The Damage Caused By Combating Climate Change

The Damage Caused By Combating Climate Change

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in” (Alan Alda)

The greatest damage to humankind and the environment is not caused by climate change.  It’s caused by implementing bad policies based on faulty science in the name of combating climate change.

Is the earth warming?  It seems to be, at least to some extent.  Is that warming due to man?  Doesn’t seem to be.  But if warming is due to man, can the U.S. and other western nations stop it?  Nope.  However, what we can do, and are doing, is causing massive harm to children and the environment based on flawed data applied to a complex problem in an effort to find a simple solution.

Since at least 1988 scientists have been warning about climate warming – which morphed into climate change when the extreme warming they were predicting failed to occur. Since then, we have been consistently warned that climate change will bring widespread famine and food rationing followed by the destruction of the human race…unless we take immediate action and make drastic sacrifices.  Well, drastic sacrifices for normal people.  For those who own private jets, play on their yachts, and live in mansions…not so much.

Since 1988 we’ve been told that without immediate action climate change will result in the Maldives Islands and Manhattan would sink under the water, the arctic would be ice free, snow would be a thing of the past; the deserts would expand; Britain’s climate would become the same as Siberia, food production would be ruined, and famine would be rampant.   None of this occurred, yet climate change advocates keep making predictions that don’t happen.  Why?  One reason is they rely on faulty computer models.

There are five greenhouse gases – water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone.  Of these water vapor accounts for 90-95% of the greenhouse effect.  As for CO_2, well it makes up only 0.04% of the atmosphere and is responsible for only 3.6% of the greenhouse effect.  In other words, for every 1 degree increase in temperature claimed to be caused by climate change, only 0.036 of one degree can be attributed to CO_2.  Further, since 1945 the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere has increased only 0.008% – that’s right, eight one thousands of one percent.  CO₂ simply cannot account for the dramatic temperature increases climate change advocates predict, nor the doomsday scenarios they claim will follow.

So how do these climate change scientists come up with their dramatic temperature predictions?  Glad you asked.

In order to obtain the results they want, computer climate modelers build-in very high water vapor content into their computer models.  They do this on the assumption that the warming caused by CO₂ results in a significant increase in water vapor.  Just one problem with this assumption – the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere has declined since 1948.  In essence, climate change advocates are relying on models that artificially inflate water vapor to achieve a desired result, which they then blame on CO_2.  They wrap these results in the cloak of “science” and then demand that people make extreme sacrifices to combat climate change.

Though every doomsday prediction made by climate change activists has failed to occur, there have been several actual man-made environmental and social disasters that have occurred due to our reliance on this flawed science.  In our blind haste to embrace going “green” in order to reduce atmospheric CO_2, we’ve rushed to replace gas and diesel powered vehicles with Electric Vehicles and embarked on shifting electric production from fossil fuels to “renewable” methods of production. The results are devastating.

One example of the social cost of combating climate change is the spread of child exploitation.  Cobalt is required to make rechargeable batteries for electric cars and for storing power from wind and solar plants. Sixty percent of the world’s supply of cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where much of it is mined by children as young as seven who make at most $1.90 per day.  As of 2021, there were an estimated 35,000 children working these mines – all breathing cobalt dust that can cause fatal lung ailments without so much as a paper mask.

In the Lithium Triangle of South America (Chile, Argentina and Bolivia) the vast amount of ground water used to mine and process lithium, another mineral needed for rechargeable batteries, has been linked to the spread of deserts.  It’s ironic that we are causing the actual spread of deserts in order to avoid the possible spread of deserts due to climate change.

To date, the damage we’ve caused the environment in the name of preventing damage to the environment that climate change has never caused has been devastating:

–         Exposed 23 million to toxic waste;

–         Polluted 297,800 miles of rivers;

–         Ruined 16 million acres of farmland;

–         Polluted 63,000 square-miles of flood plains;

–         Caused the expansion of deserts (noted above) and

–         Contaminated 5.72 million head of livestock by exposure to pollutants.

I cannot fathom how climate change advocates willingly accept this actual social damage and environmental destruction in the name of preventing doomsday predictions based on flawed science. Especially since not a single prediction has occurred.

Even if everything these advocates say is true, which they are not, there is nothing the western countries can do to prevent climate change.  Canada, Europe, and the U.S account for 22.58% of carbon emissions.  China, India, and Russia, account for 43.85%.  The rest of the world accounts for 33.57%.  Even if CO₂ is the primary cause of climate change – which it is not – the effect on climate change of the western nations dramatically reducing CO₂ emissions would be insignificant without at least India, China, and Russia also significantly reducing their CO₂ emissions.  China and India have both made it clear they will not reduce their emissions, to the contrary both are significantly increasing the number of coal fired electrical power plants.

So, what can honestly be said about climate change?  The earth seems to be warming but not due to human activity, at least there is no actual evidence for that link and quiet a bit of evidence showing the link does not exist.  Also, we’ve caused significant damage to society and the environment by rushing into “green” technologies that turn out not to be green at all.  Finally, assuming everything the climate change activists claim is true – which they are not – there is nothing the western nations can do to prevent climate change on their own, well except to destroy their economies, irreparably damage the environment, and force their citizens into third world poverty.