THE CO2 COALITION AND THE ERROR
ABOUT THE CO2 EMISSIONS. PART 1.
How I lost the membership
Erik Bye
July 2025
I was personally invited by William Happer to be a member of the academic organisation CO2 Coalition. The organisation has about 190 academic members, including several Nobel Prize Laureates, and I looked upon this invitation as significant.
I was invited to support the scientific activity to increase the knowledge of the importance of the CO2 molecule for all life on earth. In addition, I considered the possibility of improving my CO2 competence, and last but not least, to freshen up and improve my English.
In addition to the external contribution, the Coalition has organised an internal discussion platform for the presentation and internal discussions of ideas for further exploration.
CO2 in or out of the ocean?
My first contribution to the internal discussion was the presentation of my biography, with 130 Norwegian titles translated to English. Half of the articles were presented with the possibility for a direct translation.
In one of the Fakta360 articles, I described the quadratic increase of the CO2 level in the atmosphere:
https://fakta360.no/2025/01/antall-mennesker-pa-jorda-bestemmer-co2nivaet/
The curvature being a result of the emission of CO2 from the warm ocean. Here I referred to an article of H. Yndestad, which confirmed the curvature of a parabola, see Figure 4 in this article:
https://scienceofclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/Yndestad-2022-L unar-Forced-CO2-Variability.pdf
My article was commented on by Wrightstone, who disagreed with the CO2-flux direction. According to Wrightstone, both Yndestad and I were wrong. However, after some discussions with others, it turned out that the flux direction actually is dependent upon he lattitude and the temperature of the ocean. I was urged by Wrightstone to correct the article, without any further considerations. Due to the variable flux direction, related to the latitude, no corrections were decided immediately.
CO2 Coalition is wrong about the natural CO2 emission
Then I was aware of this article from the Coalition in December 2024:
Human Contribution to Atmospheric CO2: How Human Emissions Are Restoring Vital Atmospheric CO2
https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Human-Contributi on-to-Atmospheric-CO2-digital-compressed.pdf
According to the ABSTRACT, they claim that the CO2 emission in modern times is mainly anthropogenic, i.e. caused by humans:
This must be wrong; the Coalition has omitted the natural part of the CO2 emissions, which is almost 95% of the emissions. The anthropogenic part is only around 5%, according to the generally accepted pattern.
This was not accepted by Wrightstone, who responded that I was wrong and that the inclusion of the natural CO2 part was irrelevant. According to the Coalition, the «sinks» would absorb the natural part so quickly that it was a big mistake to include the natural CO2 emission in the CO2 budget.
To my best knowledge, the natural amount was the dominating part, and I actually had to ask if this paper had been published with peer review somewhere. The answer was no, and due to a large agreement among the members, such a publication was considered unnecessary. My comment on consensus as a non-scientific concept was not commented on by Wrightstone.
I was then made aware of the discussion between the first author of the article, Ferdinand Engelbeen, and several scientists, eg. Hermann Harde, Willie Soon, and Edwin Berry. According to Hermann Harde, the human-caused contribution was 15%:
https://scienceofclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/Harde-2023-Und erstanding-Increasing-CO2-II.pdf
All the scientific arguments towards the Coalition was not appreciated by Wrighstone, and I was accused of being unfriendly towards his colleagues:
«Erik: Please show some respect in your posts to the highly qualified experts who have created the reports. You posted: “I have earlier pointed out that the following paper from CO2 Coalition is wrong. ”
When, in fact, it has been well documented that your sources (Roth and others) are pushing bad science.»
It is up to the readers here to evaluate being claimed for promoting «bad science». All my references were scientific papers, judged through peer review in the scientific journal: Science of Climate Change (SCC).
The end of the membership
One day later, I got this message from Wrightstone:
«Erik: After requesting twice that you not be disrespectful to our other esteemed members, you continued. Our membership committee has determined that you are not a good fit for our Coalition.
I received several emails concerning your conduct:
“I was struck by the disrespectful tone of his comments. Offering an alternative hypothesis for discussion is one thing, but what shocked me was his bold statement that the other Coalition members were wrong. ”
“I was shocked by his tone.”
“He is promoting junk science using highly flawed reports and has been discourteous in his portrayal of the fine work completed by our team of experts on the matter of atmospheric CO2.”
Again, the Science is «bad and junk», and the word «error» is too much.
And my membership in the CO2 Coalition organisation ended after 1 1/2 months!
That might have been a relieving decision, for me!