My third column on climate change denial ran in today’s Moscow-Pullman Daily News. Enjoy!
As I noted in two previous columns (No one is a climate change denier Part 1 and Part 2), all agree that the climate has changed for millennia and is still changing. What scientists do not agree on is the cause. Some believe in the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis, saying that human activity is solely responsible for the warming we experience today.
In 2013, President Obama tweeted that “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.”
Yet that same year, the American Meteorological Society (AMA) took a survey of their professional members, asking “Is GW [Global Warming] happening? If so, what is its cause?” Only 52% of respondents agreed that it was mostly due to human cause, and only 37% of their professional forecasters said the same.
Why the disagreement between AMA professionals and professional politicians? Could it be that there is a political agenda at stake and not a scientific one? Could this also explain the ideological divide between Democrats and Republicans? Pew Research reports that 96 percent of liberal Democrats thought human activity contributes greatly to climate change. Meanwhile, 14 percent of conservative Republicans thought humans contribute a great deal to climate change, and another 39 percent said humans have “some” contribution.
The recent 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment demonstrates why so many people are misled. Their main summary page, sent to journalists and policy makers, shows heat waves increasing since 1960, wildfires increasing since 1983, arctic sea ice extent declining since 1979, and sea levels rising since 1920. Anyone who has studied statistics knows that you can show the opposite by cherry-picking start dates.
- By starting heat wave data at its lowest in 1960, they hide the 1930s Dust Bowl, which tells the opposite story.
- By starting wildfire data in 1983, they hide the fact that total acreage burned peaked in the 1930s and is actually 80% less today.
- By starting artic sea ice extent in 1979, they again chose the peak date. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), they have been using satellite date since the early 1970s, and “in 1972-1975 sea-ice extent was significantly less.”
- Finally, they cherry-picked the 1920 date to show that sea levels are rising. Yet the tide gauge in Lower Manhattan shows sea levels rising steadily since 1850. And scientists tell us that sea level has been rising for the past 20,000 years.
My favorite economist, Walter Williams, recently published a list of quotes from professional environmentalists that demonstrate their political motives:
Ottmar Edenhofer, lead author of the IPCC’s fourth summary report released in 2007, speaking in 2010 advised: “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.”- N. climate chief Christiana Figueres said that the true aim of the U.N.’s 2014 Paris climate conference was “to change the (capitalist) economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”
- Christine Stewart, Canada’s former Minister of the Environment said: “No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits. … Climate change (provides) the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
- Tim Wirth, former U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs and the person most responsible for setting up the Kyoto Protocol said: “We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
The National Climate Assessment curates data until it is no longer science but propaganda that supports the Democratic Socialists’ mission; a mission that is bent on destroying the freedoms enjoyed by a capitalist nation. Further, they seek to frighten the people of the world into running to the government, willing to offer up anything to protect their planet.