For fifty years, environmentalists have been predicting impending disaster if we do not dramatically reduce our use of fossil fuels. These predictions are a modern version of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” and we must question their credibility.
In the 1970s, environmentalists predicted a new Ice Age and widespread famine. Their solution was a dramatic reduction in the use of fossil fuels. When that prediction failed to materialize, they shifted their claim to global warming. Again, the proposed solution was a dramatic reduction in the use of fossil fuels. When the polar ice caps did not disappear as predicted, they changed their mantra to climate change and renewed demands that we limit the use of fossil fuels.
If one continually makes predictions that do not come true, then rationality demands that we question the veracity of any subsequent claims. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Context matters. In the case of environmentalists and their ever-changing predictions, their track record is one of abysmal failure. We must keep this in mind whenever the movement issues new prognostications. Given the movement’s track record, we must question their credibility when they issue new predictions.
For fifty years, the environmental movement has consistently predicted an impending disaster if we don’t reduce fossil fuel use. They are uncertain whether we will freeze to death, burn to death, or be overwhelmed with flooding. But no matter what disaster might await us, fossil fuels are the alleged cause.
The fact is the environmental movement is opposed to fossil fuels because oil, gas, and coal provide the energy required to transform nature to produce the values that sustain and enhance human life. The movement wants to reduce the use of energy, and with it, our ability to produce values. The environmental movement isn’t pro-nature as much as it is anti-human.
Contradictions cannot exist: Follows are reports by AGW *pro*ponents, _not_ the opposition.
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The AGW folks may wish to consider the following–which ***they themselves have reported***: CO2 levels today are equivalent (OR FAR LESS THAN) to those millions of years ago (when, of course, fossil fuel belching factories, power plants and automobiles blanketed the planet).
Perhaps that will lead them to the central question to be asked in the context of planetary climate cycles: Which comes first, rising CO2 levels or rising temperatures?
========================EXHIBIT “A”
Antarctic CO 2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in *4 Million Years*
Scientific American
Carbon dioxide has been steadily rising since the start of the Industrial Revolution, setting a new high year after year. There’s a notable new entry to the record books.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antarctic-co2-hit-400-ppm-for-first-time-in-4-million-years/
========================EXHIBIT “B”
2.7 Million Years Ago Icy Greenland was Pretty Green, Study Finds
“‘More than 2.5 million years ago Greenland looked like the green Alaskan tundra, before it was covered by the second largest body of ice on Earth,’ the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said in a statement Thursday.”
https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2014/Apr/NR-14-04-05.html#.U1BNpfldXv4
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Atmospheric CO2 at highest levels in 3 million years
“The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.”
http://americablog.com/2013/05/global-warming-heat-trapping-co2-concentration-passes-400-ppm-milestone.html
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Antarctic CO 2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4 Million Years — Scientific American
“Carbon dioxide has been steadily rising since the start of the Industrial Revolution, setting a new high year after year. There’s a notable new entry to the record books.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antarctic-co2-hit-400-ppm-for-first-time-in-4-million-years/
========================EXHIBIT “F”: The Killer
CO2 levels 400 million years ago were approximately __10 Times__ those of today.
“When it comes to carbon dioxide (CO2) and climate, the past is prologue. Barring radical change to humanity’s voracious consumption of fossil fuels, atmospheric CO2 is bound to go up and up, driving global warming. But it won’t be the first time that CO2 has surged. In Earth’s ancient atmosphere, scientists see the faint outlines of a CO2 roller coaster, climbing and dipping across deep time in repeated bouts of climate change.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/fossil-leaves-suggest-global-warming-will-be-harder-fight-scientists-thought
NOTE: Far left is CO2 levels 400+ million years ago (2,000 ppm); far right are CO2 levels today (@ 250-300 ppm)–during “humanity’s voracious consumption of fossil fuels…”
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Doing that, though, would require more than just tash talk.
WrittenWord Consulting®
Steven Brockerman, MS
Florida
My article at Capitalism Magazine (https://www.capitalismmagazine.com/) some 20+ years ago (has since been taken down). Nothing has changed, re: the Gulf, since then.
