Tag: carbon dioxide

On May 6, 2016 we woke up to 54°F temperatures here in parts of Lake County Florida. For those of you reading this who don’t live in Florida, I can tell you that 54°F is pretty chilly. Yes, climate change is real. Global warming? Maybe not so much.

The consensus at the United Nations’ IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), has it that Big Oil and self-indulgent Americans, who drive their fossil fuel burning vehicles to work every day, are destroying the planet. How dare they do this!

The true believers in anthropogenic, i.e., man-made, global warming have somehow convinced themselves that a harmless greenhouse gas, namely CO₂ or carbon dioxide, which we were all taught in elementary school to be necessary for life on earth, is now a pollutant! What changed?

So, was it really science that originated the idea of man-made global warming or was it something else? If I had to bet, I would put my money on politics—progressive politics to be exact.

Hey Bernie, it’s not climate change that we deniers believe is a hoax, it’s man-made climate change that we deniers believe is a hoax. Sorry, but I’m not “feelin’ the Bern.”

Hey, oh yeah, yeah
The sky is burnin’, I believe my soul’s on fire…

Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah
Now the sky is burnin’, I believe my soul’s on fire…¹

In 2007, the anti-American, socialist Sweden’s Nobel Prize was awarded to and shared between the IPCC and none other than Al Gore “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”² Notice that the award spells out man-made climate change. The way I see it, the Nobel Prize wouldn’t have been awarded to the IPCC and Gore if their knowledge dissemination were for natural causes of climate change.

Socialist Europe, along with their surrogates in the United Nations, are using climate alarmism via the Kyoto Protocol and other agreements to force Americans into a position where they can’t compete economically with their laid back, sophisticated European counterparts.³ Amusingly, China, India, and over 100 other so-called developing countries were exempt from Kyoto.⁴

After all, isn’t there worldwide consensus that so-called developing countries’ carbon emissions are less harmful to the environment than developed countries’ carbon emissions? You could just replace “developed countries” with “United States” and you would then know who Kyoto is really targeting. This all sounds more and more like politics not science.

As a result of Gore starring in and promoting the fictitious documentary An Inconvenient Truth (or more appropriately entitled: The Sky is Falling) he pretty much single-handedly gave birth to a new movement called Climatism. The IPCC and Gore should have been awarded the Nobel Prize for their success in creating global climate alarmism because that’s exactly what they have done.

Narrator:   Chicken Little was in the woods one day when an acorn fell on her head.  It scared her so much she trembled all over.   She shook so hard, half her feathers fell out.

Chicken Little:   “Help! Help! The sky is falling! I have to go tell the king!”

Narrator:   So she ran in great fright to tell the king. Along the way she met Henny Penny.

Henny Penny:  “Where are you going, Chicken Little?”
Chicken Little:   “Oh, help!  The sky is falling!”
Henny Penny:   “How do you know?”
Chicken Little:   “I saw it with my own eyes, and heard it with my own ears, and part of it fell on my head!”
Henny Penny:  “This is terrible, just terrible!  We’d better hurry up…”

Narrator:   And they all ran in great fright across a field.  Before long they met Turkey Lurkey strutting back and forth…

Turkey Lurkey:    “Hello there, Chicken Little, Henny Penny, Ducky Lucky, and Goosey Loosey.  Where are you all going in such a hurry?”
Chicken Little:   “Help!  Help!”
Henny Penny:   “We’re running for our lives!”
Ducky Lucky:   “The sky is falling!”
Goosey Loosey:   “And we’re running to tell the king!”
Turkey Lurkey:   “How do you know the sky is falling?”
Chicken Little:   “I saw it with my own eyes, and heard it with my own ears, and part of it fell on my head!”
Turkey Lurkey:   “Oh dear! I always suspected the sky would fall someday. I’d better run with you.”

Narrator:   So they ran with all their might, until they met Foxy Loxy.

Foxy Loxy:   “Well, well.  Where are you rushing on such a fine day?”
Chicken Little, Henny Penny, Ducky Lucky, Goosey Loosey, Turkey Lurkey (together)   “Help!  Help!” It’s not a fine day at all. The sky is falling, and we’re running to tell the king!”
Foxy Loxy:   “How do you know the sky is falling?”
Chicken Little:   “I saw it with my own eyes, and heard it with my own ears, and part of it fell on my head!”
Foxy Loxy:    “I see.  Well then, follow me, and I’ll show you the way to the king.”

