It’s Time to Listen to the ‘Climate Denialists’

Climate catastrophists have degenerated into hysteria. When we’re told to tow their political line or the world will end in (fill in the blank), it is obvious to me that they’re essentially admitting that their arguments  are hollow. Case in point, a recent New Jersey Star-Ledger editorial, Trump, climate change, and our Orwellian future. The editorial was published as a response to a bout of severe weather in New Jersey and elsewhere:

The usual warnings have been fast and furious since last week. Tornadoes strafed the national beltline — through Kansas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, even reaching Northwest Jersey — and raised the yearly death toll to 38. Floods are inundating Oklahoma, Arkansas and Iowa. The Gulf Coast region shudders with the start of another hurricane season.

Tornadoes, floods, and hurricanes--Oh My! Tornadoes in NJ, oh my--except that tornadoes are not uncommon in NJ. We’ve gotten to the point that routine weather events are peddled as “proof” of climate change, which is automatically assumed to mean impending disaster.

So President Trump decided this would be a good time to stifle research on the long-term impact of climate change, notably the catastrophic events that will result from it.

Get that? “Will”--not may. In fact, Trump’s policies on climate and energy are among his best. He’s trying to adjust our government’s policies to the actual facts, not the mythologies of the Leftist political climate establishment. Roger Pielke Jr. is a scientist who has studied the issue of weather disasters and climate change. All of the available data from both private and government studies “don’t support [politicized] claims that the rising costs of climate disaster are due in any part to human influence on climate.” Nor, “based on the current expectations of the climate science community, . . . there is presently very little basis for expecting that changes in climate will lead to a discernible increase in the costs, severity, or frequency of disasters any time soon.” [page 6-7]

As is common among the climate Left, the Star-Ledger smears distinguished scientists like Princeton's William Happer as a "denialist crank" rather than consider what he actually has to contribute to the issue. I posted these comments, expanded and slightly edited for clarity:

But what are the ‘denialists’ actually saying? What do they say that the smear-mongers don’t want you to know? If you look behind that smear, you find a mountain of research by thousands of scientists and institutions giving us the truth: There is no “climate crisis.” Industrial progress ended it. There is no evidence of a destructive  increase in extreme weather or climate damage. Human activity is likely contributing to the changing climate, but current climate change is well within the range of natural variability.

And the facts back the “deniers”—the skeptics of climate catastrophism. The summaries of the IPCC and the NCA are written by political hacks doing the bidding of a statist political agenda. They distort facts from their own reports.

When every routine weather event, such as the tornado, is peddled as “evidence”—when you hear garbage like “Trump’s strategy [is] to make the country uninhabitable”—you know the catastrophist statists are getting desperate. And the Star-Ledger labels William Happer, a distinguished physicists with a long career, a “crank”?

If you care about your grandkids, you should embrace continued economic progress, not energy deprivation. You should embrace individual freedom, not the socialist agendas of the climate catastrophists. You should realize that reliable energy like fossil and nuclear are vital to human well-being, climate livability, and safety—and reject the catastrophists who want to take it way. The catastrophists do not have human well-being, or “future generations,” at heart. Get objective assessments of the facts from people like Alex Epstein, Ronald Bailey, and Roger Pielke Jr., and institutions like the NIPCC and Cato.

Government “assessments” are politicized science. It’s time to get the politics out of the science. If you are drawing conclusions on human activity and climate change without consulting the “deniers,” your opinions are worthless. Given the serious attacks on our lives, freedom, and prosperity that the climate catastrophists are proposing as policy “solutions” to their mythical “climate crisis,” it is imperative that people get the whole story by listening to what the “denialists” have to say. Science is on the denialists’--or progressive lukewarmers’--side.

Related Reading:

The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change, second edition--Roger Pielke Jr.

New U.N. Study Shows Climate Catastrophists Getting More Open About their Totalitarian Designs

The 'Watermelon' Analogy is Real, and it is Dangerous

‘Climate Crisis’: The Dem’s Path to Totalitarian Socialism

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels—Alex Epstein

The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the 21st Century—Ronald Bailey

Trump Provides the Right Kind of Leadership in Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord

Related Listening:

Climate change: an apocalypse, catastrophe, or annoyance? | Don Watkins and Alex Epstein