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It’s Weather, Not the Apocalypse
Another day, another weather panic. A storm bears down on the media centers of the east coast. Reporters don oversized parkas, waddle into the howling wind and offer jeremiads about global warming climate change. “Repent! The End is Nigh!”
Because who would expect the northeast to get snow in February — it’s unheard of! Messrs. Delingpole and Steyn made great sport of this on their recent podcast.
But when we mock this predictable alarmism, lefties cast us as blasphemers. “Y u hate science, stoopid rethuglicans!!1!” says the charming Twitter account with an egg avatar and three followers. Yes, your piercing logic has swayed my scientific conclusions, @p4lintard.
Internet cranks aside, well-meaning liberals often ask why so many Americans doubt climate change hysteria. Our recent history with environmental apocalypse provides clues.
In the 1960s, the Malthusian “Population Bomb” was going to kill us all. Now it’s predicted that global population will begin to decline in the next few years, all on its own. So much for that theory.
In the 1970s, the “Coming Ice Age” was going to kill us all. My first-grade teacher tried to scare us with a map; it showed our entire city covered by a glacier. I was just thankful that my family was moving from Chicago to Phoenix that summer.
In the 1980s, the “Ozone Hole” was going to kill us all. Almost as soon as they started mapping ozone, they noticed thinning over the north and south poles. Understanding basic physics and centripetal force, I found it unsurprising that the ozone layer would be thicker around the equator. Funny how we don’t hear much about the ozone hole anymore.
Of course, since the 1990s, “Global Warming” is going to kill us all. Concerned about the inconvenient global cooling trend of the 2000s, eco-alarmists have altered the restrictive GW title to the endlessly flexible “climate change.” Now every time there’s a hot spell, cold spell, rain, drought, flood, snow, tornado, hail, fog, hurricane, sleet, mudslide, wind, lack of wind, wildfire, derecho or haboob, it is proof (proof!) of climate change and something must be done!
Forgive my impertinence, but the climate is supposed to change. It always has in the past and I guarantee it will in the future. And, as always, humans will continue to adapt to the changing conditions.
Furthermore, why do environmental doomsayers believe that the current climate is the “correct” one that we must lock into place? Even if possible, harshly enforcing a static climate seems drastically more unnatural than anything the most rapacious oil exec could contemplate.
With the awful track record of ecological prophecy, Americans are right to demand much more evidence before upending the most prosperous and free society the world has ever known.
Until then, I’ll continue to save energy, recycle, and teach my kids to do the same. Being a wise steward of the planet does a lot more good than being its self-proclaimed savior.
Published in General
My long standing skepticism of Global Warming alarmism arises from what I perceived to be a reaction to averages within a study of extremes. Weather and temperature vary wildly. Throughout the nineties we were told that weather was warmer than average and this meant bad things. But that’s the nature of averages. Any time you insert new numbers into averages, the average changes. Given how temperature varies, we can’t expect it to adhere to average, but we seemed to be told that it if it didn’t adhere, we should panic.
The fact they moved to “climate change” gives me a sense of vindication.
When I took statistics in high school, my teacher explained something similar to me. The school board was in a panic about average test scores falling one year. My teacher noted that test scores were just fine. All that happened was that two kids that had no business taking the test — a special needs student and a non-college bound girl who was just hanging out with her best friend — got such low scores that it brought the average down. (This was the eighties. He could say that without a blink of the eye.)
Climate studies seem centered on panicking about extremes that change the average, yet weather seems large built on extremes.
Climate change alarmism is just good old fashion apocalypse talk. Environmentalism is the left’s new religion and all religions need an apocalypse so that their more wild brethren can man street corners yelling, “Repent! The end is near!”
The best evidence that belief in AGW is not science is that 100% of the correlation between being a scientist and believing in AGW is explained by politics. “Ninety percent of scientist agree with AGW.” is as informative about science as “Ninety percent of scientists voted for Obama over Romney.” The latter statement is taken as “the science is settled”, does this mean the second statement says, “It is scientifically proven that Obama is a better president than Romney would be.”
That’s because the hole seems to be closing.
But before you go off and celebrate, it could just be that the closing of the hole is going to kill us all! It might rain, or not rain, or rain over here and not over there, or vice versa. Anyway, the weather is going to change and it’s all your fault, Jon.
Denier.
This leads to good question, namely, how much longer are we going to have to endure this particular case? We’ve had about a 15 year pause in rising temperatures. When is this thing going to be put to rest?
In my line of work I actually translate a lot of material on alternative energy and environmental law from Germany and Austria, and it has been informative in the last year or so to listen to the tone of the editorial comments clients make in their introductory materials change. In Europe, the AGW alarmists are in full panic and retreat. They already think they’ve lost the public debate for now and are talking about consolidating their losses. This was not so in 07 through 11. I wonder how long it will take for the greenies here to reach that state.
Not any time soon. Although I didn’t read the article I recently saw a headline that the U.N. has determined that climate change is going to be much worse than previous predictions forecasted.
::SIGH:: I guess I knew it was all my fault… :-(
When I was a wee lad, I would have the occasional dream about a nuclear holocaust. In typical kid fashion, the bombs exploded off in a far distance, so I could see them happen, the mushroom cloud, but be far enough away to run away to apocalypse-ized cities where no one dwelt anymore.
Do today’s children dream of a climate apocalypse? Or electric sheep?
In Vermont, we had a snowstorm a week or two back. Not an apocalypse, and certainly not a rare event in March. Hell, when I was in high school, it snowed in May – as I was walking home from baseball practice. 1984. This was taken as evidence of global cooling.
In short: Aside from the political side of the green agenda – which is really where it’s at, and implementing further controls on the lives of others so they match your worldview – there is nothing going on here, nothing to see, but certainly nothing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on, which net us nothing.
It no longer snows in May in Vermont like it did in 1984. Global Warming!
One of our local TV stations here in Charleston SC calls their every day news cast ” Weather Disaster Plus” and run ads billing it as such. I guess regular weather isn’t sexy enough to get any attention.
Let’s not forget the homicidal Silent Spring scam. Rachel Carson’s jeremiad against the pesticide DDT and its subsequent ban caused over 50 million malaria deaths worldwide. Sadly, the death toll continues to mount, with 500 million infected and an additional 1-2 million deaths each and every year.
Yet the environmental left is positioned as the caring and compassionate political philosophy.