Wrong again: Sorry, Greta, humanity is still here
By Jason Isaac
Real Clear Wire
Hope you don’t have any exciting weekend plans. By the time you read this, humanity has already been wiped out.
Hasn’t it?
On June 21, 2018, Greta Thunberg tweeted that “climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.” Five years have come and almost gone, and the tweet has been suspiciously deleted.
Thunberg is claiming her point was misinterpreted, but any way you look at it, the climate cartel is dead wrong — again — about the fate of humanity. In fact, there’s almost nothing about the climate change movement that stands up to science.
Since Thunberg’s fatalist tweet, climate rhetoric has risen to a fever pitch, but fossil fuel usage hasn’t dipped at all. Nationwide oil, natural gas, and coal consumption last year was about equal to annual averages from the 2010s.
It’s not for lack of trying. Even after decades of multibillion-dollar subsidies and seemingly unanimous public support, renewables still only represent 4% of our energy. As nice as wind and solar energy sound, renewable technology just isn’t capable of serving as a primary energy source. It may not be for generations, if ever. If “whole of government” support from Washington, mind-boggling corporate investment, and rabid virtue-signaling from the media and pop culture isn’t enough to move the needle, what will?
No matter how shrill the climate cartel cries that the end is near, the American public just isn’t willing to sacrifice the benefits of affordable, reliable energy — which only fossil fuels can provide.
They see through the disinformation the climate cartel is spreading. Not only is the human race nowhere near the brink of extinction, but our lives and our environment are better than ever before.
In 1980, just over 40 years ago, nearly half the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. Today, the number is just 8%. Global life expectancy has skyrocketed from 51 to over 70, and over 80 in developed countries. Every statistic, from infant and maternal mortality to education and gender equality, has meaningfully improved as access to affordable, reliable energy has expanded.
And in America, at least, the environment is cleaner than ever. Air pollution is down nearly 80% since 1980, and the U.S. is ranked number one in the world for access to clean and safe drinking water.
We’ve also grown more resilient to our natural surroundings, even though the average temperature has warmed about a degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution. We are 99% less likely to die in a climate-related natural disaster than our great-grandparents were. Interestingly, resiliency to these natural disasters is improving at a much faster rate than to non-climate-related natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanoes. Warmer weather actually seems to improve the human condition, since cold is far deadlier than heat and slightly higher carbon dioxide concentrations stimulate plant and crop growth.
All this progress has happened while fossil fuels have remained by far the dominant energy source, the global population has boomed, and our economy has steadily grown. Fossil fuels aren’t the enemy — they’re the key to human flourishing.
How has the climate cartel gotten it so wrong over and over again? Ironically, the faction constantly demanding blind allegiance to “the science” doesn’t understand science at all.
Climate change predictions, like those Greta Thunberg used to predict the not-so-impending apocalypse, are formulated using statistical data models. Modeling is used in many industries for many purposes, but like any computer program, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out. And the leading climate change model uses outdated, nonsensical inputs, like near-global reliance on coal and lack of any environmental technology. This model, which is used by the United Nations, the EPA, and nearly every climate-centric organization around the world, has overestimated historical warming every single time.
An unbiased, thorough review of climate science reveals that warming is likely to remain mild and manageable while our resilience to all manner of challenges, climate-related or otherwise, continues to improve.
Humanity wasn’t supposed to survive 2000, 2009, 2012, or 2020, either. Yet here we are, enjoying the benefits of longer, healthier, more comfortable lives than ever before.
The Honorable Jason Isaac is director of Life:Powered. He previously served four terms in the Texas House of Representatives.
Comment
Global warming $cam
Way back in time Bill Clinton’s Executive Branch laid the groundwork for a message that environmental catastrophe is around the corner “unless we act.” Bill Clinton’s final address to the nation raised fears of “deadly heat waves,” more frequent droughts, flooding of coastal areas, and general economic disasters. Press releases at the time excelled in misdirection, a magicians technique, to mislead. Headline starts with “new evidence,” even though there was none. Claims that the surface temperature of the Earth is rising, deflecting attention away from the main fact revealing that the atmosphere itself, as measured by weather balloons, is NOT warming.
The bottom line: Human influence on climate is "theoretically" expected, and calculated to be appreciable by current climate models, but in reality human influence is so small it may not be detectable at all. It is impossible to measure the average surface temperature of the earth, yet scientists try to claim that it is possible to measure “anomalies” of this unknown quantity.
This hasn’t stopped motivated fear mongering scam artists from manufacturing climate catastrophes in order to impose costly regulatory restrictions and taxes on energy use and other human activities, because that's what they're paid to do... with your money.
Snow closures
On June 24th, the Beartooth Pass road was closed between Montana and Wyoming because 4 feet of snow had accumulated. Not exactly global warming, 3 days into summer in the Continental United States had a locale with 50 inches of snow...
••••Publisher's note: Not surprised. I've driven Beartooth Pass in July and there was snow along the road.
Publisher
I've never taken that route to or from Yellowstone. I looked up the aerial map of the road. There's a switchback or two as you head through the pass.
•••Publisher's note: More than two as I recall. But how else are you going to reach the Top of the World on Route 212?
prediction
Unless we laugh these types of people off of the world stage, an American democrat will make Greta Thunberg their climate czar in 5 years... ala Algore and John F Kerry-Heinz.