I'll just come right out and say it: climate change is a hoax from top to bottom. I'm not one of those conservatives who has caved on the issue in order to get better optics. You can call me a skeptic or a denier, but then I've got to ask you: What is there to affirm about Climate Change anyway? The more you read about the history of the climate movement, the less credible it is. Prediction after dramatic prediction comes up short, almost every scientist or expert turns out to be intellectually dishonest, and real initiatives that would eliminate pollution are usually opposed by climate change activists. As I say there's nothing to really affirm here.
Take a minute to join me in this thought exercise: What if Einstein had talked about his research into gravity the way that modern climate scientists talk about their research? When his theory that gravity is the warping of space and time was confirmed in 1919, he became world famous. What if he had then gone to a radio station, hopped on the air and announced that unless something is done to reduce the mass of the earth right away then we only have 12 years before the planet gets swallowed into a black hole? Wouldn't he have sounded ridiculous? Yes, and he would've sounded like every climate scientist today.
If you think I'm exaggerating then look no further than the foolish biologist Paul Ehrlich, the most laughable person in science today. In 1968 he published a book called The Population Bomb that was the de facto Bible among the original Earth Day climate radicals. In that book, and in public speeches, Ehrlich made absurd predictions about mass die-offs from food shortages, civilizational collapse from resource depletion, the death of all important sea life. He claimed that these would all happen in the 1970s and 1980s. I kid you not: he even predicted that England would not exist by the year 2000. He based all of this on his research of butterflies... do I need to say more about the exaggerated nature of his "climate expertise?"
Virtually every environmental regulation agency and law that you can think of is rooted in the absurd predictions made by people like Ehrlich and others in the 1960s. You know those dire warnings that we 90s kids grew up with about the depletion of the ozone layer and the polar bears going extinct? Same deal, and now the ozone hole has healed itself and there are about 10 times as many polar bears as there were in the 80s. So that's the state of climate science today: a nobody butterfly researcher can make dramatic statements about impending doom, and we all need to swallow it.
In 1980, economist Julian Simon publicly rebuked Ehrlich with the powerful argument, "humans are not butterflies" before challenging him to a 10 year bet which proved that Ehrlich knew absolutely nothing about the state of the world's resources. 4 billion people did not die off in the mass starvations that he predicted, and nothing else he ever claimed would happen was correct. Does it matter that Ehrlich has a track record of idiotic public statements? Nope. He's still managed to become the Bing Professor of Population Studies, Emeritus and President of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford. That's right, this 88 year old cartoon character is a teacher.
So you took five minutes to Google the myriad nutty predictions that climate scientists, experts, and activists have made over the last 50 years. You've come to the conclusion that these were just dead wrong. But is it fair to judge them in hindsight? Maybe they were honestly doing their best to warn the world of what they thought then was an imminent threat. That's an unusually generous thing to say considering that these experts have virtually never recanted their wrong predictions. What's worse, they have often defended those predictions with a handful of convenient excuses. Their intellectual dishonesty is showcased by the refusal to admit the many times and ways that they have gotten it all wrong.
The most irritating response to a failed prediction is, "Well it didn't happen because we acted soon enough!" Did your local environmental expert claim that we're nearing the point of no-return where human impact will mean the mass extinction of sea life, only to find a few decades later that it didn't happen? This would be a great time to point out that his prediction was wrong, only you find that he has a ready excuse: his prediction was wrong because we were able to implement good regulations in time to curb our impact. In other words, he should get an award for being wrong. How convenient. I guarantee you'll hear this one, and it's a cheap lie. Every time that economists have studied the impact of third party regulations they have found that it led to more inefficient business practices and therefor more waste. You really can't credit this excuse for the fact that reality failed to live up to a climate expert's predictions.
