The view of Earth’s energy production and climate is evolving

May 12, 2026

Climate and energy are two very important topics. They can be closely related and over the last few decades they have been very closely related. Very serious problems were predicted to effect Earth’s climate due to the damage fossil fuels were supposedly causing.

The Fulcrum7 website provided a list of predictions of disaster due mostly to our energy production that did not come true:

1) In 1970, S. Dillon Ripley, a wildlife conservationist who served as secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, warned that 75 percent to 80 percent of species would be extinct by 1995.

2) In 1970, Kenneth Watt, an ecologist and professor at the University of California, Davis, warned that "there won't be any more crude oil," that "none of our land will be usable" for agriculture, and the world would be 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. 

3) In 1970, biologist Paul Ehrlich at Stanford University warned that by the end of the decade up to 200 million people would die each year from starvation due to overpopulation, life expectancy would plummet to 42 years, and all ocean life would perish. 

4) In 1970, Peter Gunter, a professor at North Texas State University, predicted that "world population will outrun food supplies" and "the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine" by the year 2000.

5) In 1971, Dr. S. I. Rasool, an atmospheric scientist at NASA, predicted the coming of a "new ice age" within 50 years.

6) In 1975, Ehrlich, the Stanford biologist, warned that 90 percent of tropical rainforests and 50 percent of species would disappear within 30 years. 

7) In 1988, Hussein Shihab, environmental affairs director of the Maldives, warned that his island nation would be completely underwater within 30 years, which wouldn't even matter because experts also predicted the Maldives would run out of drinking water by 1992.

8) In 2004, a Pentagon analysis warned of global anarchy due to climate change.  Major European cities would be underwater by 2020, at which point Britain would suffer from a "Siberian" climate.

9) In 2008, Bob Woodruff of ABC News hosted a two-hour climate change special warning that New York City could be underwater by 2015, among other apocalyptic predictions.

10) In 2009, former vice president and climate activist Al Gore predicted the Arctic Ocean would have no ice by 2014, which is the same thing Greta Thunberg said would happen by 2022.

Al Gore also issued several other warnings that were false, including: Kilimanjaro’s no more snows within a decade; Glacier National Park glaciers gone by 2020; Polar ice caps ice free by 2016.

Enough scientists and others agreed with these predictions, forcing decisions on energy production that had significant negative influences on the American people, how they lived and where they worked. Fossil fuels, which were the primary sources of energy production for decades, were ruled dangerous, and wind and solar production were advertised as the solutions to the dangers of fossil fuels.

Coal-fired electric plants were closed or scheduled for closure. Mining operations were cut back or shut down. And the use of wind and solar facilities was increased.

As time has passed, the problems with wind and solar have become more well-known. Solar panels don’t work when the sun doesn’t shine, and wind turbines don’t work when the wind doesn’t blow. Thus, dependable 24-hour-per-day backup systems and large battery facilities are needed. 

Both wind and solar systems take up lots of land and use materials that are difficult and expensive to obtain, and their panels and turbines are also difficult or impossible to recycle after they wear out.

And now the scientific reality of clean, renewable energy being so much better is being weakened by scientific data from scientists who are not afraid to talk about the understated problems of wind and solar, and the overstated problems of fossil fuels.

A good many respected scientists say that not only is CO2 not the huge problem we have been told it is, but that we actually need more of it to contribute to plant growth, which will produce more oxygen and consume more CO2.

The reality of the problems of wind and solar, and the exaggerated story of CO2 problems caused by fossil fuels are now recognized for the damage they have done. We are seeing shut down coal-fired power plants reopening, along with the mining industry beginning a comeback.

Chris Hamilton, President of the West Virginia Coal Association, tells us that, “There are moments when events strip away the luxury of theory and force a return to first principles. This is one of those moments. Recently, President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to strengthen America’s coal supply chains and reinforce the backbone of reliable, affordable electric generation. The order authorizes federal support for mining, transportation, export and domestic terminals, generating unit availability, and long-term fuel security. It is a direct acknowledgment that coal remains indispensable to the stability of the American power system and to the broader national interest.”

The coal industry, so helpful to our area in the past, likely won’t reach its previous levels. But increased coal use will be a good thing.

An atmospheric scientist “clears the air” on climate change

April 22, 2025

The debate about global warming — or climate change, as some prefer to call it — goes on. There are essentially two sides to this debate, those who believe the environment is under attack by carbon dioxide (CO2), and those who think CO2 is not really a problem. There are regular people on both sides of the debate, and there are also scientists on both sides of it.

One scientist with significant credentials divides those who are pro and con on the global warming/climate change debate into three groups. Two of those groups are scientists, and group three, he says, are mostly politicians, environmentalists and the media.

The authority cited is Richard Lindzen, who was professor of atmospheric sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for 30 years, who wrote an article for Prager University. During his professional life, Lindzen has published more than 200 scientific papers. He notes that in his 30 years at MIT, “the climate has changed remarkably little.”

He says that during that time, “the cry of ‘global warming’ has grown ever more shrill. In fact, it seems that the less the climate changes, the louder the voices of the climate alarmists get. So, let’s clear the air and create a more accurate picture of where we really stand on the issue of global warming.”

He begins by describing the three groups involved in the debate: “Group one is associated with the scientific part of the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change or IPCC (Working Group 1). These are scientists who mostly believe that recent climate change is primarily due to man’s burning of fossil fuels — oil, coal and natural gas. This releases C02, carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere and, they believe, this might eventually dangerously heat the planet.

“Group two is made up of scientists who don’t see this as an especially serious problem. This is the group I belong to. We’re usually referred to as skeptics.”

He notes that there are many reasons why the climate changes, including “the sun, clouds, oceans, the orbital variations of the earth, as well as a myriad of other inputs. None of these is fully understood, and there is no evidence that CO2 emissions are the dominant factor.”  

He then lists five things that the two groups generally agree on:

1. The climate is always changing.

2. CO2 is a greenhouse gas without which life on earth is not possible, but adding it to the atmosphere should lead to some warming.

3. Atmospheric levels of CO2 have been increasing since the end of the Little Ice Age in the 19th century.

4. Over this period (the past two centuries), the global mean temperature has increased slightly and erratically by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit or one degree Celsius; but only since the 1960’s have man’s greenhouse emissions been sufficient to play a role.

5. Given the complexity of climate, no confident prediction about future global mean temperature or its impact can be made. The IPCC acknowledged in its own 2007 report that, “The long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

So, where does the heated discussion come from? He explains that, “Most importantly, the scenario that the burning of fossil fuel leads to catastrophe isn’t part of what either group asserts. So why are so many people worried, indeed, panic stricken about this issue. Here’s where Group Three comes in — the politicians, environmentalists, and media.

“Global warming alarmism provides them, more than any other issue, with the things they most want: For politicians it’s money and power. For environmentalists it’s money for their organizations and confirmation of their near religious devotion to the idea that man is a destructive force acting upon nature. And for the media it’s ideology, money, and headlines. Doomsday scenarios sell.”

