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JULY 2020

Prof Michel Chossudovsky: Global Warming and the Ozone Layer: What’s More Dangerous, CO2 or Nuclear War?



Written by Prof Michel Chossudovsky; Originally appeared at Global Research


4500 climate strikes in over 100 countries. Several million protesters demand that governments around the World  “take action” on the devastating environmental impacts of climate change.

Many of the climate activists point to the destructive impacts of global capitalism on their lives. 

“Capitalism = death (or extinction)”.

“Cancel Capitalism.”

People’s lives are destroyed. Politicians are coopted by the corporate giants including Big Oil. The economic, environmental and social structures are undermined. The outcome is a process of Worldwide impoverishment. 

The oil giants were indelibly under fire. In New York City, climate activists confronted “Big Oil”: 

“ExxonKnew: Make Them Pay” outside a meeting of fossil fuel CEOs and government representatives at the Morgan Library and Museum, just blocks away from the U.N. Climate Summit in New York. 

Who is Funding the Protest Movement

Prof Michel Chossudovsky: Global Warming and the Ozone Layer: What’s More Dangerous, CO2 or Nuclear War?“Exxon: Make Them Pay”?

The unspoken truth is that Big Oil funds the campaign against Big Oil. Sounds contradictory?

Climate activists have been lied to.

The Climate Movement (New Green Deal) is funded by major charities and corporate foundations including the National Endowment for Democracy, Soros Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Brothers Trust, Shell Foundation, BP, Goldman Sachs, among others.

Whereas “Big Oil” is held responsible for the devastating impacts of the fossil fuel industry, the architects of Big Oil, namely the Rockefeller family is the major protagonist of the Green New Deal:

“Beginning in the 1980s, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund became leading advocates of the global warming agenda. … In their Sustainable Development Program Review, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund boasts of being one of the first major global warming activists, citing its strong advocacy for both the 1988 formation of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the 1992 establishment of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.” (The Energy & Environmental Legal Institute published in 2016).

Debate on the world’s climate is of crucial importance.

But who controls that debate? Major capitalist foundations ultimately call the shots?

There is an obvious contradictory relationship. The protest movement is funded by corporate foundations.

According to William Engdahl, the New Green Deal is an “economic project”:


And the Protest movement including the Extinction Rebellion provide a justification for investing in Green Bonds:



A cursory review suggests that the key climate organizations are invariably funded by corporate capital (including the Oil giants):

  • Climate Action  has links with a number of financial partners with a view to promoting “Green investments” in what is described as the “global sustainability industry.”
  •  The Climate Institute at climate.org, is a major research entity funded by Ford Motor Company Fund, GE Foundation, Goldman Sachs, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Shell Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, among others.
  • The Climate Leadership Council  is an initiative of major corporations which funds the global climate consensus.

Global Warming. The Concepts

While climate activists express their concern regarding the nefarious impacts of global capitalism on climate, including those pertaining to militarization (and defense spending), the scientific analysis of climate under the auspices of the IPCC  largely focusses on a single variable: Carbon Dioxide (CO2), i.e. the impact of increased emissions of CO2 derived from fossil fuels (including fracking) on average global temperature.

Depletion of the ozone layer is what triggers global warming. The ozone layer is in the Earth’s stratosphere. “Ozone is constantly being produced and destroyed naturally. This ozone layer filters out ultra-violet (UV) rays from the Sun and protects life on Earth.”

Greenhouse gas emissions affecting the ozone layer largely consist of water vapor (50%), carbon dioxide (CO2) (20%) and clouds (25%).  The remaining greenhouse gases (5%) is made up of small aerosol particles, methane (CH4) and nitrous oxides (N2O) (both a greenhouse gas as well as an “ozone destroyer” with devastating impacts on climate). (approximate figures provided by NASA for 2011).

Decrease of the ozone layer “will increase the amount of Ultra Violet radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, and worsen the impacts due to UV exposure.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the key UN body “for assessing the science related to climate change”.

