There is no debate!

Perhaps the most concerning aspect of the climate debate is that there is no debate.  The cancel culture and the media have conspired to silence those brave enough to dissent.  Honest scientists must now be careful about circulating data that debunks the assumptions behind the administration’s climate change policies because social media and technology companies routinely  muzzle dissenting viewpoints.

LinkedIn, the Microsoft-owned, California-based online company, has been regularly shutting down dissenting voices for years.  Then, this past summer, the International Monetary Fund summarily canceled a presentation by John Clauser, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who publicly disavows the existence of a climate “crisis.”  Interestingly, Clauser along with dozens of other dissenters had already been delisted from LinkedIn for their dissident views.

Fortunately, there are rational voices on the matter. Just last month, more than 1,600 credentialed scientists, among them two Nobel physics laureates, Clauser and Ivar Giaever of Norway signed a declaration stating there is no climate emergency, and that climate advocacy has devolved into mass hysteria.  This global coalition of scientists say that politics and a journalistic frenzy has propelled a false doomsday scenario.

But the Biden administration refuses to take heed and continues to move at flank speed with the radical transformation of our society based on dubious scientific claims amplified by a complicit media.  This loose coalition of writers and thinkers acknowledges that the climate is warming, but they typically ascribe as much if not more influence on natural cycles and climate variability than to human activities, such as burning fossil fuel.  Yet the Left will not listen.

Classic liberalism advocates that all voices to be heard.  So, why won’t the Left listen to alternative viewpoints?  The answer is clear; the activists aren’t practicing classic liberalism because on the subject of climate change, their actions are reminiscent of 1930’s European fascism.  We can speculate about their motivation, but perhaps it’s simply a matter of powerful people not wanting to admit to making trillion- dollar mistakes.

Meanwhile, the dissenters believe there are many different approaches to the matter beginning with the modeling.  Most also agree that while humans are affecting the climate, we lack sufficient information to ascertain just how much of the changing climate is due to man-made sources versus nature, or what we can realistically do about it.  Nonetheless, all agree on one count – that public is getting a one-sided, apocalyptic account that stokes fear, politicizes science, misuses climate modeling, and shuts down debate.

For years climate activists led by the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) have designed climate models that fit the conclusions of those who funded their research.  Steven Koonin, author of Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, was correct when he said, “What the climate activists are trying to do is scare the bejesus out of the public, so they’ll think we need to act fast.”  

There is no consensus on many of the key questions in the climate debate, including the accuracy of those models, which are fully dependent upon the ideology of those doing the input; and in the case of the activists, it’s tantamount to “Ready, Fire, Aim!”  And every time I hear slogans such as “follow the science” and “scientific consensus” I think of Edward R. Murrow’s famous admonition – “Never mistake slogans for policy.”

Humans can no more control the earth’s climate than we can control the oceans’ tides, and as the climate changes societies will have to adapt just as societies have adapted to our ever-changing climate throughout mankind’s history.  No one disagrees that global temperatures are increasing incrementally, but that increase began at the end of the geologic period known as the Little Ice Age, which scientists tell us ended between the 14th and 18th centuries, which was long before man began burning fossil fuels.  Meanwhile, the degree of human influence on climate is either uncertain or negligible.  There is no formula, no equation, no irrefutable evidence, and there are no climate models that accurately predict if humans do A, then the climate will do B.  So how can the Left have all the answers when science hasn’t yet ascertained the correct questions?

The global political push to destroy the fossil fuel industry is already erasing jobs, raising energy costs, and leading to economic downturns.  But even worse, it will lead to political instability in the developing world where the poorest nations will pay the highest price for this folly in reduced standards of living.  Meanwhile, the biggest polluters, China and India, and recalcitrant states such as Russia and Iran ignore the net-zero mandate and continue their symbiotic relationship as the latter two export their oil to the former two a discounted basis.

I’ll close this post with a reminder.  The same media that filled the airwaves  for four long years telling anyone who would listen that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 election are the same media who continue to bury the Hunter Biden story and are the same media advocating that the earth is in the middle of a climate crisis.

Quote of the day: “The best sermons are lived not preached” – old farm saying