I'll Take Climate Change For All Your Money, Alex

     Let’s start by stating an incontrovertible fact: climate change is real, and has been happening on earth since, well, there was an earth. Now let’s don’t confuse climate change with weather.  People often do. You’ve probably heard “this summer heat is a result of climate change” or “I guess all this snow in (name any place) is because of climate change.” No, it’s not. Weather is, as a general rule, the temporal state of the earth’s atmosphere, and more specifically, the troposphere just below the stratosphere.  Temperature changes (hot or cold), precipitation (wet or dry), cloud conditions (windy, calm or stormy) all refer to day to day changes and patterns. The difference in weather and climate change is, as you might imagine, time.  Weather and weather patterns happen daily, weekly or monthly but climate change is noticeable only through averages of measurements through decades and even centuries. Since the average human life expectancy is plus/minus 80-85 years, climate change itself will be something that affects future generations to a far greater degree than it will anyone that happens to be reading this today - or even tomorrow or the day after.

     The long-term aspect of climate change is only predictable to the extent that scientists looking at past weather patterns and their causes may use them to predict future weather patterns.  That is, as you might suspect, playing a rather long game of “what if” on the supposition that climate in the future will follow some -or many-of the patterns in the past. Milankovitch Cycles (developed by Servian scientist Milutin Milankovitch), hypothesize that the long term, collective effect of changes in the Earth’s position relative to the Sun are a driver of climate cycles responsible for triggering the beginning and end of glaciation periods (AKA Ice Ages). It’s a rather complicated theory that involves changes in the shape of the earth’s orbit, angle of axis tilt and direction of the axis of rotation (eccentricity, obliquity and precession, respectively).  The universe is nothing, however, if unpredictable, and unforeseen and unknown factors seem to come into play quite often. If a large meteor strikes earth again, all bets on climate change are immediately off, and you’d better hope that emergency food supply can last long enough for the sun to reappear (not likely), or if a rogue AI decides it really would be a better planet without all those pesky humans around and creates a legion of AI Terminators (more likely), then all bets on climate change ending human life on earth become moot.

     You have probably read about the terrible wildfires that are sweeping the US at an “unprecedented rate” and burning “more acreage per year than at any other time in our history” and more often than not attributed to higher temperatures as a result of “climate change.” It’s simply not true. Below is a chart of wildfires in the US since 1926.  Judge for yourself:

     Several other climate predictions, predictably, have come over the last 50 years or so, and only seem to have two things in common; 1) they are from “experts” that resort to scare tactics to attract attention and promote socialism, and 2) they are all wrong. Climate Alarmists have for many years been predicting their particular version of the Climate Apocalypse in various forms, including the 1989 warning from the UN “Global Warming To Wipe Nations Off the Face of the Earth if Climate Change Not Addressed by 2000,” the 1967 book “Famine 1975! America’s Decision: Who Will Survive?” and Al Gore himself in 2006 predicted that humanity only has 10 years before reaching a climate change point of no return.  His movie “An Inconvenient Truth” showed animations of water slowly covering Manhattan and Florida.  He predicted an ice-free Arctic by 2013, but later moved the date to 2014. His movie, strangely enough, fails to mention that Al bought an $8 million beachfront property in LA with some of his profits. Then there’s Scientist Harrison Brown’s prediction in Scientific American that “lead, zinc, tin, gold and silver deposits will be fully depleted before 1990.”   Another warning from the UN in 1982 from Mostafa Tolba warned us “by the turn of the century, an environmental catastrophe will witness devastation as complete…as any nuclear holocaust.”  In 1970, the prediction was “New Ice Age by 2020,” later amended in 1974 to “Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast” and “New Ice Age by 2070.” My personal favorites are from noted scientist Alexandria Cortes and her warning that “the earth will end in 12 years if nothing is done to address climate change.” I’m not sure where she got her data, but 12 years seems like an amazingly short time, even for drastic measures. John Kerry, US Climate Envoy whose work is so important he must fly in a private jet, is working diligently to arrange “climate reparations” from industrialized countries to those “less developed” as penance for environmental injustices ignored for years. This call for “climate justice” is not new, but has now reached the stage that many countries, including the US, have agreed in principle to participate in a fund that would be “separate from money to help poor countries adapt to a changing climate…. Loss and damage is a matter of historic responsibility to pay for irreparable losses such as the disappearance of national territory, culture and ecosystems.” I’m not sure how that fits in with fighting climate change; if he believes we are all doomed to extinction from heat, cold, rising water levels, fire, storms or starvation in the near future, why are we asked to spend money for reparations when there won’t be time for the people we send it to spend it? 