He adds that over recent years scientists who are not directly involved in climate science have joined the crowd that believes that CO2 will destroy the Earth. They are “publishing papers blaming global warming for everything from acne to the Syrian civil war,” and others, whom he calls “crony capitalists,” are after the abundant and easily procured government subsidies.

Group three has taken the lead in the public argument, having out-shouted the other side, replacing what ought to be serious debate with organized, but inaccurate noise.

Lindzen concludes his article with this: “But while politicians, environmentalists and media types can waste a lot of money and scare a lot of people, they won’t be able to bury the truth. The climate will have the final word on that.”

We need to understand that quite a few scientists support the idea that we actually need more CO2 in the atmosphere, not less. They say plant life, hence humans, would benefit from twice the CO2, given that plants produce and release oxygen. There is also the fact that global temperatures have been higher several times in the past than they are now.

The scare tactics that the climate change faction is pumping out have done damage to the country and the people. Things such as lost jobs, economic problems, unnecessary changes to what we are allowed to purchase and how we are allowed to live our lives are not justified.

The Earth’s history is extremely long and very complicated

December 24, 2024

Estimates of Earth’s age and how long homo sapiens have been around vary somewhat. Numbers like three-to-four billion years are offered as Earth’s age, and our “ancestors” are estimated to have been here for six million years. However, our form of humans has been around for only about 200,000 years.

Over those countless centuries Earth has experienced many changes, and temperature fluctuations are among them. We have had both warm periods and cold periods along the way, and they have alternated back and forth many times.

Smithsonian Magazine explains that “Our planet’s average surface temperature did not stick close to a central point but instead has swung into very hot and very cold periods through the past 485 million years.”

“Earth has experienced cold periods (informally referred to as ‘ice ages,’ or ‘glacials’) and warm periods (‘interglacials’) on roughly 100,000-year cycles for at least the last 1 million years,” according to climate.gov. “The last of these ice age glaciations peaked around 20,000 years ago.” During these cycles, global average temperatures warmed or cooled anywhere from 5-15 degrees Fahrenheit.

Moving from an ice age to a warm period, and vice versa, is a slow, lengthy process, taking tens of thousands of years. And we are currently in a warming period.

Currently, there is an energetic debate over Earth’s increasing temperatures, with scientists and others on one side expressing a fear of temperatures warming to a dangerous level due to increasing levels of carbon dioxide/greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. 

The scientists and others on the opposing side say that this carbon dioxide level is not dangerous, and in fact that double the amount of it would actually be a good thing, spurring more and stronger plant life. Plants absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen into the atmosphere, and that is a good thing.

The climate alarmist side has predicted several catastrophes over the last 50 years, none of which actually occurred:

* In the 1970s we were warned of global cooling and a descent into a new ice age. 

* Paul Erlich claimed worldwide famine by 1975.

* It was claimed several times since 1988 that “we only have ten years left to save the planet.”

* Global warming “creator” Jim Hanson, predicted that lower Manhattan would be underwater by 2009. It isn’t.

* Al Gore predicted that the Arctic ice cap would be gone by 2015. It isn’t.

*We were told that polar bears were going to be extinct by now, but they are still around in large numbers.

*More droughts were predicted, but there have actually been fewer droughts.

* We were warned of more frequent and more intense hurricanes and tornadoes, but they have actually decreased in numbers and severity.

* Polar ice caps melting due to global warming was going to flood island nations. They are still here.

And now there is another study with a similar message. This one, conducted by the University of Bristol, also focuses on carbon dioxide/greenhouse gasses as the culprit: we must stop burning fossil fuels now, it warns.

As reported by the UK based LADbible Group, “The report suggests that Earth will cease to have any mammal inhabitants that cannot adjust to living with temperatures of between 104 to 158 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Their research showed “all mammals will die … [and] that humans are likely to go extinct in 250 million years,” unless we stop burning fossil fuels and increasing greenhouse gas emissions now.

Obviously, 250 million years is a long way off, so we have a good bit of time to both observe what is happening and adjust if needed.

Science tells us that Earth has experienced much warmer periods in its geological history. It is said that 2023 was the warmest year on record since recordkeeping began in the late 19th century. The warming theorists say this means the Earth is warmer now than at any point in recent history.

But these temperature records only go back about 150 years, and that is a miniscule part of a warming or cooling period.

Furthermore, there are questions about the accuracy of the temperature records. Three scientists from the CERES environmental nonprofit organization — Willie Soon, Ronan Connolly, and Michael Connolly — believe that there is not a strong enough argument for the choice of the available global temperature trends used in these predictions.

In an article on The Heritage Foundation website, they commented that, “The scientific debate is still ongoing, and the scientific community is not yet in a position to establish whether the observed temperature changes since the 1800s are mostly natural, mostly human-caused, or a mixture of both.”

Another article on the Heritage site titled “Global Warming: Observations vs. Climate Models,” author Roy Spencer — Visiting Fellow in Heritage’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment — notes that “Warming of the global climate system over the past half-century has averaged 43 percent less than that produced by computerized climate models used to promote changes in energy policy.”

The evidence does not support the United States making radical changes in the way we want to live, and the things we prefer to have. Especially when other countries are unconcerned about it. 

What exactly is carbon dioxide, and why is it such a problem?

October 1, 2024

First it was “global warming,” and now it is “climate change.” It is caused, we are told, by too much carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. CO2 is one-part carbon and two-parts oxygen. It is the carbon that is the problem.

“Carbon is a planetary paradox,” according to Arizona State University’s ASU News. “As the foundation for DNA, carbon is essential for all life on Earth. Yet, as part of the compound carbon dioxide, too much of it has built up in our air, threatening life on Earth as well.

“Today, carbon-based fuels power our very way of life. They support the global economy, transport networks and energy infrastructures. Addressing our carbon problem is, in a word, complex.

“Fortunately, it’s also a problem we can solve together.

“At Arizona State University, researchers explore many ways to reduce atmospheric carbon. And by working alongside industry, government, nonprofits and communities, they’re seeking solutions that are good not just for the planet but also human well-being.

“Experts from fields across ASU share how we can start to bring these systems into harmony and build a healthier world for ourselves and our children.

Why is carbon dioxide a problem?

“Our planet has an elegant system to recycle carbon. After making its way through plants, animals, soil, rock and ocean, it goes into the atmosphere — mainly as carbon dioxide — where it begins its journey again. But if Earth is so great at recycling carbon, how did we end up with too much in the atmosphere?

“Around 200 years ago, a key disturbance unbalanced this cycle. People found they could extract oil and coal — two forms of carbon called fossil fuels — and burn them for energy.

“In short time, our way of life came to depend on carbon-based fuel. Many of today’s amenities, like long-distance travel, buying food grown far away and lighting our homes, rely on this fuel.

“But these innovations have a hidden cost. As we burn fossil fuels, we release carbon back into the air, bypassing a natural process that would have taken thousands of years.

“From pre-industrial times to 2021, humans have added an extra 1.69 trillion metric tons to the atmosphere, and scientists estimate we added around 37 billion metric tons in 2022 alone.

