I posted this answer:
“Pushback on climate change” is unusably vague. So I’ll assume that what is meant is “pushback on government policies to “fight” climate change.”
The reason is simple. Climate change danger has been vastly exaggerated to advance an anti-human agenda that values raw nature over human life, and that consequently aims to eliminate vital reliable energy; nuclear, hydro, and especially fossil fuels. There is no “climate crisis” (the term itself is conceptually senseless). The truth is, there would be an unprecedented human catastrophe if reliable energy were eliminated in favor of unreliable, super-expensive “renewables” like solar and wind.
As to weather extremes, there was never a time, in the USA or worldwide, in which there was not “overwhelming proof of weather extremes.” They’ve always existed, and contrary to the perpetually failed predictions of the climate alarmists, there is as of yet little evidence that they are becoming meaningfully more extreme (although the possibility of some weather events becoming more intense in the future are plausible expectation). We’re living in a relatively tame period, in terms of swings in climate and extreme weather. If you want to see weather extremes, read Brian Fagan’s book The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850. What we are experiencing today is not only routine, it is mild compared to the rapid shifts in ocean currents, climate, and extreme weather that people endured during that period. What we have today is more akin to the comparably tranquil conditions of the Medieval Warm Period. *
What is undeniably true today is that climate livability and safety has surged.
For example, climate related deaths from weather extremes (and natural disasters more generally) have plunged 98% to 99% over the past 100 years. Reason science correspondent Ronald Bailey documents that the risk of dying from extreme weather since the 1920s has dropped by 99.75 percent. (Hurricane Ida, Climate Change, and Falling Trends in Global Deaths From Natural Disasters). If you want a really dramatic specific example of the tremendous positive trend in human climate safety and livability, consider two Indian ocean hurricanes of recent weather history, 1970’s Bhola cyclone and 2019’s Cyclone Bulbul. The two storms struck the same area of India/Bangladesh, and were of comparable strength (tropical cyclones in this part of the world are called simply “cyclones” rather than hurricanes). Bhola killed about 500,000 people, Bulbul 24! As Aljazeera reported,
Bangladesh’s low-lying coast, home to 30 million people, and India’s east are regularly battered by cyclones that have killed hundreds of thousands of people in recent decades.
While the storms’ frequency and intensity have increased – partly due to climate change – the death tolls have come down because of faster evacuations and the building of thousands of coastal shelters.
That’s real progress in protection from extreme weather in just 5 decades, and the progress happened in the time period in which we are constantly told we are facing a “climate crisis.” And it was made possible by the adoption in that part of the world of fossil fuels, including coal, which more broadly powers the industrialization that actually makes us safer from climate dangers.
The statement “we are seeing overwhelming proof of weather extremes in the USA?” is childish. It’s akin to religionists asserting “overwhelming proof of God” in everything, without ever having to offer proof of anything. There is “such strong pushback on climate change” not because people don’t recognize that climate change is a natural feature of Earth’s weather or that human activity may be influencing climate, but because “climate change” is used to whip up unwarranted hysteria geared toward policies that would cripple industry and consumers of energy and cause, if fully implemented, unimaginable human harm. Climate change hystericists vastly exaggerate the danger while ignoring or minimizing the enormous benefits that accompany human influence on the climate.
Before we consider any political climate agenda, we should start with the age-old wisdom, “First, do no harm.” Don’t let the “climate crisis” hysteria of political and crony business interests, Environmentalist anti-industrial revolutionists, and the concerted media propaganda campaign that backs it to constrict your thinking. There’s more to this story. Broaden your mind. By all means, listen to the alarmists. I do. But be objective. Get informed about the motives behind the climate panic mongering, the vital importance of energy to our everyday lives, the actual facts about extreme weather trends today, the actual history of weather and climate, what the evidence shows about the relationship between weather-related disasters and climate, the positive state of human flourishing and the planet today that the climate fear mongering camouflages, and the continued industrial/technological progress and the enabling Capitalist freedom needed to foster both growing worldwide prosperity and the tools to deal with whatever extreme weather awaits us in the future.
* [The 2019 edition includes an added Afterword by the author that the original 2000 edition did not have. Unfortunately, the conclusion of that Afterword gives an inexplicable nod to today’s climate catastrophism movement, complete with the usual straw man tactics. I say inexplicable because the last two pages of the Afterword contradicts the entire book. Nonetheless, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850, 2019 edition, provides invaluable context for evaluating today’s raging climate change contraversy and debate.]
Related Reading:
The Collectivist Left Media Launches Major ‘Climate Crisis’ Propaganda Campaign
The Anti-human Tyrade of an Ungrateful 16-Year-old
We Owe Our Children a More Technologically Advanced Society, Not 'Preserved' Nature
It’s Time to Listen to the ‘Climate Denialists’
We Are Doomed Without, Not Because of, Fossil Fuel Use
CLIMATE VULNERABILITY AND THE INDISPENSABLE VALUE OF INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM—Kieth H. Lockitch
Stop ‘Denying’ the View From Outside the Climate Catastrophist Government Establishment
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