Guest Post by John Stossel
“How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood!” insisted teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg at the United Nations. “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction!”
Many people say that we’re destroying the Earth.
It all sounds so scary.
But I’ve been a consumer reporter for years, and I’ve covered so many scares: plague, famine, overpopulation, SARS, West Nile virus, bird flu, radiation from cellphones, flesh-eating bacteria, killer bees, etc. The list of terrible things that were going to get us is very long.
Yet we live longer than ever.
Now I’m told global warming is different.
The Earth’s average temperature is rising. It’s risen 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880. The U.N. predicts it will rise another 2 to 5 degrees this century. If that happens, that will create problems.
But does that justify what’s being said?
“We have 12 years to act!” says Joe Biden.
“The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change!” adds Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Twelve years? That’s the new slogan.
The Heartland Institute invited some climate alarmists to explain the “12 years” and other frightening statements they keep making.
The alarmists didn’t even show up. They never do. They make speeches and preach to gullible reporters, but they won’t debate anyone who is skeptical.
Over the years, I repeatedly invited Al Gore to come on my TV shows. His staff always said he was “too busy.”
At a Heartland Institute event I moderated, climatologist Pat Michaels put the 12-year claim in perspective by saying, “It’s warmed up around 1 degree Celsius since 1900, and life expectancy doubled in the industrialized democracies! Yet that temperature ticks up another half a degree and the entire system crashes? That’s the most absurd belief!”
Astrophysicist Willie Soon added, “It’s all about hand-waving, emotion, sending out kids in protest. It has nothing to do with the science.”
Is that true? I wish the alarmists would show up and debate.
Alarmists say, “Miami will soon be underwater!”
Few serious people deny that the Earth has warmed and that sea levels are rising. But Michaels points out that even if the warming increases, humans can adjust.
For example, much of Holland is below sea level. “They said,” Michaels recounts, “we’re going to adapt to the fact that we’re a low-lying country; we’re going to build these dikes. Are you telling me that people in Miami are so dumb that they’re just going to sit there and drown?”
Climatology professor David Legates added a point the climate alarmists never make: “The water has been rising for approximately 20,000 years and probably will continue.”
But aren’t sudden climate changes happening now? Aren’t hurricanes suddenly far more violent?
“No they aren’t!” responded Michaels. “You can take a look at all the hurricanes around the planet. We can see them since 1970, because we’ve got global satellite coverage. We can measure their power… There is no significant increase whatsoever — no relationship between hurricane activity and the surface temperature of the planet!”
He’s right. That’s what government data shows.
Nevertheless, activists and politicians demand the United States move toward zero carbon emissions. That would “put you back in the Stone Age,” says Michaels.
Another myth is that carbon dioxide, the prime creator of greenhouse gases, threatens the food supply.
But carbon dioxide helps plants grow. “There are places on Earth where it is greening up like crazy,” says Michaels.
But if the crisis isn’t real, why do governments race to respond to it with regulations and big spending projects? Why is the U.N.’s Panel on Climate (IPCC) so alarmed?
Well, IPCC does stand for Inter governmental Panel on Climate Change.
Legates says, “Governments want to keep control… Carbon dioxide becomes that molecule by which (they) can take control of your lives.”
Government is the real crisis.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
In real science and observation temps have been declining, fact, not fiction.
What’s more damaging and rising faster than CO2, sea levels and temperatures is the Ignorance of Liberals.
You have to give it to gretel, at least she had the wherewithal to establish a career path at a young age.
Only thing she’ll get from me is contempt and rejection of her deliveries, and the BS agenda of her handlers.
They deserve nothing but ridicule and scorn.
Greta
They are NASA and they know it !
We are in an 11 year grand solar minimum and we will eventually enter a grand solar maximum of 11 years ! If I comprehend this correctly we as a planet will be cooling then heating then cooling then …. This is our suns natural cycles couple that with volcanic activity dusting the upper atmosphere and we are in a constant climatic state of flux .
Certainly pollutants belched into our air and water are negatively affecting the ecosystem and should be reduced reused recycled as much as possible .
Destroying the US economically will not stop China or India along with countless other emerging independent nations from doubling down on pollutants .
The one nation with the engineering and industrial capabilities to solve these issues is the US . Technological advancements created a lot of mess in its wake and only new innovation in industry , science and technology will lead the way to a fix . Listening to some brainwashed skull of mush babble at the U.N. about climate change is about as infantile as one could get .
Let’s level the U.N. and plant trees and let local city residents tend little plots of ground for some gardening and fresh food and flower production . I bet NEW YORKERS would get more out of that then they do out of a bunch of diplomatic windbags with limos and private jets !
Another nonexistent invisible problem for the dems to fix.
Oh just pay your taxes and be quiet.
What about taxation without representation?
The House has been on strike since the dems took over.
