Climate Change Silliness

The Middle East is imploding. Islamic State butchers are annihilating Christian and other communities including Moslems. Putin is sending arms and troops to Assad. Under the Obama-Iran nuclear deal, the mullahs will get $150 billion to expand their proxy terror war on Israel and the West. Saudi Arabia has 100,000 empty air-conditioned tents but won’t take any of the millions who’ve been driven from their homes right there in the Middle East. Neither will most of the other 22 Arab League nations or 57 Organization of Islamic Cooperation member countries. The world is in chaos and our leaders complain about “climate change” as if it were the Number One issue facing us. Silliness for sure.

EU nations have hobbled their nuclear and carbon-based energy systems so completely that unsubsidized German and Danish electricity prices are almost ten times higher than in US states that still rely on coal-fired generation. Industrial giant Siemens is cutting 1,600 jobs in its power and gas division, companies are hard-pressed to compete internationally, and 0.5% annual economic growth is deemed “robust.”

“Climate change is already disrupting our agriculture and ecosystems, our water and food supplies,” President Obama recently said, And he continued, “If we do nothing, Alaskan temperatures are projected to rise between six and twelve degrees by the end of the century.” Where does this come from?

Nature-driven climate change has disrupted lives throughout human history. Seas have risen 400 feet since the last mile-thick glaciers melted off the northern half of Asia, Europe and North America.

Some Alaskan glaciers have been retreating for decades, but Hubbard is growing and Glacier Bay’s ice retreat began around 1750. Arctic sea ice has increased some 26% (400,000 square miles) since 2012, in a cycle that’s continued for millennia. The sea ice “was thick in the 1920s, thin in the 1930s and 1940s, thick again in the 1960s and 1970s, and thinner in recent decades,” oceanographer Igor Polyakov noted in 2004.

And Greenland’s ice mass has grown by some 200 cubic kilometers (48 cubic miles) just since 2014. Vikings built homes, grew crops and raised cattle in Greenland between 950 and 1300, before they were frozen out by the Little Ice Age and encroaching pack ice and glaciers. Antarctic sea ice set another record in May, the US National Snow and Ice Data Center reports, climbing 12% above the long-term 1981-2010 average, to reach 12.1 million square kilometers (800,000 square miles) – almost as much as Alaska and Texas combined!

The Pope and President oppose fossil fuels and criticize capitalism – though these have brought greater health and well-being to more people than any other systems in history. By denying the world’s poorest people energy, jobs and economic growth, this alarmist agenda will sentence these folks to perpetual poverty, disease and early death. By mandating the use of biofuels, wind turbines and solar panels, food turns into fuel, increases malnutrition, converts wildlife habitats into enormous inefficient energy facilities, and kills countless millions of birds and bats.

The Pope and President criticize plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide as “carbon pollution” and say this 0.04% of Earth’s atmosphere has replaced the powerful natural forces that have always driven climate and weather fluctuations and events. They disregard satellite and weather balloon data and records from East Anglia University, which show there has been no planetary warming since at least late 1997, if not 1995.

They studiously ignore the fact that even full implementation of EPA’s Clean Power Plan would at best prevent a global temperature increase of only 0.03 degrees F and a sea-level rise of barely 0.01 inches by 2100.

Climate alarmists refuse to recognize that some 2,300 coal-fired power plants are already operating worldwide, and almost 2,200 more are being proposed, developed or built. Nearly 900 are planned for China and India alone. In barely ten years, Asia’s energy consumption will increase 31% and some two-thirds of that demand will be oil, natural gas and coal. So a US shutdown would do nothing.

The constant rants about “catastrophic manmade climate change” are driving policies that shut down carbon-based energy, economic growth and job creation while telling developing nations they can hold us for climate ransom.

Following Obama’s recent GLACIER conference in Anchorage, China, India and Russia (three of the four biggest CO2-emitting nations) refused to sign a nonbinding declaration seeking greater international action to combat Arctic melting and climate change. Nearly all developing countries oppose agreements calling for binding emission targets or even “obligatory review mechanisms” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, they insist on $100 billion to $400 billion per year in climate change “mitigation, adaptation and compensation,” plus free energy technology transfers.

Denmark is dropping plans to phase out coal-fired power plants and be fossil-fuel-free by 2050. Britain is junking its wind energy subsidies and pushing ahead with fracking for gas to fuel more power plants. Yet, this administration imposes more restrictions on coal and natural gas use, and more taxpayer subsidies for wind, solar and biofuel programs, on top of water, ozone and other regulations. This will cost trillions of dollars, inflict heavy costs on poor and middle class families, and bring few or no health or ecological benefits.

This alarmist agenda will force ever-greater scarcity, ever-lower living standards, ever-fewer jobs and opportunities.

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