Handsup & Greta: A Fairy Tale
Is it hot in here, or is it just me? It was called “Global Warming” by liberal crusaders suggesting that we’re all destined to boil to death in just a few years, if we don’t change our selfish, evil ways. That is until, much to their disappointment, it was determined that the globe has only warmed by about 1.5-degrees over the past 100-years! So, in panic mode, they circled their horse-drawn wagons (so as not to pollute, beyond the naturally occurring pony fudge), and rallied around the new, and far safer alarm, “Climate Change,” allowing their perceived future damage, now, to be either hot or cold.
You see, back a failed concept or so ago, the globe, and in particular, our chunk of it, failed to really heat up for liberals on cue, which just wasn’t supposed to happen. Also never supposed to happen: (1) a few unique “men,” today, actually menstruating and having babies (see previous post), (2) a university humanities professor actually being conservative, (3) a young campus lib actually never needing a “safe space,” or (4) actually finding something costing more than a buck at the Dollar Store.
Sometimes, much to the dismay of liberals, facts can irritatingly overwhelm feelings. Thus, the revision from climate “warming,” to climate “change,” which then allowed the doom-merchants to get their “feelings” back. Offering them the satisfaction of either warmer or cooler changes in climate, so as to underscore, either way, their certainty that either the U.S.(their preference), or the globe, is doomed to extinction, by the forces of extreme, powerful, overwhelming….weather. Not nuclear war, not famine, not California, and not gingivitis, but ‘climate-dictated’ weather.
Yes, folks, by the weather. Echoed at last year’s United Nations climate summit, when Britain’s Sir Davis Attenborough, warned those present that “the collapse of our civilization and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon,” unless nations get doggone serious about combating man-made global warming. And the doom drum-beat continues. The director of policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists stated: “We are not running out of time. We are already out of time.” A UN Environment Program report indicates that world carbon dioxide emissions must drop by whopping 55% in ten years to stay on track for world survival. An extreme goal, unlikely to be met, at a time when many nations around the world are working hard to sustain their economic growth, leading inevitably to even greater Green House Gas (GHG) accumulation.
Growing prosperity has come to many African and Asian nations, along with the United States, of course, and other countries around the planet, which will increase emissions. And do be reminded that thousands of these international delegates (and staffs), harping all the while on CO2 reductions, are traveling to these UN climate meetings from around the world, and we’re pretty sure they’re not walking there. Meanwhile, summarizing the UN-driven call to save humanity by the intense push to “decarbonize,” with this dose of reality: “For the world to change, politicians, industries, and consumers will have to make hard, expensive choices.”
The basic question, then, is whether the nations of the world, some prosperous, some not, understandably focused on their own internal economies, are actually willing to make those “hard (i.e., 55% reduction in 10-years!), expensive choices.” Looking at the world’s adopted (imposed?) road map for GHG reductions, an analysis of the Paris Climate Accord (effective 2015) member nation reduction pledges indicates that almost 75% of the 184 climate pledges made for reduced emissions are “inadequate to slow climate change, as some of the world’s largest emitters will continue to increase emissions.” Among those will be China (29% of the world’s current CO2 emissions), and India (4th largest CO2 emitter), both with growing populations and economic expansion. Russia has not yet submitted a climate pledge! And some smaller nation reduction pledges will only happen if wealthier nations provide the funding! The United States pledged emission reductions by 2025, under the previous president, but President Trump plans to withdraw from the Paris Accord at the first allowable date (11-4-2020). Why? America first, rather than submitting to globalism’s creeping environmental / socialistic handcuffs. And, then, right now in the news and no surprise, international outlaw Iran failed to submit any emissions reduction pledge at all.
Getting back to the liberals-of-the-world ‘we are doomed’ mantra, their bottom line seems to be this: “Based on our meticulous analysis of the climate pledges, it is naïve to expect current government efforts to substantially slow climate change. Failing to reduce emissions drastically and rapidly will result in an environmental and economic disaster from human-induced climate change” (Dr. James McCarthy, Professor of Oceanography at Harvard, and co-author of this UN report). In other words, if human-produced CO2 emissions really are the overwhelming driver in global warming/climate change, the existing international pledges of reductions, within 10 or 20 years in the future, are simply not going to solve the coming “disaster” for humanity. Have a nice day.
But it’s not just due to the very recent doom-sayers that we’ve somehow managed to elude death. Predictions of the coming end of humanity have been voiced throughout decades, and even centuries, past! In more recent times, many voices of anguish trace back to 1970. The reason? The very first U.S. Earth Day occurred on April 22, 1970. It was the perfect time to declare approaching doom. Biologist George Wald predicted that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years, unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” Fellow biologist Barry Commoner wrote that “we are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of our nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
And the Earth Day death knell warnings continued. “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels, if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.” Good going everyone. We beat that 30-year threat without having to bring our our bathing suits and canoes to work. A 1967 book actually predicted mass starvation and famine, destined to occur by 1975, as the author concluded: “Today’s crisis can move in only one direction – toward catastrophe.” Missed it by a whisker, just a mere 45-years, and, hey look, we’re all, as a society, still here and prospering!
