Facts are stubborn things.
A lot of political agendas would be much more easily enacted if it weren't for those stubborn facts. Facts like human sexual bipolarity, like the Laffer Curve's accurate summation of marginal tax rates' effects on revenues, and, of course, the global climate being an enormous, chaotic, amazingly complex system with billions, maybe trillions of inputs and results.
More and more people, people who are in a position to know, are coming forth to argue with the climate scolds who are arguing for a return to 19th-century technology. One such individual is Dr. Richard Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a vocal advocate for sanity.
“If you reach Net Zero by 2050, if you do it worldwide, you avoid about a third of a degree of warming. If it’s just Europe and the Anglosphere, it’s closer to a tenth of a degree,” says Dr Richard Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist and professor emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “So you have avoided a tenth of a degree of warming at a cost of probably tens of trillions of dollars. Doesn’t seem like a bargain to me,” he adds. “How far will the population go in saying, we will sacrifice ourselves for a symbolic gesture?”
And who cares about a tenth of a degree of warming, Lindzen asks. “When somebody says the change of a tenth of a degree, or when (UN Secretary-General António – HS) Guterres says, if it changes a half-degree, we’re finished as a species, this is an existential threat – people have to ask, what the hell are they talking about?”
Indeed - and we might note, the climate scolds are worried about a slow increase in global climate that has been going on, with a few short-term (on the geologic scale) ups and downs, since the end of the last ice age. But what's really alarming, as we've discussed many times, is the drastic acts they push, the degradation of our modern, high-tech lifestyle, that would result from their agenda.
As I noted recently, they also don't take into account the positives - the upsides of a slightly warming climate.
See Also: Good News, Everyone! Melting Glaciers Mean New Fishing and Mining Opportunities.
Dr. Lindzen isn't done:
According to Lindzen, all recent predictions of climate catastrophe have proven false, and future ones will be as well. “2030 will pass. 2050 will pass. Fifty years will pass. There will be no climate catastrophe,” he says.
In the interview, Lindzen thoroughly discusses what climate scientists know about climate change and its processes, as well as the half-truths and outright lies propagated by those proclaiming a climate crisis. He addresses topics such as the limited capacity of CO2 to warm the planet, its actual role on Earth, misleading claims about the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, the absurdity of climate policies and the future of energy.
Some of us are old enough to remember when the panic du jour was global cooling, and as you might remember, those predictions were wrong, too. Then, as now, the underlying motivation wasn't saving the Earth, preventing a third of a degree of warming or cooling. It was always about control. Just look at the claims of the scolds: We must always give up something, according to these people. We must give up our air conditioning, our gas stoves, our comfortable gas-burning vehicles, our reliable, low-cost energy. What do we gain?
Maybe - maybe - a third of a degree in "prevented warming."
For the time being, at least, in the United States, the federal government is returning to some level of sanity. The Trump administration's energy policies and the current legislation making its way through Congress are growth-friendly, not scold-friendly.
See Also: How the Big, Beautiful Bill Scraps the Green New Deal
The balance is now tipping. People in a position to know better - people like Dr. Richard Lindzen - are coming forward, and the scolds are being debunked, with more and more authority.
Here, by the way, are some of Dr. Lindzen's bona fides:
Dr Richard Lindzen is an internationally recognized American atmospheric scientist and MIT emeritus professor whose contributions to climate science are significant. Over the course of his career, Lindzen has published almost 250 scientific papers, exploring the greenhouse effect and other complex aspects of climate change, like dynamic meteorology, hydrodynamic instability, planetary waves, monsoon meteorology, planetary atmospheres and hydrodynamic instability.
This isn't some frustrated Swedish teenager or a blue-haired, overweight freak spraying red paint on a historic work of art. This is a respected professional, a climate scientist, one who has devoted his life to a study of Earth's atmosphere and the climate, who has spent his career in one of the nation's more famous universities - MIT - that still actually has some respectability. And he is one of many who have had enough with the climate scolds' constant cries of the sky falling.
You can watch the full interview with Dr. Lindzen here.
