One of the things that most baffles me about liberals is how they grasp onto some theory and notion and then hold onto it despite information to the contrary. Instead, their usual reaction is to denigrate the carrier of that opposing proof or theory and explain them away. This happens in just about every conceivable liberal thought. Despite mounting evidence that the United States is imploding under a mountain of debt, we are told that deficits and debt are not a problem now and that they can be fixed later. Despite evidence that Social Security needs to be reformed and is possibly the biggest Ponzi scheme ever foisted upon the American public, we are told that it is solvent and in need of no reform, not even a small, gradual adjustment in the retirement age. When presented with evidence that Obamacare will actually drive up the cost of health care, not significantly cover more people and be more costly to taxpayers, we are told to wait because it has not been fully implemented. The reason, methinks, is that liberals live in the world of the hypothetical and the model while conservatives live in the real world of reality.

In a recent article at that liberal website known as “The Daily Beast,” they have declared that climate change/global warming is here to stay and that we should all hunker down because at this point, there is little we can do about it. They state that the time to do something was when George H. W. Bush was President but, supposedly because he was one of those evil Republican presidents beholden to the more evil oil industry, he backed out on his promise to do anything after being elected in 1988. Why 1988 was chosen by “The Daily Beast” as the cut off year is never explained since global warming’s face- Al Gore- was too busy inventing the Internet at that time to worry about global warming. Which brings me to an interesting point about these environmental alarmists- namely, the way they adjusted the argument from “global warming” to the more inclusive and broader concept of “climate change.” One suspects this was done after certain facts came to light such as the earth was actually not “warming,” but that temperatures were rather static and, in some studies, decreasing. At the very least, scientific studies show that since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution- a manmade event if there ever was one- global temperatures have been well within normal ranges and roughly parallel global temperatures from the time of Christ. And after reading the New Testament, I can find no evidence of an accompanying industrial revolution 3000-2000 years ago.

What do the writers at “The Daily Beast” (read: children) claim as evidence for climate change? Of course, it is Hurricane Sandy, ignorant of the fact that this particular hurricane traversed a path through the Atlantic Ocean that another hurricane is highly unlikely to take in another 100 years. At the beginning of the hurricane season, the National Weather Service’s Hurricane Center usually makes a prediction. I am always amazed by the inaccuracy of these predictions which usually prompts them to do an amended prediction somewhere half way through the season in an effort to get it right so that they can then claim victory and accuracy. These examples of evidence often cited- the most recent hurricane to strike land in the United States, the most recent drought in the Midwest, the most recent outbreak of wildfires spurred on by the Santa Ana winds- remind me of those arguments that the sharks of today are more aggressive than the sharks of the past. Actually, it is more people swimming in the water increasing the chances of a shark attack that explains the shark’s alleged aggression. Likewise, with weather events, they generally get heavy reporting when they impact people. If wildfires in the hills of California in no way threatened human life and property, would they receive the coverage they get otherwise? If Hurricane Katrina had not hit a major metropolitan area on the Gulf Coast and had a city not built BELOW sea level flooded, would it receive as much coverage? What if Hurricane Katrina had turned west and hit the Yucatan peninsula? Would it be used as proof of global warming? With regards to Hurricane Sandy, what it if it did not head up the eastern seaboard and make a perfect left turn for the New Jersey coast…during a full moon…at high tide? Would we still be touting it as the final nail in the coffin of those “flat earth” (see the denigration?) who deny that global warming and climate change exist?

Last year, NBC was all ga-ga over the fact that people were jogging in shorts and picnicking along Lake Michigan enjoying temperatures in the mid-80s in Chicago in late February. This, they pronounced to the reassuring voice of Brian Williams, was surely due to global warming. Skip ahead one year, and these same “news” outlets are surprised at the snowstorms blowing across the upper Midwest less than a week into spring as if the birds come out, the grass sprouts and trees gain their leaves magically on March 20th or thereabout. Yet while Chicago was enjoying those lovely springlike February days, much of Europe was under an 8 foot blanket of snow. Someone forgot to tell the alarmists that it is global warming, not American warming. While the Midwest may very well have had a drought over the past few years, other areas of the country had wetter than normal weather. Tell the people in the Middle Atlantic states or the Northwest there was a drought and they will look at you puzzled. In fact, remembering my grade school American history, I seem to remember something about the Dust Bowl. I even read a novel about it. And I am sure that when all the snow received out west and in the Midwest begins to melt and rivers start to rise this year, Brian Williams will report this as more proof of climate change and global warming.

