The Earth is Out of Balance
Climate Scientists warned us, now they are getting fired and silenced.
“What is at stake is the freedom to investigate, debate, and express ideas that run counter to the interests of corporations and their political allies. Attacks on this basic freedom hide behind the guise of transparency but, in reality, are a step toward tyranny.”
― Shawn Lawrence Otto, the war on Science
“Earth in the Balance,” was the famous title to Senator Al Gore’s 1992 groundbreaking book which proposed the idea of a “Global Marshall Plan” for the environment. This new plan was needed to address escalating issues like stabilizing the exploding population, implementing emerging environmental technologies, recognizing economic “rules of the road” by measuring negative impacts and generally cooperating more on a global scale to help heal our suffering Planet Earth.
In 2006, the former Vice President Al Gore followed up his best-selling work with an an even more popular book titled, “An Inconvenient Truth.” The book and film were adapted from a slide show that Gore was giving regularly to educate the public about the dangers of global warming. Specifically, Gore stated that human greenhouse gas emissions were driving increases in global temperature with results detrimental to human life, and essentially, all life forms on Planet Earth.
My career as an explorer began the same years Gore was writing and publishing his first book. I was a young adventurer, environmentalist and photographer when I first went to sea in 1991 and vey much influenced by Gore’s thoughts and writing. While aware of global warming at the time, I didn’t realize yet the rapid climate changes that would happen to reshape my entire world view.
I first observed global warming at work along the Antarctic Peninsula in 1992. Our sailboat and crew of Cloud Nine was allowed to stop and anchor at the US Scientific Base called Palmer Station after getting thrashed about in stormy weather near the frozen continent. Scientists at Palmer Station told us that the Antarctic Peninsula was rapidly warming and threatening species, like the Adelie Penguin, and disrupting the entire ecosystem and food web.
In 1994, I sailed north to the Arctic via Greenland and attempted the Northwest Passage east to west over the top of the world, something never accomplished by an American sailboat. My mission was simple, photograph the austere beauty of this remote region of the world, observe and record the local environmental conditions we encountered along the journey.
Long story short, we got hopelessly stuck in the Arctic Sea ice which blocked our path through the Northwest Passage and we were very lucky to escape and retreat from the north but could not complete the passage.
In 2007, I returned to the Northwest Passage on Cloud Nine determined to accomplish the east to west transit. This time I was armed with scientific knowledge about global warming affecting the Arctic ice pack that clearly showed a “death spiral” of declining sea ice that would allow us to proceed, where before we failed. What we encountered in the summer of 2007 profoundly changed my life forever.
Our crew of six on the 57’ fiberglass sailboat Cloud Nine sailed almost 7000-miles through the Northwest Passage becoming the first American sailboat to accomplish this feat in history. But our record sail deserves a footnote as we definitely got an assist by a rapidly-changing Arctic environment with dramatically less ice. Our story went viral worldwide and we became a valuable piece of climate data.
In the short thirteen years between my two Arctic expeditions, I documented a forty-percent loss of sea ice to our North Polar environment. This loss was not normal. I became an eye-witness to one of the earth’s first great climate “tipping points,” where the planet itself begins to react to human-caused climate change in ways that we may not be able to understand, control or stop.
I returned from this voyage with the knowledge that Al Gore’s book, “Earth in the Balance,” was outdated. The earth now was clearly out of balance, but his idea of a Global Marshall plan was now needed more than ever, and implemented quickly.
A newly elected President Obama gave me tremendous hope that this process could be initiated. There seemed to be worldwide momentum. I was speaking about the issue to large audiences at venues like first-ever World Science Festival in New York City and I sensed positive change in the air. The public was ready and energized.
Then something changed. The largest and most profitable companies in the history of the world saw their business plan was in jeopardy. In fact, we now know through unearthed documents, the world’s largest oil companies i.e. ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, etc, knew their business plans and products were destroying the earth’s biosphere, that which provides the delicate protection to all life on Planet Earth.
Oil company scientists in the 1970’s predicted the global warming and changing climate very accurately. So how did they respond? Instead of supporting a phasing out, and transitioning away, from their planet killing products, they doubled-down by creating PR campaigns that obscured the dangers of their polluting industries. Because of the 2010 Citizens United SCOTUS decision, they could also funnel massive amounts of dark money to purchase candidates that would support fossil-fueled energy production. It worked.