That same U.N. official, cited above, provided a ‘conservative estimate’ that the Earth’s temperature: “will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30-years.” In actuality, NASA reported a temperature increase of ½-degree Celsius, from 1989 to the present. Seems appropriate, then, to couple this dire heat rise prediction to something on the opposite end of the thermometer. In 1975, a British science writer warned that: “The threat of a new ice age (!) must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.” So bundle up, or sun screen, which is it?
Shifting from water or hot/cold temperatures predicted to do mankind in, to yet another issue, that of simply too many people on the planet. The best known proponent of population control was American entomologist Paul Ehrlich. Back in 1968, he wrote and released the book entitled The Population Bomb. Its promise of our coming doom, worldwide, caused quite a stir, raising the issue of overpopulation and food supplies that Americans likely never thought about. Wrote he: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over.” And he makes it quite clear, that we flat-out lost that battle. In the 1970’s, “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death; nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.” Now, 52-years later, it is our great good fortune that he was completely wrong, at least here in the United States. And there were a great many additional predictions of the coming end of time, from 40-to-50 years ago, but that’s enough from the crystal-ballers. You get the illusionary drift.
Much more recently, unfortunately, there are two sadly-prominent earth-doomers who stand out. Mr. Al “Kiss Your Rear End Good-Bye”Gore and his Inconvenient Truth movie told us that we had only 10-years left before we’d be facing the end. Among other things, global warming was going to elevate the sea levels, at least along the East Coast. As you know, he has made millions from preaching warming (and water) doom. And then there’s Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who last year announced a legislative desire for a ‘Green New Deal.’ Included within that ridiculously expensive and socially disruptive piece of (fill in the blank), was her prediction, as the scientist she is not, that the world would end in 12-years, if dramatic steps weren’t taken to deal with global warming/climate change. Apparently due to her grandstanding on climate change, one poll reported that almost 30% of Americans began to believe that young couples should take recent climate predictions into account before deciding to have children!! “There is a scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult,” leading to the question of whether or not it’s climitologically safe to make babies. So, AOC seems to have inadvertently supported population control, as well. Paul Ehrlich would be proud. Actually, we should thank her, since she has given us two more survival years than promised by Mr. Gore! Two more years until we all become human fritters, due to nature’s grand flamethrower of uninhabitable heat.
OK, so much for mankind purposely ruining the planet, and especially America’s piece of it, by failing to reduce, or stop completely, the use of fossil fuels, which was all along the basis for these interminable dooms-day predictions. And the reality is this: we’re not, realistically and economy-wise, going to be able to make any significant reduction in the use of oil, gas, or coal (already pulling back as utilities transition from coal largely to natural gas, which still doesn’t please critics) within a generation into the future, at the very least. Stopping the use of fossil fuels would turn a large share of our economy (employment!) upside down. But Mr. Biden has a nifty solution. He tells future out-of-work Appalachian coal miners not to worry. Instead of mining, they can all learn to “code”! That is one very scary man. While steps at reduction are being taken, a bite at a time, it will take years, if ever, to switch totally to renewables. Ironically, nuclear power has, historically, been a viable substitute for gas/oil/coal, but it’s start-up is costly, and there remains a lingering fear of it within the population (i.e., not in my backyard!).
The reality that climate crusaders refuse to accept is that man-made CO2, while it may contribute to some degree, it is not the only source of that gas. The EPA says: “Global warming represents one aspect of climate change.” Continuing: “As the earth circles the sun, there are three factors that affect the solar radiation levels (i.e., sunlight): “It’s tilt, plus the changing shape of the orbit around the sun, and the Earth’s wobble as it spins on its axis.” Along with those factors, “the shifting of the Earth’s tectonic plates creates large scale change to continental masses, impacting ocean and atmospheric currents, and triggering volcanic activity that releases carbon dioxide into the air.” And “the relatively pleasant global climate of the past 10,000-years is largely thanks to higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.” Keep that alternate source in mind.
Now, there have reportedly been five Ice Ages over the billions of years of the Earth’s existence. The duration of the last one was estimated by scientists at over 6,000-years. It is said to have ended 11,700-years ago. So then, man-made global warming is the cause of the Earth ending in 10 or 12 years, believe today’s progressive climate advocates. However, there were no American or world industrial smoke-stacks way back then. No cars, trucks, trains, or planes there to cause the globe to get hotter. So, something else must have caused all that region-covering ice to melt. And as we said in the preceding paragraph, the answer and the reason for the Big Melt, almost twelve-thousand-years ago, was not man’s CO2 activities, but rather the presence of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Yep, it was atmospheric carbon dioxide, say actual scientists, “that warmed the globe, melting back the continental ice sheets, creating the current climate that enabled humanity to thrive.” Specifically, “waters of the Southern Ocean may have begun to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, warming the globe.”