The focus of the IPCC is to estimate the additional CO2 greenhouse gas generated by fossil fuel extraction. It is assumed that the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from Planet Earth results solely from  CO2 emissions tied to  fossil fuel extraction (including fracking). Note: The CO2 emissions resulting from fossil fuel extraction constitute a very small percentage of total CO2 emissions (estimated at 20% of total greenhouse gas emissions), i.e a small percentage of the 20%.

The current IPCC climate debate focus consists of the following:

  • -Rising CO2 emissions (from fossile fuels) constitute the sole cause of global warming, attributable to the depletion of the ozone layer.
  • -To reduce the depletion of the ozone layer requires a reduction in fossil fuel extraction, which constitutes the major cause of rising CO2 emissions.

The IPCC May 2018 report entitled Global warming of 1.5°C puts forth the following methodology:

 “an understanding of the impacts of 1.5°C global warming above pre-industrial levels and related global emission pathways in the context of strengthening the response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.”


Most of the results in this IPCC study are based on model simulations of likely impacts comparing a 2.0 C increase in average global temperature to the 1.5°C global warming above pre-industrial levels.

The report highlights major environmental and social impacts which are based on simulations of rising temperature attributable to increased CO2 emissions attributable to fossil fuel extraction.

These include impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, species loss and extinctions (plants, insects and vertebrates), impacts on oceans and waterways, as well as social impacts including poverty.

The report distinguishes between terrestrial, freshwater and coastal ecosystems. It examines the impacts of global warming on ocean temperatures. It also addresses “associated increases in ocean acidity and decreases in ocean oxygen levels”and the impacts on marine life and biodiversity. The social impacts on (e.g. on fishing communities) are also acknowledged.

On land, impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, including species loss and extinction, are projected to be lower at 1.5°C of global warming compared to 2°C. Similarly, “limiting global warming to 1.5°C is projected to reduce risks to marine biodiversity, fisheries, and ecosystems, and their functions and services to humans”

Critique: Single Variable Analysis

There are many other complex factors which directly or indirectly affect climate and environmental structures including the ozone layer, which have been excluded from the IPCC model simulations.

The quantitative results of the IPCC are deterministic to say the least. According to MIT Professor Richard S Lindzen:



They omit variables which affect climate. With the exception of fossil fuel, they do not address the impacts of government policy on climate, nor do they address how US led wars as well as the multi-trillion dollar war economy threatens Planet Earth.

It is the art of omission:

  • A single highly relevant variable carbon-dioxide (CO2)  “Explains Everything”. (ceteris paribus).
  • With all other variables excluded, through omission, CO2 “Explains nothing”.
  • CO2 emissions cannot reasonably explain the complexities of climate change.
  • By centering solely on CO2, the Climate debate has excluded “everything else”.

The climatic and environmental crisis in different regions of the World are identified. The underlying causality is the single variable approach: helloCO2 emissions from fossil fuel extraction.

And the IPCC’s stylized results are then used to justify the Green New Deal multibillion corporate bonanza.

A whole series of important processes including biodiversity, animal life, poverty, species loss, etc have been explained by the IPCC solely referring to the impact of the the increase in CO2 emissions on global warming, nothing else.

The Impact of Radioactivity on Climate

Are increased CO2 emissions from fossil fuel the only cause of  climate change and environmental degradation?

In this article, we  focus briefly on the impacts on the Ozone Layer resulting from the explosion of nuclear bombs, an issue which has not been addressed by the New Green Deal, as well as radiation from nuclear  power plants.

Radiation from Nuclear Power Plants (Fukushima)


In this regard, since 2011, amply documented, marine life as well as species loss has been affected by the release of radioactive plutonium into the Pacific Ocean following the Fukushima-Daichi disaster.


Nuclear Testing and Radioactive Fallout

The testing of nuclear weapons has been ongoing throughout the post WWII era. Among the more than 2000 tests, a large number of these tests are “not underground” or “underwater”, i.e the testing in the atmosphere. According to a 2000 Report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation to the General Assembly


The above report highlights the impacts of radiation on living cells as well on the concurrent incidence of leukaemia, cancer of the thyroid, lung and breast cancer.