“CO2 naturally traps heat, so all that extra CO2 increases Earth’s average temperature. This has noticeably affected our climate and weather patterns. These changes increase flood and fire risk, threaten crops and food security, endanger vulnerable species, expose us to new diseases, and force people to leave their homelands.”

So, that amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is a problem. What besides CO2 is Earth’s atmosphere made of? While the list of components has 16 gases, it primarily consists of four gases: nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide.

The function provided by each of these is described thusly by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): “Nitrogen dilutes oxygen and prevents rapid burning at the Earth's surface. Living things need it to make proteins. Oxygen is used by all living things and is essential for respiration. It is also necessary for combustion (burning). 

“Argon is used in light bulbs, in double-pane windows, and to preserve museum objects such as the original Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Plants use carbon dioxide to make oxygen. Carbon dioxide also acts as a blanket that prevents the escape of heat into outer space.”

Because CO2 absorbs heat, it is blamed for contributing to the “greenhouse effect,” “global warming,” or “climate change.”

However, the NOAA website from July 2024 tells us that the proportion of these four gases is approximately as follows: nitrogen = 78 percent; oxygen = 20.9 percent; argon = 0.9 percent; carbon dioxide = 0.04 percent.

So, with all that extra CO2 from fossil fuel use, only 4 in 10,000 atmospheric particles are CO2.

As the NOAA said, “Plants use carbon dioxide to make oxygen.” So, plants “eat” CO2 and emit oxygen. That’s a good thing, right?

In Australia, China and nations in Africa, drylands are turning greener. Why? Because of the increased amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

“The primary reason, most recent studies conclude, is the 50-percent rise in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere since preindustrial times,” according to Yale Environment 360, published by the Yale University School of the Environment.

David McGee, an associate professor in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, is quoted on MIT’s Climate Portal saying that today’s CO2 levels are actually “nothing special.” “In the past, carbon dioxide levels have been much higher than they are today and much lower than they are today.”

And Earth’s temperatures have been both much higher and much lower than they are today.

Conceivably, the comparatively minor temperature and CO2 increases that have been witnessed recently are not so important in the context of those changes over many decades and centuries.

Perhaps these increases are not really the serious problem the climate crisis faction wants us to believe they are. And maybe if we make changes to how we do things, those changes should be less radical than those proposed.

Along with summer time, the solstice brings us hurricanes

June 25, 2024

Well, with June comes the birthday of West Virginia, the start of summer, and the start of the six-month-long hurricane season. 

Hurricanes are one of nature’s most powerful storms, and the strong winds, storm surge flooding, and heavy rainfall can lead to inland flooding, tornadoes, and rip currents, all of which can cause great damage to property and death to those in their path. 

Obviously, something like this generates a great deal of attention, particularly in coastal areas where they are most likely to strike.

Stormfax.com tells us that on average there are as many as 12 named storms, 6 hurricanes, and 2 major hurricanes each year during the Atlantic hurricane season. 

“As the impacts of climate change have been more and more evident, we have seen and experienced increasing frequency and gravity of extreme weather events,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said recently, when the country’s ability to respond to disasters was being discussed.

The climate change/global warming faction thinks that this year could be a very busy hurricane season as climate change causes storms to be stronger. And, the first named storm of the hurricane season has already arrived, dumping heavy rain on parts of Mexico.

Climate change they say is the result of too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. However, many climate scientists tell us that the Earth is much cooler now than in the past, and that the warming that is cited is not a large increase, and that we are still a long way from the historical warmest temperatures.

Other scientists warn that if we continue to try to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere we will significantly harm plant growth, and it is plants that give us the oxygen that keeps us alive. They also say that rather than cutting the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in half, we need to double it. Doing so, they say, will spur greater plant growth, which is a good thing.

But if the climate change folks are correct that the planet is warming and that it is a true problem, is there correlation between warmer temperatures and more and stronger hurricanes?

David Legates is a professor emeritus of climatology at the University of Delaware, a visiting fellow for the Science Advisory Committee in the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at The Heritage Foundation, and has written a book titled “Climate and Energy: The Case for Realism.”

He says that “[If] we have colder periods, we will get more hurricane activity. If we have warmer periods, the hurricane activity tends to drop off.” Under that premise, warmer weather equals fewer and less severe hurricanes.

In an interview for The Daily Signal, interviewer Virginia Allen asked him: “Professor Ligates are hurricanes over the past five to 10 years more severe than hurricanes were maybe 50 or 100 years ago?”

“Of course they are because these sites could never tell you anything that can’t be true,” he responded. “See, when you say more severe, we can parse that in a variety of ways. We can say there’s more hurricanes happening.

“We can say that the hurricanes that happen are becoming more intense. We can say that the hurricanes that are happening are actually becoming larger and more powerful overall. Or we can say that they’re making landfall more often than not. And after all, landfall hurricane is the worst-case scenario. If a big hurricane stays out in the Atlantic, that’s only a good thing unless you’re a shipper.”

He then presented some graphics produced by Ryan Maue, who served as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) chief scientist and produced the graphics from data from NOAA that illustrate his position.

Legates said, “if you look at that record, you see lots of variability over the years, but you see no long-term trend either in tropical storms or hurricanes. So, we can’t really say that over the last 50 years that there’s been a dramatic increase in the number of tropical storms or hurricanes or there has been a drastic decrease. It looks just like there’s lots of variability, which we call year-to-year. Some years we get hit and some years we don’t. And so, there’s no change there.”

After further discussion, Allen asked: “So we’re seeing a decrease in the number that are making landfall?” 

“Yes, it is less that are making landfall, which should be a good thing to write home about,” he said. “I know news likes to say, ‘let’s pick on the bad stuff. If it bleeds, it leads,’ but this is good news to write home about [and] that if there’s something in that signal, it’s a good signal.”

In conclusion, Allen asked Legates if there was anything that humans could do to affect the severity of hurricanes. His response: “A warmer world might do that because as we’ve seen [in] the coldest period of the last 400 years, the hurricanes were a little more intense. So maybe a warmer world is the best thing we could hope for.”

Maybe global warming/climate change isn’t really a crisis, after all.

The United States’ war on CO2 is having no actual effect

March 4, 2024

The idea that our atmosphere is heating up to dangerous levels continues. We are told that the cure to this temperature increase is the reduction or elimination of carbon emissions (CO2).

Looking at how carbon emissions changed from 2000 to 2018, we find that the United States and Europe had reduced their emissions, with the U.S. reducing by 10 percent, and Europe reducing by 16 percent, according to data from the Global Carbon Budget 2018.

As meager as that might seem to climate activists, it is enormously better than what some other nations were doing. India, for example, had increased its emissions by 155 percent, and China had trounced India, defeating it with a 208 percent increase.

Why is CO2 a crisis in the U.S. and Europe if two nations — India and China — are producing almost 15 times the carbon emissions that the U.S. and Europe are eliminating? And, China has been building one new coal-fired power plant per week. 

