By Nancy Thorner -
Having recently returned from The Heartland Institute's 9th International Conference on Climate Change held in Las Vegas from July 7-9, "Just Don't Wonder About Global Warming, Understand It," I was privileged to hear some of the world's hundreds of leading climate scientists and researcher discuss the latest state of global warming science, all who question whether manmade global warming" will be harmful to plants, animals, or human welfare. Eight hundred participants were on hand to hear 64 speakers from 12 different countries (14 countries if counting the moon with Astronaut Walter Cunningham and Washington, D.C.) despite the fierce heat of Las Vegas in July. At one point 4,000 individuals were listening to the conference as it was streamed live from the conference website in Las Vegas.
This year's delegates' speeches showed how the myths of the climate alarmist are false, which shatters the often quoted 97% consensus figure given for those who believe most of the warming since 1959 was man-made. On the contrary, only 0.5 percent of the authors of 11,944 scientific papers on climate and related topics over the past 21 years have said they agreed that most of the warming since 1950 was man-made. Furthermore, according to the RSS satellite record (Remote Sensing Systems), there has been no global warming for 17 years and 10 months.
Obama's statements conflict with scientific findings:
The above conclusions conflict with the statements made by President Obama On Tuesday, May 6, when he warned that "people's lives are at risk" because of man-made climate change proclaimed during a series of interviews with National and Local television meteorologists. "Not only is climate change a problem in the future, it's already effecting Americans," Obama told CBS News, warning that the phenomenon was "increasing the likelihood" of floods, droughts, storms and hurricanes.
Even the U.N.'s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said in its last two reports that there has seen no particular change in the frequency or severity of floods worldwide. Neither are droughts getting worse (the fraction of the world's land under drought has fallen for 30 years), nor are hurricanes getting worse (combined frequency, severity and duration has been at or near the lowest in the 35-year satellite record).
There was an element of truth, however, to be found in President Obama's remarks on Tuesday, May 6, but as happens time and again, Obama's spoken version of the truth amounted to fantasy. Instead of putting people "lives at risk" by failing to take drastic measures to curb CO2, millions of people are dying because Western policies seem more interested in carbon-dioxide levels than in life itself. Such was the topic of the final panel discussion, "Panel 21: Global Warming as a Social Movement," on Wednesday afternoon before adjournment of Heartland's 9th Annual International Conference on Climate Change The distinguished panelists included E. Calvin Beisnert, Ph.D., Founder and National Spokesman of the Cornwall Alliance; Paul Driessan, J.D. senior policy advisor with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise; and Peter Ferrara, J.D., general counsel of the American Civil Rights Union at the Heartland Institute. Minnesota State Rep. Pat Garofalo was the Moderator, a Republican member of the Minnesota House of Representatives representing District 588.
Panelists Beisnert, Driessan and Ferrara laid out a convincing message how climate alarmists, as environmentalists, view people primarily as polluters and consumers who use up Earth's resources and poison the planet in the process, rather than being good stewards. It might even be said that environmentalism is the new face of the anti-human, "Pro-Death" agenda. Through the bogus "crises" of man-made global warming, affordable and reliable energy and other modern blessings are being denied to the developing world. This despite the $3.5 billion spent around the world to combat climate change. Worth reading is an opinion piece by Caleb S. Rossitger, updated May 4, 2014, "Sacrificing Africa for Climate Change.” Change.”
Social Impacts of Reducing Carbon Emissions:
- 90% of the people living in sub-Saharan Africa do not have electricity and lack light to study and work by, refrigeration to prevent food spoilage and power to operate equipment that could multiply their productivity. Environmentalists' oppose building large power plants and electric grids. Each American accounts for 20 times the emissions of each African. With 15% of the world's population, Africa produces less than 5% of carbon-dioxide emissions. Shouldn't real years added to real lives trump the minimal impact that African carbon emissions could have on a theoretical catastrophe?