How about the most disdainful excuses made for Dr. David Viner of the Climate Research Unit for his statements to published media? This loony tune told the Independent in 2000 that soon there would be no more snow thanks to global warming. Many of the coldest and snowiest winters on record happened since he made that claim, which pretty savagely undermined faith in the Global Warming propaganda narrative and caused the linguistic shift to "Climate Change." Is there any denying that Dr. Viner was just being an alarmist attention whore? Apparently there is, and it goes like this: "Well weather and climate are different. You can't say that a really cold year with a lot of snow disproves global warming." Funny how these so-called experts never hold themselves to the same standard. A hot year, or even just a really hot day somewhere is always "evidence of climate change." My bad. How dare we base skepticism on actual years of snow which shouldn't have happened, rather than blindly follow baseless predictions and hypocritical approaches to evidence?
Remember Julian Simon, the economist who outed Paul Ehrlich as a fraud? Well he also highlighted a disturbing viewpoint given to Discover Magazine by Dr. Stephen Schneider in 1989 in order to justify apocalyptic statements that are made by climate scientists. Simon cited Schneider as saying that scientists should consider stretching the truth when presenting their views to the public. That's a mild way of putting it when you think of the examples given of Ehrlich and his butterflies, or Viner and his snow. However Schneider attacked Simon in a 1996 interview for taking his views out of context.
Schneider then clarified that his full quote to Discover was, "On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but - which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need [Scientists should consider stretching the truth] to get some broad-based support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both."
Is it just me, or doesn't this sound much worse than merely "stretching the truth?" Schneider actually advocates inventing scary and simplified scenarios while smothering legitimate doubts so that he can "capture the public's imagination" and "get loads of media coverage." In other words, when it comes to choosing between stealing the spotlight and practicing science, get him to makeup STAT. Or what about his claim that there is a difference between "being effective and being honest"? As far as I'm concerned, you had better not be effective if you aren't also being honest. That. Is. Called. Lying.
Dr. Schneider's excuse for this behavior is actually the most pitiful of them all. "Nobody gets enough time in the media either to cover all the caveats in depth, (i.e., "being honest") or to present all the plausible threats (i.e., "being effective")." In other words, it's the media's fault not his. But you never hear Schneider come out to correct any overhyped narratives in the news or in public policy. Blaming the media is just a convenient way to deflect his own lack of responsibility, while he helps to push the climate agenda forward. It also makes Schneider, who is a Professor of Biological Sciences and Sr. Fellow at the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, an intellectually dishonest hack like all the rest. He may even be the king of them all.
When is the last time that you ever heard a climate expert endorse nuclear energy? By all accounts nuclear is the cleanest and highest-yield form of energy and it has been available for about 80 years. Yet for that entire time, climate change activists have thrown campaign after campaign against it. The modern climate movement is the most vociferous opponent of nuclear power even though France, home of the Paris Climate Agreement, gets almost all of its energy from a network of nuclear power plants. That is because the politicians and international bureaucrats who back the climate movement know that nothing else provides energy as efficiently.
Instead, climate experts offer an array of outmoded energy sources. Wind and solar? These are not the energy sources of the future. Wind power reached its peak in the 1500s. It may also surprise you to learn but solar power is really only efficient once organic matter which absorbs it is converted over millions of years into fossil fuels. This is where climate experts reveal their luddite nature. They are really opponents of human progress, and the climate is a sufficiently complex arena to couch the effort of stopping technological advance. It's equally clever to offer up a futuristic science fiction version of antiquated wind and solar as the energy sources we need. The imagery is compelling and sellable but it's all for show.
Now that you've met a few of the luminary minds behind the whole Climate Change movement, can you honestly say that there's no reason to be skeptical of these people? Scientific inquiry is supposed to search for truth, not to weigh the truth against political incentives, or to deflect from results that contradict predictions. It's also supposed to be reserved, and these climate experts are anything but. They are really a cluster of pea bodies desperate for attention, but they lack the intellectual muscle of an Einstein that would bring them that attention through a dedication to science for its own sake. At their core, these are unprincipled, weak people; which is why they hide behind claims of scientific consensus and excuses for their dramatizations. So don't let them or their followers boss you around.