For close to 18 years, there has been no warming of the atmosphere. Most of the warming that occurred anyway has occurred in the polar regions during winter seasons rather than in the temperate regions and the tropics. One of the EPA lines of evidence for their endangerment findings – the trapping hot spot theory over the tropics – is visibly false. (As are the other two. One of them actually uses computer models that have busted horribly as “evidence” of warming). I refer the reader to something I wrote about the EPA last year and is now coming into view front and center.

In this piece I systematically dismantled the EPA arguments. They are checkmated because each of their arguments is provably wrong. In fact, I marvel at how they are getting away with their endangerment finding, given what they based it on, and how easily it is shown to be false. That it’s coming to the front now, when the EPA horse is out of the barn and is not going to be reigned back in, is baffling to me. This should have been looked at by Congress a long time ago.

But I am not an unreasonable man about the fact there are many more people living in places where they did not live before, and that weather and climate have huge effects. But given close to 18 years of no warming and even NOAA admitting what we have been saying – some slight cooling has started since the PDO flipped – it’s absurd to be shutting down the economy over something that is not happening. The cure for all this is not prevention of something that is natural – the ups and downs, back and forths of the atmosphere. Rather, it’s adaptation. Dr. Ryan Maue’s tweet below sums up what the attitude should be on this matter for all of us: The government is here to be a “safety net” providing for the common good, not an all powerful nanny state with a smothering blanket.

Bingo.

Dr. Maue’s point is this: If you live on the Outer Banks and looked at all the storms that have hit close enough to cause flooding in the last 100 years, why not simply assume it’s part of living there and put measures into preventing what you know – that storms will hit and you will get flooded? It’s nature, not anthropogenic global warming.

On the larger scale, if you look at the weather history of the U.S., and understand we are a more complex society with many more people and are now more prone to weather disruptions because of the increase in population and our reliance on technology, why would you not simply take steps to adapt, rather than spend counting trillions over the years to prevent what is already a known course of nature? The latter option makes no sense.

There is nothing wrong with developing regional weather reaction centers to deal with the severe weather events that naturally are going to occur. This I have no problem with, just like I have no problem with hospitals and police and fire stations. These exist to deal with problems. A well run safety net of rapid response centers across the nation to extreme weather events is far less expensive and far more practical than spending ungodly amounts of money to lasso a problem that is not there and shackling the economy. In this case an ounce of cure is worth a pound of prevention. In fact, there might be some bi-partisan agreement here. But where it ends is the idea that we can actually change the climate.

There will be those who yell this is yet another attempt at Big Government bureaucracy. While I do believe less government is best government, the fact is there are essential services the government does supply. Does anyone argue that in spite of imperfections, the military of this nation has been run in a way to benefit the nation? Weather does affect man. And it is the duty of the government to provide for the common good of the nation. We know we have more people in the nation living in harm’s way. Instead of shackling the economy with a smothering nanny state blanket of regulations that do no good, why not simply, for a fraction of the cost, develop this plan? To paraphrase Dr. Maue, we should be spending our efforts on preparing for what comes naturally, not worry about stopping some man caused climate disaster that doesn’t exist.

As I’ve said before, it’s the climate change agenda, not global warming, that is the threat to this nation. An ounce of cure is worth the pound of prevention, especially when we you are trying to prevent can’t be prevented. But it can be adapted to.

Joe Bastardi is chief forecaster at WeatherBELL Analytics, a meteorological consulting firm.