Opinion: Climate change is killing us

By Larry Weitzman

Climate change, a term used in place of anthropogenic, global warming (AGW, meaning human produced carbon dioxide is causing the world to warm which will cause disastrous effects to the Earth) has come to the forefront of California politics again, like it wasn’t already every other word out of a liberal politician’s mouth already. It seems that the new president pro tem, Kevin de Leon, of the California Senate has announced new proposals to “fight” global warming. As if humans think they can change the climate any better than Don Quixote can battle windmills.

You’ve heard the story, if we don’t “fight” global warming, humankind will be inundated in unnatural disasters, more storms, more intense storms, heat waves, cold snaps, droughts, famine, pestilence, disease, islands will be enveloped by the oceans, and coastal cities will be inundated by a dramatic rise in sea level and so on. Of course the only solution to “fighting” global warming is more government, more unelected bureaucracy, more restrictive laws, less choices, more taxes and a lot less freedom. And of course these same politicians have all the answers to all problems. Just ask them. But we are all willing to give up some freedom for some alleged security, right?

Larry Weitzman

While our populace has been literally flooded with potential horror stories from the mainstream media or blathering politicians of ever more intense weather events being caused by global warming, none of it is true, either in there being more frequent or more intense storms or as to a dramatic sea level rise. But like Don Quixote, politicians just see it as a way to destroy America as more restrictive laws, less choice, less freedom and more taxes are nothing more than creeping socialism. Remember environmentalists are like watermelons, green on the outside and red on the inside.

As more data and reports come out that scientists are producing selective data to fit the theory of climate change by cheery picking, more scientists are also learning that the actual data both anecdotal and scientific doesn’t support the theory. As the evidence that AGW is just not factual becomes more apparent, the proponents will become so high pitched that everything that happens will be caused by AGW, including the latest hangnail you got two days ago.

A recent story about the work of Paul Homewood published in the Telegraph of the UK showed how those scientists including the biggest fanatical proponent of AGW, James Hansen have been “adjusting” data to fit the theory. Hansen recently produced data showing historical Arctic temperatures being lower than they actually were to claim that Arctic temps are rising. This wholesale temperature fibbing was exposed by statistician Steve McIntire from a paper Hansen published in 1987. Homewood called this temp manipulation by the U.S. sponsored Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) and the government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) the “real elephant in the room of the greatest and most costly scare the world has known. This really does begin to look like one of the greatest scientific scandals of all time.”

Munich Re, the world’s largest re-insurer, published its review of natural catastrophes in 2014. Its findings were lower losses from weather extremes and earthquakes. It noted the unusually quiet hurricane season. In fact it has been a quiet hurricane season for the last nine years. To jog your memories, shortly after Hurricane Katrina, a middle of the road class III storm, in 2005, we were told repeatedly by the climate alarmist fearmongers that hurricanes would increase in numbers and intensity and Katrinas would become commonplace. Of course they were wrong and the reason was those same alarmists had absolutely not one shred of evidence and/or data to back up such a statement. Most Katrina damage was from the failure of flood control devices.

Swiss Re, the world’s second largest re-insurer said that 2014 global disasters events cost insurers $34 billion below recent annual averages.

Studies also showed that the most expensive losses were from winter damage, not heat or storm related. Winter damages in the U.S. and Canada ranked fourth in losses. As to flood damage Professor Roger Pielke of University of Colorado says that “while the U.S. is prone to very large flood events, resulting in tens of billions of dollars in losses … the trend since 1940 is striking. As the nation has seen its economic activity expand by a factor of 13, flood losses as a proportion of that activity have dropped by 75 percent.“ Research has also shown very little evidence of increasing flood frequency or magnitude either in the U.S. or globally.

With respect to each year being the hottest ever is also misleading. According to the NASA satellite data and Remote Sensing System, last year was not the hottest, but even the claim that if it was the hottest, it was the hottest by 0.01 degrees, which puts it within the margin of error for several other “hottest” years. The attempt here by the alarmists fearmongers is to scare the public. If the temperature goes from 72 degrees to 72.01 degrees while you could say it is hotter, the truth is that it is such an insignificant increase it is hardly worth mentioning. The warmest recent year was 1998, an El Nino year which brought record rainfalls to California. Since 1998 temperatures have declined slightly notwithstanding the fact that CO2 has increased steadily by about 8 percent. So much for the validity of climate models that claim temperature increases of several degrees.

And notice how the winter weather isn’t mentioned in the same sentence as an Ice Age with respect to the Eastern two-thirds of the United States. Or the fact another boat, an Australian 207 foot fishing vessel, the Antarctic Chieftain, got stuck in the expansiveness of the Antarctic ice and had to be rescued last week by the heavy icebreaker, the U.S. Coast Guard’s Polar Star. The same thing ironically happened to a New Zealand research vessel last year studying AGW.

With respect to California’s current drought, history shows that as recently as the last several hundred years or so California had even more severe long term droughts as Fallen Leaf Lake was dry and its current 415-foot deep bottom was filled with a forest. This drought was discovered by scientists from UNR were studying a fault line under the lake. They found a stand of trees upright on the bottom. It was more evidence that California went through a megadrought for hundreds of years during what is now known as the Medieval Warm Period. Graham Kent, a scientist in the study, said it was a megadrought that lasted 200 years where precipitation was 60 percent of what we now consider normal. And we also know this megadrought was not caused by humans, SUVs, oil consumption or any other of the ridiculous claims today.

But that hasn’t stopped politicians for using an unproven theory to pass laws to fundamentally change the essence of the United States, never mind destroy the economy of California, which is their real purpose.

And for those liberal/socialists now in control of the state Legislature, it will not create jobs. If wind, solar power and electric cars were so terrific, they wouldn’t need to pass laws to make us buy them or outlaw other forms of power and cars leaving such unreliable power systems and impractical vehicles as our only choice. They would sell on their own. The fact that politicians don’t say is that they are very expensive and impractical. As put by politician and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, “Never let a crisis (real or imagined) go to waste.”

Larry Weitzman is a resident of Rescue.