Help!!! There’s “Climate Change” Monsters Under my Bed!
Ruth Stephens
05/01/2014
We’ve all heard it before alately it seems more than ever, the climate is changing and WE, (all of us) are the cause! From our gas guzzling cars to wasting plastic bags that results in the killing of innocent baby seals, every one of us is guilty of these monstrous crimes. What can we DO we all ask? We have tried to modify our habits, we even bought the scratchy terrible toilet paper because its recycled, paid 38,000 for a crappy compact car because it said it’s a hybrid, and drove our rinsed out glass bottles across town because it’s the “right thing to do”. So why isn’t this working? Every week, this year we heard from John Kerry of upcoming apocalyptic crisis if we don’t accept man-made climate change into our hearts. And now the president himself chiding us all as he jets from coast to coast to lecture normal Americans on the long-term costs of our evil habit of consumption.
We all try to be “green” so why isn’t this enough for some lawmakers? Should we be taxed into better habits for our own good? In my span of 31 years on this earth I have witnessed lots of drastic changes in the climate, but is one more preferable than the other? Where did scientists even get the idea that weather ought to behave a certain way and what would “well behaved climate” look like? There are so many ideas presented on how to preserve a better planet for our future children. These ideas range from simple fixes such as reusable water bottles, to the more extreme suggestions that propose jailing all “climate-change deniers”. FINALLY, someone has come up with a way to settle the debate over climate change: Put the people on the wrong side of the argument in cages! A writer for the website Gawker, Adam Weinstein recently penned a self-described “rant” on the pressing need to arrest, charge and imprison people who “deny” global warming. Weinstein says that this “is an argument that’s just being discussed seriously in some circles.” He credits Rochester Institute of Technology philosophy professor Lawrence Torcello for getting the ball rolling. Last month, Torcello argued that America should follow Italy’s lead. In 2009, six seismologists were convicted of poorly communicating the risks of a major earthquake. When one struck, the scientists were sentenced to six years in jail for downplaying the risks(Weinstein).
Wikipedia claims that “The scientificopinion on climate change is that the Earth’s climate system is unequivocally warming, and it is extremely likely (at least 95% probability) that humans are causing most of it through activities that increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as deforestation and burning fossil fuels” ( (Contributors). So there you have it, the debate is settled when it comes to climate change, it is man made, it is catastrophic and only a few rubes in the sticks disagree. In my research for this very presentation, the majority of Google searches turned up headlines claiming, “99% of scientists have reached a consensus, the debate is settled. The costs of inaction on climate change will be “catastrophic”, according to US Secretary of State John Kerry. Aside from dramatic environmental shifts like melting sea ice, many of the ills of the modern world –starvation, poverty and disease — are likely to get worse as the planet warms. In 2008, Al Gore predicted that the North Pole Ice Cap would be ice-free by 2013. Arctic ice, which never came close to disappearing, has actually been making a bit of a comeback lately.
Why do some people have a hard time accepting the gospel of “climate change”? Surely they are not one of the ignorant deniers written about in the spiritual guides such as “The Guardian” or “The Huffington Post”! Contrary to the push from the media and government institutions, what I was taught from a very young age was to challenge ideas, examine a consensus and then come to conclusions about how the world works. Without curiosity and inquisition, my father told me that I would end up governed by my inferiors. So when one sees alarmist bells being rung with the fervor of a church bell calling all to worship the idea of a scientific consensus, begin to question. What I began to find as I started down the path to scientific enlightenment on climate change was exactly the opposite, I became very disillusioned and started to see a much larger and perhaps sinister agenda.
Some of the questions to be asked during research should be about temperature, what is considered a “normal” temperature for the earth? What has been normal for the past hundreds of thousands of years is for the temperature to vary greatly (Cliff Harris). The cycle of periods of extreme warmth and cold, and everything in between, is what is normal. Before man, and after man, the Earth has experienced these huge swings in temperatures. Who are we to say that the climate for the last couple of hundred thousand years is normal and that some deviation of a degree or two is abnormal? Who are we to say that the rising or falling of sea levels is abnormal if history shows this occurred regularly? What is measured in a 50-year span is not a good representation of weather patterns that have occurred for thousands of years. Variations in temperatures and in sea levels have occurred since the beginning. Did ancient Indian tribes also believe the changes in weather patterns were brought on by their behavior? Perhaps one tribe could blame another for a drought by accusing them of burning too much wood? Its not too unlikely, after all, Indians were a superstitious people. I have often questioned if “Climate Science” of the alarmists is not really “Climate Science” but “Computer Science”. The entire enterprise is based on a provable fact: that in a controlled laboratory experiment utilizing a closed system, increasing CO2 increases temperature. From that one repeatedly provable fact, they construct elaborate computer models of the Earth’s (the entire planet!) climate. This is an excellent example of the arrogance of the Left. Two major problems with the alarmist’s computer models, they forgot the first rule of computing: Garbage In, Garbage Out. Why is this wrong? They did NOT forget the first rule, but consciously manipulated the “In” to produce the “Out” they desire.
From the UN, to the IPCC, to Al Gore and even todays NASA, the theme remains the same; we MUST act before it’s too late. What do they mean by this? How do we act? One proposal that has been a source of controversy has been to implement carbon taxes like many European countries have. Ah yes, the universal solution for modifying weather patterns, more taxes! Lawmakers claim this is a cost effective way to reduce carbon emissions (by collecting our money), because if we cannot see or feel the impact of our sinful use of petro-fuels, we must at least experience a financial penance. That will set us straight! Or is this just another way to line the pockets of already greedy and corrupt political systems? Don’t forget, humans exhale C02 as well, should this result in future taxation of exhalation or will they offer more relaxed policies such as a “one child” rule?
