Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs

OPINION:

It’s been a good summer for climate activists who are pushing the false narrative of “climate change.”

We had the Canadian wildfires with smoke drifting into other parts of North America. Then there were hotter-than-usual temperatures in many parts of the country (it’s summertime, and I predict that temperatures will drop this fall, winter and spring, as usual), followed by a devastating fire in Maui, and then Hurricane Idalia.

Never mind that the fires in Canada might have been prevented if environmentalists had not opposed clearing underbrush and removing old trees. The same goes for Maui, along with better management of the fire when it first broke out.

President Biden added to this fictional summer storyline by embellishing an often-told yarn about a fire at his Delaware home. We’ve heard several versions, the latest being firefighters “ran into flames” to rescue his wife and the house “almost collapsed.” Previous stories put his 1967 Corvette and cat at risk after a lightning strike.

Much of the media are hauling out one of their favorite words — “unprecedented” — to describe the force and destructive power of Idalia, which is not true. Hurricanes happen in the summer and early fall, and some of the worst occurred long before the Industrial Age.

Let’s not forget the “experts” who swore in the 1970s that Earth was headed for a new ice age in which we would all freeze to death. Trust the science, we were told.

The deconstruction of this latest chapter of fiction begins with this: According to the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, “98 percent of all Hawaiian fires are started by people, of which 75 percent are due to carelessness.” Bring back Smokey Bear, who said: “Remember, only YOU can present forest fires.”

Returning to those Canadian wildfires — common across that country in summer — the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that lightning strikes caused half while the other half were caused in different ways, from discarding cigarette butts to sparks from passing trains. While the newspaper includes “climate change” as a contributing factor, better forest management could have helped reduce the risk.

Concerning the predictable hysteria from some TV reporters standing in ankle or hip-deep water, the climate Chicken Littles are wrong again. According to the webpage Advancing Earth and Space Sciences: “Global hurricane counts and Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) have significantly decreased since 1990 likely due to a trend toward La Nina. [The] decreasing trend in global hurricanes and ACE is primarily driven by [the] downturn in western North Pacific activity.”

CNN went into full crisis mode when its top climate “expert,” Bill Weir, said: “The cost of [using fossil fuels] is becoming bigger with every storm. Science has been warning about this for a very long time, in many ways it has been predicted.”

But not all “science” and not all scientists are in the field of environment or receiving grants from the federal government. The organization Climate Intelligence has published a letter signed by 1,609 scientists who say there is no climate emergency. Their letter is loaded with scientific facts, not statements by politicians and reporters who repeat familiar lines.

In addition to their citation of scientific facts, they write: “To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in. This is precisely the problem with today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. Should we not free ourselves from the naive belief in immature climate models?”

It’s a good question, and one purveyors of the “climate change” storyline should contemplate.

• Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book, “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (HumanixBooks).