To the Editor,
Re: New green deal offers hope to youth, AV News,
Contrary to common media alarmism (see David Altheide’s Creating Fear: News and the manufacture of crisis) there is no looming climate crisis (“chaos in 12 years”). Remember the father of the warming alarm- James Hansen- prophesying in 2008, “It’s all over in five years”. Like Pastor Harold Camping’s prediction of the end in 2012, apocalyptic prophesies have a 100 percent historical failure rate. So another “oops” when Hansen’s 2013 date passed as all apocalyptic dates do, in the endless prophesying of the end-of-days. Learn from Chicken Little. It will save you embarrassment.
There is no doubt or denial: contemporary climate science affirms that climate change is occurring, just as it always has. Climate is a dynamic, not static, natural system. And CO2 is rising and has a warming effect or influence. No skeptical scientist denies these facts (“deniers”- another common media myth re: skeptical scientists). But, and it is a huge “but”, there has never been any 97 percent consensus that CO2 is the main or dominant driver of climate change. Note that 32,000 scientists signed the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine Protest Petition affirming that “there is no conclusive evidence that more CO2 and warmer temperatures will be disastrous for life and, to the contrary, good evidence of benefits to life”. Freeman Dyson (Einstein’s successor in physics) and Richard Lindzen (atmospheric physicist, formerly MIT), among many others, signed that petition. The most credible scientists on the planet.
We know today that other natural factors show stronger correlations to the climate change that we have seen over the past few centuries—notably the cosmic ray/sun/cloud interaction (see Henrik Svensmark’s The Chilling Stars) and the ocean-atmosphere relationship (see Michael Hart’s Hubris: The troubling science, economics, and politics of climate change).
Apocalyptic prophets (e.g. Hansen, Gore, Suzuki) should be ashamed of their shouting fire in crowded theatres and traumatizing children with needless fear. The outcomes of alarmism have always been devastating to real people, usually the most vulnerable.
Wendell Krossa,
Port Alberni