- Because of the lack of electricity, two to three million women and children die annually from lung disease around the world from burning wood and dried dung to cook their food or heat their huts.
- Another one to two million people die annually from malaria since the banning of DDT.
- Where energy is available, regulation of greenhouse gas and other environmental regulations drive up the cost of basic necessities such a food, fuel and electricity, stifling economic growth and costing jobs.
- America's ethanol policy alone is estimated to cause nearly 200,000 premature deaths every year in the developing world by limiting the amount of corn for human consumption, which, in turn, raises its purchase price.
- Golden corn seeds could end Vitamin A deficiency in millions of children. Genetically produced rice with Vitamin E is also available. Even so, eight million children have died since the invention of this life-saving rice out of fear of using genetically enhanced food items.
- Proposed caps on emissions, and so-called renewable energy mandates, would cost our nation millions of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Even though Americans are wealthy by world's standards, poor and single-income families in the U.S. would be hardest hit, while much poorer people around the would suffer even more if required to restrain greenhouse gas emissions.
- A carbon tax on Cap and Trade is a regressive tax which would hit hardest the poor among us. The poor already pay a higher proportion of their income for energy, plundering the poor, as would state mandates for wind and solar power, which would result in higher energy costs over what is currently being provided by power plant now under fire by the EPA for CO2 emissions linked to Global Warming.
- Wealth increases more when the overall global temperature is warmer and furthermore correlates with happiness, better health, and longevity. The more we do to fight Global Warming, the less off the poor will be in poorer nations, with higher rates of disease and death.
For Reflection:
If this nation really cared about the poor, our government would stay off the Global Warming bandwagon and use the billions currently being spent to combat EPA fuel emissions standard, which have no effect, and instead put the billions to where it would do the most good fighting disease and poverty. Building fossil fuel plants and a grid to provide electricity to all the houses around the globe where dung and wood are still burnt in the absence of electricity, would cost 1/2 billion a year less than compliance with EPA's fuel emission standards.
Evident is that those who control carbon control our lives. Shutting down power plants could carry some health benefits by reducing the risk of asthma and heart attacks in areas near the plants, but will cutting carbon emissions from existing power plants by about 25% from 2012 levels by 2020 make the planet healthier? Greenhouse gasses would still escape into the atmosphere from around the world? Hence, cutting carbon emissions would be a drag on this nation's economy. See this article by Sally Deneen for National Geographic, "One Key Question on Obama's Push Against Climate Change: Will It Matter", for further clarification.
Global Warming could rightly be called a social movement, a big green and government movement, not unlike the “Population Bomb” which warned of mass starvation of humans in 1970's and 1980's due to overpopulation, and which advocated immediate action to limit population growth.
The emphasis on Climate Change as a urgent threat, propagated by President Obama and being carried out through the EPA, is in actuality a weapon of mass destruction and a war on women and children. Alarmists use threats as a way to justify their power to decide how much energy is available for use by humanity throughout the world. As such, big green with its eco-friendly measures appears callous to human destruction.
In Conclusion:
It is not being denied that global temperature have risen over the last 150 years or more, but it is mostly a natural occurrence, and certainly within the range of natural climate variability over the centuries; i.e. the Medieval Warm Period, an interval from approximately AD1000 to AD1300. During that time many places around the world exhibited conditions that seem warm compared to today. Heartland and the scientists it works with have never promoted “denial of a changing climate.” The climate is always changing. The question is whether man’s contribution to climate change rises above statistical noise and whether it is a crisis.
The issue of Climate Change is the greatest moral and ethical battle of our time. We must stand up for the tyranny resulting from the seizure of that which powers our civilization, sufficient energy production at an affordable cost. Without this availability, the global death toll will rise before is decreases due to the dark forces of a Climate Change fantasy.
View here videos of all Speakers and Panel Discussions at Heartland's 9th International Conference on Climate Change.
