There is a phenomenon in political and social movements that we might call the "doomsayer gallop." In this phenomenon, the activists, regardless of cause, gallop through the media and the internet issuing dire predictions on every front. These predictions don't have to be grounded in any serious analysis or backed up by any independently verifiable data; in fact, it's generally better if they aren't.
The two things you can always rely on with the doomsayer gallop are that 1) they are almost (but not entirely) always creatures of the left and 2) When they later prove to be wrong, nobody involved in whatever the movement is - or the legacy media - will call them out.
But some people will call out these bad predictions. In a recent op-ed at the New York Post, "False Alarm” and “Best Things First” author Bjorn Lomborg is calling out some of the climate change doomsayers, and he makes some great points.
Looking back on more than 20 years of climate agitation, two themes emerge: a stubborn unwillingness by campaigners to acknowledge any inconvenient science, and ever-shifting favorite stories, first elevated and then dropped by the wayside.
The one constant: a fixation on scaring the public, which has in turn shaped bad climate policies.
At the start of this century, the polar bear was the emblem of climate apocalypse.
We all remember the pathetic photo of the polar bear stranded on a shrinking ice floe (polar bears are excellent swimmers) and, more to the point, the photo of a young male polar bear, emaciated, seemingly on the point of death. Neither of those photos was presented with any context. As for that second photo, the field zoologist in me can tell you that young apex predators die at a shocking rate in their first year or two, and in a hostile place like the Arctic, that ratio is probably higher. The photo was intended to scare people into unquestioning acceptance of the "green" agenda when in reality it may well have been the same unfortunate end met by many young carnivores.
Protesters dressed as polar bears, while Al Gore’s hit 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth” showed us a sad, animated polar bear floating away to its death.
The Washington Post warned that polar bears faced extinction, and the World Wildlife Fund’s chief scientist even claimed some polar bear populations would be unable to reproduce by 2012.
And then in the 2010s, campaigners just stopped talking about polar bears.
Why? Because after years of misrepresentation, it finally became impossible for them to ignore a mountain of evidence showing that the global polar bear population has increased substantially from around 12,000 in the 1960s to around 26,000 in the present day. (The main reason? People are hunting a lot less polar bears).
Alaska's polar bear population is certainly doing all right.
See Related: Sheldon Whitehouse Claims Fossil Fuels Drive Inflation, Gets Destroyed in Replies
'Doom Pixie' Greta Thunberg Wins Antisemite of the Week Award
One of the more egregious doomsaying claims is that people are in serious danger of dying from heat injury due to a warming planet. That's a canard; while people do die of heat injury, we are biologically a warm-weather species, and far more people die from cold-related injuries than heat. Trust me, it happens here in the Great Land every year; we love Alaska and wouldn't live anywhere else, but global warming or not, our winters are not to be taken lightly. Temps below zero are routine in December and January, and we've seen as low as -32 at our own home - it gets much colder in the interior and north of the Alaska Range.
It's important to note that the doomsaying - not just regarding polar bears but in all the other indicators described in the linked article - is aimed at one goal, and that would be the end, or at the very least the diminishment, of our modern lifestyle. The same doomsayers that issue dire threats about polar bears dying out - until they aren't - are the same people who campaign against oil and gas development while simultaneously opposing the one technology that is low-emission while also being reliable and having high energy density - nuclear power.
Call them out on their bad predictions, but never lose sight of the fact that these people's goals are aimed at pushing us back a hundred years or more, technology-wise. Even if it's an unwitting goal, as we might generously presume it may be, that would still be the result.
Bjorn Lomberg concludes:
Telling half-truths whilst piously purporting to be following the science benefits activists with their fundraising, generates clicks for media outlets, and helps politicians rally voters.
But it leaves all of us poorly informed and worse off.
Feature, not bug.