And more to the point, why should we in the U.S. have to purchase items that produce less CO2 and are less efficient, less desirable and more expensive? Or, why are we are unable to buy or use anymore items that we prefer because of their carbon emissions when all of that makes absolutely no difference in the effort to reduce emissions due to the monumental lack of concern of India and China?

However, in light of all of this we should consider whether CO2 is actually a real problem.

The National Geographic Society and National Geographic magazine published an article which said that “Earth’s atmosphere is composed of about 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, 0.9 percent argon, and 0.1 percent other gases. Trace amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and neon are some of the other gases that make up the remaining 0.1 percent.” 

So, CO2 and other gases combine for a grand total of just 1/10th of one percent of the atmosphere. But, let’s look deeper.

Yochanan Kushnir is a research professor at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, in the Division of Oceans and Climate Physics of Columbia University. He explains that of those other gases, carbon dioxide is only 0.04 percent — 4/100ths of a percent — of the entire atmospheric mixture. 

That figure is confirmed by other scientists, who also tell us that 95 percent of that 0.04 percent comes from natural sources, not human activity. Still others say that plant life will do better if the CO2 level was doubled.

While the effort to reduce or eliminate CO2 has affected household and other items, it also had a big effect on a large economic element in our region.

A policy of the Barack Obama administration limited power plant emissions and reduced domestic coal production. The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards policy left power plants with the option of purchasing costly upgrades if they were to stay in business. This forced many plants across the country to close up shop, according to John Deskins, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research in West Virginia University’s John Chambers College of Business and Economics.

West Virginia Coal Association President Chris Hamilton noted that these regulations forced six West Virginia plants to close, and hundreds across the country due to the financial burdens the policy caused.

He also said that West Virginia lost nearly half of its coal production, dropping from 165 million tons to less than 90 million tons.

Damian Phillips of WVNews wrote last week that coal production improved somewhat after Donald Trump became President. And Hamilton noted that During Trump’s first year in office, coal production rose in West Virginia alone.

“The state’s coal production stayed about the same in Trump’s second year,” Hamilton said, “but by the time the pandemic was in full swing, production around the country shut down, and it took more than a year for it to recover.”

Those of us living in southern West Virginia, southwest Virginia and other coal-producing areas have seen first-hand the harmful economic effects of the Obama policy. It is a policy that, according to the data presented earlier, must have been based on political ideals rather than scientific evidence.

And Phillips quoted Hamilton as saying that “Energy producers have warned the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Biden administration that continuing with these policies may upset the national power grid, increasing the likelihood for outages.”

Previous dire warnings about climate catastrophe include that space satellites showed a new ice age coming fast; that there was no end in sight to 30-year cooling trend in northern hemisphere; that within five years the North Polar Ice Cap would be completely free of ice; and French foreign minister Laurent Fabius’ 2014 warning that "we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos." None of these and other predictions of catastrophe actually came to be.

Given the long list of doomsday prognostications that didn’t occur, their breathtaking contrariness to climate reality, and the minuscule amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, we should neither worry about, nor continue to combat CO2, and stop punishing the American people by mandating inferior products and unnecessary costs.

Climate change is being blamed for wildfires in North America

August 8, 2023

The wild fires in Canada this year along with the warmer-than-normal temperatures in parts of the country have energized the pro-climate change voices.

An article on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Website noted the following: “Climate change, including increased heat, extended drought, and a thirsty atmosphere, has been a key driver in increasing the risk and extent of wildfires in the western United States during the last two decades.”

Citing a 2016 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) study, the article added that, “climate change enhanced the drying of organic matter and doubled the number of large fires between 1984 and 2015 in the western United States. A 2021 study supported by NOAA concluded that climate change has been the main driver of the increase in fire in the western United States.”

This is a compelling scenario. Wildfires in the U.S. and Canada have certainly been a problem, particularly recently. But as Paul Harvey so wisely said in his radio broadcasts, “Now, the rest of the story.”

An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal last month, authored by Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, tells us that, “One of the most common tropes in our increasingly alarmist climate debate is that global warming has set the world on fire. But it hasn’t.”

Lomborg isn’t just some “climate denier,” he is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, and is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School. He was listed as one of Time's “100 most influential people,” and Business Insider cited him as one of "The 10 Most-Respected Global Warming Skeptics."

The Copenhagen Consensus Center is the winner of Prospect magazine’s 2016 Think Tank of the Year award in the International Affairs category for think tanks based in the United States. 

Given his skepticism of the degree to which the fears of climate change have been expanded, his arguments against that mentality have been harshly received by those who promote that danger.

But he does not come to the fight unarmed, or with only words. In his column he wrote that, “For more than two decades, satellites have recorded fires across the planet’s surface. The data are unequivocal: Since the early 2000s, when 3 percent of the world’s land caught fire, the area burned annually has trended downward.” In support of that claim, there is a chart prepared by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA).

“In 2022, the last year for which there are complete data,” Lomborg continues, “the world hit a new record-low of 2.2 percent burned area. Yet you’ll struggle to find that reported anywhere.”

The area burned has decreased by 0.8 percent, showing that there has been roughly 27 percent less area burned since 2000.

Lomborg’s point is that while looking at North America tells a particular story, broadening the focus to include the entire globe tells a very different story.

Leighton Steward, who passed away last year, was a geologist, environmentalist, author, and retired energy industry executive. He had served as Chairman of the Board of The Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at Southern Methodist University, was Chairman of the National Wetlands Coalition, and was twice Chairman of the Audubon Nature Institute. He had offered environmental advice that was accepted by both the EPA and the U. S. Corps of Engineers.

Years before his passing, U.S. News’ “Washington Whispers” discussed Steward’s perspective on climate change. Paul Bedard, who authored the article, outlined Steward’s views. “Much of the global warming debate has focused on reducing CO2 emissions because it is thought that the greenhouse gas produced mostly from fossil fuels is warming the planet. But Steward, who once believed CO2 caused global warming, is trying to fight that with a mountain of studies and scientific evidence that suggest CO2 is not the cause for warming. What's more, he says CO2 levels are so low that more, not less, is needed to sustain and expand plant growth.”

Furthermore, Steward believed that if CO2 levels are cut, food production will suffer because plants grown at higher CO2 levels make larger fruit and vegetables and also use less water. He also believed that higher CO2 levels are really not harmful to humans. 

Buying into the CO2 crisis, the Biden administration is rising to the occasion by planning to limit many things that Americans need and want. Things like gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles that are affordable and dependable. Incandescent bulbs to light our homes and businesses. Stoves, water heaters, furnaces, grills and other appliances powered by natural gas and propane. All of these desired devices will be banned in favor of electric devices that will be heavily regulated, very expensive, and will create more of a demand than the electric grid can supply.

And the federal government — which has evolved from the smaller and limited entity it was designed to be into a gargantuan, too-powerful body — now enforces these political desires with rules with the force of law that have not been approved by the Congress, the law-making body in our tripartite government.

