The Patriot Post® · Giving Thanks for Climate Authenticity

The philosopher Aristotle once observed, “The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.” This is true of many political movements. It’s also applicable to the issue of climate change. Simply by revisiting 20th-century climate predictions, we can see that the extreme fear generated by global cooling-turned-warming was unfounded. Yet the climate alarmists’ outlook today continues to worsen despite a dearth of verification.

This week we were handed yet another overheated forecast. Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii at Manoa is the lead author of a comprehensive new study on forthcoming climate conditions. According to NBC News, “Mora’s team combed through more than 3,200 studies to try to paint a broad picture of what climate change is going to do to people over the coming century. They cross-referenced their findings against known disasters.” Here’s how The New York Times summarized the team’s findings:

Global warming is posing such wide-ranging risks to humanity, involving so many types of phenomena, that by the end of this century some parts of the world could face as many as six climate-related crises at the same time, researchers say. … The paper projects future trends and suggests that, by 2100, unless humanity takes forceful action to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change, some tropical coastal areas of the planet, like the Atlantic coast of South and Central America, could be hit by as many as six crises at a time.

Dr. Mora even likened this outlook to “a terror movie that is real,” while NBC warned that “climate change is going to make life on Earth a whole lot worse.” Yet it’s worth asking how such conjectural precision is even possible given past failures. The short answer is that it’s not. As meteorologist Joe Bastardi muses in an email to The Patriot Post, “It’s their strategy — blame every event on climate change. Never mind that most of the planet is peaceful and the area affected is trivial. There just happen to be people living in the affected areas who are recording every event with their cameras. There are also people who refuse to look at both sides of the issue.”

To the Times’s credit, it also notes, “The authors include a list of caveats about the research: Since it is a review of papers, it will reflect some of the potential biases of science in this area, which include the possibility that scientists might focus on negative effects more than positive ones; there is also a margin of uncertainty involved in discerning the imprint of climate change from natural variability.” This is a pertinent point that is frequently overlooked.

As reported by space.com this week, another study purports: “As Earth’s tectonic plates dive beneath one another, they drag three times as much water into the planet’s interior as previously thought.” This would appear to mitigate sea-level rise, which is among climate scientists’ top concerns. In fact, most dire outlooks are predicated on sea levels rising.

Which brings us full circle to Aristotle’s point. Social and political movements that are borne out of fear eventually reach a point at which “deviation from the truth is multiplied … a thousandfold.” Global warming is surely real, but it’s obvious that the assertions behind it are increasingly cock and bull. Despite the clamorous predictions of doomsday, humanity continues to survive and adapt. All the while, scientific analysis is fluid and in constant flux as research evolves.

That’s something to have gratitude for this Thanksgiving.