By Nancy Thorner -
CNN's marathon town hall Wednesday, September 4th, put the climate crisis closer to the center of a presidential election than ever before. Over the course of CNN's 14-hour television extravaganza, Democrats' leading 2020 presidential candidates explained their positions with respect to climate change and floated a variety of proposals to cut Americans' energy use and, ostensibly, to stop the climate from changing.
A central theme of the night was sacrifice. Many of the candidates’ climate change strategies require vast amounts of capital, from Joe Biden’s $1.7 trillion to Bernie Sanders’ $16.3 trillion. Who is going to end up paying that bill?
There was very little difference among the candidate positions on CO2-induced climate change, which they all claim is the most dangerous threat the world has ever faced, surpassing the human toll and carnage of any preceding economic or military-related disaster, including the Holocaust and World War II.
According to the candidates, our world has only 12 years to reverse the coming climate apocalypse, so we had all better shape up and climb aboard their policy prescription bandwagons and get moving to avoid it. Because CNN says it’s a “crisis,” Democrats were free to offer one insane prediction after the next.
CNN was not interested in the fact that the United States is the only country in the world that has reduced emissions over the past decade-and-a-half while growing its economy, and it certainly wasn't to expose the ignorance and extremism of the Democratic field, yet that is what happened. Given 40 minutes apiece, the aspiring Democratic contenders showed that they are willing to de-industrialize the U.S. economy, put millions of people out of work, and lower the standard of living for tens of millions more, all for the sake of “science” they cannot explain and do not understand.
But the candidates weren’t fully to blame, as CNN kept making “scientific” claims that ranged from half-truths to pure nonsense. More than once moderators suggested that Hurricane Dorian was caused by climate change, or a sign of things to come, when it wasn't.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s “U.S. Hurricane Strikes by Decade” data, reaching back to 1851, can be accessed here. They show that there has been a 50 percent reduction in the number of major hurricanes making landfall in the United States since the 1930s. For the entire period, there is a slight downward trend in frequency, but the decline since the 1930s is remarkable.
So, if anything, hurricanes have become less frequent, not more, during the period of allegedly man-made global warming.
Partial credit, however, must be given to CNN for noting that plans like the “Green New Deal” will hurt mining and agricultural communities, which fell on deaf ear with some of the candidates.
- TAXING “CARBON POLLUTION.” Some called it a “carbon fee”; others called it a “carbon tax.” Former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) was the only one offering a “cap-and-trade” system as an alternative. All believe that you should be paying more for fuel. None suggested making it revenue-neutral — say, by lowering payroll taxes — though South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg would redistribute the money to the poor.
- BANNING FRACKING. With the possible exception of former vice president Joe Biden (who agreed last month at the second debate that he would “eliminate” fracking) and former HUD Secretary Julián Castro (who would back bans at state and local levels), all of the Democrats want to ban the one innovation that has made the greatest difference for our planet in the last twenty years, powered the economic recovery, and made us less dependent on the Mideast.
- ENDING OIL AND GAS EXPLORATION AND EXTRACTION ON PUBLIC LANDS. The Obama administration tried it, too. Never mind that some public lands have been specifically set aside for oil and gas development. There seems to be little thought about the impact that would have on the U.S. economy, on fuel prices, and on national security. Nor is any credit given for industry advances in environmental-friendly technology (except as a warrant for more regulation).
- BANNING NUCLEAR ENERGY. Perhaps with Nevada — the fourth state in the 2020 primary contests — in mind, most of the candidates objected to nuclear energy because of challenges around nuclear waste storage. Only businessman Andrew Yang and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) offered defenses of nuclear power as a zero-emissions alternative, with Booker making the obvious argument: if you believe we need to reduce emissions quickly, nuclear is the only way.
- BANNING PLASTIC STRAWS, DISCOURAGING MEAT, ELIMINATING INCANDESCENT LIGHT BULBS. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) admitted that paper straws are useless, but wants to ban the plastic ones anyway, based on pseudoscience. Booker, a vegan, says you can eat what you want — thanks! — but the rest want you to find another source of protein. And the candidates mocked Trump for halting the imposition of energy-efficient bulbs — seemingly ignorant of health risks.
But there was even more craziness:
- Biden blamed climate change for the cancer and the genocide in Darfur.
- Buttigieg said he would explain climate change to folks in the heartland by telling them God thought greenhouse gases were a sin.