Climate alarmism’s failures have seriously damaged our country

July 11, 2023

News headlines in the days following the July 4th holiday said the following things:
* The planet saw its hottest day on record this week. - CNN
* Heat Records Broken Across Earth - The New York Times
* How we know the Earth is now the hottest in thousands of years - The Washington Post
* World's hottest day? Earth set another heat record Thursday - USA Today

These headlines fit comfortably with predictions of climate catastrophe that we have been treated to over a period of many years, such as these, published by The Western Journal in 2018:
* 1970: “Most species on the Earth will perish by 1995” 
* 1970s: “Global cooling is the real problem”
* 1989: “If global warming isn’t reversed by the year 2000, it will be too late to avert catastrophe”
* 2000: “Great Britain will be almost snow-less thanks to global warming”
* 2001: “Snow is going to be a thing of the past in other places, too”
* 2008: “We’ll be living in Antarctica pretty soon”
* 2008: “Prince Charles says we only have 96 months to save the world”
* 2009: “We only have 50 days to save the world from global warming”
* 2016: “Pretty much everything in ‘An Inconvenient Truth’”

And, there was one more, but the end date of this predicted catastrophe has not yet arrived: 1988: “The Earth will warm by 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit by 2025-2050.”

These were serious predictions made by, or based upon theories promoted by, scientists and/or organizations focused on climate issues. 

The reference to “An Inconvenient Truth” addresses the documentary produced by former Vice President Al Gore, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for it.

In the 2006 global warming documentary, Gore predicted that the global sea level could rise as much as 20 feet "in the near future."

It didn’t happen.

Two years later during a speech at the Copenhagen Climate Conference he said that there was "a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years."

It didn’t happen.

Dire predictions like those of Gore and the preceding list that did not come true tend to create doubt about other similar predictions. Even those that someday may come true, if any of them ever will.

This is even more likely when people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the former bartender and current member of the House of Representatives, warn of impending doom.

“The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,” she reportedly said, “and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?”

This comment found the support of two-thirds of Democrats in a Rasmussen poll, and a total of 48 percent of all those polled. Later, Ocasio-Cortez labeled her comment as “dry humor” and “sarcasm.”

One of the many great things about this country is the ability of everyone to say pretty much anything they want to say, with a few exceptions for dangerous material. This is still largely true, despite some recent efforts to control some opinions. These previous faulty predictions were allowed, and even encouraged.

We don’t really know what prompted the “predictors” to say what they said. Perhaps they truly believed what they were saying. Or, perhaps they had some nefarious purpose behind their predictions.

What we do know is that the predictions were grossly wrong, since the time for them to have occurred has passed, and Earth is still here and hardly the worse for wear.

And yet there are still those that predict climate catastrophe, and a broad range of folks who believe them.

In a video on Facebook, a guy was interviewing another guy and asked him what to do about climate change. The interviewee said, “Farming has to stop. That’s the single biggest driver of climate change.” An interesting perspective.

The interviewer then said, “Alright. Without farming you would be hungry, naked and sober.” Perhaps the interviewee had not thought beyond his initial idea.

Even some of those who reject the cataclysmic predictions agree that people and their habits are having an effect on Earth’s climate. But they understand that anything that the United States does will have minimal effect on the global atmosphere. 

Yet, the U.S. under the Biden administration’s edicts, tries to kill fossil fuels, push “green energy” on us, despite its inability to meet the demand, force electric vehicles on the populace, and do away with gas ovens and other things. All this as China, India and other nations continue to increase their reliance on coal-burning energy and other uses of fossil fuels.

We need to think smartly about this situation and not try to force on people things that will occur naturally as the clean forms of energy that they think will save the world evolve.

The situation simply does not require the U.S. and other nations inclined to fight climate change to force expensive and often painful situations on their people, while other nations happily ignore the situation, counteracting whatever smidgen of good these harsh methods accomplish with their selfish tendencies.

Fueling America: U.S. not capable of being battery powered

June 13, 2023

The U.S. government has many policies, rules and other things in place that work against people’s interests. In the haste to do away with fossil fuel use, we have made it more difficult to acquire coal, oil and natural gas, things that people need. And even when we have those fuels, it has been made more difficult and more expensive to transport them. Pipeline transport is much more economical than transporting oil and natural gas by truck and train. But President Joe Biden’s halting of the Keystone XL Pipeline interfered with that.

Even Biden knows that we can’t do without fossil fuels. As he said during the State of the Union address last February, “We’re going to need oil for at least another decade.” The Congressional audience erupted in laughter, and he corrected himself, adding, “And beyond that, we’re going to need it.” 

Because of Biden’s actions the U.S.  now has to buy oil from other countries, usually dirtier and more polluting than our oil, which is the cleanest in the world. 

In 2021, the Energy Information Administration reported that about 51 percent of the world’s oil comes from five countries. The U.S. led the group, producing 14.5 percent of the 51 percent, followed by Russia at 13.1 percent, Saudi Arabia at 12.1 percent, and Canada and Iraq that together total about 11 percent.

In 2022 U.S. oil production was below the 2019 record levels. That may reflect a trend in domestic oil production.

The terribly optimistic idea of an electric vehicle replacement of vehicles that burn gasoline and diesel fuel any time in the next three decades or so is a pipe dream. 

The vehicles in use in the U.S. are mostly made here, and they use fuels we can make here. But the desire is to replace them with vehicles that use batteries, and a great deal of the materials to make the batteries come from other countries.

As reported by U.S. News, most electric cars use lithium-ion batteries. “These types of batteries require several chemical components, including lithium, manganese, cobalt, graphite, steel and nickel, and they require a lot of these materials. By a lot, we mean about 17 pounds of lithium carbonate, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds of cobalt and a whopping 77 pounds of nickel!”

Here's where some of the components for batteries come from. According to SAE International, 100 percent of natural graphite comes from China, Mexico, Canada and India; 37 percent of copper comes from Chile, Canada and Mexico; 50 percent of nickel comes from Canada, Norway, Finland, and Russia; 100 percent of Manganese comes from Gabon, South Africa, Australia and Georgia; 50 percent of lithium comes from Argentina, Chile, China and Russia; 100 percent of rare earths come from China, Estonia, Japan and Malaysia; and 83 percent of zinc comes from Canada, Mexico, Peru and Spain. 

We are dependent on other countries for much of these components.

U.S. mining of basically anything useful as a fuel or in making materials for electric vehicles, like nickel, copper and cobalt, is blocked or made more difficult by government rules. And we buy lots of these materials, and other things, from China, our greatest adversary.

So, while we will need fossil fuels for a long time, and while the materials for making EV batteries largely come from other countries, the climate change faction still preaches our destruction if we don’t change how we do many things.

Not everyone agrees with that unavoidable catastrophe being the future of the world if we don’t stop using fossil fuels.

One of those people is an early member and former president of Greenpeace. Formed in Canada in 1971, Greenpeace exists “to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future,” according to its website.

A former president of Greenpeace, Dr. Patrick Moore, served as Greenpeace Canada President for nine years and as a Director of Greenpeace International for six years. Among his many credits, Moore has a Ph.D. in Ecology from the Institute of Resource Ecology at the University of British Columbia.

He is no longer affiliated with Greenpeace, and his current position on Earth’s environment is at odds with the organization, and that has earned him its harsh criticism.

