources will quell rising tides of despair for polar bears. And while we’re at it, let’s recognize that no sane person doubts that climate changes — always has, always will — although it just hasn’t occurred recently. Incidentally, the same goes for those extreme weather events which have become neither more frequent — nor more severe.

But what about all those “experts” who have warned us otherwise? Isn’t CO2 “pollution” supposed to be dirty . . . and aren’t those claiming that “settled science” confirms a human-caused climate crisis really coming clean?

No, it’s actually the other way around. CO2 is the beneficial clean stuff that greenhouse operators add to make plants grow better. Unsettlingly dirty science attributes alarmist climate predictions and weather events to human CO2 emissions.

As Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito explained at a February 11 Claremont Institute dinner:

“A pollutant is a subject that is harmful to human beings or to animals or to plants. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Carbon dioxide is not harmful to ordinary things, to human beings, or to animals, or to plants. It’s actually needed for plant growth. All of us are exhaling carbon dioxide right now. So, if it’s a pollutant, we’re all polluting.”

The Justice continued:

“When Congress authorized the regulation of pollutants, what it had in mind were substances like sulfur dioxide, or particulate matter — basically, soot or smoke in the air. Congress was not thinking about carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases . . . Now, if the administrative agency [EPA] can do that, I don’t know what an administrative agency cannot do. Lawmaking power has been transferred from Congress to the Executive.”

Records clearly show that global warming (which was rebranded as “climate change” around 2010) has been occurring in fits-and-starts since the multiple century “little ice age”(not a true Ice Age) ended in the mid-1800s.

This welcome trend began shortly after George Washington’s brutal 1777 winter at Valley Forge, and Napoleon’s frigid 1812 retreat from Moscow, and will likely continue until the next estimated approximately 90,000-year-long real Ice Age comes along in the next 3,000 years or so.

And yes, a warming climate does actually cause sea levels to rise over time.

After all, seas have risen about 400 feet since the peak of the last Ice Age around 18,000 years ago. They have been rising at a constant rate of barely 7 inches per century over about the past three thousand years without any measured acceleration whatsoever.

As the UN’s latest 2013 IPCC report states, “It is likely that GMSL [Global Mean Sea Level] rose between 1920 and 1950 at a rate comparable to that observed between 1993 and 2010.”

Regarding hysterical polar ice-melting hype, the Arctic, which goes through regular 60- to 70-year-long warming and cooling cycles, has indeed most recently been losing some ice mass. Arctic sea ice, however, was 22% greater in 2016 than at a previous recent 2012 low point. Overall, it has been in a 10-year pause — no significant change over the past decade.

A 2015 NASA study found that the vastly larger Antarctic continent has not been losing ice mass, nor is it currently contributing to sea level rise.

Despite much ballyhooed “record high” atmospheric CO2 levels, global warming has taken a temporary siesta. Those so-called “hottest year” claims we have heard reported in mainstream media echo chambers during 2005, 2010, and 2015 are based upon temperature data that differ by only a few hundredths of a degree Fahrenheit — which are well within the margin of error.

Satellite records, which have been available only since 1979, show that other than naturally occurring 1998 and 2015 El Niño temperature spikes, no statistically significant global warming has occurred for nearly two decades. On the other hand, satellite imagery shows that the plant-fertilizing CO2 has increased global greening by 25% to 50% since then.

Extreme weather patterns have demonstrated recent multi-decadal respites as well. No Category 3-5 hurricanes have struck the U.S. coast since October 2005, setting a record lull since 1900.

Additionally, the frequencies and intensities of hurricanes have decreased during the last several decades; frequencies of storms and tsunamis have decreased during the 20th and 21st centuries; tornado occurrence has remained stable or decreased since 1950; there are far fewer wildfires today than centuries ago; there are no significant trends (including decreases) in extreme precipitation events in recent decades over past centuries; and drought frequencies and intensities are stable or even decreasing.

Will calculated alarmism over CO2 “pollution” finally begin to abate as endless doomsday climate change predictions and links to extreme weather disaster trends fail to materialize?

Don’t expect this to happen until government sponsorship reforms force dirty science to clean up its own act.