Sham climate crises divert dollars and sense from real preventable crises
Last week Beto O'rourke took on the mantle of the latest Democratic presidential hopeful for 2020. America and the world face a “crisis!” Of course we do! We are surrounded by crises.
When asked his thoughts on the new green deal, O'rourke pulled no punches: “We face catastrophe and crisis on this planet….” Ironically, he included a migration crisis, saying, “There is going to be massive migration of tens or hundreds of millions of people from places that are going to be uninhabitable or under the sea.” He continued, “This is the final chance. The scientists are unanimous on this. We have no more than 12 years to take incredibly bold action on this crisis.” Virtually all Democratic presidential hopefuls have voiced similar climate change warnings.
O'rourke's rhetoric is reminiscent of alarmist headlines from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. O'rourke's drop-dead deadline is “no more than 12 years,” i.e. 2031. Consider these headlines: Boston Globe, April 16, 1970 — “Scientist predicts a new ice age by 21st century;” Chicago Tribune, March 2, 1975 — “B-r-r-rr: New Ice Age on way soon?” and, New York Times, January 5, 1978 — “International Team of Specialists Finds No End in Sight to 30Year Cooling Trend in Northern Hemisphere.”
Scientists' views boomeranged radically toward global warming in the 1980s. NASA scientist James Hansen testified before Congress June 23, 1988, that he had a “high degree of confidence” in a “cause and effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming.” His testimony and accompanying paper redirected environmental activists from preaching global cooling to predicting global warming. Hansen predicted three scenarios based on scientific research at the time. Needless to say, none of his predictions panned out.
Hansen is not alone in making errant predictions. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's models have exaggerated claims of global warming on average by 200-percent. None of these “proofs” has chilled Hansen's or his fellow climate crises proponents' predictions. In 2007 Hansen and scientists predicted most of Greenland's ice would melt over the next 100 years, raising sea levels more than 23 feet.
Climate change alarmists got a shot in the arm when Al Gore's 2006 documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” predicted sea levels could rise twenty feet. Hansen buttressed Gore's claim of hitting a climatic “point of no return” in his review of Gore's book and documentary, writing, “We have at most ten years—not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions.”
Of course, alarmists have continued to predict crisis after crisis, and many points of no return for stopping climate change. Rajendra Pachauri, head of a UN climate panel, reasoned scientifically that earth would be doomed if drastic action were not made before 2012.
In the 21st century, climate change has leapt from “proven science” to the political realm. Cue James Hansen in 2009 who warned that President Obama had only “four years to save Earth.” Sound familiar? In 2012, UN Foundation president Tim Worth pronounced Obama's second term would be “the last window of opportunity” to restrict use of fossil fuels.
Back on planet Earth for the past 50 years, millions who have starved or died annually from preventable diseases could have been saved if we had invested in meeting real, current needs instead of wasting trillions of dollars on climate crises that have not happened.
Daniel L. Gardner is a syndicated columnist who lives in Starkville. You may contact him at Pjandme2@hotmail.com, or interact with him on the Clarion-ledger web site www.clarionledger.com/ story/opinion.