OPINION:
Beware of the individual who refers to his ilk as “we select group of human beings.” It’s the unmistakable mark of the elite who believe their concern for climate can save the world. Mindful that those who guaranteed the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines now associated with disturbing health anomalies derive from the same exclusive class, Americans should regard the purveyors of climate change remedies with studied caution.
The most self-assured of this sort have a habit of showing up for the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering, which recently concluded in Davos, Switzerland. With his “select group” puffery, President Biden’s special envoy for climate, John Kerry, gathered his fellow discussion panelists and audience into a league of their own.
It is all a part of forum founder Klaus Schwab’s plan to “master the future” through climate change activism. Eager to oblige, Mr. Kerry urged all within earshot to rebuff any self-image of “a crazy tree-hugging lefty liberal” and embrace their identity of the “almost extraterrestrial” breed who are “saving the planet.” He made the case that the key to staying cool is “money, money, money, money, money, money, money”: The denizens of Davos want $3 trillion annually to finance greenhouse gas reductions.
By contrast, climate guru and former Vice President Al Gore showed little hesitation in personifying the crazy tree-hugger. Referring to human-caused atmospheric emissions, the Davos forum regular claimed, “That’s what is boiling the oceans, creating these atmospheric rivers and the rain bombs and sucking the moisture out of the land, creating the droughts and raising the sea level and causing these waves of climate refugees predicted to reach one billion in this century.”
All this “settled science” from a self-appointed climate expert who, according to The Washington Post, could not quite manage a gentleman’s C in his Harvard science classes.
Common sense prescribes the inclusion of information from properly credentialed sources. Roy Spencer, the principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and former senior scientist for climate studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, is reputed to embrace only meteorological facts.
In studies posted in recent months at Drroyspencer.com, he makes the case that computer models employed to explain climate change trends over the past half a century have exaggerated the warming effect by more than 50%: “Homogenization techniques” — scientific lingo for methods of averaging out temperature anomalies — “can remove abrupt changes in station data,” he writes, “but cannot correct for any sources of slowly-increasing spurious warming.”
Mr. Spencer submits that such “spurious warming” is caused by “urban heat island effects” on ground-based temperature monitors in areas of intensifying population growth. Using data gathered by space-based satellites instead, he writes, “The results show an average trend fully 50% below that produced by the official [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] product.”
Evidence has emerged that the governing elite has oversold COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness in stopping virus transmission and underplayed the incidence of vaccine-caused health ailments. Consequently, Americans should be wary of Chicken Little-like rhetoric contending that the planet can be saved from a coming climate catastrophe — with boiling oceans, rain bombs and climate refugee waves — only by handing over more money, money, money.
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