Narrator:    So Foxy Loxy led Chicken Little, Henny Penny, Ducky Lucky, Goosey Loosey, and Turkey Lurkey across a field and through the woods.  He led them straight to his den, and they never saw the king to tell him that the sky is falling. [iconic emphasis mine]⁵

The climate alarmist in our children’s story was Chicken Little, however, today we have a real-life Chicken Little in Al Gore. In our story we see there were many snuckered followers of Chicken Little. Now, instead of Henny Penney, Ducky Lucky, Goosey Loosey and Turkey Lurkey, we have Bill Nye, Paul R. Ehrlich, Michael E. Mann, and James Hansen—all on the alarmist bandwagon.

Before we leave this discussion, let’s not overlook the villain in our story, Foxy Loxy. Foxy Loxy (or Fox News) represents the global warming deniers of today who are getting in the way of the radical environmentalist agenda.

As I’ve pointed out so far, man-made climate change, i.e., climatism, is synonymous with climate alarmism. If you don’t think so then you haven’t been keeping up with current events.

Well maybe you haven’t heard what 2016 Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said recently:

I’m the only candidate, which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity, using clean renewable energy as the key, into coal country. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.⁶

Ms. Clinton of course tried to backpedal her comments after she realized they were not going to help her chances of winning Kentucky and West Virginia so she offered the coal miners careers in clean, renewable energy. Really, like windmills, solar panels, and stuff? No, Ms. Clinton meant exactly what she said because the climate alarmists will propose and do almost anything to promote their agenda, up to and including destroying people’s livelihoods.

I don’t know about you, but I was caught completely by surprise recently by President Obama’s remarks at the Coast Guard’s Class of 2015 graduation ceremony. So what were those remarks that took me, and probably you also, totally by surprise? Well, it was his remarks concerning the hypothetical threat of [man-made] climate change as a serious risk to the United States. Yes, you got it right…climate change. The President and many others obviously can’t see the real threats that are right in front of their faces: IS and [Islamic] terrorism; the Iranian nuclear capability; recent Chinese expansion in the South China Sea; or even political correctness! On top of that, he went on to say that not only is climate change a risk to our national security, but that it is an immediate risk. You probably caught this soundbite on one of the nightly news broadcasts:

So I’m here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security.  And make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country.  And so we need to act — and we need to act now.⁷

Worse yet, the soundbite you probably didn’t hear was a remark the President made linking climate change with the unrest in Africa and the Middle East:

Understand, climate change did not cause the conflicts we see around the world.  Yet what we also know is that severe drought helped to create the instability in Nigeria that was exploited by the terrorist group Boko Haram.  It’s now believed that drought and crop failures and high food prices helped fuel the early unrest in Syria, which descended into civil war in the heart of the Middle East.⁸

I don’t know how the President can say that drought in Africa and the Middle East encouraged the rise of Islamic extremism given the position of one highly authoritative source who blames George W. Bush and Dick Cheney with inventing the Islamic State.⁹ Blame Bush, blame the Republicans, blah, blah, blah…nothing new from the unimaginative Left. Seriously though, haven’t there been numerous periods of drought and famine throughout the world, even in the United States? What about the Dust Bowl that devastated the Southern Plains during the 1930s?

So, what the President tried to convince the graduating Coast Guard cadets to believe is that climate change brought about the economic conditions which fueled the rise of terrorist organizations in Africa and the Middle East. Really, Mr. President? Unlike everyone else in the world who understands Islam to be a religion, you, Mr. President, obviously do not. The folks making up the Boko Haram terrorist organization aren’t a bunch of disgruntled workers upset over the meager wages paid to them by their oppressive employers; no, quite the contrary, they’re actually religious extremists trying to overthrow western influences in order to establish an Islamic State.¹⁰ In fact, anyone willing to face reality would acknowledge that this not about climate change or economics, it’s about religion; and it has always been about religion.

Speaking of religion, where should Bible-believing Christians stand on this issue? Well, it depends on where you think the Earth’s thermostat resides, on Earth or in Heaven. If it’s on Earth, then man could be responsible for how it’s set, but if it’s in Heaven then God is in control of the Earth’s temperature. I would bet good money that it is in Heaven.

