Fossil Fuel Greenhouse Gas Pollution Blamed For Trump’s Election: New Study Teaming Up Health Scientists And Election Data Scientists Reaches Startling Conclusion

A scientific analysis that clouded thinking, i.e. CO2 clouds, led to the election of Donald J. Trump

A scientific analysis that clouded think, i.e. CO2 clouds, led to the election of Donald J. Trump.
Two heads are better than one, and two teams of scientist bringing together different areas of expertise that might never have been thought of as related can uncover and explain things that heretofore have gone entirely unnoticed. . . .

. . . That’s why we are now getting crucial new insights into some very important matters from a new study produced by health scientists studying the effects of carbon dioxide, CO2, the greenhouse house gas being pumped into the atmosphere as we burn fossil fuels, who teamed up with election data scientists who can explain exactly what accounts for often unpredictable swings of the American electorate.  It’s been more than two years, almost two and half, since Donald J. Trump was, to the great surprise of many, declared the elected president of the United States.  Now, reviewing carefully collected facts and statistics and applying a kind of analysis that nobody previously was perspicacious enough to apply, it turns out that Trump’s election can be handily explained– It's not a reason anyone thought of before.

That nobody thought of it before is probably due to the way that scientists too often operate in their own independent thought silos not realizing how their work interrelates with work that others are doing in the world.  Thankfully, we got some synergy leading to something better after two scientists from disparate specialties encountered each other in one of Harvard's faculty cafeterias and afterwards decided to bring their teams together to fashion a joint study uniting their respective areas of expertise.

For some time now scientists have known, including the work of a Harvard study confirming the findings of a little-publicized 2012 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, that increasing levels of CO2, although colorless and odorless, can have deliver adverse health effects.  That includes “a direct and negative impact on human cognition and decision-making.”  (See- Exclusive: Elevated CO2 Levels Directly Affect Human Cognition, New Harvard Study Shows, Joe Romm, October 26, 2015.)  The effects are more pronounced in indoor environments where trapped CO2 can accumulate and rise to even higher levels, the more sealed an insulated the room is to conserve energy, the more readily the CO2 can accumulate.  That can be especially problematic in situations where rooms are well populated by the carbon dioxide-expelling breath of many human beings.

At concentrations of 1,000 ppm, human cognitive ability declines by around 21 percent.  (See: The Uninhabitable Earth- Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think, by David Wallace-Wells, July 9, 2017.)  The problem is not just the better insulation of buildings that prevents air exchange; it is that with CO2 rising throughout the earth’s atmosphere, now over 400 parts per million, the baseline from which such build up starts is increasing and the outdoor atmosphere has a less restorative effect when mixed back in where indoor levels are high.

What can this look like indoors?  In examples the 2012 LBNL-SUNY article gives:

In surveys of elementary school classrooms in California and Texas, average CO2 concentrations were above 1,000 ppm, a substantial proportion exceeded 2,000 ppm, and in 21% of Texas classrooms peak CO2 concentration exceeded 3,000 ppm.

The Harvard health scientists noted that when cognition and decision-making are impaired by high CO2 levels, thinking becomes more primal and what has, in politics, been termed the “lizard brain,” that operates out of the brain’s more primitive limbic system and its amygdala, asserts itself.  The effects on politics and political outcomes of the “lizard brain” have already been widely discussed and analyzed by those concerned with political dynamics, prediction and calculations.

Trump rise psychology? - The "lizard Brain"

Predicted voting behaviors= matrix

What the teamed up scientists were able to do was create a matrix of predictive behaviors for cohorts of voters across all spectrums.  This was coupled with replicative testing involving focus sessions about how these cohorts would vote.  Overlaid was testing of the predictive shifts based on the brain and cognitive effects of the current amounts of extra CO2 pollution that they were able to research and determine that different cohorts of voters were experiencing and how with impaired cognition they would let their lizard brain impulses surface and ultimately control their choice. . .

The result was a range of predicted outcomes from the assessed influence that CO2 pollution was already having through cognitive impairment on U.S. voting behavior in 2016.  The scientists said that it was impossible to tell exactly where within this determined range the effect might actually have been on the election, but that no matter where it fell, it was clear that the effective decision making impairment was enough to account for swinging enough voters to get Trump “elected” in each and every set of determined probabilities.

As an example of how the effects were taken into account, information about how much time different groups of voters generally spend inside also had to be considered.  California voted very blue in the national election and that was accounted for partly by the amount of time Californians spend outdoors, often at the patios of outdoor restaurants where patrons are kept warm with outdoor gas burning space heaters.

While the results of the study only reached conclusions about the direct cognitive impairment effects of CO2, the paper also noted for future analysis a number of other ways the researchers have already begun to study that increased CO2 pollution in the atmosphere could have affects on the election as well.  As OSHA, the United States Occupational Health Administration, notes, high CO2 levels can also leave human beings lethargic.  The researchers feel that this probably affected voter turnout.

The researchers further pointed out that high CO2 levels also affect human cognition (and generate listlessness) indirectly via a reduction in the nutrients in the food human beings are eating.  See: Rising CO2 Is Reducing The Nutritional Value Of Our Food, by Fiona McMillan, May 27, 2018 and How More Carbon Dioxide Can Make Food Less Nutritious, by Brad Plumer, May 23, 2018.

With CO2 levels still rising in the planet's atmosphere, the scientists predict that in future elections will reflect even more exaggerated swings in the voting electorate of this nature.

The scientists said that they had hurried to get the results of their study out in time for the unfolding of the next national election cycle.  They said that they regretted not having been able to do their research and release information even sooner.  They said they would have been able to produce results sooner, but that they had a hard time being taken seriously when they proposed their study for funding.  This was because so many of their potential funders believed that other reasons provided a more probable explanation for Trump’s election.

The researchers admitted that other factors were highly influential in turning the election Trump’s way.  They said that included various forms of voter suppression, unreliable voting machines and votes that likely went uncounted. However, they said what really derailed their ability to get to bottom of what turned the election was something else. . 

The researchers said that, at one point, funding they had lined up for their study was diverted when their funder decided that a better use of the funds would be to send it as an unsolicited bonus to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow to encourage Ms. Maddow to do more of her Russiagate investigation reporting.  The researchers pointed out that the unsolicited bonus must have been the very teeniest drop in the bucket given Ms. Maddow’s astronomical multi-million annual salary.
                                   
The irony is that the researchers, who are now at work on documentation respecting a new analysis, say that the cognition-impairing effects of CO2 pollution, which are indiscriminate, almost certainly account for the nation’s long distraction by the Russiagate probe championed by Maddow.

First publication of the researchers study and documentation is to be put up on Facebook on April 1st.