Had this whole hypocritical hysteria about climate change and unstoppable warming, been true, with predictions going back to the 1970’s, before and since, we would all be, by now, burnt or drowned toast. For those before, and more recently, who have predicted humanity’s demise, their pronouncements could only have come from sorcerers or palm-readers. There was simply no basis for, nor provable scientific fact for, approaching disaster, and to actually predict the year by which the earth shrives up. Again, there is no actual proof offered for a coming climate disaster. None. As such, we know by now, after a cumulative 50-years of climate dodge-ball, that these pronouncements of doom were either well meaning, but simply poor guesses, or, especially more recently with today’s cast of unaccredited climate gurus, simply hoaxes, in support of their very real political agenda. And here, then, is that progressive socialist/communist goal: More and more central government control, with climate as the decoy. Control of the driving forces in our economy and control of our individual lives. You saw that play out during the painful and regrettable Obama years, with much of those mandated policies restrictions, thankfully reversed by our American prosperity and freedom oriented current President. Anything promised by today’s progressive socialist presidential candidates, anything is like candy-on-a stick. Take the candy and get whacked by the stick. The aim, again, is imposition of collective control and the resulting removal of personal freedoms. That sounds a whole lot like socialism-to-communism, firmly in the political opposition’s globalism mind-set. So, the, we must do all in our power to see through the smoke screens (e.g., climate control, with an emphasis, of course, on control), and fight (vote) to keep that from ever happening. If we actually were to face the climate unthinkable (which we won’t!), in the 12-year time frame that Miss Ocasio-Cortezh as graciously granted to us, the heat will reside with the elite in Washington, while the deep freeze will be that imposed on the now vaporized liberties of the American people.
So, there you have it. OK, yes, man-made CO2 is likely a factor in perceived, and perhaps actual, global warming/climate change (proof, please!). And yes, given that, we should continue to take reasonable, responsible steps to reduce such, in ways that don’t significantly negatively impact our overall economy, our nation-wide employment, and our continued upward path to greater national prosperity. Atmospheric CO2 is a reality and another contributing factor affecting climate. As is the sun, and the earth’s changing position in relation to it. Human activity is unquestionably a causal part of the GHG accumulation, but historically, it’s by no means the only one!
And this addendum on the subject of renewables is simply to good to leave out of this discussion. It’s detailed within the editorial pages of today’s Wall Street Journal (1-4-20). In a move toward renewables, the Bureau of Land Management announced plans to approve a 7,100-acre solar farm east of Las Vegas. It is reported that, upon completion, it would provide electricity to 130,000 homes. This is a huge step, among others around the country, toward moving from fossil-fuel-generated power to the sun as the acceptable replacement source. Well, guess who is actually objecting to this project: the Progressive Green Power folks! Yep, they are concerned about the environmental impact on habitat animals like the desert tortoise and kit fox, plus some rare plants. And based on solar experience in California, they are also concerned about the huge number of bird deaths that massive solar creates. They want it both ways: move to renewables but don’t disturb or kill birds and animals. While fossil fuels are deemed ‘bad.’ It would appear that, at times, so are renewables!! Incredible…..
(1.5-degree temperature rise via epa.gov; staff, 1-19-17; Attenborough quote via dailycaller.com; Michael Bastasch, 12-3-18; Union of Concerned Scientists quote/5% reduction goal via dailymail.com, Ros Ibbetson, 11-26-19; For the world to change quote via The Wall Street Journal, Rochelle Toplensky, 1-3-20; 75% of pledges inadequate/No Russia climate pledge/China & India emissions via junkscience.com (“All the science that’s fit to debunk”), Scott Milloy, 11-5-2019; Multiple end of the world quotes via aei.org, Mark Perry, 4-21-19, and via foxnews.com, Maxim Lott, 1-3-20; Ehrlich quotes via smithsonianmg.com, Charles Mann, January, 2018; Climate impact on children quote via dailycaller.com, Tim Pearce, 3-4-19; EPA quotes via epa.gov, 1-19-17; As the earth circles the sun quote via weather.com, Ada Carr, 3-27-17; Tectonic plates impact quote via history.com, Editors, 6-7-19; Atmospheric CO2 caused the melt quote via scientificamerican.com, David Biello, 4-4-12; Opposition to solar project via The Wall Street Journal, editorial page A-12, 1-4-20).