While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day and night Shall not cease. (Gen. 8:22 NASB)

So, if the Earth’s thermostat is truly in Heaven, then scientific evidence for natural causes of climate change or global warming should exist. But if we are to believe the IPCC, Al Gore, the media, and many deluded climatologists, there is no evidence for natural causes of climate change. As the alarmists like to say, “The science is settled.” and “There’s scientific consensus on climate change.” Are these statements true? Well, like I’ve said on other topics in the past, it depends on who you ask.

I began my research on this topic of climatism or climate change by picking up a few books written by authors who aren’t in collusion with the IPCC, Al Gore, and other climate alarmists. If you take the time to do a little of your own research, you will find the truth to be very interesting; in fact, not only interesting but frightening.

In my research, I’ve found two common words used to describe the man-made global warming scare: “scam” and “fraud.” On the other hand, I did not find words used such as: “unbiased” and “scientific.”

The following are some interesting quotes from the resources I’ve used to write this climate change post. I’ve grouped the quotes under my own headings for emphasis.

CO₂ and Greenhouse Gases

As most of us learned in school, atmospheric carbon dioxide is just as necessary for life on Earth as oxygen. Without CO₂ there would be no photosynthesis, and therefore no plants, and no animals, and no people either.¹¹

Clouds also have a strong greenhouse effect, especially relatively thin high-altitude clouds. Water vapor and clouds account for about 90 percent of the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect, CO₂ amounts to about 3.5 percent…¹²

The current warming trend is following the same pattern as the natural, solar-driven warmings in the previous 1,500-year cycles. The warming began too early and too suddenly for man-made CO₂ to be a likely candidate as its driving force.¹³

…humans exhale about 2.8 lbs. each of CO₂ every day, which adds up to over a half-ton per person per year, multiplied by a population approaching seven billion.¹⁴

While SUVs and power plants garner the most media and environmentalist attention, combustion emissions contribute about 2 percent of the greenhouse gases currently keeping our atmosphere habitable.¹⁵

Climatism and Politics

It was stunning how swiftly and uncritically the IPCC embraced the hockey stick.  Many years of published research supporting the existence of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were suddenly swept aside to make room for a revisionist climate history where there is no natural variability anymore, and where humans are in almost total control of the Earth’s climate.¹⁶

Despite a horrendous bastardization of science, Mann’s Hockey Stick has been accepted by millions. The United Nations still carries the Stick to compel global policy, while Al Gore carries it to the bank…¹⁷

The Keepers of All Climate Knowledge have erected a nearly impenetrable barrier to any new science that does not support the current paradigm of anthropogenic global warming, as defined and guided by those controlling the IPCC process.¹⁸

Cherry-picking data is not just a favorite weapon in the arsenal of alarmist activists, but it is also a beloved pastime of bureaucrats.¹⁹

Science normally involves the testing of alternative hypotheses, not picking the first one that comes along and then religiously sticking to it. But that is exactly what the IPCC has done.²⁰

As with abortion on demand, homosexual marriage, and some other agenda items of the far Left, the fight to micromanage you in the name of global warming may find its best friends in unelected judges and unaccountable international tribunals.²¹

The Kyoto Protocol would drive up prices for all families, rapidly increase government (or UN) control, dramatically limit our ability to use energy, but would still not even prevent one-tenth of one degree of warming over the next fifty years.²²

Any future famines will be humanity’s fault—caused by war, corrupt governments, or irrational opposition to new technologies—not the fault of climate.²³

The United Nations, for its part, saw the greenhouse theory as a way to expand its influence and power. The greenhouse theory demanded that energy be scarce, and the agency that rationed energy would be powerful indeed.²⁴

The UN views national sovereignty as the primary impediment to a UN-led system of global government, although this view is not often publicly expressed.²⁵

Climatism and Anti-Americanism

For competitive reasons, Europe wanted to see the United States and its job-creating economy saddled with the same high energy costs that European employers and drivers already paid.²⁶

Europe was overjoyed when Al Gore and the Clinton administration signed the American economy up for Kyoto’s energy constraints—and terribly disappointed when George W. Bush erased that U.S. commitment.²⁷

Consider that communism and anti-Americanism remain vibrant and complementary political forces in those same areas of the world where environmentalists hold their greatest sway: mainly Europe.²⁸

