I would like to thank Paul for allowing me to publish his work. This appeared here. RK
The full-court press is on. Alarmist scientists,
politicians, pressure groups, newspapers, ministers, rabbis and bureaucrats
want Americans to “stop stalling” on climate change. They demand that we
embrace “revenue-neutral” carbon taxes and carbon dioxide regulations, before
it’s “too late” to prevent “catastrophic” global warming, “monster” storms and
rising seas that will “inundate our coastal cities.”
Anyone dissenting from this “call to action” is a climate
change “denier” – a pejorative devised to vilify and silence anyone who rejects
this agenda, by linking our views to Holocaust denial. What nonsense.
All of us “deniers” know climate change is real and has
been throughout Earth’s many cycles of warming and cooling, storms and
droughts, ice ages and little ice ages. Striations (scratches) on a chunk of
Niagara Escarpment limestone that I dug out a mile from my boyhood home
memorialize stones dragged by the last glacier that buried Wisconsin under a
mile of ice. Countless climate changes have buffeted our
Earth.
What we deny are assertions that human carbon dioxide
emissions have replaced the myriad of complex, interrelated planetary, solar
and cosmic forces that caused previous climate reverberations, and that what we
are experiencing now is unprecedented and likely to be catastrophic.
Not one of the alarmist claims is supported by actual
observations or scientific evidence. Even worse, the claims are getting
more ridiculous with every passing day: “children aren’t going to know what snow is,” crime is rising, oceans won’t smell the same, and storms are
getting worse – because of global warming.
Contrary to the hype and hysteria, our planet stopped
warming 16 years ago, even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continued to
climb. That prompted climate catastrophists to start talking about “climate
change” and blame every “extreme weather” event on CO2 emissions.
As I have pointed out before, far from being a “dangerous
pollutant” (as President Obama and EPA keep saying), carbon dioxide makes all life on Earth possible. It makes
food crops and other plants grow faster and better, loads them with more
nutrients, helps them survive droughts, and makes
our planet greener.
This trace gas has almost nothing to do with planetary
warming or climate change. But it’s worth noting that the United States has
slashed its CO2 emissions more than almost any other country – sending them
back to where they were 30 years ago, thanks to the environmentalists’
latest target: fracking! And the daily human contribution of
CO2 to our atmosphere is equivalent to a penny out of $1 million!
CO2 levels have “soared” to 400 ppm (0.04% of Earth’s
atmosphere) not because of the USA or other developed countries – but because
China, India and dozens of other countries are working desperately to lift
billions of people out of abject poverty. To do that, they need fossil fuels,
which provide 80% of the energy that makes modern civilization and living
standards possible – and these countries are not going to slash their hydrocarbon
use. To suggest otherwise reflects callous contempt for the needs of families
that want to take their rightful places among Earth’s healthy and prosperous
people.
No one would suggest that the absence of extreme
weather events over a particular time period is due to humans. However, recent
history certainly contradicts incessant claims that our weather
is getting worse. In fact, no category 3 or higher hurricane has struck the
United States in eight years, the longest such stretch since the Civil War.
With only a couple of exceptions earlier this summer, the US is enjoying its
longest respite from major tornadoes in decades. We are also witnessing the
highest August Arctic sea ice extent since 2006, amid the
coldest summer on record at the North Pole; record August lows for Alert and Eureka, in
Nunavut, BC; and record highs for the extent of August sea ice in Antarctica.
Equally fascinating, most of the record high
temperatures that the alarmists are trumpeting beat the previous records,
mostly set in the 1930s, by mere hundredths of a degree. Yet,
somehow that’s news.
As to oceans inundating coastal communities, Topex
Poseidon satellites show virtually no rise in sea levels between
1993 and 2001, and the EU’s Envisat satellites show no rise from 2003 through
2011. The steady 2-3 mm per year rise in sea level, it turns out, is because
scientists “adjust” the raw data (always upward, never down, for some reason).
But even 200-300 mm (8-12 inches) per century, or by the year 2100, is a far
cry from the 3-20 feet that President Obama and former VP Al Gore have warned
us about. Even Mr. Obama was off a few years when he said June 2008 was “the
moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow.” But it’s one more climate
cataclysm that we can erase from our worry list – especially compared to the
400 feet that the world’s oceans have risen since the end of the last ice age.
(Mr. Gore is also famous for misinforming his 2009
“Tonight Show” audience that the Earth’s interior is “really hot, several
million degrees” – the core is actually 9,000 degrees F – and for refusing to debate anyone on climate change or
even take audience questions that he has not preapproved. Perhaps in his
defense, Nobel Laureate Gore managed only
a C+ and a D in the only science courses he ever took.)
If it’s “weird weather” you seek, just peruse Richard
Keene’s fascinating weather guides, Skywatch East and Skywatch West, for numerous examples of
wild and wacky weather in the USA. For more examples, check out the Tri-State Twister and Children’s Blizzard, or consult the
Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change 2011 interim report, Climate Change
Reconsidered. You will be amazed at how different the facts are from the
fallacies, fibs and fear mongering you find in the “mainstream media.”
One final point. No tax that penalizes people and
businesses for using fossil fuels is “revenue neutral.” Any such tax or
regulation kills profits and jobs, turns full-time jobs into part-timers, and
adversely affects people’s health and well-being. Millions of families cannot
heat and cool their homes properly, pay their rent, mortgage or other bills,
take vacations, or save for retirement. The increasing stress results in sleep
deprivation, poor nutrition, more commuting, higher incidences of depression
and alcohol, drug, spousal and child abuse, lower life expectancies and higher
suicide rates. Climate taxes and regulations also force us to spend billions
subsidizing environment unfriendly biofuel, wind and solar energy.
That’s an intolerably high price to pay, for “protection”
from illusory and exaggerated climate dangers.
Climate alarmists are trying to sucker, snooker and
stampede us into taking “immediate action” on job and economy-strangling taxes
and restrictions, before more people catch on to what’s really happening. This
protection racket is one more example of passing a law, so that we can find out
what’s in it. We simply cannot afford to let science get coopted to serve anti-hydrocarbon political agendas.
Demands that we “stop stalling” on “catastrophic manmade
climate change” have nothing to do with preventing warming and cooling, storms
and droughts that have been “real” since time immemorial. They have everything
to do with regulating and restricting the use of hydrocarbons that provide 80%
of the energy that makes modern civilization and living standards possible.
They have everything to do with giving politicians, bureaucrats and pressure
groups more money and more control over our lives and economy – but with no
accountability for the lies, mistakes, job losses, ill health and deaths that
are inevitable as US living standards deteriorate, and Third World lives remain
destitute and desperate.
Computer models and scary predictions are not evidence.
Basing energy and economic decisions on climate models is akin to betting your
life’s savings on a computer model that focuses on middle linebackers and
ignores quarterbacks and offensive lines, in predicting the Buffalo Bills will
win the 2014 and 2015 Super Bowls – and when the prediction falls flat
insisting that the Bills really did win, and reality must be “adjusted” to make
it conform with the predictions.
Climate “deniers” and rationalists should support Senator
Ron Johnson (R-WI) and other politicians and scientists who are under constant
attack by climate alarmists, for daring to dissent from approved orthodoxy.
Their vigilance and determination are all that stand between energy and
economic sanity – and America heading down the same destructive path that
Europe has trod for the past two decades.
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