What would be the impact of the explosion of nuclear weapons on the World’s climate?

The issue of nuclear winter was first addressed in a 1983 study by  R.P. Turco, O.B. Toon, T.P. Ackerman, J.B. Pollack, and Carl Sagan (referred to as TTAPS)  “Global Atmospheric Consequences of Nuclear War”

The publication of the TTAPS study at the height of the Cold War unleashed a concern on the devastating impacts of nuclear war including its climatic impacts.



It also created an awareness among US foreign policy-makers, which today is totally absent. Trump does not have the foggiest idea regarding the impacts of a nuclear war.

According to Atomic Archive.com which essentially summarizes the concepts of the TTAP study (p. 22) “When a nuclear weapon explodes in the air, the surrounding air is subjected to great heat, followed by relatively rapid cooling.”





It has been estimated that as much as 5,000 tons of nitric oxide is produced for each megaton of nuclear explosive power. See Atomic Archive

The 2008 Simulation of Nuclear Conflict. Impacts on Ozone Layer

In a major 2008 study by Michael Mills et al entitled Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict (Academy of Sciences of the United States) a  simulation was conducted  (largely based on the concepts outlined in the TTPS 1983 study) of a nuclear conflict involving 100 Hiroshima sized bombs. The simulation confirmed that the nuclear explosions “could produce long-term damage to the ozone layer, enabling higher than “extreme” levels of ultraviolet radiation to reach the Earth’s surface, (see GSN, March 16, 2010).


Increased levels of UV radiation from the sun could persist for years, possibly with a drastic impact on humans and the environment, even thousands of miles from the area of the nuclear conflict. …


The research by Mills and colleagues was the first to address the possibility that a nuclear explosion could lead to increased ultraviolet radiation levels on Earth, according to a NCAR press release issued during the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference.  NTI

According to Prof. Allan Robock:

In the 1980s, using simple climate models, we discovered that global nuclear arsenals, if used on cities and industrial areas, could produce a nuclear winter and lead to global famine.

Smoke from the fires would last for years in the upper atmosphere, blocking sunlight, and making it cold, dark and dry at the Earth’s surface. It would also destroy ozone, enhancing ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface.

While the immediate effects of nuclear strikes might kill hundreds of thousands, the numbers that would die from starvation in the years that followed could run into billions.

In the real sense of the word, nuclear war could potentially lead to a process of Human Extinction:

A very large nuclear war would be a calamity of indescribable proportions and absolutely unpredictable consequences, with the uncertainties tending toward the worse. . . . All-out nuclear war would mean the destruction of contemporary civilization, throw man back centuries, cause the deaths of hundreds of millions or billions of people, and, with a certain degree of probability, would cause man to be destroyed as a biological species . . . Andrei Sakharov, Foreign Affairs, Summer 1983

Those concerns have largely been excluded from the Climate Debate and the Extinction Rebellion.

The Extinction Rebellion Protest Movement has its eyes riveted on the rising emissions of Carbon Dioxide (from fossil fuel), heralded as “the most dangerous and prevalent greenhouse gas”.

All other variables are excluded. Scientific lies by omission.


Impacts of Chemicals on the Ozone layer

In recent history, Ozone layer depletion was caused by chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs. The CFCs are a greenhouse gas which was previously used in air conditioning and cooling units including refrigerators.

The use of CFCs was banned under the Montreal Protocol. A June 2016 study  however confirms that the Montreal Protocol failed to fully resolve the CFC ban:

“when countries began phasing out CFCs, manufacturers replaced them with hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). HFCs don’t deplete ozone, but they are potent greenhouse gases, which contribute to global warming. The challenge going forward, then, will be to develop new alternatives to HFCs — and to have the world adopt them, once again.”

Moreover, the Montreal Protocol did not eliminate methyl bromide (MeBr) which is an ozone-depleting substance .

