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Close-minded politicians everywhere!

Despite the repeated news in recent weeks that the evidence for global warming is slim, or at least confused, today we have two elected officials and one appointed official screaming that the sky will fall if we don’t do something, including spending billions of dollars of other people’s money.

First we have our friend Al Gore, who was in Washington, DC to speak at an environmental event put on by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island). Whitehouse you might remember was the senator who, even before the injured and dead had been counted from the terrible Moore, Oklahoma tornado, started blaming Republicans for the tornado because they weren’t doing more to stop global warming.

During an online chat this week Gore demanded that Obama stop talking and get serious about doing something about global warming.

“I hope that he’ll get moving on to follow up on the wonderful pledges he made in his inaugural speech earlier this year and then soon after in his State of the Union,” Gore said. “Great words. We need great actions now.”

Then, in a speech at Whitehouse’s event, Gore complained that scientists “won’t let us yet” link tornadoes to climate change.

The first demand is hardly surprising, as Gore is a politician who wants politicians to run the show. That he makes it now however illustrates his close-mindedness. To Gore, it is completely irrelevant that the climate stopped warming fifteen years ago, something that even the New York Times has finally admitted. It is also irrelevant to Gore that this fact suggests that his entire theory — that increased CO2 in the atmosphere will cause the global climate to warm — appears wrong. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Gore would deny these facts, if asked.

Gore’s second comment is informative, as it proves that Gore was never guided by the science. In the case of extreme weather events, scientists have found no evidence at all that a warming climate causes more extreme weather. In fact, the data doesn’t even show an increase in extreme weather events, something that supposedly was happening with the global rise in temperatures during the 20th century.

This isn’t good enough for Al. He, like Senator Whitehouse, religiously believes that global warming is going to cause weather disasters and big tornadoes, and to hell with the data!

Next we have New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg who today proposed that New York spend $20 billion to protect New York City from big storms and the threat of sea level rise due to global warming.

The plan – which would also include the building of marshes and the flood-proofing of homes and hospitals – is one of the biggest, most ambitious projects ever proposed for defending a major U.S. city from the rising seas and severe weather that climate change is expected to bring.

Bloomberg proposed this expensive plan based on the following:

The recommendations draw from updated predictions from the New York City Panel on Climate Change, a scientists’ group convened by the city. The average day could be 4 degrees to nearly 7 degrees hotter by mid-century, the panel estimates. A once-in-a-century storm would probably spur a surge 5 or more feet higher than did Sandy, which sent a record 14-foot storm tide gushing into lower Manhattan. And with local waters a foot to 2 1/2 feet higher than they are today, 8 percent of the city’s coastline could see flooding just from high tides, the group estimates.

That this prediction is utter hogwash seems irrelevant to Bloomberg. There is no evidence that temperatures will rise this much. And the rate of sea level rise has been steady at about 3 millimeter per year for the past two decades. In fifty years that rate would translate into a sea level rise of only 6 inches, not 2.5 feet.

Finally, we have NASA administrator Charles Bolden, who today spoke at NOAA’s annual propaganda event, the Space Weather Enterprise Forum. Every year in June NOAA holds this event for reporters, and every year we are subsequently inundated with news reports about how we are all gonna die from solar flares if we don’t do something. (See my essay on Behind the Black from June 2011 to see how nothing has changed since then.)

Bolden however somehow outdid all other doomsayers by linking the threat of extreme weather and tornadoes with the dangers from solar flares.

“This conference shines a spotlight on another naturally occurring phenomenon that can be just as punishing as a tornado — space weather,” Bolden said in his written remarks for the event, after mentioning his grief at the lives lost during the deadly outbreak of tornadoes in the Midwest in recent weeks.

To equate the tragedy of those tornadoes, which actually killed people, with the threat of a solar flare, which at worse will simply cause a power outage, seems a bit over the top. Moreover, the lack of solar activity during this solar maximum suggests again that the threat from space weather is very overstated.

But who cares? Bolden, like Gore, Bloomberg, and Whitehouse, has an agenda. We need to spend money to save the world. More important, we need your money to do it!