I like alternative energy; I think it can be great and innovative to use our natural resources to create other options for energy. However, I also look at coal and petroleum fuels as natural resources being that they come from the earth. Coal is cheap and efficient; 41% of our electricity comes from coal…even those little rechargeable electric cars use coal powered electricity to get around (USA: Short Summary of Solyndra Scandal). On Sept. 20 the Obama Administration proposed regulations that would require future coal-fired power plants to deploy currently nonexistent technologies to reduce their CO2 emissions. The President has also directed the Environmental Protection Agency to implement rules next year to reduce CO2 emissions from existing coal-fired plants. One little problem, Demand for power in the United States is expected to grow 28 percent from 2011 to 2040 according the U.S. Energy Information Administration. What is the plan to replace some of the energy that normally comes from coal? Don’t look to companies like Solyndra; talk about a losing bet, and with our tax dollars at that! The FBI is investigating what happened with Solyndra, a solar panel company that got a $535 million government-backed loan with the help of the Obama White House in spite of the objections of federal budget analysts. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden got a nice photo op. They got to make speeches about being “green.” But then Solyndra went bankrupt. Americans lost jobs. Taxpayers got stuck with the 535 million dollar bill. George B. Kaiser Oklahoma’s wealthiest man (and Obama fundraiser) largely owned Solyndra via two Investment vehicles. Its actually genius if you ask me, everyone is sick of the oil billionaires, so when you have these “little people” competing for a share of the market all in the name of environmentalism, who wants to argue against that? Solyndra is not an isolated case, in fact many Obama fundraisers have received government loans, some of them much more than Solyndra. Here are just a few examples of the crony deals given in the name of “green energy” since 2008:
- Brighsource Energy received $1.6 billion. The “senior advisor” is Robert Kennedy Jr., an early Obama backer.
- Solar reserve received $737 million. The main investor is Micheal Froman who raised $500,000 for Obama.
- Abound Solar received $400 million. A key investor is billionaire heiress Pat Stryker, who financed Obama’s inaugural party with $87,000 and the Democratic Party with hundreds of thousands more.
- Granite Reliable Wind Generation received $169 million. The majority owner is a firm, which was run by Nancy Ann DeParle, who is now White House deputy chief of staff.
- These facts should immediately make clear why billionaires usually embrace higher taxes and fund socialists or even communists. After all, they usually get their billions from the taxpayer (USA: Short Summary of Solyndra Scandal).
It is not hard to see what the common link is between all the government grants and what the criteria seems to be to obtain one.
In the past couple of years, some scientists have dared challenge the status quo on climate change, which has usually resulted in a excommunication from the scientific community. Take Canadian Ecologist Patrick Moore for example, whose recent comments about climate change placed him on the heretic blacklist. “There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years,” he said in his prepared remarks to members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Tuesday. An Ecologist and business consultant, Moore was a co-founder of the environmental activist group Greenpeace as a Ph.D. student in 1971. Moore left the group in 1986, after it made what he described as a “sharp turn to the political left ” and began espousing policies he could no longer support, though opposition to global warming was not then among them at the time ( (Kenny). This is an example of a very pro-environmental activist who also happens to be a scientist and who is challenging the status quo on climate change. Is this other side of the debate worth listening to? Why do politicians like John Kerry and Harry Reid say this man is a “denier”? In the past, the scientific community would give him a platform to share his ideas and research and let the best science win. Moore was not the only scientist I found who opposed a man made climate change theory; there were actually hundreds of highly educated scientists who seemed to share his concerns and who had been dismissed by politicians as heretics and obstructionists.
Many people have tried to exploit environmental issues and use them to elevate themselves into powerful positions or amass wealth. Being a good steward of the planet should be on everyone’s list of priorities, after all this is our home, we have to live in it! Government should cease to use unproven propaganda about climate change and focus funds and resources on practical programs that do not seek to satisfy a radical cause. We have been good citizens and taken the practical steps that have been implemented, even the costly 12$ light bulbs. Most Americans are happy to join in a cause to recycle more, waste less, plant trees and care for animals and their habitats. As individuals we can all do better to not litter, minimize waste, and be cautious of what we put into our soil and our water. Fortunately we are an intelligent species and we don’t need a government program to force us into habits that will ultimately be “better for us”.
Bibliography
Wikipedia contributors. “Global warming.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 23 Apr. 2014. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
Cliff Harris, Randy Mann. “Global Temperatures (2500 B.C. to 2040 A.D.).” Chart. 2011.
Contributors, Wikipedia. “Scientific Opinion on Climate Change.” Wikipedia.
Kenny, Jack. “The New American.” The New American.com. <www.thenewamerican.com>.
“USA: Short Summary of Solyndra Scandal.” In Other News. <In-Other-News-.com>.
Weinstein, Adam. “Gawker.” 14 April 2014. Gawker. 23 April 2014 <www.gawker.com>.
Can Utopia be attained?
I observe many humanitarians, and even politicians who seem to have formed a world view based on the idea that human beings can exist side by side and only pursue causes that are noble. The obstacles to them are that some have less than others, some are less educated etc. If all men were given the same resource, this problem would go away. There is a comfort in attaching yourself to this sort of world view, and as good as it may feel, it is simply a fallacy. Studying history may be a helpful aid in understanding the brutal nature of man…not all men, but many. There will always be a covetous nature in people that see what you have and will want it for themselves. Living by knowing this truth does not have to make one guarded or combative, in fact one can relax most when understanding the world is not a just or perfect place but it is a good place. Heaven on earth is a noble but lost cause.
rutesperanza 
