Real Opinion: Portents of a Happy New Year

Guest Post by Just Beau

Individuals range along a spectrum about climate alarmism.   From left to right, there are true believers, supporters, leaners, people unsure, those who lean skeptical, and lastly adamant skeptics.   I am in this final category.  I seldom reject anything with the rest-easy conviction that I enjoy about climate alarmism. This post discusses possible factors that influence opinions about alarmism, before ending on an uplifting note.

My analytic filters: I am blessed to approach climate change armed with analytic perspectives that converge.   These include:

• Knowledge how firms and markets work (micro-economics).
• Knowledge how freedom and competition stimulate economic growth.
• Select knowledge of economic history, including socialism.  The Nazis were national socialists.  The USSR stood for the union of soviet socialist republics.   Socialism has turned once wealthy Venezuela into a basket-case.
• Select knowledge of technologies.  Many patented ideas turn out to be non-viable, within real world markets.  I do not assume academics publishing tomes about “green chemistry” are writing anything useful.
• Knowledge of data analysis, including assumptions and uncertainties
• Knowledge of the scientific method.  The UN never stated a scientific hypothesis for global warming or climate change.
• I look at topics in a holistic, inter-disciplinary way.
• Knowledge of select environmental topics, data, and uncertainties.   I doubt DDT thinned the eggs of bird shells, because hard to measure reliably.   I doubt a pesticide exposure shrank the sex organs of alligators in a Florida lake, likewise hard to measure.   I am familiar with strong criticisms about studies that claimed to find small airborne particles cause death.  I read the climate scientist emails leaked from the University of East Anglia.
• Select knowledge of bio-sphere fundamentals (e.g., photo-synthesis; hot air rises).  Before tte advent of photosynthesis, Earth’s atmosphere was low in oxygen, under 1 percent.   Photo-synthesis, enabled by CO2, has since raised oxygen levels to 22 percent today.  CO2 is the essential precursor of oxygen and as such prima facie not a threat to the world’s climate, despite ex-President Obama’s “endangerment” finding.
• Select knowledge of biochemistry, pharmacology, and risk assessment.
• Knowledge of United States history
• Skepticism of government programs and of multi-national societal governance via UN.   Alarmism is an attack on economic health via taxation of energy supplies and confiscation of private property.   It distorts the marketplace for energy, creating useless niches like ethanol.
• I do not uncritically accept propaganda.
• I doubt “Russia Gate.”  I have zero trust in Fake News.   The current impeachment of Trump by the House is fact-free, as was the assault on Judge Kavanaugh.
• I do not assume political leaders are always sensible.   They are human, not all knowing, and make mistakes.
• I understand unreliable results can appear within all scientific disciplines.  This is particularly true in the environmental field.  Much funding comes from sources seeking to confirm a fear.
• Trustworthy science is based on the pursuit of honest insights.

Climate alarmism is a hoax:  Gaseous carbon dioxide is benign.  At Earth’s birth, circa 5 billion years ago, its atmosphere was endowed with little oxygen, under 1 percent.   This can be reliably inferred from soluble iron being present in the oceans.   It required evolution to create plants that emitted oxygen via photosynthesis, thereby altering soluble iron into insoluble oxides.  Nowadays, oxygen levels in the atmosphere are 22 percent, the result of emissions from plants.   Plants also provide food to sustain grazing animals.   Carbon dioxide bestows both the elixir of oxygen and the blessing of food, each essential for life on this planet. It was thus absurd for CO2 to be called endangering, in the wisdom of Obama’s USEPA, plus the UN.   Wonderful of Dr. Carlin to object to this nonsense during summer 2009.   Since CO2 is the essential precursor to the generation of oxygen, Leftists are in effect claiming the world is threatened by oxygen.  Why should anyone believe this?

A real greenhouse allows sunlight to pass thru glass, thereby to warm and to contain underlying air, preventing its vertical escape.   Hot air rises.   Greenhouses cannot be made from gases, alone.   Greenhouses require air-tight glass to retain the warm air.  Because Earth is not encased by glass, there can be no Greenhouse Earth or Global Warming.

