Posted by Tina
The science journal, Scientific American, has taken a bold step in publishing a report on two essays that dramatically downplay alarmism in the global climate movement and suggest human beings have the tools to meet whatever challenges lie ahead. John Horgan, the director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology, insists that apocalyptic scenarios are false and that human creativity and ingenuity can overcome problems that arise. He cites two essays to make his point.
Steven Pinker’s (Harvard) essay, “Enlightened Environmentalism,” claims the environmental movement has encouraged “radicalism” and the “fatalism it encourages.”
Pinker points to industrialization, saying it has been, “good for humanity”:
“It has fed billions, doubled lifespans, slashed extreme poverty, and, by replacing muscle with machinery, made it easier to end slavery, emancipate women, and educate children. It has allowed people to read at night, live where they want, stay warm in winter, see the world, and multiply human contact. Any costs in pollution and habitat loss have to be weighed against these gifts,” he says.
And just as human ingenuity has allowed us to overcome countless obstacles in the past, he notes, it is more than reasonable to suppose it will do so in the future as well.
While Pinker calls for alarmism to cease based on human capability to address problems, Will Boisvert, known as a left-wing environmental expert, calls for alarmists to back off ridiculous doomsday predictions saying that even if greenhouse predictions warm the planet the “consequences for human well-being will be small.”
We’ve all seen dire left environmental alarmist predictions come and go over decades. It’s a mystery why they haven’t been laughed off the stage and run out of town on a rail by now. Boisvert points to a 2016 Newsweek article to make his point:
The story, based on a Lancet study, made dire forecasts regarding the effects of climate change on agriculture, while failing to note that the study actually predicts much more abundant food availability in 2050 thanks to advances in agricultural productivity. These advances will “dwarf the effects of climate change,” he contends, and the “poorest countries will benefit most.” … “Throughout history humans not only weathered climate crises but deliberately flung ourselves into them as we migrated away from our African homeland into deserts, mountains, floodplains and taiga,” he writes, before embarking on an excursus into the striking cleverness of the Inuit in adapting to a hostile environment.
It would seem that a few people in the environmental community have finally become embarrassed enough to try to reign in the extremists and restore the trust that’s been lost in the sciences related to climate. I applaud their efforts but doubt it will have much effect. Climate alarmism springs from politics, not science. Those making millions on the hype, including men like Al Gore and left-wing governments like that of Jerry Brown’s California, have a vested interest in keeping doomsday predictions alive and those who continue to buy into the hype (lie) are willing dupes in taxing scheme.
The high cost of climate hysteria has been a well known fact for some time now. I hope you’ll read that 2011 article in it’s entirety. It cites a GAO (Government Accountability Office) report that looks at the many ways Americans pay and the hundreds of billions of dollars this bogus alarmism consumes.
In 2017 Joe Bastardi put climate alarm spending waste in perspective when he suggested most of this money could be better spent elsewhere:
Take the billions of dollars that are going toward what supposedly is a settled science issue — climate change — and use it to create a pool for pre-existing conditions. It is our duty to help those less fortunate and for the government to provide a safety net. So let’s form that safety net by dealing with a known problem today, not a ghost that may or may not be there tomorrow — especially since human progress has skyrocketed in the age of fossil fuels. Do you think medicine would be where it is today absent the fossil fuel era?
The rest of the nation would be in the free market for insurance. And combined with tort reform and portability, we may be able to bring the price down.
It wouldn’t even take the hundreds of billions this hysteria is costing taxpayers and businesses to fund a pool for pre-existing conditions but the suggestion certainly illustrates the point. American’s cannot continue to allow dire politically motivated predictions based on hysteria to rule the taxpayer purse.
It’s good to see Scientific American publish those who question the hysterical among us on climate change.