Justifying life-altering policies through “dangerous manmade
global warming” claims
By Paul Driessen
Numerous articles document how European
climate policies have been disastrous for affordable
energy, economic
growth, entire industries,
people’s jobs
and welfare, wildlife
habitats and human
lives. Even the IPCC, BBC and Economist
have finally
recognized that average global temperatures have not budged since 1997. The
EU economy is teetering
at the precipice, people are outraged at the duplicity and the price they
have been made to pay, the Euro Parliament has voted to end subsidies for its
Emissions Trading Scheme, and the global warming and renewable energy false façade
is slowly crumbling.
Ignoring
this, alarmist scientists, eco activists and government bureaucrats are meeting
yet again – first in Bonn, Germany June 3-14 for the 38th meeting of UN climate
treaty promoters and wordsmiths, then in Warsaw, Poland November 11-22 for 19th
Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
They are determined to hammer out a new treaty, demanding more restrictions on
fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions, before the tide turns even more inexorably
against them.
Meanwhile,
in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency is issuing more anti-hydrocarbon
regulations and more statements detailing the coming horrors of “dangerous
manmade climate change.”
Two
points must be kept uppermost: the global warming “disasters” exist only in
computer models, Hollywood movies and alarmist assertions; and the
“preventative measures” are worse than the disasters.
The issue is not whether
greenhouse gases “contribute to” climate change. Scientists acknowledge that.
The only relevant issues are: How big a contribution? Do these gases now dominate planetary climate variation, supplanting the solar, atmospheric,
oceanic and other forces that have warmed and cooled our Earth throughout its
history? And will human GHG/CO2 emissions cause dangerous climate changes that are unprecedented, worse than we have
confronted since time immemorial and impossible for modern, technologically
advanced societies to deal with?
No evidence supports EPA or
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change positions on these issues.
Average
planetary temperatures have not budged in 16 years, even as atmospheric levels
of plant-fertilizing
CO2 have climbed steadily. For many areas, the past winter was among the
coldest in decades, and the US and UK just recorded one their
coldest springs on record. The frequency
and severity of hurricanes, tornadoes,
floods and droughts are no different from observed trends and cycles over the
last century. 2012 set records for the fewest
strong tornadoes since 1954 and the number of years with no category 3 or
higher hurricane making US landfall. Arctic
climate and sea ice are within a few percentage points of their “normal”
levels for the past fifty years. The rate of sea level rise
is not accelerating.
These
facts, and many others, completely contradict computer model predictions and
alarmist claims. Moreover, as Climategate and numerous studies have shown, the
“science” behind EPA’s ruling that carbon dioxide “endangers” human health and
welfare is conjectural, manufactured, manipulated, comical
and even fraudulent. Here are just a few of numerous examples of dangerous “climatism”
at work.
The EPA and IPCC insist they rely entirely
on scholarly peer-reviewed source material. However, fully 30%
of the papers and other references cited in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment
Report (AR4) were not peer reviewed; many
IPCC “lead authors” were graduate students or environmental activists; and many
sources were actually master’s
degree theses or even anecdotal
statements by hikers and mountain guides.
The IPCC claimed Himalayan
glaciers would “disappear by the year 2035,” depriving communities in the
region of water. This assertion was based on a World Wildlife Fund press
release, which was based on a non-peer-reviewed article in a popular science
magazine – which was based on an email from a single glaciologist, who later
admitted his prediction was pure “speculation.” The
IPCC lead author in charge of this section subsequently said he had included the
Himalayan glacier meltdown in AR4 – despite knowing
of its false pedigree – because he thought highlighting it would “encourage”
policy makers and politicians “to take concrete action” on global warming.
Almost
90% of National Weather Service climate-monitoring stations relied on by the
IPCC and EPA to prove “unprecedented” warming were placed too close to air
conditioning exhaust vents, blacktop and other heat sources. The heat
contamination caused the stations to report higher than actual temperatures.
EPA
is using this junk science to justify actions that will be devastating for Americans.
The agency is supposed to protect our environment, health and welfare. Instead,
it “safeguards” us from exaggerated or illusory risks, and issues regulations
that endanger our health, wellbeing and wildlife far more than any reasonably
foreseeable effects from climate change.
As
anti-fossil fuel mandates put EPA in control of nearly everything Americans
make, ship, eat and do – fuel and regulatory compliance costs
will soar. Companies will be forced to outsource work to other countries,
reduce work forces, shift people to part-time status, or close their doors. Poor and
minority families will be unable to heat and cool their homes properly, pay
their rent or mortgage, buy clothing and medicine, take vacations, pay their
bills, give to charity, or save for college and retirement.
Reduced
nutrition and medical checkups, along with the stress of being unemployed
or involuntarily holding two or more low-paying part-time jobs, also lead to
greater risk of strokes and heart
attacks, and higher incidences of
depression, alcohol, spousal and child abuse, and suicide. New 54.5 mpg fuel
efficiency standards will force more people into smaller, lighter, less
safe cars – causing thousands of needless additional serious injuries and
deaths every year.
Regulators
and environmentalist groups have given heavily subsidized wind turbine
operators a free pass, allowing them to slaughter
millions of birds and bats every year – including bald and golden eagles,
hawks, condors and whooping cranes. Rainforests and other wildlife
habitats are being cut down, so that “innovators” can produce
$50-per-gallon biofuels, to replace oil and natural gas that the
world still has in abundance and could easily produce with conventional,
enhanced and fracking
technologies.
US
forests are also being chopped down – to fuel electricity generation in
Europe, where regulations prohibit both fossil fuels and tree cutting, but
promote subsidized “renewable” energy. So American trees and wetland/forest
habitats are being turned into wood pellets for shipment to Britain and other
EU countries: 1.9 million tons of pellets in 2012, to burn in power plants that
consumed over 7 million tons of wood last year – and expect to double that by 2020. It’s insane. It’s
not sustainable
or ecological.
Would the IPCC, US Global
Change Research Program or EPA “ever produce a report saying their issue is
of diminishing importance – so that EPA regulations of greenhouse gases are not
needed?” climatologist Patrick
Michaels wonders. “Not unless they are tired of first class travel and the
praise of their universities, which are hopelessly addicted to the 50 percent
‘overhead’ they charge on science grants.”
EPA finds, punishes and even
targets anyone who violates any of its ten thousand commandments, even
inadvertently. EPA’s climate change actions, however, are not inadvertent. They
are deliberate, and their effects are far reaching and often harmful. For
better or worse, they affect all of us,
100% of our economy.
And
yet, these increasingly powerful bureaucrats – who seek and acquire ever more
control over our lives – remain faceless, nameless, unelected and
unaccountable. They operate largely behind closed doors, issuing regulations
and arranging sweetheart “sue
and settle” legal actions with radical environmentalist groups, to advance
ideological agendas, without regard for the impacts on our lives, jobs, health,
welfare and environment. They know that, for them, there is rarely ever any
real transparency, accountability or consequences – even for gross stupidity,
major screw-ups, flagrant abuses or deliberate harm.
We
need to save our environment from environmentalists and EPA – and safeguard our
liberties, living standards and lives against the arrogance of too-powerful politicians
and bureaucrats. How we achieve this, while protecting our lives and
environment from real risks, is one
of the greatest challenges we face.
________________
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For
A Constructive Tomorrow and author of Eco-Imperialism:
Green power - Black death.
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