Regarding losing our chance when Bush I was President, apparently that was the year the oceans started to rise and global temperatures started to spike. I have never really looked at or studied the infamously now discredited hockey stick graph, but I suspect temperatures began to rise around the late 1980s. Perhaps the best explanation I heard for this has nothing to do with actual changes in the world’s temperatures. What many people fail to realize is that average earth temperatures are determined from a series of temperature-taking stations around the world. They are then averaged together and we determine the average temperature. As any grade school child will tell you, take away extremes at the lower end of a range of data and the “average” will increase. In fact, while the Soviet Union was crumbling before our very eyes on the nightly news, the Soviet Union was closing many of these stations throughout Siberia and the hinterlands to save money. And as far as anyone knows, Siberia remains a very cold, inhospitable place even today. I would suspect that the residents of Siberia would welcome a little global warming with open arms.

This is like the other “evidence” for global warming. Polar bears looking forlorn on an ice floe makes for a great visual. The World Wildlife Fund used to run late night advertisements soliciting money to help stem the tide of global warming and “protect these endangered animals.” Meanwhile, Canada was increasing the number of polar bear hunting permits for their native populations in an effort to decrease, or stabilize, the growing polar bear population. Incidentally, the WWF failed to mention that sitting on ice floes is, besides swimming, the usual way polar bears get from Point A to Point B. We were told that snow was becoming a rarity at the top of Mt. Kilamanjaro in Africa and indeed it was/is. Besides cold temperatures, however, one needs water in the form of ice to make snow, or at least that was what I was taught sometime around first grade. The reduced snow at the peak of Mt. Kilamanjaro was attributable to a decrease in rainfall likely caused by deforestation at the base of the mountain. We were treated to images of huge icebergs breaking off of Antarctica as if that whole continent was to break apart and ram into Australia. We were not told that the ice was thickening exponentially at the center of the continent. I am no geologist or hydrologist or any other “ist,” but I do know- again going back to grade school, that ice grows at the center of Antarctica, migrates out, then breaks off in the form of ice bergs and it has been doing this for centuries.

Today, we have a President who has fallen for this nonsense hook, line and sinker. He so believes in his powers of “healing the earth and ceasing the rise of the oceans,” that he is willing to bypass Congress and unilaterally, through his Gestapo-like EPA, get his way in this area. Energy prices be damned, he will stop the rise of the oceans and heal the earth. “The Daily Beast” article goes on to say that the best way to effectuate positive change is the usual liberal solution- just end debate and stop the denial. In practical terms, they state that some form of carbon tax, carbon penalty, or carbon tariffs (or possibly all three) should get the message across and at least arrest the non-existent rise in temperatures. It is intriguing that in the same week this rag doubles down on climate change and returning the country to pre-Colombian days, another publication, “The Economist” which had basically jumped on the same band wagon commanded by Al Gore, ran an article about how “surprised” they were that average global temperatures had not increased over the previous decade. Apparently, a scientific fact had blind sided them. In fact, “The Daily Beast” explains this by using an article from “Science.” Under this theory, carbon emissions had decreased over the previous decade because of the recent recession which caused a decline in manufacturing activity. With the economy slowly rebounding, these carbon emissions are now increasing again. This “solution” proffered by the alarmists is their exact undoing. If they are correct, then the best way to heal the earth and arrest global warming such that it exists is to basically reverse the Industrial Revolution. Accordingly, we are to give up our vehicles, make more blankets to huddle under (one assumes they will not be mass produced in a factory), and possibly have a fireplace although I understand burning wood increases carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. If we want mass produced energy, then fire up those wind mills and hope for sunny days to charge those solar panels…

“The Daily Beast” is accurately named since if we are to take this environmental alarmism at face value, then we surely will return to the days when we were simply beasts. The problem is that every major weather event is trotted out as proof of climate change. When the out-of-the-ordinary happens like 85 degree temperatures in Chicago in February or the fact that it is snowing in April in Wisconsin, both events are used as examples of the new norm when it comes to weather. We are told that this erratic behavior is to be expected because it fits their model of global climate change. In other words, the environmental alarmist folks get to have it both ways while we flat-earth people and everyone else gets to pay the bill. Strange weather events have been around since the earth was formed and they will be around long after we are gone. It is funny how things have come full circle…kind of like climate and weather. Today it is the environmental alarmists who are the “climate deniers.”