There are many ways to disprove the claim that gaseous carbon dioxide is warming or altering climate.   Because CO2 is not doing any such thing, there are many ways to refute climate alarmism.

Alternative outlooks: Next, a potpourri of beliefs that might lead someone to consider climate alarmism credible:

• Sun rays and wind can supply affordable and sufficient energy.
• Earth’s endowment of hydrocarbons will be depleted
• A society based on freedoms will yield unwelcome results and should instead be regulated by political leaders
• Little knowledge about climate change and energy technologies
• Confidence in the United Nations, a forum of 180+ countries, more than the United States.
• Confidence in movie celebrities and religious leaders like Pope Francis
• Belief that collaborating within the United Nations will strengthen ties among nations
• Belief that UN crafted international laws should supersede US laws

• Confidence in claims based on environmental science.
• Confidence in non-governmental organizations
• Belief in a tribe (union or political party or school)
• Belief in a purveyor of alarmism, like the New York Times.
• Desire for wealthier nations to bestow dollars on poorer countries.
• Desire to raise money from energy companies by taxes.

Why do some accept alarmism?  Thoughtful people can be fooled by climate alarmism.   If you are one, there is no reason to feel shame.  Shame only lies with contributors to the hoax, not with innocent followers.

In life, we face a general problem of who to believe?   Do you conform to beliefs prevailing in your social circle?   Most people have other demands on their time and cannot read climate papers.

We are told by the Fake News that most nations and scientists agree about climate alarm.  “Clean” technologies are being installed, solar cells or windmills.   This will reduce messy oil spills, coal mines, nuclear energy accidents.  That sounds nice.  Trusted teachers articulate their concerns about climate.   These factors are going to persuade many smart people to accept climate alarm.  They are assured by no less than Mr. Gore that opponents are corrupt or flat-earth stupid.

Happier days are here again.  Alarmism has persisted for decades.  Dire predictions have not come to pass, yet the cause does not slink away in silent shame.  Instead, leftist politicians offer ever more expensive, draconian, lame-brained climate schemes.

Yet the prophecy of doom is aging.  Climate alarm hit a peak with Merkel and Obama, but now looks past its prime.  The cause has nowhere to go but down.  Politicians no longer debate about the islands, Quemoy and Matsu, as during 1960.  Likewise, pet rocks and hula hoops are less popular than during their heydays.  Fads rise, fads fall, and fall decidedly out of fashion.

In the USA, Hillary lost the election of November 2016.  By spring 2017, Trump pulled the US out of the UN climate process.   In October 2018, yellow jacket protesters began to express anger at Macron in France.  During May 2019, a national election in Australia went against the left, despite much blather about climate.  In recent polls, Trump is more popular than Obama at the same point in their respective presidencies.   The Obama administration is evermore revealed to have violated laws by spying on the opposing campaign during 2016, in collusion with foreign governments and FBI/DOJ dirty cops; negative publicity about this may lie ahead.  This impropriety helps explain the absurdly contrived Russian hoax and subsequent impeachment process.

Given all the new hoaxes, climate change is ever more revealed as just another older one.   In December 2019, Britain experienced an election earthquake, a decisive swing in favor of leaving the European Union.  Support for leftwing British politicians (and their climate program) fell greatly from longstanding norms.  As if on cue, Al Gore generously labelled Brexit “the stupidest decision a country could have taken.”  Earning Al’s scorn should encourage British deplorables to keep doing so, as a sign they are now on a promising path.

We should continue to hear a great deal about climate change during 2020, because Democrats feel obliged to campaign about something, but have precious little else to offer.   As a sign of mental impoverishment, the Left has championed a surly Swedish teen-ager as the “person of 2019.” Trump amiably recommended she see a “good old- fashioned movie with a friend.”  Kind advice.  The President is not worried by climate change.  Neither should we.  The trends are positive.   Climate realism is on an upswing.

Best wishes to all for 2020.