Commentary

For as long as I have been publishing political commentary, I have been writing about the climate change hoax, not as a denier because I believe climate does change, but as one who refuses to believe we can control it. It’s cyclical.

This past weekend, I read two articles on climate change.  “At Long Last, Clarity on Climate,” an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal particularly caught my eye because of its author, Steven Koonin, who’s work I have been following for years.

 Koonin is the Edward Teller Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.   He served as undersecretary for science in the US Department of Energy under President Obama from 2009 to 2011, where his portfolio included the climate research program and energy technology strategy.

On November 28, 2018, with the release of the U.S. National Climate Assessment, the media latched onto it, reporting that it represented “evidence of human-caused climate change is overwhelming and that climate change-related threats to Americans’ physical, social and economic well-being are rising.”

“Not so,” responded Koonin. “Taken at face value, human-induced climate change isn’t an existential threat – or even a significant one – to the overall U.S. economy through the end of the century.”

By that time, a copy of American Thinker’s “120 years of climate scares,” published on August 4, 2014, had become a handy reference.  It begins with an1895 New York Times report that geologists believe the world may be frozen up again.

On April 27, 2021, in my coverage of Biden’s fanciful plan to halt climate change, I was critical of Americans who had fallen for the myth that we can, and should, seriously address climate change, that we are near crisis, and that it is “settled science.”

I wrote of “Unsettled,” Koonin’s new book. In it he writes, “Heat waves in the U.S. are now no more common than they were in 1900,” and “the warmest temperatures in the U.S. haven’t risen in the past 50 years.”

Enough background and back to Koonin’s Journal op-ed, in which he writes about his appointment with four other senior scientists by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, to provide clearer insights into what’s known and not about changing climate.  Together, they represented more than 200 years of research experience, almost all directly relevant to climate studies.

 “Our report is the first from Washington in years that deviates from the narrative of a climate headed for catastrophe,” Koonin notes. 

Unfortunately, space will not permit me to list their findings here, except that you should know that the words “existential,” “crisis,” and “emergency” to describe the projected effects of human-caused warming on the U.S. economy finds scant support in the data. 

“It speaks to a governmental failure to communicate climate science accurately to the public,” says Koonin.

Recalling the billions of dollars the Biden administration committed to climate change, Koonin suggests “it’s essential that the facts in this report be acknowledged” in future policy decisions.

Earlier, in introducing this edition, I mentioned a second article I read over the weekend.  You probably won’t be surprised when I tell you, “Climate activist isn’t giving up fight,” appeared in the left-leaning Arizona Republic, a paper that still has a climate reporter, Jean Meiners.

In the piece, Meiners attempts to help to connect and inspire Arizonans who care about protecting a livable climate but are struggling to find hope in that effort.  She tells the 60-year story of Hazel Chandler’s passionate environmental activism.

In a photo accompanying the story, Chandler is shown with a group holding signs reading, “Climate Can’t Wait.”  What does that mean?

With the Trump administration’s repeal of the Biden administrations overreaching to fight the impossible fight of climate change.  “There’s no words.  It’s appalling,” Chandler laments.

At 80 years of age, Chandler is now facing down a terminal cancer diagnosis, which she can’t help but feel that it’s related to breathing so much polluted air.

“This hopelessness adds a harsh tinge to the closing chapter of a lifetime spent successfully advocating for a protected environment,” wrote Meiners

“We can’t hand the kids a totally destroyed world,” Chandler told Meiners, “We have to stand up, we have to get in line, we have to talk to everyone we know, and we have to insist that we take our own steps to help. Chandler and her friends have been doing this for decades. To what end?

“I started working on this 60 years ago.  And I will be working on it until my last breath, whenever that is.”  How sad.

While Meiners did a credible job of chronicling Chandler’s activism, she didn’t ask one question I would have asked: Over your 60-year endeavor, there were about a hundred threats of the end of the world as we know it, you and other activists continue to talk about a world destroyed by climate change.  Is life today really that much worse than it was 60 years ago?”

May God continue to bless the United States of America.