The Patriot Post® · Challenging Obama's State of the Climate

By J.D. King ·
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/40332-challenging-obamas-state-of-the-climate-2016-01-28

President Obama used borderline threatening words during his final State of the Union Address — language he directed towards those who are skeptical of his position on man-made climate change:

Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it.  You’ll be pretty lonely, because you’ll be debating our military, most of America’s business leaders, the majority of the American people, almost the entire scientific community, and 200 nations around the world who agree it’s a problem and intend to solve it.

It is quite peculiar that Obama said “you’ll be debating” all these people. Last time I checked, there has never been a large-scale debate over the likelihood of man-induced, irreversible, catastrophic climate change. Not even once! Ironically, the “science” of global warming has always been presented as “settled” since day one. Al Gore has never participated in a single public debate to defend his wild assertions in either his book or his movie. President Obama hasn’t debated on the topic, either.

If indeed the science does so strongly suggest that the planet will soon be doomed and climate chaos will be ensuing in the not-so-distant future because of fossil fuel consumption, why don’t they just have a big, publicized, end-all debate to persuade the half of Americans and the majority of the rest of the world who don’t believe climate legislation is a top priority? Perhaps it is because there’s not quite so much “consensus” among scientists about climate change as the U.N., the Obama administration and Big Green Inc. would like us all to believe.

The White House has repeatedly emphasized that nothing “poses a greater threat to our children, our planet, and future generations than climate change.” That is a very serious statement. But why hasn’t anyone, such as James Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientist, or UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, or Canadian science broadcaster David Suzuki ever stepped up to the debate plate? Enough crouching behind computer models that have never been accurate and patting each other’s back at fancy conferences in exotic places all over the world that cost a city’s worth of “carbon-footprints.”

What if the greatest threat to our children, our planet and future generations was instead a large centralized government that intimidates its way to control every aspect of life? Maybe we should be more troubled about an all-powerful State that heedlessly hands billions of dollars to crony green organizations and corrupt third-world political leaders, and then taxes the one thing — carbon — that has lifted more people out of poverty than just about anything else in the history of the world.

Carbon is the main component of food and fuel. A carbon tax is far more regressive even than a sales tax because with a sales tax a high fashion dress is taxed more than a discount dress — but they both use the same amount of carbon! So the full weight of carbon taxation falls on the poor. So much for a political party that claims to represent the lower classes or an ideology that helps the economy!

For science to work as it is supposed to work, ideas need to be argued and debated. Hypotheses need to be tested. Theories must continually be sifted, pressed and worked over for any possible error. But for the past decade climate change alarmists have not welcomed debate — they’ve avoided it. However, if the U.N. is wrong and the “doubters” are right, the economic impact of climate policies could be devastating — especially to the poor of the world.

We cannot afford to mess this one up. How much do we really know about the global climate system? I mean, they got something as simple as polar bears wrong! Can we really have faith in what they say about something far more complex?

Until welcomed argumentation and headline debates occur over this very important topic, and climate science is tried by fire and tested by time, I cannot help but distrust nearly everything you say about the matter, Mr. President.

For now, if I must, I’m content to be lonely (even though I’m not).