In primitive times - and no, I don't mean the '60s - most folks were only marginally literate at best, formal education for much of the population didn't exist, and a whole passel of weird ideas sprouted up, like that rubbing sheep dung on a doorpost kept bad luck away; that sort of thing.
That's typical of the medieval period, and it's typical of some of the climate scolds today, who assure us bad things will happen if we don't appease the climate spirits by reducing our carbon footprints. There's about as much science behind that as well, but that hasn't stopped the New York Times and other liberal, legacy media outlets from pointing at President Trump and his administration's yanking us out of bad climate deals, and shouting "Blasphemy!"
The New York Times article, “Under Trump, U.S. Adds Fuel to a Heating Planet,” claims that President Donald Trump’s policies and actions will result in higher carbon dioxide emissions, causing more droughts, floods, hurricanes, and other extreme weather. While Trump’s policies may result in increases of CO2 emissions, hundreds of Climate Realism posts and dozens of Climate at a Glance articles have clearly demonstrated that emissions have not and are not changing the weather for the worse. Weather has not become more extreme as emissions have increased. The NYT is making a connection that science in no way supports — specifically that President Donald Trump and his administration wield power over the atmosphere and climate. This is false.
Yes, some of the administration's policies will result in more CO2 emissions. They can't help but do so when we are increasing our use of gas, oil, and coal. Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, although it's far from the most potent of greenhouse gases.
But CO2 is also necessary for plant growth, and the earth has been greening under the slight uptick in CO2 emissions, which is something the climate scolds never seem to want to discuss. And it's not at all clear that the number and severity of weather events are increasing, either.
President Trump has, in fact, boosted American prosperity by yanking us out of some of these costly and ultimately futile climate deals. More to the point, he's saved the taxpayers some money by cutting off subsidies for boondoggles like solar and wind power, which attempt to replace high-density, reliable energy sources like natural gas, coal, and oil, with low-density, intermittent sources.
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All of these are known; we've covered them time and again, and no doubt will continue to do so. This New York Times piece, though, borders on the kind of medieval thought I describe above. Just take a look at their rather hysterical language:
In recent days his administration has slammed the door on every possible avenue of global cooperation on the environment. At the same time, it is sending the message that it wants the world to be awash in fossil fuels sold by America, no matter the consequences.
Under President Trump, the United States has become the only nation to renege on a pledge to try to keep warming to 1.5 degrees. Its actions will make the global fight harder, scientists said.
“Emissions will be higher,” warned Justin S. Mankin, an associate professor at Dartmouth College who researches climate variability. “Trump’s greenhouse gas emissions will cause Trump’s heat waves, Trump’s droughts, Trump’s floods, and Trump’s wildfires.”
Nothing the Trump administration has done will have the world "awash in fossil fuels." That's the purest form of the stuff one finds at the south end of a northbound horse. What the Trump administration has done is to ensure reliable, affordable energy for the American economy. Energy, be it electrical generation, gasoline and diesel fuel, or nuclear power, is at the heart of everything in our economy. "Renewables" have and, barring some wild, unforeseen breakthrough, will always be intermittent, unreliable, and expensive. And that cost, the cost of energy, is factored into everything else we do. Our entire economy, our entire way of life, rests on this.
Yes, emissions will be higher. But there's no solid agreement that there have been more heat waves, more droughts, more floods, and so on. In fact, some of the most high-profile wildfires we have seen in recent years have been caused not by climate change but by poor forest and scrubland management by government - I'm looking at you, Gavin Newsom.
We shouldn't worry about appeasing the climate scolds. We should worry about facts, and we should worry about prosperity, for us and for future generations. The Earth isn't a closed room. There's no thermostat we can set. If there were, we wouldn't know where to set it. Through most of the planet's 4.6 billion-year history, it's been warmer than now. Through much of that history, humans couldn't even have lived on the planet. The global climate moves on vast cycles, cycles in ocean currents, cycles in its rotation, and cycles in its orbit. Some of these cycles are measured in hundreds of years. Some, in hundreds of thousands of years. At present, we are in a warming stage of one of those cycles, in an interglacial period that has been slowly warming the climate since the Wisconsin glaciation receded.
We have been monitoring the climate for about a century. These cycles and the vast, chaotic nature of the planet's climate are still largely beyond our comprehension.
But the New York Times would have us surrender our comfortable, high-tech lifestyle to appease the climate spirits. That's ridiculous. It's anti-science. Fortunately, President Trump isn't having any of it, nor should we.
