The devastation resulting from this year’s hurricane season has once again spurred the climate change faction into action. Combined with a new report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), these horrible storms regenerated the predictions of doom and gloom from a group of scientists that gets paid lots of money and works overtime to convince us that the end is going to come. And now it is even closer than the last time these scientists cranked up the Scare Machine.

The IPCC report suggests that a 2°C increase in global temperatures over the next 22 years would be catastrophic. The New York Times took this to mean that we face “a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.”

Weighing in on this renewed crisis, political commentator Ben Shapiro addressed it in his column, “No, Global Warming Isn’t The End Of The World. Here’s Why,” last week.

“The report urges a 45 percent reduction in carbon emissions from 2010 levels by 2030 in order to prevent that imminent doom,” he wrote. “The report finds that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require ‘rapid and far-reaching’ transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities.”

Shapiro added that the consequences of this approach would be devastating. “Some of those changes could include an attempt to direct 5-10 percent of global capital revenues toward investment in public works projects, plus a $27,000 tax on each ton of carbon by 2100 — equivalent to roughly $250 per gallon tax on gasoline.”

All of which made Eric Holthaus and other confused socialists break out the champagne. Holthaus, of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, cheered the dismantling of capitalism that will follow this really foolish idea: “If you are wondering what you can do about climate change: The world’s top scientists just gave rigorous backing to systematically dismantle capitalism as a key requirement to maintaining civilization and a habitable planet. I mean, if you are looking for something to do.”

Imagine that— a creature of academia who wants to do away with capitalism!

Some interesting data addressing emissions is the “BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2018” chart showing the 10 countries with the largest reductions of CO₂ emissions and the 10 countries with largest increases in CO₂ emissions.

Leading the world in reductions in CO₂ emissions in 2017 is — wait for it — the United States, with more than 40 tons of reductions. The next three are Ukraine, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. At the other end, the four with as much or more in increases as the U.S. had in reductions are:

• the European Union: 40+ million tons;

• Turkey: 40+ million tons;

• India: 90+ million tons;

• China: nearly 120 million tons.

America leads the world in CO₂ reductions, but four contributors each negate America’s efforts. One contributor produces twice as much as we reduced, and another produces four times what we reduced. And yet America must do more, they say.

The earth has been heating and cooling for thousands, probably millions, of years; warming and cooling periods are not unusual. The terms “global warming” and “climate change” do not adequately illustrate how the earth’s global temperature behaves.

To provide some understanding, a chart produced by climatologist Cliff Harris and meteorologist Randy Mann covering temperatures from 2500 BC up to the present and looking ahead to 2038 AD shows the warming and cooling cycles, and should assist in understanding what is happening.

In this 4500-year period, there have been at least 75 major temperature swings, the chart explains. The warmest temperature occurred in 1100 BC, and the coolest temperature, by far, occurred in The Little Ice Age sometime near 1600 AD. The warmest “recent” temperature occurred in about 1300 AD. For most of the 4500 years, no numbers are used to indicate temperatures.

The normal temperature is 57°F. The warmest temperature using actual numbers was 58.3°F in 1998, and the coldest was estimated at 54.3°F in The Little Ice Age in 1600 AD. The recent temperature span indicated by these two data points was approximately 4°F.

On the chart, the projected high temperature in 2038 is approximately the same as the high temperature in 1100 BC, but is not represented by a number.

“Why shouldn’t we be quite as worried,” Shapiro asks, “as the Left would argue about global warming? Because people are good at adapting. The changes that we’re talking about don’t happen overnight – they happen over the course of decades. And that means that the impact is spread out over the course of decades, too, and against a backdrop of global growth.”

Certainly, this information must be willingly received and considered. But given the strong scientific data challenging the catastrophic predictions, the past manipulation of data, the “green money” influence enjoyed by the climate change scientific community, and America’s world-leading record of CO₂ emission reductions, any sacrifice needed to combat climate change must come from other nations.