The Hysteria Continues on Global Warming

Charles W. Kraut

Lexington, Virginia

22 November 2019

In the past couple of weeks Americans have been bombarded with new, urgent and dire warnings about the need to act immediately to stop the global warming/climate change juggernaut.  These warnings have been issued since the late 1970s, ever since the experts stopped being concerned about global cooling and realized there is a lot of political power and wealth to be gained by creating a panic over global warming.  Both scenarios were largely fabrications, and both were or are being overcome by 1) history, and 2) good science to replace the bad science or the non-science.

As I often do, I did a little checking.  I read the articles, noted the references, and looked at some of the links. 

The first article I read was published in BioScience, Vol. XX No. X, https://academic.oup.com/bioscience.  This hysterical piece was signed by no less than 11,258 scientists from 153 countries, which is to say that 11,258 scientists all over the world agreed that everything in this piece was correct as of the date of publication, which is November 2019.

Time for a little checking.  As I read through the list I saw the names and titles of numerous scientists, few of whom were working in the field of climate science, Earth science, meteorology, or any other field that might have something to do with global warming.  The other thing I noticed is that many of them were not scientists at all, but medical doctors or other professionals.

In other words, this article was fatally flawed from the beginning because it was based upon a lie.  This lie is very similar to the one that was passed around about a year ago to the effect that 97% of the world scientists agreed that man-made global warming was going to cause the destruction of the planet.

I am getting ahead of myself; but the next article, published in The New York Times in November 2019, continues to warn of exactly the same things.

A little checking into that 97% number reveals something very interesting.  The way that statistic was arrived at is completely flawed and is off by an order of magnitude.  The people conducting the survey manipulated the wording of the questions in order to obtain the answer that they had decided in advance was the correct one.

What is the real number?

The actual number is that 0.03% of the people surveyed were willing to state that humans pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is the primary contributor to global warming, and will cause the destruction of the planet.  There is an enormous gap between 97% and 0.03%.

It is obvious that we are dealing with people who do not mind lying to us.  Global warming/climate change is the meal ticket for tens of thousands of people all over the world, each of whom would lose either a significant portion of their income or even their jobs if they were to change their minds and tell the truth.

Getting back to this article by 11,258 “scientists”, let me quote the very first paragraph:

“Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat and to single tell it like it is.’  On the basis of this obligation and the graphical indicators presented below, we declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.”

As we used to say back in the 70s, that is heavy.  That is a wake-up call to 7 billion people that we have got to do something or are all going to die.

The rest of the article matches the first paragraph.  There are numerous charts, about 29 in all, that are visually distorted and generally meaningless.  They are intended to convince us that we have a real emergency.  Unfortunately, aside from giving us brief captions to each of the charts, there is no text to indicate why these charts indicate a dire emergency.

The article itself is the same, except that it does not even add anything we did not know since the 1980s.  Much of what it does say has been thoroughly discredited by reputable scientists.

To sum up, then, 11,258 “scientists” are simply wrong.  The article is completely out of date, and there would be no justification for any reputable scientific journal to publish it.

Next, The New York Times runs a column entitled Climate FWD.  This bastion of truth (“All the news that fits, we print”) has decided that man is responsible for global warming and the subsequent destruction of our planet.  They are just as certain of that as William Randolph Hearst was that the USS Maine was destroyed by Spanish saboteurs in 1898.  Hearst was wrong then and The New York Times is wrong now.

Here is the Times’ opening paragraph in the November 20 addition of Climate FWD:

“Sometimes, Thanksgiving dinner comes with a side dish of climate denial.

“Whether it is grumbling about ‘the climate hoax’ from your parents, a sibling or that cousin you rarely see, it is time to get ready in case climate myths come up at the dinner table.  Here are 10 resources to refresh your understanding of our warming planet.”

The article then proceeds to list 10 different resources including websites, fact sheets, podcasts, videos, and books, all of which faithfully regurgitate the man-made global warming agenda.  Typical of Liberals/Progressives, much of this is done with pointed humor that belittles those who they label “climate deniers.”  The idea is that if you can humiliate someone he will be less likely to come at you again.

Unfortunately, humiliation and belittling are not science.  Of the 10 sources I was not surprised to find NASA on the list.  This website, which costs a lot of taxpayer dollars, is found here: https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/.

On the NASA website you would expect to find the world’s best science, the most objective research, and sound conclusions from the top people in their field in the entire world.  Wrong!  The NASA site is dreadfully out of date, just like the article by the 11,000 scientists.  It is as if all the data and the good science, much of which has been generated by NASA itself, did not exist.

One of the big and basic mistakes the NASA website makes is this quote:

“Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.”

Not surprisingly, that quote comes from the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations organization we fund with our tax dollars which was the first to proclaim that the sky is falling.  The IPCC is notorious for a long series of very flawed pronouncements reflecting bad science, or non-science, or manipulation of the data, or a combination of all three.  It was Michael Mann, a newly minted PhD with no experience in the field, who manipulated the data for the infamous “hockey stick” chart, which really got the ball rolling all over the world. 

Many scientists have disproven both the “hockey stick” and just about everything else Michael Mann has had to say.  The reasons why Michael Mann’s science was so bad was that he ignored almost all  the factors that cause climate change.  He also ignored most of the Earth’s history and data that has been gathered through many different types of research.

The Neglected Sun

In 2015 a new book was published in German.  Its English title is The Neglected Sun: Why the Sun Precludes Climate Change.[1]  Basically, if you want to know anything about the current state of climate change science, you must read this book.  If you do not, you really have no fully informed opinions about climate change.  It’s that important.