Methyl bromide (MeBr) is used increasingly as a biocidal fumigant, primarily in agricultural soils prior to planting of crops. This usage carries potential for stratospheric ozone reduction due to Br atom catalysis, depending on how much MeBr escapes from fumigated soils to the atmosphere.

The IPCC simulations neglect the fact that HFC as well as MeBr constitute a threat to the ozone layer.

A recent UN report nonetheless confirms that despite the IPCC  alarm bell, “Earth’s protective ozone layer is finally healing from damage caused by aerosol sprays and coolants, a new United Nations report said.”


This report on ozone layer repair not only contradicts IPCC CO2 fossil fuel hype, it also suggests that the CO2 single variable analysis and projections are flawed.

Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD)

The militarization of climate is rarely mentioned in the Climate Debate. “In 1977, an international Convention was ratified by the UN General Assembly which banned ‘military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects.’”




The US possesses a vast arsenal of  electromagnetic weapons which are capable of  disrupting  climate through environmental modification techniques (ENMOD). (See the author’s earlier writings)

The impacts of ENMOD techniques for military use were documented by CBC TV in the early 1990s. The  report acknowledged that the HAARP facility in Alaska (now closed down or transferred to another location) under the auspices of the US Air Force had the ability of triggering typhoons, earthquakes, floods and droughts:


“Owning the Weather” for Military Use

According to US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report, the US Military Would eventually “Own the Weather”.

Advanced techniques of climatic warfare including environmental modification techniques:



Concluding Remarks 

Climate instability is an important concern. But it cannot be analyzed in isolation. It is an extremely complex process.

While there is a significant grassroots movement of young activists, the CO2 Climate Consensus has distracted millions of people from an understanding of the broader and ongoing threats to human life on Planet Earth. 

These climate strikes are taking place at a time of crisis, largely marked by US threats to wage war on Iran. The use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran is contemplated.

Activists are often misled by those who fund the campaign including Rockefeller et al, as well as by the organizers and the public relations operatives involving Hollywood celebrities, et al.

In a bitter irony, the movement against capitalism is funded by capitalism. It’s called “manufactured dissent”.

Global warfare

Global warfare using advanced weapons systems coupled with deliberate acts of destruction, sabotage and destabilization of sovereign countries constitutes the most serious threat to the survival of humanity.

The globalization of war is coupled with the derogation of civil rights, the surveillance State, neoliberal IMF-World Bank macroeconomic reforms applied Worldwide which trigger mass poverty, unemployment and environmental destruction. This global policy framework (controlled by powerful financial interests) repeals workers’ rights, destroys family farming, undermines the Welfare state leading to the privatization health and education, etc.

What is required is a broad protest movement which encompasses these interrelated dimensions. The underlying causes of this Worldwide Crisis must be understood. It is not caused by a single variable (aka CO2 emissions).

The Extinction Debate and Nuclear War

Nine countries including US, Russia, France, China, UK, Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea together possess nearly 14,000 nuclear weapons. (2017 data) The US and Russia have 6185 and 6500 respectively.

According to ICAN, “The United States and Russia maintain roughly 1,800 of their nuclear weapons on high-alert status – ready to be launched within minutes of a warning.”

Today’s nuclear bombs (with the exception of the so-called mini-nukes) are significantly more powerful in terms of explosive capacity than a Hiroshima bomb.

The B61.11 “mini-nuke” (categorized as a “low yield” “more usable” nuclear bomb) has an explosive capacity between one third and twelve times a Hiroshima bomb.

People should understand. There are enough nuclear bombs to destroy life on planet Earth several times over. Surely this should be part of the Extinction Debate.

While one can conceptualize the loss of life and destruction resulting from previous wars including Iraq and Afghanistan, it is impossible to fully comprehend the devastation which might result from a Third World War, using “new technologies” and advanced weapons, until it occurs and becomes a reality. The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name of world peace. “Making the world safer” is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust.  (Michel Chossudovsky, 2011)

War rather than CO2 emissions is the greatest threat to humanity. Oops, according to the media, nuclear weapons are a means to achieving World peace.