Speaking on a video from 2015, Moore said the following: “There is no definitive scientific proof … that carbon dioxide is responsible for any of the slight warming of the global climate that has occurred during the last 300 years.

“But there is a certainty beyond a reasonable doubt that CO2 is the building block for all life on Earth, and that without its presence in the global atmosphere … this would be a dead planet.”

Moore is not the only scientist who disbelieves the idea that CO2 will someday destroy humanity. And the accuracy of previous predictions of environmental catastrophe is stunningly poor. 

Not burning fossil fuels is certainly a worthy goal. And it is a goal that will eventually be reached as the natural development of alternative energy proceeds.

These manic efforts to force these not-yet-capable energy sources into use is expensive, and works against the needs and desires of the people.

An Associated Press story provides some things to think about

April 11, 2023

The recent horrible weather events that have killed and injured hundreds of Americans and destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses have gotten well-deserved attention.

In addition to tornados like those seen this year in America, through its many decades the country has experienced many severe weather events, like hurricanes, floods, draughts, blizzards, ice storms, wildfires, bomb cyclones, the polar vortex and other weather horrors.

These weather phenomena were addressed last week by the Associated Press (AP) in a story by Seth Borenstein titled, “Why the US leads the world in weather catastrophes.”

Borenstein, noting that the “United States is Earth’s punching bag for nasty weather,” said that we can blame geography for the serious weather we experience.

“Two oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains, jutting peninsulas like Florida, clashing storm fronts and the jet stream combine to naturally brew the nastiest of weather,” he wrote.

According to North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello, our weather problems start with “where we are on the globe. It’s truly a little bit … unlucky.”

Borenstein noted that when we add to that man-made aspects that complicate our locational problem -- like what, where and how we build things -- the situation gets worse. “The U.S. is by far the king of tornadoes and other severe storms,” he wrote. 

Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini commented that “It really starts with two things. Number one is the Gulf of Mexico. And number two is elevated terrain to the west.”

Describing our recent outbreak of tornadoes, Borenstein warned that more could be coming. “Dry air from the West goes up over the Rockies and crashes into warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, and it’s all brought together along a stormy jet stream. 

“In the West, it’s a drumbeat of atmospheric rivers. In the Atlantic, it’s nor’easters in the winter, hurricanes in the summer and sometimes a weird combination of both, like Superstorm Sandy.”

The way forward to reduce the hazards of these storms is not to stop using incandescent light bulbs, gas stoves, gas-powered and diesel-powered vehicles and toilet paper, as championed by the Climate Change camp. 

Susan Cutter, director of the Hazards Vulnerability and Resilience Institute at the University of South Carolina, told Borenstein, “One of the ways you can make your communities more resilient is to not develop them in the most hazard-prone way or in the most hazard-prone portion of the community.”

“The insistence on building up barrier islands and development on barrier islands, particularly on the East Coast and the Gulf Coast, knowing that that sand is going to move and having hurricanes hit with some frequency … seems like a colossal waste of money,” she said.

One factor is that in the south more manufactured housing is being used, and it is “more vulnerable to all sorts of weather hazards,” Cutter said. 

Where we build and how we build contributes greatly to the deaths, injuries, and destruction resulting from the weather phenomena that our Earthly location brings to us. Given that we cannot control the weather that occurs naturally in the U.S., we should be even more aware of where and how we build structures.

If the United States as a whole has it bad, the South has it worse, according to Marshall Shepherd, a Georgia meteorology professor and former president of the American Meteorological Society.

“We drew the short straw (in the South) that we literally can experience every single type of extreme weather event,” Shepherd said. “There’s no other place in the United States that can say that.”

Some states, like Florida, North Carolina and Louisiana, stick out in the water, so they are more prone to being hit by hurricanes, some of the experts noted.

This AP story provides a factor affecting our severe and often deadly weather that many or most of us have not known of thought about previously. While those who argue against the catastrophic claims of climate change are generally ridiculed, this factor tends to lend them a significant element of defense.

And those dire warnings of catastrophe in the past decades that did not materialize seem even more crazy than before.

Comedian George Carlin many years ago pointed out that our planet has been here 4.5 billion years. Humans, by contrast, have only been around for maybe 200,000 years, a very small percentage of that time. And we have been involved in heavy industry and other things that so many believe may destroy Earth for only about 200 years. He said that “the planet has been through a lot worse than us.” 

Of course, George Carlin is not a climate scientist, and how humans do things can have very negative consequences. But maybe things aren’t as bad as some think. 

The natural factors that the AP story highlights must be a part of how we think about weather and climate change. And maybe we can moderate our attitude regarding doing away with fossil fuels by forcing the end of their use prematurely and unnaturally, given that our Earthly location is a primary factor in our weather. 

Heat wave warms political rhetoric and motivation

 

It’s been a bit warm lately in most of the U.S., and very hot in some places. Another climate crisis is upon us, and we are told to act soon.

Why is it that virtually each and every time an “out-of-the-ordinary” weather event occurs, the climate mania folks cry “It’s the end of humanity if we don’t do radical things immediately?” Too many hurricanes in a year: the end is nearing. Above normal heat and dry conditions: we must stop using fossil fuels.

However, if you look back at the history of catastrophic climate warnings over the last 50-plus years, they were embarrassingly wrong. In this space on June 28th, there were listed seven examples of incorrect predictions of climate doom dating from 1974 through 2018.

Yet, a couple of additional hurricanes, a dry spell, or today’s heat wave sends the eco-mania left into another round of catastrophic predictions of imminent doom

Last week, Fox Business Network’s Larry Kudlow featured theoretical physicist Dr. Steven E. Koonin on his 4:00 p.m. program. Koonin is the author of the bestselling book “Unsettled: What climate science tells us, what it doesn’t, and why it matters.”  His credentials also include being former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University, and he served as Undersecretary for Science in the US Department of Energy under President Barack Obama.

Koonin gets slammed by the pro-climate-catastrophe crowd due to his view that the world is not nearing its end because of CO2 and other climate threats. 

Discussing an official government report from 2018 on the Kudlow program, Koonin said, “The graphs are there; they show warmest temperatures are not greater than they were in 1900, nor are the heatwaves more common than they were in 1900.”

“What we see with heat waves is weather. It happens on time scales or changes of a few days. Heat waves are not going to last more than a few days, either in the US or in Europe. Whereas climate is the many-decade average of weather: temperature, winds, humidity, extreme events, and so on,” he continued. 

“And so, people have a tendency — the news media certainly does — to focus on what happens today. That’s news. But it’s kind of boring to say things have changed by x, y or z over the last 30 years.” 

Kudlow asked, “so what’s the real story here on climate change?” Koonin’s response: “We’ve seen heat — warming — since the 1600s. We had what’s called ‘the Little Ice Age,’ and [Earth’s temperatures have] gone up in the last century, let’s say, by about 2-degrees Fahrenheit. That’s globally averaged. It’s gotten warmer more rapidly in some places, in the poles, for example, and it tends to get warmer in the evening, compared to getting warmer in the daytime. There are changes. Nevertheless, it’s gotten warmer.”

