Climate Change Fraudster - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Climate Change Fraudster
by

Let’s get this straight: any halfway intelligent person wants to breathe clean air. We don’t want little carbon or wood particles taken into our lungs, giving us lesions and cancer. We don’t want China and India to burn immense amounts of soft coal that put gases in the air that harm our bodily organs and possibly cause birth defects.

So, as far as wanting clean air, I am right up there with Ralph Nader.

But global warming? That’s something else. I will start with history. Yes, there is a consensus among climate experts that man made activities affect the climate in a harmful way. But I can remember many other consensus positions by scientists that were wrong. It was once the consensus that the sun revolved around the earth. For a very long time, it was the consensus that some racial groups were inherently, genetically more intelligent than others not by a narrow margin, but by a lot.

Now, we would scoff at that idea and consider it an outrage.

When I was a teenager, climate experts looked at the exact same climate — affecting factors we have today and announced that there would soon be a new ice age because man-made pollutants would block the sun’s heat. That was not an outlier. That was standard and not long ago. Now, we would consider it a joke.

So consensus in science can be wrong. Scientists are just people. They make mistakes. They want to be part of the in-group. They’re highly political. They don’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows in terms of grants and tenure.

These mere mortals are telling us that we are in danger of killing the planet based on various measurements about warming. But distinguished scientists and research entities challenge these measurements.

They point out that while ice is melting at the North Pole and vicinity, at the South Pole ice is being added at a rapid and immense rate. This greatly diminishes the danger of rising seas flooding coastal areas. The dissenting scientists point out that sea water levels are rising at a rate of about 1.7 millimeters per year, which would mean that it will take about 60 years for it to rise four inches.

According to these scientists, the world’s temperature stopped rising about 25 years ago and has not risen measurably since — putting the kibosh on the whole notion of global warming (a phrase rarely used now). And those cute polar bears? The ones that eat people? They are growing in number, not diminishing.

So why are we so hysterical about climate change that may not even be happening? Especially, why are we in the USA so wild about it? The immense bulk of the increase in carbon-based pollution is coming from our dear friends, the Chinese and Indians and Brazilians. It’s coming from formerly dirt poor people getting a better life. Is it fair for the children of USA millionaires to be demanding policies to send these people back into the Stone Age to possibly alter the world’s climate by a tiny amount?

Is it even a little bit sensible to spend tens of trillions of dollars on retooling all of the world’s industry and transport when we could save far more lives with far less money by making sure there are mosquito nets in the Third World’s homes and that their drinking water is pure? Why are we doing that?

I have an idea: It has to do with Mr. Obama, young Americans, and computer games. We have a President who is utterly incapable of taking charge of the security needs of America, failing at Iran, failing at Russia, failing at the Islamic State, failing as the education system collapses. We have a generation or two of young people who do not fight in wars, do not learn a darned thing in schools, but fancy themselves warriors because they play computer games against imaginary foes, in a milieu in which they cannot possibly be injured or killed.

Mr. Obama and his climate change war are like those video game wars. He cannot get hurt, because he’s fighting an imaginary foe, or even if it’s a real foe, Mr. Obama will be long gone from the scene by the time the very slightest results are seen. He cannot touch ISIS. He will not stand up to Iran even when Iran spits in our face. But he sure can fight against fossil fuels, which cannot fight back, with the media and the college kids blocking and tackling for him. He can paint himself as Lancelot when he’s more like Quixote.

Meanwhile, we ignore real existential threats like Iran and ISIS and Russia, and smile and smile and pose and preen for the “war” on climate change. But is it largely a fraud and a waste of time? Did I say that? Impossible. I could not possibly have said that. It’s illegal. The Environment Thought Police don’t allow us to even think that “climate change” might be a fraud, a fig leaf used in large measure to give the college kids and the kooks a chance to control the rest of us and to excuse Obama’s failures. Wait? Did I say that, too? No, it must have been someone else. It must have been the wind or wind power.

Yes, that’s it. It was wind power.

Long live wind power.

Ben Stein
Follow Their Stories:
View More
Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes “Ben Stein’s Diary” for every issue of The American Spectator.
Sign up to receive our latest updates! Register


By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: . You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact

Be a Free Market Loving Patriot. Subscribe Today!