From the ever-valuable WattsUpWithThat:
If you think it is colder than you remember last year, you’re right. Winter hasn’t officially started yet, it begins on Wednesday, December 21st. But the numbers tell a cold hard fact: as of 7 a.m. EST this morning, Sunday, Dec. 18, the average temperature across the Lower 48 states of the U.S. is colder than any time all last winter.
As this plot of hourly temperatures shows, the average temperature is 16 degrees. F, which is 4 degrees colder than any time last winter. What’s worse, the coldest part of winter is still six weeks away.
Not to worry. As we all know — or so the “warmists” tell us — climate is not weather. (What is it, exactly, other than weather over time? Oh well…) Furthermore, they insist anthropogenic global warming or — in its most recent self-protective, factually meaningless euphemism — “climate change” is “settled science.”
Never mind that something as basic to the laws of physics as Einstein’s theory of gravity is currently under attack, the over-weening, disastrous effect of human activity on the Earth’s temperature is “settled.” Those who are even mildly skeptical of this alleged fact are branded as anti-science, even tarnished with the Holocaust-redolent epithet “denier.” Is just a bit of projection possibly going on?
I’m agnostic on the issue (not on the projection). But for now, at least, I accept the view of MIT’s Richard Lindzen who at a recent conference stated “the only meaningful question would be whether we are seeing anything sufficiently unusual to warrant concern and the answer to this is unambiguously no.”
According to The Hill, Lindzen concluded his address with a quote from Eric Hoffer: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. And those who benefit in the racket will defend it with passion.”
It’s not just Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio who obviously benefit from this racket, er, “great cause.” Much of the public at large has been brainwashed. We see this at almost every cocktail party from New York to Los Angeles where the most passionate arguments in support of global warming usually come from people who abandoned science study with their freshman year college requirement, most often having taken, like Al Gore, the famous “gut” geology (aka rocks).
As many have noted, global warming and, more generally, environmentalism have become the religion of the liberal. Gaia has replaced God. Whatever your opinion of the theological implications, scientific blindness and bias have been the results. The economy has also suffered, especially for the working class.
What do we do about it?
Donald Trump has nominated someone more realistic — Scott Pruitt — for head of the Environmental Protection Agency currently dominated by climate totalitarians.
But why not change the name of the agency itself to give it a fresh start? Why not call the the EPA the Conservation Agency? Yes, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet — or not — but bear with me.
Years ago — before “environmentalism,” before Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”and the banning of DDT that initiated that movement and may or may not have been a good thing — there was a national consensus around “conservation.” Almost all Americans wanted clean air and water and, for the most part, we now have it (with exceptions like Flint, Michigan, that should be dealt with immediately).
Conservation was not God. It was simply the right thing to do, preserve places like the Grand Canyon and our other magnificent parks for future generations, enjoy and maintain “our purple mountains majesties” and “shining seas,” make sure cities like Flint have what they need and maybe even give a small preference to the farmers of the San Joaquin Valley in their efforts to feed humanity over the survival (0r not) of the Delta smelt.
A Conservation Agency might regulate all that with the proper balanced spirit, not the religious fervor cum bureaucratic insanity of those climate totalitarians. Words do count. (Hey, I’m a writer.)
Meanwhile, there are reasons to enjoy the cold weather, though even that American classic is under attack by the (fascistically) well-intentioned.
Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His latest book is I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member