The Neglected Sun details research by numerous scientists in areas that are far more important to climate change/global warming than CO2.  The evidence is now clear that our sun is responsible for at least 50% of global warming and global cooling.  It is also now clear that worldwide global warming ceased almost 20 years ago.

The Neglected Sun describes the results of research into cosmic rays, the sun’s magnetic field, the great ocean systems in the Atlantic and the Pacific, the influence of the other planets, and the great significance of water vapor as the primary cause of global warming/global cooling.  Water vapor is far more important than CO2 for many reasons, some of which should certainly have been known to Michael Mann when he published his hockey stick.

Why are we being misled?

Why do thousands of academically qualified individuals, almost every major media outlet throughout the world, and the governments of more than 150 nations all seem to agree that the world is coming to an end?

The answer is simple but almost hard to believe.  If you investigate Progressivism, its tenets, its goals, its methodology, and its tactics, you see a powerful force for evil.  Progressivism is anti-constitutional; those who call themselves Progressives, whether knowingly or not, are out to destroy our Constitution, our constitutional republic, and our way of life.  Their goal is to replace what we have with a totalitarian system somewhere between true socialism and communism. 

Of course, if they were to say that they would be ignored.  Instead, Progressivism offers the temptation of power and wealth, and being part of the “elite” of the world’s society.  For some people it is thrilling to think of having the power of life and death over your fellow beings. That is the siren song of Progressivism. 

Hitler was a Progressive.  Stalin was a Progressive.  Lyndon B. Johnson,  Franklin D. Roosevelt,  Mao Tse-Tung,  Woodrow Wilson,  and Teddy Roosevelt were all Progressives.  Barack Obama is a Progressive.  Hillary Clinton is a Progressive.  Bernie Sanders – well, old Bernie is a Socialist.

The list goes on and on.  The great “accomplishments” of Progressivism include these:

1.      The “dumbing down” of American public education.

2.      The sexual revolution.

3.      The “Women’s Liberation” movement.

4.      The gay rights movement.

5.      Human rights (see the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights for more information).

6.      The Great Society and our modern welfare state.

7.      The War on Poverty.

8.      The man-made global warming scare.

9.      The substitution of Islam for Christianity in our public schools.

10.  A woman’s right to “reproductive freedom,” including abortion.

11.  Regime change, nationbuilding, and assassination as diplomatic tools.

12.  The United Nations Law of the Sea treaty.

13.  The Kyoto Protocols and the Paris Accords.

14.  The United Nations Rights of Indigenous Peoples Treaty.

All these things barely scratch the surface of what Progressivism has accomplished in just a little over a century in the United States and in many parts of the world.  Each of these “accomplishments” has weakened the United States and its constitutional republic.  Many of them have damaged the nuclear family, perhaps our most important institution.

Equally important, each of the things listed above accrue power to a specific group of individuals.  Most of them also allow enormous wealth to accrue to the same individuals, all at the expense of the taxpayers, the middle class, those who have been struggling because they have not gotten a pay raise in real dollars in almost fifty years.

What is this power? It is control over our lives.  It is the elimination of our individual freedom in favor of an all-knowing, all -wise dictator. The dictator exercises full control because he knows that we are not intelligent enough to make our own decisions.  We are not intelligent enough because our schools have been “dumbed down.”

Global warming/climate change is the latest, but not the last, of these immense power grabs.  If the people of the world, and specifically their governments, can become convinced that global warming is an emergency and is being caused by human emissions of CO2, the only available solution is the reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere.  The way to do that is to take charge of the entire economy of the world, and reshape it in ways for which the technology does not yet exist.

Regarding technology, solar cells are far too inefficient to be an effective solution.  Wind generators are likewise inefficient, but they also kill birds by the millions and are unsightly.  The Progressives’ refusal to allow the construction of safe, efficient nuclear power plants is a great hinderance preventing a fuller transition away from fossil fuels.

All these arguments about the dangers of CO2, all of this false data has been shouted to the world to get us to surrender control over our individual lives.  Think about being unable to own a gasoline powered or diesel car.  Think about having your thermostat, your gas meter, and your water meter all monitored by the government, which would have the ability to shut any or all of them off without any notice.  (That kind of sounds like PG&E with their scheduled power outages, doesn’t it?) 

Think about being forced to either use public transportation or walk or bicycle to work because you are not allowed to own a car.  (In case you have not noticed, cities all over the country are allowing companies to place rental scooters on city sidewalks for the use of pedestrians.)  Look at Agenda 21, the Progressives’ master plan for rebuilding our cities in accordance with their dictates.  No private homes, no privately-owned vehicles; just cheerless, identical high-rise apartment buildings like those in the New Territories area of Hong Kong.

Power and Control

Power and control.  That’s the agenda here.  We have yet to learn whether any control of our CO2 emissions will have a measurable impact upon global warming or global cooling.  One thing we do know is that if we were to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air to its pre-Industrial Revolution levels, we would not be able to feed more than about 85% of those of us alive today.  Crop yields flourish with CO2 above 350 ppm. 

Carbon dioxide is essential to all life on earth.  If we were to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to 150 ppm or less, all life on earth would eventually cease.  Why doesn’t the media talk about that?

 

[1] Vahrenholt, Fritz, and Sebastian Lüning, The Neglected Sun: Why the Sun Precludes Climate Catastrophe, The Heartland Institute, Arlington Heights, Illinois, 2015.