Climate activists are like Dr. Kevorkian; western nations are his willing victims.
Continuing Coverage of Climate Change. . .
The Cure Is Worse Than the Disease
By: George Noga – November 27, 2022
Climate change is a signature issue, but this is our first climate post since July 2021. This post updates our position about man-made warming. The big news is that we now conclude that climate activism will cause greater harm to humanity than climate change – and by a wide margin. Following is what the science tells us.
The earth is warming, and mankind exerts a warming influence.
Anything beyond the above sentence is not science; it’s that simple. The earth has been warming for 160 years. Although humans exert a warming influence, it is not possible to know how much warming is attributable to mankind. We believe anthropogenic causes are an inconsequential part of overall warming, but it is impossible to be sure. We also believe many anti-science myths that have gained currency are not true:
- Hurricanes are not more frequent or severe than 100 years ago.
- Floods have not increased over the past 70 years.
- Greenland’s ice sheet is shrinking no more rapidly than 80 years ago.
- Heat waves in the US are no more common than they were in 1900.
- The amount of land burned each year by wildfires is less than 120 years ago.
- Warming has many benefits; global greening has vastly improved agriculture.
- Deaths from heat have increased, but there are 20 times less deaths from cold.
- There is no increase in severe weather events compared to 100 years ago.
- Climate change does not pose an existential threat to humanity.
- The Paris climate accord will have zero climate effect even if targets are met.
- The recent climate legislation will lower temperature .0009 degrees by 2100.
It has become apparent that so-called solutions being proffered for climate change, a/k/a warming, will cause far more harm to humanity than the perceived problem. Following are some of the ways climate activists’ policies harm mankind.
Climate is a common global resource. It matters not what the US and western nations do if China, India, Africa and developing nations don’t join in. We are unilaterally squandering precious economic resources for a chimera. This is a classic “tragedy of the commons” scenario which we fail to grasp. There are 3.5 billion people without reliable sources of electricity. While climate alarmists consternate over a phony existential crisis 100 years from now, poor people face a real existential crisis today.
We are squandering trillions today on green pork to (maybe) achieve
infinitesimal reductions in temperature 100 years in the future.
Even the middle class is forced to make tough economic tradeoffs due to skyrocketing energy prices. Costs surge, while economic growth declines. Emissions is increasingly an issue concerning only the elite. As demonstrated by the war in Ukraine, failure to produce energy in the west poses geopolitical risks, puts us at the mercy of dictators and heightens the risk of WMD use. Climate activists’ obsession with EVs makes us dependent on extractive minerals (lithium, cobalt) found mostly in unfriendly climes and mined by child and slave labor while wreaking grave environmental harm.
Climate monomania already causes energy nightmares. Reliable electric power no longer can be taken for granted. Green regulations, subsidies and mandates are causing shortages and driving up prices – by more than 100% in much of the US. Our living standards are endangered, while we are empowering Putin, Maduro and the ayatollahs.
The greatest damage is to western economies which are being savaged by wasteful spending on green energy in a quixotic attempt to cut emissions. Billions of people are being harmed today in pursuit of a wrongheaded and impossible dream. The trillions wasted on green pork come at the expense of food security, clean water, disease control, and electricity for billions of people. People in poverty in Africa do not need solar panels made with slave labor; they need food, water and health care now.
Last, to the limited extent warming is anthropogenic, it will be solved within 100 years via population decline, and without spending any money. Demographics is destiny.
Correlation is not Causation – Women’s Hemlines
The go-to argument for climate activists always is a graph showing temperature and CO2 rising in lockstep, with starting and ending points carefully selected for maximum impact. That’s all they have. If we could choose the starting and ending points, we could make the graph show anything. It is not reasonable that an established 160-year secular warming trend abruptly ended and was replaced by an identical anthropogenic warming trend. Correlation is not causation. We could replace the CO2 data on the graph with women’s hemlines to “prove” hemlines are the true cause of warming.
As Toynbee stated, “Civilizations die from suicide, not murder“. Climate activists are like Dr. Kevorkian, and western societies are his willing – make that eager – victims.
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