Posted on 01/26/2007 5:06:03 AM PST by Molly Pitcher
Are you afraid? Very afraid?
Well, if you aren’t, you should be. And if you are, you aren’t scared enough.
In just over a week, we are about to be treated to yet another Cassandra-style warning about the “fate of the earth,” this time from the International Panel on Climate Change.
It has become part of the background noise in our daily lives: the constant refrain that the world is rushing headlong into certain doom.
A doom, that is, that you will suffer unless you hand control of the economy and your daily lives over to the very elite that is warning of the impending disaster: the media, the left-leaning political class, and academics. As long as we surrender to the tender mercies of their magnanimity and good will, all might yet be well with the world.
When I was growing up, the crisis was the population bomb. The exponential growth in human population was inevitably leading us all into a bleak future of death, disease, and mass starvation. "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate..." wrote Paul Ehrlich.
Of course the population bomb blew up in Ehrlich’s face, and now most major countries in the developed world are faced with the economic problem of population decline and increasing obesity, not mass starvation.
But being wrong hasn’t stopped the doomsayers. There is always something to be very afraid of. In the 70’s it was Global Cooling, “limits to growth,” the energy crisis, and the yellow peril of Japanese economic expansion; in the 80’s it was nuclear power, nuclear war, nuclear winter, Alar on our apples, and the conversion of the middle-class into a vast cadre of homeless people; in the 90’s we were introduced to global warming, genetically modified foods invading nature, and the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” These days worries center on global climate change, the bird flu, and peak oil.
The evidence for anthropogenic climate change (man-made global warming to you and me) is said to be “overwhelming” and “irrefutable” in the copious amount of pre-publication press the new IPCC report is garnering.
Well, count me among the skeptical few.
It’s not that I know for certain that the IPCC is selling snake oil this time, because I don’t. In fact, I have no doubt that a number of brilliant scientists without a particular axe to grind are concerned about possible human-induced global climate change, and have been involved in researching the issue.
It’s just that the IPCC’s existence and funding are wholly dependent upon there being a “crisis,” and they have established a terrible track record in their previous 3 reports that should make all of us especially skeptical. In their last report they prominently featured the compelling “hockey stick” graph of global temperature over time. The graph showed a stable global climate for the past 1000 years, until men started to really muck it up in the 20th Century.
It made for a compelling visual—much as Paul Ehrlich’s demonstration that we were headed to certain doom in the 70’s and 80’s—but it was inconveniently and ridiculously wrong. The centerpiece of the 3rd IPCC report, it is now as thoroughly discredited as Ehrlich’s predictions of mass starvation. What makes this particular case of bad science was not only how obviously wrong it was (did no climate scientists notice the lack of the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age in the graph?), but how prominently promoted it was as “proof” of human-induced climate change.
That certainly doesn’t mean that the current IPCC report will be as flawed, but it certainly opens up room for more than a little doubt about whether the proof presented should “shock the world” into action, as the Chairman hopes.
The common denominator of all these recent predictions of doom is that we are told that there is only one way to prevent certain disaster: hand over our individual freedoms and control of the economy to a political elite. In the 60’s and 70’s Ehrlich suggested compulsory population control (a suggestion taken up by China), luxury taxes on cribs and products aimed at children, and the establishment of a government bureaucracy called the Federal Bureau of Population and Environment.
More recently we have seen proposals for carbon taxes, subsidies to favored technologies such as “alternative fuels,” stepped up urban planning to promote population density, forced recycling and greater and greater government control of the economy through taxes and subsidies in general. The content of the predictions themselves is irrelevant, the general solution is always the same: hand control of politics and the economy over to an elite who know what is good for us, and they will save you from yourselves.
In other words, hand money, power and fame to the few and they will reward you with your lives. Pretty much the same deal that feudal lords gave their serfs.
The prophesies of doom and gloom are just another version of a political and intellectual elite grasping for power. And of that, I would say, you should be very afraid.
"..You know, a few weeks ago when it was 65 outside I was complaining about us not having winter yet. This morning when I left for work that -6 hit me like a hammer.
Damn global warming..."
on a more positive side, we need this hard cold to last awhile to balance nature.
locally, rabies infected skunks numbers are rising and animals that normally hibernate are really messed up
The common denominator of all these recent predictions of doom is that we are told that there is only one way to prevent certain disaster: hand over our individual freedoms and control of the economy to a political elite.
"This morning when I left for work that -6 hit me like a hammer. "
besides that, when I quick stepped out in just longjohns and tennis shoes to start truck, I got reminded that I had forgot to button flap on the back
Yep. That's the key phrase and motivating scheme behind all of this nonsense.
Ouch. At least I had on my jacket and boots.
I did leave before taking the dog out... my wife was not happy when she woke up and realized that she would have to get out there in the sub-zero weather.
If you think those animals are confused now, just wait until it snows in July!
Planting is later, and harvest is also later. The actual growing season is close to the same length.
I am not afraid, I am amused, and have been saying for a long time that if there WERE a longer growing season it would make me happy. I could grow more Super Beefsteaks and plant less Early Girls in my tomato garden.
It would be great if the growing season was longer, but it seems to have just shifted.
I would love it for my garden also.
Every program running on the Discovery/Time channel is doom and gloom, last night I watched the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef by the crown of thorns starfish. Predictably, the reason is because of the farmers in Oz are selfishly, and uncaringly, growing crops that allow the fertilizer to run off into the sea around the Reef thereby allowing a chain reaction that results in a proliferation of these starfish.
This was only part of the problem, of course, the real one is Global Warming. So trite and so predictable now that the leftoids are controlling the media with the promotion of their nonsense. Why anyone would believe this is hard to understand but many do through the drumbeat of lies and the teaching(indoctrination) of our children in public schools.
I clearly remember the Erlich hysteria and now this, deja vous all over again, heaven help us.
Save for later. Outstanding analysis.
We're also hurtling through the universe at a good clip. Who's steering?
My next home/door neighbor has a huge mulch pile about twelve feet high and twenty feet in diameter.
The mulch is decomposing as we speak, and that process causes much heat.
These days of near zero temps., the 8 to 10 deer all sit/lay around together on this huge warm pile of leaves and small twigs and are in "hog heaven". It looks like a game of "King of The Hill".
LOL
With the wind chill factored in, we're currently at a global warming temp of 12 here in Virginia Beach, Va.
Global warming passed us by this a.m. also. 20 here in our town in NE Alabama.
"Well, some of the Climate Change Chicken Littles (C3L) are beginning to get "smart" (or is that "shrewd") and cover their global cooling / global warming flip-flops by saying that "global warming doesn't just mean everything warms up - it means the weather extremes are getting more extreme." See how that covers anything? Just one step closer to saying "global warming means anything we say it means, so shut up and keep peddaling."
It is a very convenient faith...about every thing is proof of it. Cold = global warming. Warm = golbal warming. Droughts = global warming. Floods = global warming.
They have created a unified field theory for their new secular religion.
Fantastic article, Molly, and thank you for posting it!
"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"
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