Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Climate change gullibility

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - H. L.
letters door

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

- H. L. Mencken

In 1988, we were told we had ten years to drastically cut CO2 emissions or it would be too late. In 1997, we were warned we only had 11 years. And just last year we were told we have but twelve years left to save the planet. When these predictions fail, they just move the deadline farther down the timeline.

With their 100 per cent failure, why believe them? The student protesters weren't born then, many of their teachers are too young to remember, but the media should know.

Politicians know.

ClimateData.ca was set up "to support and enable Canada's climate change adaptation planning, and improve access to relevant climate data."

But their data only goes back to 1950. Why? Because many of our highest recorded temperatures occurred before 1950.

It's difficult to frighten us into submission by constantly telling us that things are getting worse when things are getting better.

Deaths from climate-related events have plummeted by 97 per cent over the past 100 years.

Tornado activity is in decline. 2018 was a record low.

Hurricane activity has been in a slight decline for decades. We recently experienced an unprecedented 12-year stretch without a major hurricane making landfall in the U.S.

We're warned that satellite observations show that Arctic sea ice is almost 50 per cent less than in 1979. But satellite observations started in 1972, and in 1972, the ice cover was considerably less than it is now. Is there any question why they left out the earlier years?

Polar bears aren't going extinct, there are five times as many as 60 years ago. That's a population explosion.

Permafrost melting will have no more effect than it did the last time it was this warm (and warmer) 1,000 years ago when humanity thrived, thanks to the warmer climate.

Globally, the area burned every year by forest fires is declining.

Deserts are shrinking - more CO2 means plants need less water.

Sea levels aren't rising any faster, islands are not being submerged, 45 per cent of them are growing and the rest are stable. A determination of sea level trends requires 100 years of data due to the oscillations that could bias the results. Ten years ago, sea levels fell. The average rate of rise for the world's tide gauges is about 3.5 cm per century.

Oceans are not acidifying. They contain 50 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere. They are alkaline, always have been, even when CO2 was 20 times higher. Additional CO2 will only make the oceans a little less alkaline at the surface. As more CO2 is added to the atmosphere and is dissolved in the oceans, more precipitates out as aragonite (CaCO3) or the dead calcitic skeletons of plankton, forming limestone.

Food production is increasing. The biggest threat to our food supply is the conversion from growing food to growing biofuels.

Life expectancy is increasing. Wealth is increasing. Fossil fuels make it possible for 7.6 billion of us to live.

Climate crisis?

The Cuban Missile Crisis, now that was a real crisis, with the Soviet Union and the U.S. on the brink of nuclear war. But this? For 30 years we've been told the end is near, but things just kept getting better.

It's about power. Politics. Wealth.

As Ottmar Endenhofer, IPCC co-chair of Working Group 3 said: "We redistribute de-facto, the world's wealth by climate policy... One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore."

So they frighten children and gullible adults, parading Greta Thunberg around with her scripted outrage, and all the while the media aids and abets their agenda instead of exposing it.

The big names in the global warming industry consider their position unable to withstand a debate. On Sept. 23, the United Nations convened its Climate Action Summit 2019 in New York City "to raise the global level of ambition to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and to galvanize action that can limit climate change to 2 C and even 1.5 C."

Consequently, The Heartland Institute invited some of the country's most prominent global warming individuals to represent the UN's side in a public climate debate to be held on the same day in New York City's Times Square. They all declined.

What climate crisis?

Art Betke

Prince George