Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the global warming crowd have become like the guy who stands on a street corner with a sign that says, “Repent! The end is near!” The main differences are, the guy on the street corner doesn’t exact money from taxpayers to prove his ideas, and his prediction is based on the prophets, who made accurate predictions in the past, where the global warming alarmists, extract money from the rest of us at gunpoint, demand our unquestioned obedience and have never made an accurate prediction. Despite the many predictions of catastrophe by the anthropogenic climate change doomsayers not one of their predictions has ever panned out. Not only has the global warming crowd failed to make any accurate predictions, based on their hypothesis, but all the Eco Henny Penny’s are uniform in that they are always wrong, at least so far. Despite the track record of failure to predict anything, the people that shill for global warming claim, we must act now! Of course, acting now means giving them unlimited power over us and smashing our economy, else they predict terrible things will happen… like a collapsing economy and tyranny.
Millions, perhaps billions of research dollars are handed out every year, to promote and dream up what terrible consequences might happen when our planet warms, because you drive to work and live in a heated house. Anyone can get access to that treasure trove of money just by writing a grant paper in which you will predict some disaster that “will” be generated by anthropogenic climate change. I predict… global warming will result in more big toe bones being broken. Since the temperatures will be higher, and people are more lethargic in heat, more people will stub their toes, and voila, more broken toe bones, all because you want to be able to cook your food! That should be worth a few million to verify.
The reason we drive past the guy on the street corner with a sign claiming the end is nigh, and shake our heads, is because nut jobs have been claiming the end is nigh, since the time of Christ. Every generation has had it’s supposed prophet of doom giving the day and time of the apocalypse, and every one has been wrong. Someday one will be right, the world will end, not because they see the future… but in the same way a stopped clock is correct twice a day. The stopped clock is not accurate but time overtakes it. The street preacher bases his or her warnings, on the predictions of the prophets, who have made accurate predictions in the past. Prophecy however is not subject to time constraints, and makes no such claim, as do climate change fear mongers.
The enlightenment was all about not taking the word of authorities just because of their authority. The new means was supposed to be debate and logic, as the arbiters of what is right, instead of authority. The heirs of the enlightenment however have a different take. They agree that we shouldn’t believe anything certain authorities tell us, even when their predictions turn out to be correct, but to accept without question their word, because they are the authority in science. Not to take a position on birth control but to illustrate the point… When the Pill came out, Pope Paul VI wrote Humanae Vitae, in which he predicted a dramatic rise in divorces, children born out of wedlock, abortions and venereal diseases, (all of which have happened), he was vilified by the heirs to the enlightenment, and is even more hated today for his correct predictions.
The global warming crowd, on the other hand, have a zero track record in their predictions. So far not one prediction of any of the Eco alarmists has come true. Who could forget Al Gore’s prediction in 2008 that the polar ice caps would be gone in 5 years? Well, 2013 has come and passed and the ice caps are bigger than ever. In the 1970s the new class was shilling a new round of glaciation. To stop it they envisioned all kinds of dangerous remedies. Rachel Carson predicted, in her book Silent Spring, millions of deaths by pesticide poisoning, the extinction of birds and bees, none of which came true. Her book was largely responsible for the eradication of DDT however, which led to the resurgence of malaria… and millions of deaths from that dreaded disease.
Which brings me to the focal point of this article, that entrusting self appointed egoists the power to make planet wide changes based on their self interested predictions, is a recipe for true disaster. Today, there are scientists who want to put mirrors in orbit to direct some sunlight away from the planet, some want to seed the oceans with iron to stimulate algae growth to suck up carbon dioxide and others want to force millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s crust to sequester it. No way any of those schemes could go disastrously wrong. Like introducing the cane toad to Australia.
Global warming alarmists are similar to the guy on the street corner, but the guy on the street doesn’t demand you give your money and sovereignty to him, only to repent. The climate change crowd refuses debate, because it might diminish their authority, and thereby reject the advances of the enlightenment. While a sign that tells us to repent is based on past predictions, that have come true, those of the Eco fear mongers are based on predictions that have never panned out. When you drill down to the reality of what the green movement stands for, it is not environmentalism, nor saving the whales, but socialism and the unlimited power socialism will give them. That is why their arguments are so inconsistent, the voracity of their predictions irrelevant and they argue against the enlightenment, it is because they are not advocating for their real goal, total control of the hoi polloi.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
