The Shifting Politics of the Climate Change Scam

Back in college when I first studied ecology in the 1970's, environmentalists were predicting an imminent climate disaster, but it wasn't called global warming. It was “Global Cooling” that was going to end life on earth. The smog in our cities was blocking sunlight so much that they said our planet would enter a new ice age unless we acted quickly. A frozen snowball earth was pictured on magazine covers.

Then in the 1980's, we found ways to clean up our air, so the ice age was miraculously headed off, and thousands of people with time on their hands and seeking purpose in life had discovered that they could make a career out of disaster prophecy.

So, we needed a new catastrophe: “Global Warming” it was called. The cause was the same - us, and our industries. Same victim: our delicate planet earth. Same threat: the end of life as we know it. Only now the temperature was going in the other direction. Global warming appealed to the media’s appetite for doom and gloom and became an instant hit. The headlines wrote themselves: The poles are melting. Polar bears are dying. The oceans are rising. Lakes and rivers are disappearing. Farmlands are being turned into deserts. People are going to starve. The government would have to join the fight.

Along came the 1990's which saw environmentalists switch their emphasis to “climate change” - purely a marketing move. Global warming could credibly be blamed for warming, but climate change could be blamed for anything. If hurricanes increase one year, that’s evidence of climate change. If they decrease the next year, that’s climate change too. Droughts are caused by climate change, but so are exceptional rains. Warmer winters prove climate change, but so do colder winters.

“Climate Change” was disaster gold. It couldn’t be disproved. But what this means is that it’s not science; it’s pseudo-science. For any theory to be considered scientific, it must be falsifiable; there must be something within the theory itself that can be disproved. While technically true, what was far more important was that “Climate Change” had already been proven — by three decades of data, by the computer models of climate experts, and by the overwhelming consensus of scientists. But those “proofs” aren’t science either.

Looking back, the idea of climate change has been a constant feature of our planet's history. Real climate science tells us that temperatures have been both much colder and much hotter in the past. For the past ten thousand years, we’ve been living in an interglacial period. These pleasant periods have tended to last for ten to fifteen thousand years, so real climate science predicts that we can enjoy about five thousand more years in our cycle of temperate weather before the next ice age hits.

To claim that Climate Change has been proven is to entirely misunderstand how science works. No scientific theory is ever proven. Theories that appear to accurately describe how nature works — like Darwin’s theory of evolution or Einstein’s relativity — are assigned the provisional status of not yet disproven, with the understanding that the discovery of a single contrary fact could throw a wrench into the entire theory.

Strictly speaking, “Climate Change” theory isn’t really a scientific theory at all. It doesn’t take into relevant account factors which arguably have a far stronger effect upon climate than CO2, like the sun, ocean currents, and the greatest greenhouse gas of all, water vapor. What “Climate Change” is, is just a bunch of doomsday predictions. Predictions are the critical part of the scientific method. They are what enable a theory to be proven or disproven. If they prove false, they’re also the best way to refute a theory.

Climate change alarmists have made lots of predictions. Perhaps too many, because not one of their predictions whose expiration date has passed has proven correct. To suggest that the scientific validity of “Climate Change” is debatable is to speak charitably. But there’s never been a debate, not for want of trying. Many skeptics have called for debates. Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, a skeptic well-versed in the details of climate science, has repeatedly challenged Al Gore to debate. That Al Gore has never replied to these requests is difficult to reconcile with his comments in 2006: “…the debate among the scientists is over. There is no more debate. We face a planetary emergency. There is no more scientific debate among serious people who’ve looked at the science.”

These are not the words of a person who understands science. They are the tactics of a person who realizes he doesn’t have a scientific leg to stand on. There must be another nonscientific reason for the “Climate Change” agenda, and we don't have to look far. Just follow the money. The reason involves billions of dollars that proponents have demanded to solve this “problem.” Plain and simple, “Climate Change” is and always has been a scam.