Finally, after decades of stealthy determination, the quixotic conjectures of Marx have seeped into the framework of the United States, with the most effectual being the supposed environmental crisis know as global warming or climate change.²⁹

An elite brigade of zealots has cleverly created a new political platform to carry out the collectivist goals of redistributing wealth and destroying personal liberty, utilizing something that Karl Marx himself never envisioned: the environment, or more specifically, the climate.³⁰

The problem with every generation is that a long-term memory of the past requires a determined and studied effort—a fact upon which modern eco-Marxists depend for success.³¹

Environmental pressure groups have no use for limiting governmental powers or expanding individual liberties. Instead, environmental claims are without fail invoked to advance the statist agenda.³²

Climatism and Terrorism

If you penalize energy use, you destroy wealth, and when wealth is destroyed, the poor are the first to suffer.³³

Penalizing the use of our most inexpensive energy sources will destroy wealth and will lead to starvation for many of the world’s malnourished.³⁴

Cap-and-trade and carbon taxes are monsters spawned from the misguided theory of man-made global warming. These policies are inflicting real and sizable damage on citizens and businesses across the world.³⁵

It is important not to glaze over the green antipathy toward people. In the eyes of an environmentalist, people are pollution.³⁶

Climate alarmists point out that every human activity uses energy, and energy use emits greenhouse gases, therefore population control is essential to stop global warming.³⁷

The Greens probably assume that even if they’re wrong about renewable energy, they’ll at least be pushing us in the right direction—toward much lower standards of living.³⁸

In contrasting old-school naturalists and conservationists to today’s environmentalist, the twenty-first-century green begins to look not only anti-American or anti-capitalist, but nearly anti-human.³⁹

Climate Science

Lots of the alarmists are computer modelers, that is, they make expensive mathematical guesses though with minimal background in the relevant sciences.⁴⁰

Even the public understands that there is natural climate variability. It is the presumed experts—the climate modelers—who have rejected the concept of natural climate change.⁴¹

Nor is consensus important to science. Galileo may have been the only man of his day who believed the Earth revolved around the sun, but he was right.⁴²

The key thing for us all to remember is that the 1,500-year climate cycle is not an unproven theory like the model-based predictions used by advocates of the theory of man-made global warming.⁴³

…if researchers are not careful about distinguishing cause and effect when observing cloud and temperature variations, they can be fooled into believing that the climate system is more sensitive than it really is.⁴⁴

The energy balance of the Earth is therefore, in some sense, simpler than the energy balance of a pot of water on the stove.⁴⁵

The Earth continually warms and cools. The cycle is undeniable, ancient, often abrupt, and global. It is also unstoppable.⁴⁶

All sorts of now-forgotten disease epidemics, from typhoid and typhus to diphtheria and whooping cough, afflicted communities during the Little Ice Age as they had during the cold of the Dark Ages hundreds of years earlier.⁴⁷

Man’s activity has made the weather more damaging, they say…Whereas the greens will say we do this by driving too much, common sense reminds us that people increasingly develop and occupy storm-prone areas.⁴⁸

Conclusions, for now…

The science is settled! Climate change is natural and unavoidable.

The so-called theory of anthropogenic or man-made climate change is either a hoax, scam, con, or fraud. Either way, pick your favorite noun—whatever fits. I’d even go so far as to add “evil” to the list.

I’m embarrassed to admit that James Hansen, a former NASA researcher, was one of the original climate alarmists.  If NASA used the same science to get to the Moon back in 1969 as it is using in today’s climate research, we’d still be out there somewhere trying to find it—forget about Mars.

Have you ever used a software application that never worked quite right? Well, the entire world is being turned upside down based on climate projections from computer models written by the very same kind of folks.

The UN, by exempting China, India, and over 100 other so-called developing countries from the Kyoto Protocol, has attempted to impose upon the United States a policy of wealth re-distribution on a global scale. The United Nations (UN) should rename itself to Nations United against America (NUaA).

Kim Jong-un is the leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), better known as North Korea. Many would consider him to be the dictator of a totalitarian regime, but did you know there is another authoritarian Korean strongman at large by the name of Ban Ki-moon. Unlike Kim Jong-un, Ban Ki-moon’s totalitarian regime is the UN. I’ll let the reader decide which ruler poses the greater threat to America.