- Bernie Sanders suggested global population control, encouraged by organizations that promote abortion abroad.
- All wanted to rejoin the Paris Climate Accords, none wants to submit them to the Senate for ratification, but several want to eliminate or evade the filibuster to pass the “Green New Deal”, the “green” socialist manifesto written by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
Climate change as nothing new
The earth has experienced “Climate Change”, Global Warming, and Global Cooling since its birth 4 billion years ago.
Most of the myth about climate change are based on reports (recently retracted or drastically revised) of the UN's IPCC, where only a minority of the 2500 "scientists" on the IPCC are in fact are meteorologists. View here: UN IPCC Scientist Debunks UN IPCC Lies – YouTube
Restated below is what I've heard from various climate experts over the past few years and The Heartland Institute's NIPCC report (Nongovernmental International Panel of Climate Change).
- There is no scientific, verified, meteorological, peer reviewed, evidence that EXTRAORDINARY “global warming” or “global cooling” is underway; which is why the left has switched to “climate change”.
- There is no scientific, verified, peer reviewed, evidence that man made, (anthropogenic), “climate change” is underway, nor anticipated. ALL projections to the contrary have proven false!
- If the U.S. eliminated every bit of its carbon emission producing activities TODAY, to zero emissions, there would be no significant impact on the environment by the year 2100.
Major producers of carbon “pollution”
The major producers of carbon “pollution” are China and India who are increasing their activities, (coal plant construction), and have no plans to do otherwise. Therefore, anything we do is futile until that changes, dramatically.
From a worldwide, strategic, geopolitical viewpoint, “climate change” efforts supported by the democrats are economically detrimental to the USA, and advantageous to China, Russia and India.
Progressives seem to delight in inconveniencing the masses for no reason. Consider the plastic straw ban. Even National Geographic — hardly an anti-environmentalist publication — admits that plastic straws comprise just 0.025 percent of the plastic in the oceans.
China, alone, produces around a third of the ocean's plastic waste. In addition, CO2 emissions are greater than the U.S. and Europe combined, and keep going up.
Do Democrats really believe in climate change?
Consider the following written by Allum Bokhari on Sept. 6, 2019 and the answer should become apparent, If Democrats cared about the environment they’d talk about China:
"If Democrats really believe that climate change is an existential threat to humanity, why are they proposing draconian and pointless curbs on the behavior of ordinary Americans? Why aren’t they going after multinationals that continue to do business with the world’s biggest polluter, without demanding any environmental commitments from them?
The real reason Democrats won’t go after China is that they are now the party of global elites, and global elites are constantly salivating about the profits that can be made from China’s market of 1.4 billion people.
They look to Europe and America and see a dwindling middle class with a declining population. There’s no money in that, not long-term anyway. Maybe the problem could be fixed with pro-natal policies like Hungary’s, but why bother? It’s far easier to simply go overseas, to a country that does have a booming population and rising middle class.
That’s the same reason, by the way, that global elites are so vociferously opposed to President Donald Trump and his agenda. Trade restrictions on China, to protect American jobs? An outrage! The elites can’t make money off American jobs, you see. They’re just so much more expensive than Chinese jobs!
Ask yourself, why is big tech so determined to work with China, despite the political pitfalls? Did Google, which once boasted the hipster motto “don’t be evil,” really think they’d suffer no blow back for developing a censored search engine designed to appease Chinese state censors? Or that working with the Chinese military but not the American one would somehow escape notice? Of course not — but for all its professed “values,” there’s no way a profit-seeking multinational like Google can resist the temptation of a 1.4 billion-person market.
But plastic straw bans, meat bans, and one-child policies won’t solve the problem. They simply cause unnecessary pain to ordinary people. MEANWHILE, THE CHINESE DIRTY COAL FURNACES KEEP ON BURNING."
It is amusing that adherents to Climate Change, once called Global Warming in the 1990's, and Global Cooling, (A new Ice Age was predicted) in the 1970's, now say they believe in Climate Change. Isn’t belief a philosophical or religious function, NOT a scientific function?
In that human CO2 is known to cause global warming with high certainty, and confirmed by observations, is but a climate myth. No science is ever “settled”. Science deals in probabilities, not certainties. When the probability of something approaches 100%, then we can regard the science, colloquially, as “settled.