“Now the real question is, are humans going to be able to, or will humans influence the climate enough so that the warming accelerates?”

“I think we understand that greenhouse gases, mostly CO2, exert a warming influence on the climate. Some human activities … exert a cooling influence on the climate. But on balance, we expect human influences to warm the climate somewhat. And the real issue is, how much is it going to warm, and the best estimate now is that it might warm another 2- or 3-degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. And then, of course, what can we do about it?”

So, Koonin, Obama’s former Undersecretary for Science, agrees that warming has occurred, and that it likely will continue to occur, but does not believe that the end of life on Earth as we know it is in the foreseeable future. Therefore, radical alterations are not called for.

Given the catastrophic predictions over the last half-century that were catastrophically wrong, perhaps Koonin’s forecast of the future is more on target.

The U.S. should reduce its burning of fossil fuels as the development of sources that can equal the demand filled by fossil fuels occurs. The U.S. should not try to force ending fossil fuels that the country’s needs, but be sensible enough to recognize that such transitions take time, and rushing the change only hurts the people, with little or no benefit.

Currently, so-called green sources, such as wind and solar, are incapable of not only matching the level of electricity and vehicle fuel currently needed, but also to do that at a cost that is commensurate with the costs — not the current high level — to which American consumers are accustomed.

President Biden and the rest of his administration would be well advised to focus on the immediate serious problems his policies have brought upon the American people. He should undo the restrictions he placed on domestic energy production, address the sky-high inflation under which people are suffering, and stop the ridiculous levels of dangerous illegal entry into the country that his foolish policies have created, for starters.

It was not an accident that the country was in far better shape under the previous administration than now, even with the scourge of Covid. Biden’s focus must be to help the American people, not to help the political left.

New book takes a broader, more realistic view of fossil fuel use

June 28, 2022

In his new book, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas — Not Less, Alex Epstein agrees that fossil fuels’ CO2 emissions are impacting our climate, and wrote that “I totally acknowledge that they have contributed to the 1ºC warming we’ve experienced over the last one-hundred-plus years, and they will contribute to further warming going forward.”

However, he contends that “the negative climate impacts of fossil fuels will be far, far outweighed by the unique benefits of fossil fuels,” that their impact “would not be catastrophic but rather continue to be ‘masterable’ by ingenious human beings empowered by fossil-fueled machines.”

The advantages of fossil fuels, he wrote, is that their abundance and relatively low cost make them useful so that eventually they will benefit the billions of people who have little or no access to energy. “Fossil Fuels,” he wrote, are “providing four times more energy than all alternatives combined.”

Because of their low cost and reliability they have transformed our environment into “one that is unnaturally clean and unnaturally safe from climate danger.” And while their use did increase the CO2 level, that would be offset by the fossil-fueled machines that provide benefits, like irrigation equipment that counter drought, air-conditioning machines that help us live in very warm climates, and heating units for cold climates.

While conceding that fossil fuels do contribute CO2 to the environment, he called our attention to the excessive and often flat-out incorrect predictions of gloom and doom that have influenced how we do things.

Grossly incorrect predictions of climate doom have been put forth over the years. Highlighting some of these mistakes in not-too-distant history, Epstein provided examples of trusted news institutions wrongly warning us back in the 1970s:

* The Guardian, in 1974: “Space satellites show new ice age coming fast.”

* Newsweek, in 1975: “The cooling world: Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects.”

* The New York Times, in 1978: “International team of specialists finds no end in sight to 30-year cooling trend in northern hemisphere.”

More recent predictions that are not included in Fossil Future have been just as wrong, and in the opposite direction, promising death and destruction from a warming world.

* In 2004, the U.S. edition of The Guardian reported that the U.S. Defense Department had told President George W. Bush that European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a “Siberian” climate, triggering nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting across the world.

* In 2008, then-presidential candidate Al Gore predicted that within five years the North Polar Ice Cap would be completely free of ice.

* In 2009, Great Britain’s Charles, Prince of Wales, said that capitalism and consumerism have brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse, and we have only 96 months to straighten things out.

* In 2014, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, appearing with then-Secretary of State John Kerry, warned that "we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos." 

Even if you are not a senior citizen that has lived through all these false warnings, you probably realize that none of them has come to pass.

In fact, some positive things have occurred. Even though there has been an increase in atmospheric CO2, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. air emissions — including carbon monoxide, ammonia, nitrous oxides, Sulphur dioxide, and particulate matter — have been reduced from 300 million tons in 1970 to approximately 125 million tons in 2020, despite the increased use of fossil fuels.

This is because the currently used fossil fuels are cleaner than those used many years ago such as wood and animal dung, which were often burned indoors, and we have cleaner methods for using them.

Two other energy sources are not used very much: nuclear and hydroelectric, which Epstein says are discouraged because of the harm they do to the environment. But, he noted that the “radiation in the case of nuclear is trivial, and the waste has been safely managed for generations.” And for hydroelectric, arguing against those projects “in the name of free-flowing rivers … is clearly not focused on human flourishing” that it will provide.

Essentially, he suggests that these arguments greatly exaggerate the dangers of nuclear and hydroelectric, and essentially ignore the positive aspects they provide that will benefit humanity. 

What Epstein accomplishes is something not really complicated, but it is something rather rare; instead of taking one side or the other and pushing it, he accepts the strong points of both sides, and presents both of them. He makes the case that ought to be more broadly presented to us; that we must keep at the top of our thinking how we best serve the needs of the billions of people on Earth by making the most of fossil fuels, and in doing that we also manage the negatives of fossil fuels to prevent them from doing serious harm.

Texas Congressman Chip Roy terms this approach a “humanity-centric alternative to the anti-fossil fuel climate hysteria” so prevalent today.

Maybe CO2 isn’t the huge problem we have been told that it is

Two videos have come to light recently addressing Earth’s climate. One is by the World Cycles Institute (WCI), and the other by an Australian geologist and college professor named Ian Rutherford Plimer.

The WCI specializes in analyzing various cycles, such as currency and money, revolutions and wars, governments, markets, and our climate.

Unlike what we see and hear most often these days, presenter Peter Temple began by saying we need “a little dose of reality, because it’s getting colder and dryer, and it’s all because of the sun, and the planets.” He then addressed the cycles of Earth’s temperature over the last 11,000 years.

The video had a chart showing the history of alternating periods of warming and cooling. It showed that we are currently in the “Modern Warm Period,” the most recent of seven throughout the history of the chart.  Two of the longest periods of warming were much warmer than it is today, and occurred long ago. “In fact, the trendline shows that it’s gradually getting cooler,” Temple said, with the chart showing that peak temperatures of the warming periods have been going down. This trend, he said, is because the sun is cooling, adding that no astrophysicist disputes that fact.

Temple then said that we are entering a cooling period. How do we know this? He cited the work of Dr. Raymond Wheeler, whose team of about 200 scientists in the early 1900s researched climate temperatures from 600 BC forward. That research, using tree rings and sun spot records, discovered major cycles of temperatures and rainfall throughout the period of research. Those cycles are roughly 100, 172, 515 and 1,030 years long.

