The doom business is quite profitable, both financially and politically, and thus are we treated to yet another weather-end-times poll, this one a Monmouth University survey indicating that two-thirds of Republicans now believe in “climate change.”
Of course, people should believe in it because the climate is always changing — naturally. Whether man is influencing this change, however, is a different matter.
Monmouth University reports on its poll, which surveyed 802 American adults between November 9 and 12: “Nearly 8-in-10 Americans (78%) believe the world’s climate is undergoing a change that is causing more extreme weather patterns and sea level rise, up from 70% in December 2015. Of note, nearly two-thirds of Republicans (64%) now believe in climate change, a 15 point jump from just under half (49%) three years ago. However, belief in climate change continues to be higher among Democrats (92%, up from 85% in 2015) and independents (78%, up from 74%).”
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If the survey is accurate, it is a testimonial to the power of propaganda and perception. As for extreme weather, note that the average number of category 3 or higher hurricanes making United States landfall each decade since 1851 is six. Yet the figure for the 1981-1990 and 1991-2000 periods has been five each; there were three from 2001 to 2004, and none during the decade preceding the 2016 hurricane season.
As for sea-level rise, some question if it’s even presently happening. Yet what if it is? For this also is a naturally occurring phenomenon; for example, at one time the oceans around Florida were 100 feet higher, at another time 300 feet lower.
Despite such realities, a “majority of Americans (54%) currently say that climate change is a very serious problem, which is up significantly from 41% in Monmouth’s 2015 poll,” the Monmouth survey also finds. “Another 17% say climate change is a somewhat serious problem and 7% say it is not too serious. The remainder say climate change is not happening (16%) or don’t know if it is happening (5%).”
Moreover, reports The Hill, “Thirty-seven percent of Americans polled said the environment and human activity contribute equally to a changing climate, while 29 percent place greater blame on human activity and 10 percent blame natural environmental changes.”
Only a quarter of Republicans surveyed believe climate change is a very serious problem, but this is where the good news ends. Not only do 69 percent of Americans surveyed believe government should take action to combat “climate change,” with only 22 percent in opposition, but 51 percent of Republicans agree with the big-government majority. Of course, since the state isn’t good at playing God, all this will do is provide government a pretext for further fleecing the people (e.g., carbon taxes).
The above illustrates the simple reality that polls don’t determine Truth. As to this, the truth on climate change is buried under a multitude of misconceptions and deceptions. But consider the following:
• Many experts are warning not of global warming, but another ice age. After all, the Earth’s pattern is one of 100,000-year glacial periods followed by 12,000-year interglacials, the latter being a warming period of the kind we’re currently experiencing. The problem? Ours has lasted for approximately 12,000 years — we’re due for a freeze.
• One man thus warning is atmospheric and space physics expert S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and a founding director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project. He wrote in 2016 that there have been nearly 20 major glaciations “in the past two to three million years. The coolings are quite severe: the most recent one, ending only about 12,000 years ago, covered much of North America and Europe with miles-thick continental ice sheets and led to the disappearance of (barely) surviving bands of Neanderthalers; they were displaced by the more adaptable Homo Sapiens.”
Moreover, warning how we might be due for a dangerous deep freeze, he also wrote that “cold periods and droughts appear to be the main dangers to agriculturally based societies in all regions of the world,” and he advised we “try to figure out how to prevent such cooling episodes, if possible.”
• This message is nothing new, mind you. Note that Newsweek ran a 1975 story enitled “The Cooling World,” preaching a message that alarmed us grammar-school kids back then — before the doomsayers started scaring children with warmist apocalyptic scenarios.
• Generally speaking, warmth breeds life and cold, death. Even the New York Times admitted this, reporting in 2016 on a Lancet study showing that “cold weather is responsible, directly or indirectly, for 17 times as many deaths as hot weather,” as the Times related it. Moreover, the paper cited yet another study suggesting that in most of the world, “rising temperatures could reduce overall mortality rates.”
• The wonder of warmth is why there are more than 10 times as many species in the tropics than the Arctic; cold weather greatly shortens the food chain, largely taking herbivores out of the equation.
• “Then consider the alarmism bugaboo CO2,” as I wrote at The Hill last year. “Often called ‘carbon,’ which is like calling H2O ‘hydrogen,’ there’s a reason botanists pump it into greenhouses: it’s not a pollutant but plant food. Rising CO2 associated with rising temperatures augments plant growth, thus increasing crop yields markedly. It’s no coincidence that the dinosaurs’ Mesozoic Era saw carbon dioxide levels 5 to 10 times today’s — and lush foliage everywhere.”
• “In fact, you just may want to make your ‘carbon footprint’ Paul Bunyan size,” I also wrote. “For astrobiologist Jack O’Malley-James warned in 2013 that life on Earth will experience a CO2-related demise — resulting from too little of the gas. The idea is that an ever-hotter sun will cause greater evaporation, over time reducing carbon dioxide levels to a point where plants will be unable to survive. Luckily, this doesn’t occur until 1,000,000,000 A.D., approximately and supposedly.”
• Whether the sun is currently getting hotter is a question, though. Some say we’re actually in a 20-year period of stable or possibly decreasing temperatures, and one report indicates that Arctic sea ice is the same thickness now as it was 75 years ago.
Moreover, even if the next ice age is thousands of years off, and even if rising temperature were negative, what could we do about it? Note here that Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, the head of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, calculated last year that reducing the global temperature 3/10ths of 1 degree by the century’s end — meaning, postponing so-called “global warming” less than 4 years — would cost $100 trillion (no, that’s not a typo).
Of course, a new federal government report was just issued warning of dire climate-change consequences if Something is Not Done Now!™ Scary? Well, just consider doomsayers’ track record. Among “Environmentalists’ Wild Predictions” have been the warning that food shortages would cause 65 million Americans to die of starvation in the 1980s, leading the U.S.’s population to decline to 22.6 million by 1999; and the even money prediction “that England will not exist in the year 2000.”
Unfortunately, as Georg Hegel noted, “We learn from history that we do not learn from history.” If we did, we’d realize that there’s one kind of disaster we probably needn’t worry about.
The one everyone else is worrying about.
Neither the majority nor the “elites” foresaw Rome’s fall, the Great Depression, or WWII. Do you really think they now have a crystal ball?
Disaster has befallen man in the past, and it will again. But it won’t be the sum of fashionable fears shouted by media carnival barkers, but will come like a thief in the night.
Photo: luigi giordano/iStock/Getty Images Plus