All these stories illustrate again why we should not rely on politicians to solve any of our problems. Even if the climate was warming and even if the Sun was going to fry us, asking politicians and the political world to deal with the problem is likely not going to do you much good. Politicians aren’t really interested in facts. They are interested in power. And that interest means they will not focus on doing the proper thing but will instead do the thing that gives them more power, even if it might actually make the problem worse.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

9 comments

  • Joe

    Al Gore has made a rather large fortune with carbon credits, these politicians believe in one thing, money which translates to power, climate change is just a vehicle to garner wide support of this carbon folly. Politicians that play this game are in a win win position, with regards to cfc’s being banned and the ozone layer recovering, if it did not recover or it did matters not, quite obviously science means nothing because cfc’s are still being used and the ozone hole is getting smaller, maybe the use was curtailed to some extent in the developed world, but that is only about a third of population, with regard to cfc’s, what is China and India doing, sure they don’t use right guard but the do manufacture r22 refrigerants and bootleg them to the rest of the world, this is all
    About taxes and money and political power!

  • JGL

    Close minded?

    Agenda driven.

  • lino

    This stuff is ridiculous. Everyone knows that Republicans don’t cause tornadoes.

    They cause hurricanes.

  • Phil Berardelli

    Bob, your last phrase is key. Let’s just assume that they’re all right and we’re all wrong: manmade global warming is real and taxing carbon will stop the warming and possibly even reverse it. The problem is we’re due for another ice age. The last one that emerged — about 110,000 years ago — did so even though the planet’s average temperature was 2 degrees C. higher than it is right now, meaning that even if the current average increased by 2 degrees, it wouldn’t be enough to head off an ice age. It also means that if efforts to cool the planet succeeded, then the new ice age could begin even sooner. That’s a problem of monumental proportions. The last one caused a 300-ft. drop in sea level and buried Manhattan under a mile of ice. A new one would do both those things, plus force perhaps have the human population to the tropics and decimate the world’s grain production. Of course, this bunch would be long gone by then, presumably accountable only to their Maker, while the rest of humanity suffers through truly catastrophic climate change.

    As Charles Krauthammer said recently about another topic — it makes you want to weep.

  • Frank Norton

    If you are afraid of tornados, move out of the Tornado Ally; Hurricanes , move away from tropical oceans; earthquakes, move away from the Pacific Rim, or other earthquake faults; flooding, move away from the flood planes; rising sea level, move away from lowland coastal areas. And stop listening to politicians for solution. Climate change, move to another growing zone, after all that is what our forefather hunter gathers did. Build a wall around a city to keep out your enemies. Not the ocean like did Holland. Also do not build on the side of a volcano, like so many do. There is a reason that insurers will not write a policy for those who do. Call it critical thinking.

  • joe

    Critical thinking is in short supply these days.

  • Phil Berardelli

    Not quite, Joe. It is thinking of any kind that is rare these days. Plotting, no. Scheming, no. Obfuscating, no. But thinking — very little of it.

  • joe

    Thank you for the correction, you are correct!

  • Mr Gore, AKA crazed sex-poodle (from the Portland Oregonian), aside from gross inaccurate statements on a seemingly daily basis maintains a residence in Tennessee, as well as a newly purchased estate in Santa Barbara. The gore family Tennessee estate is not actually in Nashville as the media reports, but actually is in Carthage, a few miles east of Nashville in Smith County. Why is this significant?
    1. It is the largest energy consuming private residence in the state. ( The Johnson City Press).
    It is fitted with solar panels but still draws more power from the rural co-op that it is connected to the grid.
    Additionally the electric consumption is greater than that of George W bush’s Crawford Texas ranch.
    2. . The estate is atop one of the Gore families enterprises; the Elmwood Mine, a lead-zinc mine that is also a good source for the rare element; germanium, that is a valuable semiconductor. Germanium production is messy and far more toxic than lead zinc.
    The mine closed a few years ago, not because of of al Gore’s concern for the environment, but because the price of zinc collapsed.
    Mr Gore sold the mineral rights to a consortium that is currently exploring the mine for decorative mineral specimens (American Mineral Treasures pg 337-348).
    3. Mr Gore’s Santa Barbara estate was a recent acquisition, around / about the time Tipper filed for divorce, evidently he is not overly concerned about climate change and sea level rise as the estate was a pro ported 8.6 million dollar transaction. ( The Sacramento Bee).

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