Former President Barack Obama has weighed in again. Travelling in Indonesia, Obama expressed his concerns about President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord on global warming.
“In Paris, we came together around the most ambitious agreement in history to fight climate change, an agreement that even with the temporary absence of American leadership will still give our children a fighting chance.”
I’ve got great news for President Obama. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has proposed new leadership and a serious review of climate science policy.
“What the American people deserve, I think,” Pruitt said in an interview with Brietbart’s Joel Pollock, “is a true, legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO2.”
An honest debate on the science of global warming is past due. Democrats have refused to debate insisting that the “science is settled.” Republicans, having been branded as anti-science, timidly avoided the science and argued that the costs would destroy our economy.
I have news for them. If Americans become convinced that the planet is at risk for their children’s world they will pay the price. This debate is all about science and must be engaged.
The warmists’ entire debate consists of two clichés – that there is a “consensus” that humans cause dangerous warming and the science is “settled.” Two points are worth making here. First, “consensus” is for politicians. Scientists seek fact. Second, science is never settled. Galileo comes to mind.
So let us talk about the science. Concerning which – some questions:
Is the planet warming? Sure. It has been warming for 11,400 years since the last glaciation and that is good. More warmth brings more rain and more CO2 brings more plant life. Why would we not want more food?
If the earth were to warm two degrees centigrade tomorrow it will burden people living in New York with roughly the same temperature that people in Washington DC are living with today. Is this dangerous?
Why have the climate computer models, upon which all predictions of coming gloom are based, been so wrong? We have passed many “end of times” deadlines and we’re still here. The deadlines just get extended.
Computer models were around 40 years ago too. Some of the same scientists predicting dangerous warming today due to humans burning fossil fuels were predicting dangerous cooling 40 years ago due to humans burning fossil fuels.
“In the next 50 years,” the fine dust that man constantly puts into the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning could screen out so much sunlight that the average temperature could drop by six degrees. … [S]uch a temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age!” – Dr. S.I. Rasool of NASA – Washington Post – July 9, 1971
The earth is 4.5 billion years old. It has seen times when it was an uninhabitable ball of ice and times when palm trees grew in the Arctic Circle. It is highly unlikely that dramatic climatological epochs occur every few decades. Can we talk soberly about that?
The Vostok ice core in Antarctica shows that temperatures and CO2 levels increase and decrease in consonance with each other, but temperature changes lead the CO2 changes by about 1000 years. Since CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 5 to 10 years, that’s a pretty pesky little molecule to drive temperatures 1000 years before it even shows up. Why not discuss this like adults?
We currently have about 400 molecules of CO2 for every million molecules of atmosphere. Approximately 12 of those molecules result from human activity. If humans cut their production in half, will it matter?
The Cambrian period, 542 million years ago, was the most prolific time for life in the 4.5 billion year history of the planet. In just 0.17 percent of the lifespan of the planet all multicellular complex life forms known to exist were deposited in the fossil evidence. The CO2 level was 18 times higher than today. Why do we not covet that?
The above questions are real. Both sides in this debate should enthusiastically engage in a discussion of them. They might also discuss this quote from one of the leaders of the global warming movement:
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore…” said Ottmar Edenhofer, co-chair from 2008 to 2015 of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change.
So what is the goal of international climate policy?
“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.” Edenhofer said.
Perhaps an honest discussion of the UNIPCC’s wealth redistribution policy would also be worth our time.
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