The Climate Change Hoax

When I assert that climate change is a hoax, I am not saying that those who deny climate change are hoaxers, but that those who promote it are.  The global warming partisans, who scoff at those who question their Chicken Little attitude, are the real deceivers.

The political hacks who told us that we would all die because Donald Trump rejected the Paris climate accords are more than alarmists.  They are grossly dishonest alarmists.  They have spread a miasma of disinformation in order to confuse and manipulate the public.

Those who tell us that the oceans are rising at a distressing rate and that droughts and hurricanes threaten to destroy our planet portray themselves as intellectuals.  They are nothing of the sort.  These are pseudo scholars who know next to nothing about the subjects on which they claim expertise.

Take the allegation that ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that global warming is dire and therefore that we must immediately prevent carbon dioxide from creating a runaway green house effect.  This may sound rousing, but it is bunkum.

Rest assured that those politicians who chant this mantra have never studied the scientific literature.  The Nancy Pelosi’s and Jon Ossoff’s of this world are like magpies on a fence.  They keep repeating what others of their ilk say.  It is doubtful that they even understand the source of these canards.

Politicians and social activists make a living out of slogans and false statistics.  The radical feminists, for instance, keep telling us that women earn seventy cents on the dollar for the same jobs as men.  The reality is that this is for different jobs.  When positions are equalized, there is only a two percent difference.

So why did Hillary Clinton wholesale this myth?  Because it sells.  Because it frightens people who look no further than the exaggerated assertion.  It is the same with global warming.   No one would care if told that some scientists predict extensive climate changes, but when most of them do, how could they be wrong?

Only it is not all.  It is not close to all.  The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) has put out a pamphlet called Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming.  It begins by examining and discrediting the papers from which the ninety-seven percent figure was derived.

For a conclusion to be valid, its methodology has to be valid.  The NIPCC author’s, who are respectively a climatologist, an environmental scientist and a physicist, make it clear that the most widely cited studies are badly flawed.  They are poorly sampled and defectively interpreted.

What is more, the writers were not climate scientists.  In one case, she was a socialist historian.  In two others, the authors were students.   All too often, upon closer examination, the so-called experts, like Vice President Al Gore, have no scientific credentials whatsoever.

But I knew this before I read the NIPCC pamphlet.  Why?  Because I read climate studies.  One was Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist.  I also keep up with emails from Dr. James Rust, who taught climatology as the Georgia Institute of Technology.

I learned from these authorities that many reputable environmental scientists vociferously criticize the climate models used by the United Nations and NASA.  I also discovered that the computer models, which predict ecological disaster, have time and again been disconfirmed by empirical observations.

There has been some global warming, but it was modest.  The oceans have likewise been rising, but slowly over the course of centuries.  It has even been the case that during warm periods, such as the early Middle Ages, temperatures were higher than now without precipitating a natural catastrophe.

Mind you, the earth may be warming.  Man-made contributions to the atmosphere might even have something to do with this.  Nevertheless, we do not know the extent or likely outcome.  To date, we only have projections based on incomplete data.

Skepticism is therefore warranted.  So is scientific vigilance.  Political fear mongering, on the other hand, is not helpful.  It is not honest.  It is not scientific.  Accordingly, let us turn down the heat.   We do not need hoaxes when dealing with so potentially important an issue.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University