The Climate Alarmists Are Wrong
Two big storms don't mean much.
"How many once-in-a-lifetime storms will it take," demands The Daily Show comic Trevor Noah, "until everyone admits man-made climate change is real?!"
His audience roars its approval.
When Hurricane Irma hit, so-called friends admonished me, "Look what your fossil fuels have done! Will you finally admit you are wrong?"
No. It's the alarmists who are wrong—on so many levels.
First, two big storms don't mean much.
The global warming activists must know that because when Donald Trump joked about a lack of warming on a snowy day, they lectured us about how "weather is not climate—one snowstorm is irrelevant to long-term climate."
They were right then. But now that bad weather has come, they change their tune.
Time magazine reported confidently, "Climate change makes the hurricane season worse."
But Irma and Harvey came after a record 12 years without any Category 3-5 storms hitting the United States. Over those 12 years, did Time say the absence of storms proved climate change fear exaggerated? No. Of course not.
It seems logical that warmer water may make storms worse, but there's no proof of that.
The government's own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says neither its models "nor our analyses of trends in Atlantic hurricane and tropical storm counts over the past 120-plus years support the notion that greenhouse gas-induced warming leads to large increases in either tropical storm or overall hurricane numbers."
As Irma approached, The Washington Post ran an even dumber headline: "Irma and Harvey Should Kill Any Doubt That Climate Change Is Real."
That's phrased to make any skeptic look ridiculous.
Of course climate change is real! Climate changes—it always has and always will. For the past 300 years, since "the little ice age," the globe warmed about three degrees. The warming started well before man emitted much carbon.
So the real unanswered questions are:
- Will climate change become a crisis? (We face immediate crises now: poverty, terrorism, a $20 trillion debt, rebuilding after the hurricanes)
- Is there anything we can do about it? (No. Not now; the science isn't there yet.)
- Did man's burning fossil fuels increase the warming? (Probably. But we don't know how much.)
I resent how the alarmists mix these questions, pretending all the science is settled. Notice how Trevor Noah, above, tossed out the words "man-made," as if all climate change is man-made?
OK, he's just a comic, but New York Times writers constantly yammer about "human-caused" and "man-made" climate change, too.
Politicians (and ex-politicians like Al Gore) are eager to exploit our fears by calling for more spending and regulation in the name of fighting deadly but preventable climate change—as if feeble efforts like the Paris climate accord would have made the tiniest difference. They wouldn't. It's all for show.
A video I made about this seems to have struck a chord. It got more than a million views over the weekend.
Some people reacted with anger online: "the scientific community suggest that humans are contributing to the warming of the planet. Isn't (it) at least a little reckless to put a finger in each ear and say 'Nuh uh! LALALALALALALALALA!'"
That would be reckless. But no one advocates that. We already spend a fortune on subsidies, mandates and climate research. The real questions are outlined above.
A calmer commenter wrote, "Don't forget the hurricanes of the past. 1926 Miami, 1935 Keys, 1947 West Palm Beach, Donna 1961. People act like hurricanes like these have never happened."
Right. And he left out Galveston's hurricane in 1900, which killed as many as 12,000 people.
One commenter added, "It's called El Nino and La Nina. We will be entering El Nino again (and) so seeing storms actually form. It shifts back and forth every 7-10 years or so. Do schools not teach these things?"
Climate fluctuates, and humans don't have too much to say about it.
Maybe someday humans will be gone. The storms will continue. But at least there'll be less hot air.
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Preach!
We are in a warming trend - it's been going on for roughly 10,000 years. The warming trend would be here even if man weren't. It's not like it was 72 fucking degrees each day until man decided to step out of the cave.
I'm shocked that Stossel didn't mention, but everyone made a big deal about how rain Harvey dumped on Houston. It was a record amount, but just barely. Houston was hit by 2 hurricanes in back-to-back years, '78 and '79, that both dumped more than 45" inches of rain. Sadly, I got a sense that the climate alarmist were actually happy that we broke the record just so they could say, "See, we told you so".
It would be a little stupid to say that mankind caused any warming three hundred years ago, and no one really seems to claim that, but somehow we're still responsible for the tail-end warming that we're still seeing as we come out of the mentioned Little Ice Age.
In my view, the real climate change 'deniers' are the one's who seem to believe mankind is the primary, or even a very measurable, cause of said warming. It's been a trend for so long that there is simply no way to attribute it to us.
I do note, however, that by focusing almost entirely on CO2 environmentalists have really dropped the ball on real pollution in the 3rd world. Odd, that.
"It would be a little stupid to say that mankind caused any warming three hundred years ago, "
Yes, because mankind didn't know how to chop down trees 300 years ago. That is a recently acquired skill. Like driving a food truck.
"One commenter added, "It's called El Nino and La Nina. We will be entering El Nino again (and) so seeing storms actually form. It shifts back and forth every 7-10 years or so. Do schools not teach these things?"
No, the highly regulated and largely government controlled schools do not teach these things. Critical thinking skills will get a student sent to detention and it will go down on his permanent record.
Yes, we need to take care of the climate changes, the global warming has to be controlled as it can cause a lot of damage to nature and mankind.
Climatic changes are becoming a crisis, as after the hurricanes there has been a lot of damage to life and property.
People are now rebuilding the property using impact doors miami to make the house withstand the storm.
Natural calamities strike anytime,we cannot stop them but can take some prevention measures to minimize the damage.