You know what they say, “Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.” This saying is aptly used to describe the alarmists’ solutions to solve man-made climate change, a.k.a., the problem that never really existed.

Climate change is an immediate risk to the United States. That is to say, the belief in man-made climate change is the immediate risk.

Next time I’ll be posting a critique of Al Gore’s so-called documentary on climate change: An Inconvenient Truth. This will be my first viewing of the film. Afterwards, I hope I don’t get seduced by the “dark side,” if you know what I mean.

 

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1. Bad Company.  Burning Sky. WB Music Corp., Badco Music Inc. http://www.songlyrics.com/bad-company/burning-sky-lyrics/#TI8Ovtl9bxwMBpCx.99. ↩

2. “The Nobel Peace Prize 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Al Gore,” Nobelprize.org, accessed May 07, 2016, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/. ↩

3. Christopher C. Horner, The Politically Incorrect Guide^TM to Global Warming and Environmentalism, (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2007), 299. ↩

4. “Kyoto Protocol Fast Facts,” CNN Library, updated March 30, 2016, http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/26/world/kyoto-protocol-fast-facts/. ↩

5. “The Story of Chicken Little,” Eva L. Easton, updated: January 20, 2015, http://eleaston.com/chicken.html. ↩

6. “Clinton backtracks on putting ‘coal miners, coal companies out of business’,” Adam Beam And Jonathan Mattise The Associated Press, The Salt Lake Tribune, March 14, 2016, http://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref=/home/3663165-155/story.htm. ↩

7. “Remarks by the President at the United States Coast Guard Academy Commencement,” The White House Office of the Press Secretary, May 20, 2015, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/05/20/remarks-president-united-states-coast-guard-academy-commencement. ↩

8. Ibid. ↩

9. “Sean Penn: Bush, Cheney ‘created’ ISIS,” Mark Hensch, The Hill, March 19, 2015, http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/236285-sean-penn-bush-cheney-created-isis. ↩

10. “Who are Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamists?” Farouk Chothia, BBC Africa, May 4, 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13809501. ↩

11. Roy W. Spencer, The Great Global Warming Blunder, (New York, Encounter Books, 2010), XIX. ↩

12. Ibid., 44. ↩

13. S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming – Every 1,500 Years, updated and expanded edition (Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008), 38. ↩

14. Brian Sussman, Climategate, (New York, WND Books, 2010), 73. ↩

15. Horner, Politically Incorrect Guide™, 69. ↩

16. Spencer, Global Warming Blunder, 10. ↩

17. Sussman, Climategate, 37. ↩

18. Spencer, Global Warming Blunder, 64. ↩

19. Horner, Politically Incorrect Guide™, 42. ↩

20. Spencer, Global Warming Blunder, XIV. ↩

21. Horner, Politically Incorrect Guide™, 30. ↩

22. Spencer, Global Warming Blunder, 67. ↩

23. Singer, Unstoppable Global Warming, 9. ↩

24. Ibid., 226. ↩

25. Steve Goreham, The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania, (New Lenox, IL, New Lenox Books, Inc., 2012), 36. ↩

26. Singer, Unstoppable Global Warming, 227. ↩

27. Ibid., 233. ↩

28. Horner, Politically Incorrect Guide™, 7. ↩

29. Sussman, Climategate, ix. ↩

30. Ibid., xvi. ↩

31. Ibid., 20. ↩

32. Horner, Politically Incorrect Guide™, 3. ↩

33. Spencer, Global Warming Blunder, 65. ↩

34. Ibid., 27. ↩

35. Goreham, Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism, 44. ↩

36. Horner, Politically Incorrect Guide™, 9. ↩

37. Goreham, Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism, 32. ↩

38. Singer, Unstoppable Global Warming, 247. ↩

39. Horner, Politically Incorrect Guide™, 23. ↩

40. Ibid., 109. ↩

41. Spencer, Global Warming Blunder, 158-159. ↩

42. Singer, Unstoppable Global Warming, 7. ↩

43. Ibid., 28. ↩

44. Spencer, Global Warming Blunder, 72. ↩

45. Ibid., 41. ↩

46. Singer, Unstoppable Global Warming, 3. ↩

47. Ibid., 55. ↩

48. Horner, Politically Incorrect Guide™, 153. ↩