Interestingly, the warm and cold periods matched up precisely with the rise and fall of great empires, which rose in the warming periods, and fell during the cooling periods.

Wheeler’s cycles predicted extreme weather at about the year 2000, followed by a cooling period and long-term drought. Temple then says that is what is now happening. “A recent drop in solar activity is warning of a much colder time coming ahead,” he said.

In fact, Russian astrophysicist, Habibullo Ismailovich Abdussamatov, who is head of the Russian section of the International Space Station, predicted not long ago that a mini ice age is on its way.

Temple then showed a chart from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with data gathered from Greenland ice cores, which he said supports Wheeler’s cycle theory.

Temperatures consistently turned colder every 172 years, and the last of those cycles was in 2007. Temple says that the Earth is going to get a lot colder and dryer, and this period may last several hundred years. This will be accompanied by a major financial collapse, he said, which is a feature of the 172-year cycles.

Ian Plimer appeared in an interview on Sky News a year ago, and responded to a question about the idea that instead of our end being hastened by global warming, we are actually headed toward an ice age by saying that, as Temple noted, our climate is cyclical.

“We are getting towards the end of a warm period … and we are heading for the next inevitable ice age,” Plimer said.

“We have had six major ice ages during which we’ve had glaciations -- that’s when the ice expands -- and warmer periods when the ice retreats. All that happened before humans were on planet Earth, and every single major ice age started when we had more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than now,” he said. “And to use the words ‘climate emergency’ indicates that you have absolutely no knowledge about the past.”

Responding to a question about the “link between humans and global warming,” and whether these claims are correct or not, he replied, “No one has ever shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming.”

He then asked anyone with such proof to show him the scientific papers that prove it. Citing the fact that so many people live in cities rather than in rural areas, they have not experienced nature in the same way as those who live in the more rural areas.

“So, we have a city-based population that doesn’t read the scientific literature, and has had no life experience [about climate], and they are telling us the ‘chicken little’ story that the sky is falling in. Well I’m sorry folks, there is a very, very large amount of scientific evidence out there that shows that we live in exceptionally boring times. And we’re just having cycles of climate come and go.”

He then cited the major factor in our climate that makes it warmer and cooler without our permission: the sun.

In the email he was quoted as saying that a four-day eruption of a volcano in Iceland negated every single effort we have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet.

And, as with every similar explanation that contradicts the climate doom narrative, many have criticized him.

There are experienced scientists that provide strong arguments, backed by data, that we are not about to destroy the Earth with CO2.

Government spending; what the ice says; and troubled democracies

The federal budget for fiscal year 2021 was $6.8 trillion, and revenue was only $4.05 trillion. That added nearly $3 trillion to the $29 trillion national debt.

Congress just passed an infrastructure bill with bipartisan support of $1 trillion. And the House recently passed the Democrats' sweeping $1.9 trillion budget reconciliation package, which still needs Senate approval. Both of these spending packages will add nearly $3 trillion more to the national debt.

A meme on Facebook asked that we consider how long 1 trillion seconds is. One million seconds equals: 16.67 billion minutes; 277.8 million hours; 11.6 million days; and 23,800 years, counting leap years.

Then, it said, think about money. So, what can $1 trillion buy? 1 million houses that cost $1,000,000; 2.86 million houses at $350,000; 16.7 million cars that cost $60,000; 40 billion hours of labor at $25/hour, or a year’s wages for 19,200 people at $25/hour.

At the rate that the Democrats are spending money we don’t have, pretty soon, we will be talking about real money.

At some time, we must address this gargantuan debt, and start spending only what we collect, and that spending must include paying down the debt.

* * *

A recent emailed video contained a presentation from several years ago by Jorgen Peder Steffensen, Professor of Physics - Ice, Climate and Earth, at the Niels Bohr Institute.

In the presentation, Steffensen said that the NorthGRIP (Northern Greenland Ice Project) was reopened to drill the last few meters through the ice sheet to the rock beneath the ice station.

“The ice core, over 3 kilometers in length, has been hauled up to the surface piece by piece, and holds important data on the history of the climate of the Earth,” he said. “It bears the fingerprints of climactic conditions for more than 120,000 years.”

Steffensen used a chart showing the temperature changes in the ice core over a period of 8,000 years. The temperature changes are shown on a chart using 4 gradations, top to bottom, with 4.0 being the warmest, and 0.0 being the coldest. Remember, ice forms at 0 degrees Celsius and 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

The warmest temperatures are 3.7 on the 4-gradation scale starting 7,500 years ago, lasting until about 4,800 years ago. At that time a long period of cooling began, ending roughly 2.6 gradations cooler 2,100 years ago. The temperature at that time was at 1.1 on the scale.

Then a warming period occurred, during which the temperature rose to about 2.5 on the scale about 1,000 years ago, which Steffensen identified as the Medieval Warm Period. That temperature was about 1.0 gradation warmer on average than today.

Other core samples from elsewhere in Greenland confirm that the Little Ice Age ended 140 or so years ago, Steffensen said, the coldest point in the last 10,000 years, at 0.6, near the bottom of the scale. 

So, the warmest temperatures detected by NorthGRIP were 3.7 on the scale, and the coolest temperatures were 0.6 on the scale, a difference of 3.1 units on the 4-gradation scale.

Steffensen said, “I agree completely that we have had a global temperature increase in the 20th Century. But an increase from what?” 

The answer: From the Little Ice Age’s 0.6 mark. From there to today’s 1.5 mark is an increase of 0.9, which is less than the rise during the Medieval Warm Period.

NorthGRIP showed that Earth was much warmer 8,000 years ago than it is today, and a good bit warmer during the Medieval Warm Period about a thousand years ago than today.

While Earth’s temperature has been rising since the start of the 20th Century, this warming follows the coldest temperatures in 8,000 years. And a warming period is a natural occurrence after a cooling period.

Perhaps the visions of climate catastrophe we see all around us are not really warranted.

* * *

The Washington Post reported last week on a report released by the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). The report, the Global State of Democracy 2021, listed “back-sliding democracies,” and for the first time, the United States is on that list.

The Post quoted from the report: “The United States, the bastion of global democracy, fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself, and was knocked down a significant number of steps on the democratic scale.”

The organization bases its analysis of about 160 countries, looking at 50 years of democratic indicators.

“The study, which analyzed trends from 2020 and 2021, found that more than a quarter of the world’s population now lives in democratically backsliding countries,” The Post wrote, “which International IDEA defines as nations seeing a gradual decline in the quality of their democracy.”

The International IDEA report said, “The world is becoming more authoritarian as non-democratic regimes become even more brazen in their repression and many democratic governments suffer from backsliding by adopting their tactics of restricting free speech and weakening the rule of law, exacerbated by what threatens to become a ‘new normal’ of Covid-19 restrictions.”

Along with the other disturbing news we are dealing with, this is especially disturbing for those of us living in the “land of the free.”