Why Rational People Don’t Take Global Warming Kooks Seriously

Another day, another prediction of apocalypse by global-warming goons:

More than 100 million people will die and global economic growth will be cut by 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030 if the world fails to tackle climate change, a report commissioned by 20 governments said on Wednesday.

As global average temperatures rise due to greenhouse gas emissions, the effects on the planet, such as melting ice caps, extreme weather, drought and rising sea levels, will threaten populations and livelihoods, said the report conducted by humanitarian organization DARA.

Uh-huh.

The best rebuttal I’ve read for this—and pretty much every other—“report” predicting our certain doom was in last month’s Wired magazine. This article lists the many times scientists and activists have assured us we were all about to die during my lifetime…and always they were utterly, embarrassingly wrong. Not just in their predictions but with their basic facts.

Just one anecdote from this excellent article, this one on the acid-rain panic:

There was no net loss of forest in the 1980s to reverse. In the US, a 10-year government-sponsored study involving some 700 scientists and costing about $500 million reported in 1990 that “there is no evidence of a general or unusual decline of forests in the United States and Canada due to acid rain” and “there is no case of forest decline in which acidic deposition is known to be a predominant cause.”

And on and on…

But go back to the “millions will die!” report and read what it is they want you and me to do about it:

British economist Nicholas Stern told Reuters earlier this year investment equivalent to 2 percent of global GDP was needed to limit, prevent and adapt to climate change.

That “2 percent of global GDP” is (ballpark figure here) around 3 TRILLION tax dollars. Almost the US federal budget. And who’s going to pay that $3 trillion?  Not the fine folks of Indonesia, India or Iran.  No—Americans and Europeans will pay the overwhelming share of any global-warming tax.

So the same people who were wrong about the ozone layer, DDT and the “population bomb” are demanding that we pay trillions to prevent their latest global disaster. Oh, and all without proof that their proposed trillion-dollar solution will measurably impact global temperatures.

Yeah, guys—good luck with that.