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Environmentalist Mythology, Part 2: Slicker Than Oil
BY STEVEN BROCKERMAN
Copyrighted
Summary: Since the first Earth Day, environmentalists have set about constructing a cunningly slick mythology calculated to replace genuine Earth science fact with a cross between rural folklore and urban legend.
“On a calm day, you can’t take a boat ride [in the Gulf of Mexico] without seeing gigantic oil slicks,” according to Harry Roberts, Louisiana State University marine geologist (“Oil Fields’ Free Refill,” Newsday, 4/2002). Naturally, we all know—thanks to environmentalists—that the sources of those slicks are the greedy, malevolent oil companies.
Not.
The gigantic oil slicks in the Gulf to which Roberts refers are the result of what’s known as “seeps”—areas on the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico where large amounts of oil and gas escape through natural fissures. Scientists, including Texas A&M University chemical oceanographer, Chuck Kennicutt, have recently discovered that the oil and gas are surging up from deeper strata far beneath the Gulf.
Moreover, the seepage that naturally occurs in the Gulf of Mexico, said Roberts, “far exceeds anything that gets spilled” by the petrochemical industry (see graph below ).
[GRAPH: Oil in the Sea III: Inputs, Fates, and Effects, The National Academies Press (2003) http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10388&page=29%5D
Naturally, we all know, too—again, thanks to environmentalists—that those areas must be barren of marine plant and animal life.
Not.
Trawling during a 1984 research voyage “brought up over two tons of stuff,” according to Texas A&M scientists. They found clams the size of one’s hand and tubeworms up to five feet long. So abundant were the life forms—part of what scientists call chemosynthetic communities—that scientists now know the seeps to be “long-duration phenomenon.”
Indeed, the A&M researchers estimated the clams alone to be 100 years old. Geologists, oil workers, ships’ captains—everyone, apparently, save environmentalists—have long known the Gulf seeps exist. According to Roberts, “the Gulf of Mexico leaks like a sieve. You can’t take a submarine dive without running into an oil or gas seep.”
Since the first Earth Day, environmentalists have set about constructing a cunningly slick mythology calculated to replace genuine Earth science fact with a cross between rural folklore and urban legend.
We’ve been told, for instance, that if we engage in offshore oil drilling, we risk the catastrophe of oil spills. Given the research data already mentioned, that would appear to be less than true. What about the other side of that myth—that the world is running out of oil?
Funny you should ask.
Yet another interesting fact about seeps is that the deep strata oil causing them is also beginning to fill some of the known oil reservoirs, replenishing them, in geologic time, at a very rapid rate, sometimes within three to ten years. If that proves the rule rather than the exception, then the world’s supply of oil would be much, much greater than previously thought. It would mean—someone please alert the media—that we’re not running out of oil.
What we do appear to be running out of, though, is sufficient domestically produced petroleum to run our economy. In these post-911 times, that’s pretty critical to national security, right? Solving that problem would surely make for a safer nation, wouldn’t it?
Then how should we treat those environmentalists and politicians who, by seeking to ban oil exploration in the U.S. (and even the construction of new oil refineries, along with that of electrical and nuclear power plants), keep America dependent for oil upon Mideast tyrants—tyrants who also happen to be bankrolling, with their oil profits, the leaders and comrades of the 911 terrorists?
Why, invite the environmentalists to lead Earth Day sing-a-longs at our schools and re-elect the politicians—again and again and again.
Naturally.
After the Fact
“Geochemist Says Oil Fields May Be Refilled Naturally,” New York Times, 2005
“Oil Fields Are Refilling…Naturally-Sometimes Rapidly: There Are More Oil Seeps Than All The Tankers On Earth,” Robert Cooke, Staff Writer – Newsday, 2005
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About the Author: Steven Brockerman, who has a Masters degree in English education, is the owner of WrittenWord Consulting, an education consulting company that contracts with businesses and colleges, develops 1-8 grade curriculum for the home education market and does contracted research. In addition, Mr. Brockerman has been an assistant editor of Capitalism Magazine and is a freelance writer whose articles have appeared in the New York Post, Washington Times, Florida Today, Salt Lake City Tribune, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Bangkok Daily News, Tallahassee Democrat, Charlotte Capitalist, Mideast Newswire, Free Republic and Jerusalem Post, among others.