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Climate Change Alarmism
Image Credit: Rick McKee | The Augusta Chronicle December 29, 2015 | cagle.com
Kerby Anderson
Turn on a television or open up a newspaper, and you will be treated to what can best be called climate change alarmism. We are told that we are headed for a climate catastrophe if we don’t act immediately.
Of course, we have heard that before. Back in 1970, Harvard biologist George Wald predicted, “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” A few years later, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted that one billion people would be starving to death by 2020.
Climate change alarmism today succeeds first by discounting any critics and then by warning that dire consequences are just a few years off. Meteorologist Dr. Roy Spencer recently wrote about the first issue. Climate change advocates claim that anyone who disagrees with them is a “climate change denier.” He says this is a “straw man argument” where you argue against something your opponent never claims. Spencer says he “cannot think of a single credentialed, published skeptical climate scientist who doesn’t believe in the existence of climate change.” This includes Dr. Pat Michaels, Dr. Richard Lindzen, and others who have been labeled “climate change deniers.”
And the last two decades have been full of dire warnings. In his Oscar-winning documentary, Al Gore warned that sea levels would rise by 20 feet “in the near future.” So far, his prediction has been off by 20 feet or so. A 2005 conference of climate scientists and politicians meeting in London warned that the world has as little as 10 years before it would reach “the point of no return on global warming.”
Alarmists and doomsayers have been with us for decades warning us of an environmental catastrophe that still hasn’t happened.
Kerby Anderson
Turn on a television or open up a newspaper, and you will be treated to what can best be called climate change alarmism. We are told that we are headed for a climate catastrophe if we don’t act immediately.
Of course, we have heard that before. Back in 1970, Harvard biologist George Wald predicted, “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” A few years later, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted that one billion people would be starving to death by 2020.
Climate change alarmism today succeeds first by discounting any critics and then by warning that dire consequences are just a few years off. Meteorologist Dr. Roy Spencer recently wrote about the first issue. Climate change advocates claim that anyone who disagrees with them is a “climate change denier.” He says this is a “straw man argument” where you argue against something your opponent never claims. Spencer says he “cannot think of a single credentialed, published skeptical climate scientist who doesn’t believe in the existence of climate change.” This includes Dr. Pat Michaels, Dr. Richard Lindzen, and others who have been labeled “climate change deniers.”
And the last two decades have been full of dire warnings. In his Oscar-winning documentary, Al Gore warned that sea levels would rise by 20 feet “in the near future.” So far, his prediction has been off by 20 feet or so. A 2005 conference of climate scientists and politicians meeting in London warned that the world has as little as 10 years before it would reach “the point of no return on global warming.”
Alarmists and doomsayers have been with us for decades warning us of an environmental catastrophe that still hasn’t happened.
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