Trump has a 1.2 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program, initially set up by Obama.


While this multibillion dollar project is intended “to make the world safer”, these (expensive) nuclear weapons are categorized as “more usable” “humanitarian bombs”, “safe for the surrounding population”, according to scientific opinion on contract to the Pentagon.

US-NATO and their allies are involved in illegal acts of war. Nuclear war is on the drawing-board of the Pentagon.

But these wars are no longer illegal: they are part of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P). These are “humanitarian wars” or “counter-terrorism” ops despite the fact that millions of people have been killed and entire nations have been destroyed. It’s called “collateral damage”.

Needless to say, there are powerful financial interests behind the globalization of war.

War is good for business. And luckily for the Military Industrial Complex, the antiwar movement is dead.

The Ritual of Rebellion Prevails. 

University of Manchester sociologist Max Gluckman (1911-1975) in his writings showed how ritualized forms of rebellion by those who protest against those in power “through a controlled expression of hostility to authority” ultimately leads to the reinforcement of the established structures of authority.

Is that not what is happening today?

The movement against capitalism is funded and supported by capitalism.

The antiwar movement is dead. There are no protests directed against global warfare and the use of nuclear weapons on a first strike basis.



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  • Noland

    Does it matter? so long as the ‘job’ is done..

  • frankly

    Chossudovsky is a heavy hitter this article is chock full of good info. Global Research is one of my favorite favorites.

  • Tommy Jensen

    The most devastating is how so many hundreds of millions can be so stupid to fool around in feel porno and believe in it.
    Hundreds of million people are occupied writing CO2 reports, CO2 annual accounts, making-changing-driving Clima cars, changing their water, heat and sewage system and houses because of an obvious hoax.
    Yes the bankers are playing/financing/organising both sides, also alternative energy, alternative health care, alternative media, m.m.

  • Douglas Houck

    Sorry, but the author is quite delusional and knows nothing about Climate Change. Anybody who links ozone with climate change is on a different planet.

    1), the IPCC does not, nor ever has limited the discussion to one parameter CO2. The reports have always fully discussed all the factors that go into determining future temperture rise and change to the climate.

    2) I would never reference Richard S Lindzen , whose theory on clouds have been discredited. And besides he was on the 2001 NAS panel that concluded “…The committee said the conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the global warming that has occurred in the last 50 years is likely the result of increases in greenhouse gases accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community”. See: https://www.nap.edu/catalog/10139/climate-change-science-an-analysis-of-some-key-questions

    They also concluded that it was unlikely that humans would go extinct under the various IPCC scenarios.

    3) There is only one way that a nuclear war can exterminate life on the planet and that is if the fall-out and debri rises high into the atmosphere. This can only happen under a full blown US vs Russia nuclear war otherwise the heat is not enough to send the debri that high. The odds of that happening are quite small. The odds of the world’s climate changing for the worse and being that way for a thousand years or so are quite good.

    • Tommy Jensen

      Why fiddling in details when the case is a nutcase in all universal principles?

      Doing the majority slamming, “greenhouse gasses reflects the current thinking of the worlds scientific community”, “98% of all scientists believe in it”. Like when Galilei was alone.

      But dear Douglas, there is no majority voting in neither math nor gramma. All equations ends with only one result, 1 truth, and all the rest is lies.

      When Michel says other variations of extreme many in the equation are omitted, and some of them lead to the opposite cooling. Then math says there is no case, no equation, only a Hollywood fiction.

      • Douglas Houck

        Good luck with your math and grammer. They could both use some improvements.

        • Tommy Jensen

          So you accuse me to need reports, books and better understanding??……..LOL.

          Already on first page second section I found 3 grave errors.
          1. “A dangerous threat, is our reliance on finite resources”???
          As the sun gives us infinite energy, our resources are off course also infinite.
          Old exploited oil fields are being slowly filled up again. In your own garden you have infinite potatoes, apples, flowers, chickens, m.m.m. for centuries centuries.

