Here we go again!
The sky is falling, the sky is falling! The agenda for the religion of global warming disciples has just ascended into full blown hysteria! If we don’t do something right now it will be too late.
Even Fox News is jumping on the global warming bandwagon. A pundit on the Fox morning Sunday show this week cited “the worst wildfires and hurricanes ever” as proof positive the climate is changing. California has always had wildfires. These last fires were no worse than many of the previous fires California has experienced. There was greater damage and loss of life than previous fires but that is a function of population growth, not worsening fires.
It is the same with hurricanes. There is more damage from recent storms because there are more houses to damage due to increased population, not worsening or more frequent storms. We’ve kept hurricane records since 1850. I invite you to research this for yourself. Current major storm statistics fall within the normal statistical ranges going back to 1850. The global warming drum has been beaten for nearly 50 years.
“The ice caps are melting. Seas will rise with disastrous effects to our coastal areas.” Al Gore (the high priest of global warming acolytes) famously predicted by 2014 the oceans will have risen in excess of 20 feet. I’m 68 years old. I’ve lived in California and Hawaii most of my life. I cannot see any perceptible rise in sea levels. Sea levels are exactly where they were when I was a kid.
The zealotry of hysteria over climate change is going to require that we spend untold trillions in an effort to combat what largely is a problem of overpopulation. A problem that is about to become infinitely worse. We currently stand at about 7.2 billion people on the planet. By 2050, an additional 1.5 billion will be added to the population, more than doubling by the turn of this century.
Global warming pales by comparison. There is no possible way to reduce our carbon footprint with the population growing so rapidly. So no matter what we spend, if climate change is real and caused by human activity, we cannot possibly reverse it no matter what we spend. And I’m pretty sure Alexandria Ocacio Cortez’s plan to eliminate fossil fuels as a solution to reverse global warming is probably unrealistic.
Dave Chrisman is a resident of Kailua-Kona.