Under the old, conservative thought regime, the environment was for man. Under the new, man is for the environment. The very conception of “environment” has been inverted. The qualitative has been replaced with the quantitative. The argument is now for the elimination of what has been arbitrarily demonized: coal, CO2, drinking straws, whatever is the focus this week.
There is so much misinformation, disinformation, misunderstanding and blind obeisance to climate alarmism orthodoxy that one hardly knows where to start. Perhaps it is best to start with some undisputed facts, which are supported by hundreds of well researched studies and thousands of scientists.
There is a natural cycle of variability in the Earth’s climate, driven by variations in the output of the Sun, the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and other factors that have nothing to do with human activity.
Fifteen thousand years ago the Earth was a very cold place, with glaciers covering the Northern Hemisphere and down the Eastern seaboard to the south of New York City. Then for reasons not known by man, the Earth began to warm and the retreating ice left Long Island, Cape Code and the Great Lakes as its residue.
Today the climate is presently in a period of stasis, with the temperature holding relatively stable over the last 30 years, despite an increase in CO₂. But the climate will change. It always does. Perhaps warmer. Perhaps cooler. And man has nothing to do with it.
Three Hundred million years ago, life on Earth was rich with plant and animal life. Atmospheric CO₂ was 5,000 parts per million (ppm) whereas today it stands at 410 ppm At the current rate CO₂ is increasing, it will take over 200 years to reach historical levels. Yet the Green Overlords want us to believe that soon, which they refuse to define, the Earth will cross a
CO₂ tipping point that will cause the Earth to burn to a crisp. Yet extensive studies of the Earth’s polar ice cores show that over the last 400 millennia increases in CO₂ did not precede a warming earth.
But alarmists are not interested in facts, or science, but rather in group think and demonizing their opponents.
Like so many locations this year in the United States and Europe, temperature records were “broken,” at least as far as the last century-plus when such records began to be cataloged.
While record breaking, triple digit temperatures are nothing new , they become newsworthy to the media only in the moment to push a global warming agenda. Let’s be honest, July and August are our hottest summer months and they were miserable but it is not like it hasn’t happened in the past.
Many conveniently forget that during this calendar year many places in the U.S. and in Europe also established record cold temperatures and snowfall.
In northern Europe, for instance, the month of July brought record cold according to the Finnish Meteorological Institute. In Germany, several locations experienced the coldest July temperatures in decades, with Rotenburg, in Lower Saxony, setting a record for the all-time coldest July with temperatures of 37 degrees breaking the record set in 1946.
Last year numerous locales in California experienced record, or near record lows. In El Cajon, outside of San Diego, it was 48 degrees in May. Only two days in May did the temperatures in L.A. reach 75 degrees breaking a record set in 1878.
Minnesota had the coldest recorded temperature in International Falls coming in at 37 degrees on the morning of July 30, 2019, breaking a record of 38 degrees in 1898. According to the National Weather Service, on March 4 it was 12 degrees in Chicago which shattered a previous record in 1890. That same day in Rockford it was only 10 degrees breaking a previous record of 14 in 2002.
I could go on, but you get the point. This is not about making the case for global cooling just because many locales shattered cold records for a given day, any more than others should spout evidence of global warming for record heat.
The late geologist Robert M. Carter, a long-time professor at James Cook University in Australia, said it well: “The fact that the temperature was warmer at the end of the 20th century than it was in the preceding hundred years, is such a piece of kindergarten science. It’s true, and it is completely meaningless in telling you anything about climate change.”
Of course that doesn’t stop Hollywood, academia, the drive-by media, or left-wing politicians who lie for a living from dramatizing the moment to further their self-importance and their climate change narrative.
The reality is that unusual weather makes for momentarily interesting conversation. It does not make for any pattern, or “evidence” of a decades long climate trend by 2030, 2040 or eight decades into the future, which is commonly claimed by so many that comprise the climate change cottage industry.
Indeed, climate has always changed and it always will. So, relax. You can enjoy the summers in Europe, Minnesota and most everywhere else in the northern half of the globe. Just don’t pack your coats away in the attic.
Source: The folly of “climate emergency” By Collister Johnson CFACTS; How ‘bout that weather! by Peter Murphy, CFACTS; Environmental Catastrophe by David Warren, The Catholic Thing
