The
strategies likewise remain unchanged: treaties, laws, regulations and
higher taxes for hydrocarbon energy – with control placed in the hands
of unelected, unaccountable elites who claim they are saving Planet
Earth from ecological collapse.
Previous events in Bali, Copenhagen, Durban and Rio de Janeiro
lavished billions of dollars on proposals and discussions that led
mostly to promises of more meetings in five-star venues like Doha. With
the Kyoto Protocol set to expire, Qatar’s atmosphere is rife with grim
determination to forge new international agreements, in the face of hard
realities that portend still more failure for global governance
stalwarts.
The United States never ratified Kyoto, isn’t bound by its dictates,
and has limited economic and political stature to play a lead role in
forging a new agreement, regardless of what President Obama might want.
Canada, Japan and New Zealand have rejected participation in a new
treaty. The European Union is drowning in debt, struggling under soaring
renewable energy costs that threaten families, jobs, companies and
entire industries, and little inclined to shackle its economy further.
China, Brazil, India, Indonesia and other emerging markets are loathe
to sign any treaty that would limit the fossil fuels they need to grow
their economies and lift more millions out of poverty. They say
industrialized nations must agree to further greenhouse gas reductions,
before they will consider doing so, and insist that holding developing
countries to developed nation standards would be inequitable.
Poor countries increasingly understand that CO2 emission restrictions
will prevent them from developing and subject them to control by
environmental activists and UN regulators. People in those countries are
beginning to realize that massive wealth transfers from Formerly Rich
Countries – for climate change mitigation, reparation and adaptation –
are increasingly unlikely. If “Green Climate Fund” pledges ever do
materialize, they will mostly end up in another unaccountable UN slush
fund for bureaucrats, autocrats and kleptocrats, with only pennies
trickling down to ordinary people.
On the scientific front, contrary to incessant claims that Earth is warming uncontrollably, average planetary temperatures
have not risen in 16 years,
even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have crept upward to 391
parts per million (0.0391 percent). Temperatures may “remain well above
the long-term average,” as some insist – but humanity also suffered
through a 500-year Little Ice Age and a “coming ice age scare” during
the 1940-1975 cooling period.
And while global warming alarmists continue to say 2010 or the U.S.
summer of 2012 was “the hottest on record,” actual data reveal that
there is only
a few hundredths of a degree Fahrenheit difference between these and other alleged “hottest years,” such as 2005. The
1930s still reign supreme as the hottest in American history.
Arctic sea ice reductions during 2012 were caused by many factors, including ocean currents and
enormous long-lasting storms that NASA finally conceded broke up huge sections of the polar ice cap. Meanwhile,
Antarctic sea ice continues to expand, setting new records. The rate of
sea level rise has not been accelerating and may actually be decreasing, according to recent studies.
Even with Hurricane Sandy, November 2012 marks the
quietest long-term hurricane period since the Civil War, with only one major hurricane strike on the U.S. mainland in seven years.
Large tornadoes
have also fallen in frequency since the 1950s, and the 2012 season was
the quietest on record; only twelve tornadoes touched down in the United
States in July 2012, says NOAA, shattering the July 1960 record low of
42.
Climate change computer models predict every imaginable scenario –
warmer and colder, wetter and drier, more snow or less snow in winter –
so human-caused disaster believers can always claim to be right. And
almost nothing stops politicians and climate alarmists from saying Sandy
was “unprecedented” and “proof that climate change is real,” no matter
what history actually shows us.
Devastating hurricanes have struck
New York, New Jersey and
Canada’s Maritime Provinces
many times over the centuries. Newfoundland’s deadliest hurricane
killed 4,000 people in 1775, while category 1 to 3 ‘canes hit the
provinces in 1866, 1873, 1886, 1893, 1939, 1959, 1963 and 2003. New York
City was hammered by major storms in 1693, 1788, 1821, 1893, 1938 (the
“Long Island Express”), 1944 and 1954.
Climate change is natural, normal, cyclical, frequent, unpredictable,
and sometimes catastrophic – as the Little Ice Age certainly was for
European agriculture and civilization.
Nor are we “running out” of oil and gas – the other rationale for
irrational attacks on hydrocarbons. Thanks to new discoveries,
technologies and techniques (like hydraulic fracturing), the world still
has
many decades of traditional energy.
We need to develop it, not lock it up, to help people realize their
dreams for a better tomorrow, and bring prosperity to families,
communities and nations the world over.
These realities won’t stop the alarmists. There is simply too much
money and power at stake. Tens of billions of dollars are transferred
annually from taxpayers and energy users to activists, Mann-made global
warming scientists, regulators, carbon tax “investors,” and renewable
energy and carbon capture subsidy seekers – all of whom have every
reason to promote climate scares and attack anyone who voices skepticism
about CO2-driven climate change catastrophes.
Nor will scientific or economic reality stop the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, which is poised to impose a raft of
economy-strangling, job-killing carbon dioxide regulations – or a
Congress and White House that are desperate for new sources of revenue,
to pay for stimulus and entitlement programs.
The real danger is not climate change. If we have the economic and
technological resources, we can adapt to almost any changes Mother
Nature might throw at us – short of another glacial period that buries
much of the world under a mile of ice.
The real danger is policies, laws, regulations, restrictions and
taxes imposed in the name of preventing global warming catastrophes that
exist only in computer models, Hollywood horror movies and
environmentalist press releases. Those political reactions will
perpetuate and exacerbate poverty, disease, unemployment, and economic
stagnation.
They will subsidize renewable energy programs that
turn precious food into expensive fuel for cars,
destroy wildlife and habitats,
and leave the pursuit of happiness and human rights progress in the
hands of pressure groups, politicians and bureaucrats who are convinced
that mankind is a “cancer on the Earth.”
That is neither just nor sustainable. It is the reason the Committee
For A Constructive Tomorrow is in Doha. We want the United Nations to
return to its founding principles, get serious about poverty alleviation
and economic betterment for people everywhere – and implement
constructive and
sustained solutions to the
real problems that continue to confront civilization, wildlife and the environment.
Editor's note: This piece was co-authored by Craig Rucker.