On November 26th, 2018, NPR released a dire headline: New U. S. Climate Assessment Forecasts Dire Effects On Economy, Health. The co-author of the assessment, Katherine Hayhoe, a long-time Union of Concerned Scientists activist, clarifies the assessment’s conclusion in her interview with NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday by saying: “Climate change is happening here and now.” It must be a new thing.

And it must be true, because the Climate Assessment is daunting, according to NPR it is, “the culmination of years of research by the country’s top climate scientists. It’s well over 1000 pages touching on a daunting range of topics.” Conveniently, the NPR article makes no mention of the years that were studied, the methods used to accumulate and analyze the data, or the reliability of the forecasting models.

But there are two things we know for sure. First, that the Assessment cost untold millions of taxpayer dollars, thanks to the lobbying efforts of John Podesta, Tom Steyer and George Soros’ Center for American Progress (their senior fellow Andrew Light served as a review editor). And second, blame for the economic damage the Assessment predicts will fall squarely on, drum roll please, greenhouse gas emissions.

Greenhouse Gases

The most abundant of all greenhouse gases is water vapor, and by this logic, the most insidious. Heck, its invisible, and once it metastasizes in the hydrosphere, it triggers convection currents, and these lead to clouds! When clouds become saturated with water vapor, condensation occurs, and they explode! And it rains. According to the assessment, if rainfall increases, agricultural production will fall, coastal flooding will “threaten” billions in property damage, and local governments will destabilize. Yikes.

The next most abundant greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide (CO2), which of course is the villain according to greenhouse gas police. You know, the most virtuous among us who have voluntarily decided stop exhaling (after everyone else does). According to Wikipedia:

CO2 is produced by all aerobic organisms when they metabolize carbohydrates and lipids to produce energy by respiration. It is returned to water via the gills of fish and to the air via the lungs of air-breathing land animals, including humans. Carbon dioxide is produced during the processes of decay of organic materials, or their combustion (wood, coal, petroleum and natural gas).

And it is the combustion of organic fuels that is blamed for global warming. The NPR article goes on to predict dire consequences such as wildfires, tick and mosquito infestation, harmful ozone levels, air pollution, drought, heat waves, and hurricanes.

Examples of recent headlines include: Death Toll Mounts to 60 in U. S. Storms, Tidal Wave Ruined Norway Fishing Towns, Earth Growing Warmer – Swiss Glaciers Reveal, Cuban Malaria Increases, Midwest Hopes for Relief from Heat – 602 Killed, Famine Faces 5 million in Drought Area, 7 Lives Lost as Tropical Storm Whips Louisiana, and Antarctic Heat Wave. In geologic time, this is very recent; the year of these headlines was 1934, before significant CO2 emissions began, according to Alex Epstein in his book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.

The third most prevalent greenhouse gas is methane, and according to the climate crowd, it is also a global warming culprit. Thankfully, methane emissions caused by bovine flatulence in Ireland and Denmark are finally under control. Right now, Danish bovine herders are being taxed $110 per head because the cows don’t have any money, yet.

Complex Systems Defy Modeling

For most objective observers, any climate research funded by government is suspect. Has there ever been a climate study funded by government that used forecasting models whose variables could not be manipulated? This happens all the time in the world of economics and finance with their econometrics and faulty use of mean variance optimizers.

For example, did any econometric model include variables like AAA ratings assigned to subprime mortgage pools, or Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buying these mortgages with less than 2% capital reserves, and thereby predict the housing crisis of 2008? Did any mean variance optimizer include mark to market accounting rules for bank stocks, or the unreliability of alternative asset class data sets, to predict the financial meltdown that began in 2007? The complexity of the systems being studied, whether they are economic, financial, or earth’s climate, have far too many co-dependent variables to be subject to reliable modeling.

Regarding our atmosphere, did the Climate Assessment’s models include the output of the sun in relation to earth’s orbit? Changes in sunspot activity? Urban heat island effects? The volcanic activity of earth’s 700 active volcanoes? Landfills and wastewater plants? One data point that was certainly ignored comes from NASA, and it tells us that Earth’s outer atmosphere has been getting cooler. I guess that’s why they call it climate change now, and they’ll blame human economic activity anyway.

It’s commonly known that Earth’s average surface temperature has not increased in the last three years. What is not commonly known, and was recently reported by Martin Armstrong in LewRockwell.com, is that the Earth’s average high temperatures over the last 200 years are below the highest temperatures recorded during the Medieval Warming Period (900 to 1300 AD). And, back then, it lasted twice as long. Must have been the bovine flatulence.

Earth Calling Environmental Globalists

Lets just keep it simple. The Earth has stopped warming, at least for now. The outer atmosphere is getting cooler, and not because of carbon and methane flatulence. For today’s globalist political elites to claim that global warming threatens developing regions the most is nothing but political pandering. The greatest threat to developing countries is their lack of political and economic freedom, such as in the Middle East and North Africa. And this is precisely why Israel is despised and attacked so vehemently. Israel’s high tech economy is an amazing success story, and it is their economic reforms that unleashed innovation that made it happen.

So why the hoopla over the Climate Assessment? According to Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, the report is “tripe.” But environmentalists continue to lobby for the eradication of human economic activity, aka life. The Heartland Institute‘s John Dunn calls it a “400 page pile of crap.” But politicians need to find new excuses for raising taxes. And according to Eric Worrall of wattsupwiththat.com it is “baseless scaremongering.” But for the media, its whatever it takes for the progressive movement to control the levers of government.

In human history, the last three periods of above average temperatures roughly coincided with the rise of the Roman Empire, the onset of the Renaissance (1300 – 1600), and the Age of Enlightenment. Yet now, maybe global cooling is the greater risk. Fortunately for humanity, Western Civilization has survived and ultimately thrived through periods of global cooling that include the fall of Athens, the Dark Ages, and the Little Ice Age (1600 – 1800). Human ingenuity has, does, and will continue to overcome the challenges posed by the scaremongers.