OPINION: Is climate change man-made disaster or man-made scam?

Any sane person wants clean air and water; however, it is absurd to believe humans can control the Earth’s climate. Meteorologists have been studying, keeping records, and predicting climate changes for approximately 250 years. the very old sequoia trees have kept records of climate changes for over 1,200 years. The tree rings provide irrefutable (impossible to deny or disprove) proof that climate changes are repeated over and over.

Earth is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old and the various processes created by Earth in tandem with the sun (which is a star) and moon interact to make the planet a mobile dynamic realm where the only constant is change.

Proponents of the climate change agenda are pulling the biggest scam since the snake oil salesmen peddled cure-all elixirs during America’s frontier days. People who do care about the world around them must question the environmentalist claims using critical thinking.         

In other words: Where did that individual or group get the information? Do they have the credentials to speak with authority on the environment? Do they have experience in the field?

You must also question their assumptions. A person who does not use critical thinking to evaluate a claim or written statement will believe anyone and/or anything wrapped in an attractive package.

I want to point out some false claims the pro-climate change people have used, who are the financial and political beneficiaries of the climate change sham.

1. Several years ago environmental groups put 1,200 people on a stage claiming they were environmental scientists and scholars on the environment with field experience. Many people questioned their credentials and using critical thinking proved that fewer than 200 had any credentials, expertise or done any field work. The others were writers and office and maintenance personnel.

2. Environmentalists claim wind and solar energy farms produce energy at less costs than fossil fuel energy plants. That is false and here is why:

A. Wind and solar power is only available when there is wind and when the sun’s rays directly hit the solar panels. If there is no wind or winds are too strong, the wind turbines are shut down. Likewise, if there is no sun, no solar power. That means no energy is going into the power grid and the loss of revenue for wind and solar energy farms. Wind and solar energy farms are subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer. Wind energy farms alone have received $30 billion in subsidies. When you add the subsidies and loss of revenue when idle, turbine and maintenance costs amount to $175 per megawatt.

B. Fossil fuel energy plants and hydroelectric energy plants never shut down due to lack of coal or water powering the turbines. Hence no loss of revenue from idle facilities and they do not receive direct subsidies from the taxpayer. Their maintenance costs are less as well. Their cost to produce a megawatt is $35.

IT’S IRONIC that the world’s two biggest CO2 polluters, China and India, are not bound by strict environmental requirements because the United Nations considers them developing nations. China builds a coal-fired energy plant every other day because it provides the cheap energy their consumers can afford.

The World Bank has jumped on the climate change bandwagon. they issued a report that climate change will push 100 million people into extreme poverty by 2030. Their report emphasizes and demands billions of dollars in so-called climate finance to developing countries that total 92 in the U.N.

The U.S. and other Western countries made the insane decision to scale up climate finance to $100 billion annually by 2020. The World Bank is not a charitable institution. Follow the money. It receives huge amounts of money from the U.S. and other industrialized nations and loans it to developing countries. It charges a fee for this service and an interest rate on money loaned.

Western political leaders mimic the environmental crowd to keep the support of that voting bloc of gloom and doom. President Obama, to score points, stopped the Keystone XL pipeline, citing the “broad perception” that Keystone would carry “dirty oil.”

If the president hasn’t noticed, crude oil is dirty until it is refined. His own State Department said they’d determined Keystone wouldn’t significantly raise carbon pollution levels. The president doesn’t give a wit about the thousands of good paying direct and indirect jobs and the billions of dollars that would be injected into the U.S. economy. It is more important to him that stopping Keystone would be the crown jewel for his environmental legacy.

This quote from TransCanada’s CEO is spot on. “Today (Nov. 7, 2015) misplaced symbolism was chosen over merit and science. Rhetoric won out over reason.” I would add “American jobs were sacrificed for Obama’s environmental legacy.” Americans should be glad he can’t get another term because he would transform American and destroy America’s industrial base beyond recognition.

In the 1960s global warming was the hot-button issue. Environmentalists were saying in 20 years Alaska would have no icebergs or glaciers and Greenland would be ice-free. Today Alaska still has icebergs and glaciers, Greenland still has a mantle of snow and ice in the summer covering 90 percent of the island, and last year, 2014, meteorologists and geologists in Antarctica announced that Antarctica’s ice sheet is growing again after receding for several years.

Listed below is why natural disasters such as floods, droughts, catastrophic storms, and long and severe winters, will always plague mankind.

1. Atmospheric circulation — the ceaseless compensation for Earth’s heat imbalances — plays a key role in climate, one of Earth’s built-in safety valves. Variations in patterns of circulation cause anomalies such as El Nino. Climate belts are constantly shifting. Some 20,000 years ago much of North America and Europe resembled Greenland. Six thousand years ago, cattle grazed the now-barren Sahara Desert.

2. Gulf Stream — This system in the Atlantic picks up warm water from the tropics, flows northeastward off the North American coast and tempers the climate of most of Europe. When the Gulf Stream stalls, as it did in the 17th century, Europe had very cold winters and wet springs for three years. Result was mass starvation until the Gulf Stream picked up speed.

3. Earth’s orbit — The planet has an elliptical orbit around the sun. At times this orbit is flattened, resulting in Earth receiving less heat from the sun and at other times the center bulges, bringing Earth closer to the sun creating a hotter climate. Also, as the Earth spins on its axis,  it tilts to or away from the sun.

4. Ozone layer — This is a large layer in the Earth’s stratosphere containing a high concentration of ozone, a toxic form of oxygen which absorbs most of the ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth from the sun. The holes in the ozone layer will move around, expand or contract constantly.

None of these factors is even marginally affected by what humans do on Earth. Yes, we can clean our air but that does not affect or change earth’s climate. Environmentalists’ claims are based on faulty assumptions that do not stand up to scrutiny. They count on the public’s ignorance of the earth and space sciences, or scare them into believing that if we do nothing the earth and its people are doomed.

I recommend everyone get educated in astronomy, astrophysics, geology and read the latest issue of the “Geographic Atlas of the World.”

Environmentalists remind me of Luddites. These were bands of English workers who opposed mechanization and destroyed machinery with sledge hammers in the early 19th century. Today’s rabid environmentalists use fear, shouting down their opponents in public meetings, destroying machinery and being a pain. Oh well.

Scientist estimate the sun will go nova (explode) in about 4 billion years. Earth’s physical features will be blown away and Earth will be a barren, rocky planet. If the environmental community is still around, they can write the Earth’s obituary then.

John Rallis is a resident of Columbia Falls.