In Florida over the holidays, President Trump tweeted, “In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!”
Al Gore—the leading global warming propagandist—fearing a collapse of his warming hypothesis, tweeted that the recent record lows are due to global warming. That drew biting derision from real climate scientist Dr. Roy W. Spencer in an imaginary interchange on his Facebook page:
"ME: So warm winters, cold winters, snowy winters, and no-snow winters are all predictions of global warming?
"MR. GORE: Yes, that is correct.
"ME: Are you aware how foolish that sounds to many people?
"MR. GORE: I am aware that there are deniers of the current climate crisis we are in, yes.
"ME: Ugh."
Trump’s tweet should surprise no one. During his presidential run, Trump promised to take down climate policies that posed a threat to development and didn’t serve the well-being of American citizens.
After coming to power, he fulfilled that promise, initiating steps to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement and end the Obama administration’s “Clean Power Plan.”
The Paris agreement required the US and other industrialized countries to shell out trillions of dollars over this century to developing countries such as India, who were required to make a mandatory transition from conventional coal-based energy to more expensive and unreliable wind and solar.
Proponents, led by the United Nations, claimed that unless we reduce carbon dioxide emission from fossil fuels, global temperature will rise to dangerous levels.
However, the alarmist claims are based on faulty computer models, which in the past 39 years have predicted two-thirds more warming than actually observed.
Some of the best climate scientists do not support the apocalyptic forecasts, and the staunchest alarmists themselves acknowledged the bankruptcy of these climate models.
The temperatures showed no significant increase in the past twenty years, and there are no scientific reasons to believe that they will increase dramatically in the future.
President Trump’s tweet follows record low temperatures this winter in the US and Canada. Trump is right in his assertion—taxpayer dollars should not be wasted on international programs based on ambiguous scientific hypotheses that systematically contradict real-life temperature levels by a wide margin.
Although record lows do not invalidate or refute the alarmist hypothesis, they do expose the alarmist claim of temperatures rising to levels dangerous enough to disrupt life on earth.
The “record lows” and “record highs” the media trumpet are records only for the instrumental period—the last 150 years. But global temperatures have been changing continuously in the past 2000 years and more, with the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age being much warmer and much colder, respectively.
In fact, global temperature has been on a warming trend since the Little Ice Age ended in the 18th century. The warming trend in the last three centuries has been like other warming trends in the past. The global warming alarmists must stop calling every record high temperature catastrophic.
Changes in atmospheric conditions during the past three centuries have been beneficial to humans and fostered development.
Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration has benefitted the agricultural sector immensely. Contrary to the alarmist propaganda on CO2, the rise in CO2 has resulted in record agricultural output globally, helping meet the demands of the growing population.
Moreover, fossil fuels are the heart of the global economic engine. Harnessing abundant coal reserves has helped both the developed and developing nations to achieve record energy production in recent years.
Coal reserves in developing countries like India and China are abundant and inexpensive. Modern coal-fired plants used to burn them are essentially free from pollution.
The coal-based energy sector also helps us generate electricity more cheaply than by unreliable renewables. In Europe, electricity prices are highest in countries that have the greatest use of wind and solar technology.
It would be foolish to force successful fossil fuel-based economies to abandon their coal plants. Trump’s refusal to fund alarmist policies is a blessing in disguise for developing nations.
A transition from coal to renewables would not only cause a financial loss but also destroy the energy sector in these countries, eventually pushing them back into the Dark Ages.
Political leaders of the world must stop wasting trillions of dollars on extreme climate policies that harm rather than help humanity. Instead, they should nurture the conventional fossil fuel industry and channel taxpayer money into programs and policies that aid economic and social growth.