“Few serious people deny that the Earth has warmed and that sea levels are rising…”
I’m serious and I deny it. In my six decades of life I have visited numerous seasides and observed fixed structures, monuments, and terrain features located at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean and not one of them is any way threatened by or submerged in the sea. If the rising sea level is that imperceptible than what is the fear?
Second and far more telling is that American insurance companies and mortgage lending institutions still provide coverage for and deal in waterfront properties. If any of what they claim were true moratoriums on insuring and lending on these parcels would have long ago been instituted- that’s how these companies operate. They understand risk better than perhaps any other industries or corporations on the planet and they do not give money away, especially if they have provable data to back up their decisions. Risk analysts and indemnification specialists are integral to their operations. If this trend were even remotely provable do you believe that they would continue to do business with properties that are guaranteed to go under?
The climate changes all the time, it has never remained the same, nor will it. The causes of climatic change are so complex it is virtually impossible to pinpoint any specific or primary catalyst and even if it were, no way to alter those conditions. We have a lot of human caused problems, the primary one as I see it being the inability to control sociopathic elites from strategically co-opting virtually every organ of human achievement in order to obtain power and control populations for their benefit. And that is what this power grab is all about.
Stop making sense will ya, you’re ruining my downer.
What’s it been 30 years since that idiot All Gore said that the oceans will rise so much the East coast would be under water? That had the non thinkers here in upstate NY celebrating that at some point they would have ocean front property and palm trees.With year round Summer. Well it feels like Winter here,and has for the last two weeks. That would be a month and a half early.Hey but at least Gore got rich.
Well said. Succinct, spot on and to the point. I would have led with this, but I realize you just sat down, wrote it and posted it. You are not the slightest bit OCD about revising something until it dies, like some of us.
Nice… add a nice photo and you got yourself a short Hardscrambled post.
The climate changes all the time, it has never remained the same, nor will it. The causes of climatic change are so complex it is virtually impossible to pinpoint any specific or primary catalyst and even if it were, no way to alter those conditions. We have a lot of human caused problems, the primary one as I see it being the inability to control sociopathic elites from strategically co-opting virtually every organ of human achievement in order to obtain power and control populations for their benefit. And that is what this power grab is all about.
(Close with something that seems both mystical and profound.)
An upvote for the poster about Spirit.
Someone wrote a good and entertaining essay on this once:
Thanks HSF. Now save me some chicken feet next time!
Insurance coverage for waterfront mansions is the key though it is subsidized by the taxpayer under the farmers federal government insurance plan . The insurance for farmers was to protect food production that gets flooded out every 20 years or so not for the 1% to have hurricane insurance for a beach home .
Many insurance companies no longer cover dwellings with flat roofs . That saves a bundle for insurance companies not having to cover homes in Baltimore
Its all about taxing and controlling people. agenda 21.
If you send lots and lots of money, we can fix the problem.
I promise it will happen this time if you don’t send the money.
The hypocrisy of some who tout man-made climate change is astounding. Time-Warner, one of the biggest media promoters of man-made climate change just finished building their new World Headquarters not long ago. It is located a mere two blocks from the Hudson River in NYC. Two Blocks. Sure would be a shame to see that beautiful piece of architecture submersed in the Atlantic Ocean.
The same goes for the lying piece of rat shit Obama who told the graduates of the Coast Guard Academy in 2015 that climate change “was still the single greatest threat to the nation..” So what did he and Big Mikey do? Well, they purchased a 15M dollar mansion in Martha’s Vineyard approximately two hundred yards from the ocean. A mere two hundred yards. Be a shame to see Barry and Big Mikey get swallowed up by the Ocean. Not.
“Claims about dangerously rising sea levels, and island nations being submerged by them – as a result of human fossil fuel use and man-made global warming – are nothing more than a clever ruse, designed to frighten people into demanding or accepting terrible energy policies.”
A great rebuttal to climate alarmists:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvrsA0XlYGg
BRRRRRR
https://canadafreepress.com/article/sea-ice-coverage-bad-news-for-alarmists
It might sound a bit naive of me but if we believe that the planet is 4,500,000,000 years old and we have been able to accurately measure temperatures and record them for the last 200 years that would make it that we are basing climate change fanaticism on data of ratio 1:22,500,000. I could be wrong and say that we have been able to measure for longer period of time or that the earth has been around for longer yet it does not change the premise.
That seems to me to be akin to basing your financial stability on a pipedream lottery win. Wonder if climate change is the same pipedream.
“Few serious people deny that the Earth has warmed and that sea levels are rising.” I stopped here. The earth warms and cools. For the last hundred years or so that we have records for the sea level has been rising at exactly the same minuscule rate as it has “always” been rising.
It’s called weather and it’s not broken.
Just another leftist hoax to drain more money out of our pockets.
I learned about “Photosynthesis” in 7th grade back in the early 1960s.
Real science and it totally debunks the stupidity.