Fast forward to 2025. Slogans like, “America First, Energy Freedom, Energy Dominance and Drill Baby Drill,” are all uniformly used by MAGA GOP Republicans who have rallied around Big Oil while also distancing themselves from efficient clean energy alternatives like solar, wind, water and battery storage. The political capture is almost complete.
Why do I tell this story? The Trump Administration is the culmination of all these years of propaganda, dark money and chipping away at the truth. Truth doesn’t mater in a world of alternative facts where the “climate is always changing.” Why worry, be happy, go shopping. Truth, and the Truth-Tellers, are the first casualties in the drift to fascism. Another casualty is global cooperation (think Gore’s environmental Marshall Plan) as “America First” and other Nationalist authoritarian movements spread like infectious diseases across the world.
Who brings us the truth about global warming and the dangers of climate disruption?Climate scientists i.e. atmospheric chemists, oceanographers, astrophysicists, meteorologists and their institutions bring this truth everyday from NASA, NOAA, National Academy of Sciences, Union of Concerned Scientists, Colleges and Universities across the country, you know, the best scientific institutions in the world built over our nation’s history. Heck, Abraham Lincoln began the National Academy of Sciences in 1863, with the Civil War fully raging.
There is a current “War on Science” which is very real, and extremely dangerous. In recent years, scientists have been harassed and threatened, data has been challenged by social media influencers and conspiracy theorists, climate education has been disrupted or eliminated and hundreds of books and websites have been banned censored or destroyed. Just look at Iowa for an example where the terms “evolution” and “climate change” have recently been censored from public education curriculum.
This all became very personal to me on Friday (2/28) as we learned that 800 NOAA scientists were fired. This included one of my young friends named Zack Labe. Website Zack is brilliant climate scientist who had recently achieved his “dream job” at NOAA. He is a great climate communicator who designs beautiful graphs which easily convey climate science to the public. He is the go to source for my presentations. As you can see below, his work directly connects to my eye-witness documentation to prove the urgency of the climate crisis.
I am honored to be one of the three hosts for a newly released Substack Podcast called “Three Degrees.” Podcast Link We are telling the truth about climate through unique guests and narratives. Meteorologist and climate communicator, Chris Gloninger, is the producer. Chris has now lost colleagues to the mass firings also. But Chris is also a big part of my story as he was harassed, and his life threatened, because he had felt the moral imperative to bring climate change into nightly news weather forecasting. As a meteorologist at KCCI-TV in Des Moines he was telling the truth. For that he was threatened, and then resigned and left the state of Iowa with his family. What a tragic loss to the state. Meteorologist Threatened
One of our recent guests was sailor and climate scientist, Dr. Jennifer Francis. She is an Arctic specialist and we spoke the same language, sailing, exploring, climate. A fascinating conversation ensued where she confirmed everything I’ve been presenting about Arctic ice loss for years. Then she broke some news. The North Polar region has now lost 75% of its total volume of ice in the last 40 years. Full stop. Think about that. Planet Earth is billions of years old and we just lost 3/4ths of the North Pole ice in 40 years. This should be a call to a planetary climate emergency.
$Billion-dollar climate storms are happening on average every 2 1/2 weeks in the United States and the first $Trillion-dollar climate disaster is looming just over the horizon.
We must fight. We must fight for the scientists, the institutions and the truth-tellers from all walks of life. We should be committed to, and focused on, letting the best science guide us into a new, more sustainable future where the next generations can inherit a stable Planet Earth. Then maybe, just maybe, that future generation can bring the Earth back into Balance.
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Thanks for the powerful message, David! In retrospect, we can say that Gore should/could have pushed the Inconvenient Truth message vigorously when he had a platform as VP.
Wow. Thank you for this article. In the early 70s when I was going to school in Bellevue Nebraska ( Mission Jr High ) One of my teachers was already speaking this language to us and we thought, what is he talking about? It always stuck in my mind. I never forgot that conversation in class that day. And this backs it up ! please continue to share. This is extremely interesting. Thank you so much Barb W.