          2. “decline in the availability of cheap energy”???
          As said, the oil and gas replaces itself when some is used, like when our body lose 1 litre blood. Meaning cheap energy from oil and gas in a billion year.

          3. ” …issues closely linked—through fossil fuels”???
          Oil is not fossil, its abiotic and produced eternally from the inner centre of the globe.
          Ask museums in which maximum depth they have found fossils. Then ask oil drilling companies in which depth they find oil. Big big difference.

          When your basics is not ok, the rest become bs.

      • MikeH

        “All equations ends with only one result, 1 truth, and all the rest is lies.”

        Let’s think this through. So a basic equation is (natural heating effects) + (man heating effects) = (total heating effects)

        This is the basic formula to understand the concentration on man made heating. However, the models of natural heating are grossly incomplete. This makes every study that relies on the base models incorrect. If the assumptions of natural effects are understated it stands to reason that man made effects are thought to be much more than what they are. IPCC models will change and include more solar forcing in 2022. This will clearly show man doesnt significantly alter earth climate.

        • Tommy Jensen

          No! Much of Wall Streets illusion campaigns to deceive is done by fragmentation. You take a small part out of a whole and blow it up, so it looks like the whole story, the truth. MSM do the same, fragment and/or omit with the aim to deceive you from seeing what actual happened.
          That’s why its so important to know universal principles.

          When you know the earth circulate around the sun, the earth circulate around itself and the moon circulate around the earth making flood and tide. The sun give eternally energy to the earth. The other planets in our sun system have each their systems to controle our sun universe impact on earth.
          It means the whole construction is a self correcting system keeping itself in balance no matter what we do.
          Like our body defend us when we get hurt or ill.

          When you further know math is the only way to understand this universe, as all fits together in math, our calender, time, distance, physics, you will quickly realise that Clima Change because of 4WD and CO2 is a far out comic book.

          If you further know how Rockefeller invented the “fossil oil” concept, and after a 100 years realised that people are so stupid they never get it, then he invented the “scarce water resources” although water is the most common material on earth and our drinking water comes cleaned and filtrated from the sea, knowing that you and other sheeple would be stupid enough to believe in this too the next 100 years.

          Enjoy your fragment studies.

  • ke4ram

    Man is his own worse enemy. He would cause his own extinction for the possibility of obtaining more wealth and power. Today they have trashed science for a climate religion based on lies, faked data, “believing” so called scientists on Corpgov payroll. CO2 is .04 pct of the atmosphere. It is what plants use to make the oxygen we breath. Mans extinction is in fact guaranteed and has been foretold. Why? Because of his arrogance and greed and most of all, his stupidity.

  • jm74

    Electric light bulbs throw out a lot of heat there are literally billions used 24/7. When flying over major countries at night they are lit up like Christmas trees; all that heat can’t dissipate but adds to the warming of the climate. There are most likely many other contributing factors.

    • MikeH

      Muh bulbs isn’t the reason the climate is changing.

      The models of the energy absorbed by earth from the sun is incomplete and this is the reason human global warming is even a thought. The official models will change in 2022 so the warmers have to get their policies in by then before reality slaps them around. For a better understanding of this, here is the video that describes the electric and plasma effects that really affect the earth. Did you know solar wind events from our sun and earthquakes correlate well enough to predict earthquakes? Yep. Far more energy is imparted to the earth than what the current climate models account for.


      • Tommy Jensen

        Then you left out the moon and the planets which also regulate and controle the whole system around the sun, of electric, electronic, radiation, ozone, flood and tide waves, whatsoever.

        I agree it must be funny to simulate these things as scientist. But please stay from telling the world you are able to interfere in this whole universal system.
        The guys aren’t even able get our water supply right, although 75% of the earth is covered with water and you can pick 2m3 water/day out of from the air with a water plant in a container placed in the desert.

        Get your kitchen right first, then we can talk about your interference in other peoples backyard next.