     A 2013 article notes “Observed Rate of Global Warming Half of What Climate Models Predict.”

     The graphic above shows global temperature projections from 73 Coupled Models Intercomparison Project (SMIC5) from 1975-2025 (black line) compared to actual satellite (blue boxes) and weather balloon data (green circles) for the global lower troposphere from 1979 until the present. Note that almost all models predict much warmer temperatures than what was actually recorded. 

     NASA has noted, for example, that the rate of Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL) has been measured at 3.4 millimeters per year from 1993 to the present.  Even if that rate increases in the future, the Obamas don’t need to move away from Martha’s Vineyard just yet. 

     Some researchers at the University of Colorado have observed that most climate alarmists focus on the worst-case scenarios when predicting climate disasters. “While the problems are real,” they noted in a letter to the National Academy of Sciences, “constantly preaching doom is counterproductive, and overshadows the more likely outcomes of global warming…not good, but also not extremely bad.”  Thousands of scientists have, for example, complained both loudly and formally regarding the unscientific methodology of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt, socialist founder of Germany’s environmental movement, accused the IPCC with “gross incompetence and dishonesty,” most particularly regarding “fear-mongering exaggeration of known climate influence of human CO2 emissions.”    Dr. Fred Singer, Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia and Director of the Science and Environment Policy Project, is a little more outspoken about the IPCC; “When in doubt, and they always are, they just make them up based on hypothetical models that have yet to comply with observable conditions.” Sounds a lot like “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” to me.

     It seems that humankind has successfully navigated the negative effects of climate change over the last 5 million years or so, with homo sapiens (modern humans) establishing themselves as the predominant branch about 200,000 years ago.  Adaptability to changes in temperature, geography and climate has proven to be a strength of our species, and that includes extremes in heat and cold. That adaptability includes a level of ingenuity that allows us to use tools, machines, clothing and shelter that helps us through a range of temperatures and climates beyond that earlier versions of ourselves might not survive.  

     There have been, according to paleoclimatologists, either 5 or 6 major ice ages on earth over the last 3 billion years or so. Around 34 million years ago the Late Cenozoic Ice Age began, and we are currently in the latest phase of what’s known as the Quatermary glaciation that began around 2.6 million years ago.  Ice ages consist of alternating periods of glacial and interglacial periods. We are presently in a more temperate interglacial period known as the Holocene epoch. The last period of glaciation ended 11,700 years ago, and the next one is predicted to begin somewhere during the next 1500 years, give or take a few years. So no, climate change is not new nor unique to our time nor the “existential threat” that climate alarmists claim. So what’s all the brouhaha?

     Former Senator Timothy Wirth from Colorado, national co-chair of the Clinton-Gore campaign, Undersecretary for Global Affairs in the US State Department and lead US negotiator for the Kyoto Climate Conference and President of the UN Foundation was quoted in 1988 while still a US Senator “we’ve got to …try to ride the global warming issue.  Even if the theory of global warming is wrong…we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” In other words, communism and socialism have lost much of their cachet, so we have to repackage it as environmentalism.

     Then there are the words of the Chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on the Mitigation of Climate Change Ottmar Edenhofer: “First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.” “The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economic summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.”

     The Executive Secretary of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, was one of the key figures in the development of the Paris Climate accord in 2015. She stated “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.” In other words, the goal is to destroy capitalism and implement socialism. 

     It’s your personal decision at this moment about whether or not to believe Socialism in any form is superior to capitalism. Before making that decision, I would point out four important facts:

1. In 1960 the percentage of families in the US at or below poverty level was 22.4%. In 2020 that percentage had declined to 11.6%. We are still, at least for the moment, a primarily capitalist society.

2. The fatal conceit of Socialism is the belief that the system can make better decisions for people than they can make for themselves.  It is the product of a 19th century prophet whose predictions have been proven wrong again and again; each time the would-be rulers believing they are superior in intellect to those that tried and failed before them.

3. The SIC (socialists in charge) never risk or use their own money to finance their utopian ideas, schemes and beliefs, but do not mind using any amount of yours as long as you have it. Look up a current SIC and their present financial worth. It’s not going down, is it? They don’t practice what they preach, but certainly expect you to do so.

4. No amount of money given, donated, appropriated or confiscated will ever change the temperature of the earth, the depth of any ocean or the effects of the driver of all climates on earth - the sun. Get over yourself and understand that politicians will never, ever, ever let a crisis go to waste, even if they have to create one.

As the Romans surmised, caveat emptor.  Better yet, remember WC Fields remonstrance: Never give a sucker an even break.