The Climate Time Bomb Dud
In the 1994 Greenpeace released a publication called “The Climate Time Bomb Catalogue”. In it they state categorically that the burning of fossil fuels will cause all kinds of disasters. As you will see, all of these “disasters” and “unprecedented” weather events are not new and have occurred many times in the near and distant past. The Climate Time Bomb predictions of the awful consequences of global warming have failed. Even in light of these failures organizations like Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council and many others continue to pump out scary storm stories, animal extinction dramas and dangerous sea level rise predictions. They rely on people’s ignorance of historical weather events to sell their predictions of doom. What you will find as you read on is that nearly 20 years ago, environmentalists were using exactly the same propaganda scare stories we hear today. As Joseph Goebbels said “It (in this case the environmental movement) must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”. Here is a list of some of the “Climate Time Bombs” listed in 1994 by Greenpeace. They will all sound very familiar.
Climate Time Bomb Claim #1 in 1994…Greenpeace claimed a significant increase in global average temperature in the last 140 years is due to burning fossil fuels. The proof is that eight hottest years on record have all occurred since 1980. BOMB DEFUSED: The average temperature of the earth has been rising unevenly since the bottom of the “Little Ice Age” around 1700. Analysis of temperature reconstructions from proxies reveal that earth’s temperature was as warm or warmer than today 1,000 years ago and 2,000 years ago. Temperature reconstructions from ice cores in Greenland reveal that most of the last 10,000 year were warmer and at times much warmer than today. The southward movement of the tree line in Siberia indicates that earth average temperature was much warmer than today 3 to 9 thousand years ago. Since 1945 the global average temperature has only increase during one period, from 1977 to 1998. There was a slight cooling from 1945 to 1976 and there has been no warming since 1998. The rate of warming since 1850 is consistent with previous warming periods during the last 2,000 years. Today environmental groups continue to chant that the last few years have been “the hottest on record”. The story never changes but to the young and uninformed it sounds like something new and scary.
Climate Time Bomb Claim #2 in 1994…Unusually intense (tropical) Cyclones have hit the Caribbean and the Pacific in recent years. August 1992 hurricane Andrew devastates the Caribbean and southeast coastal US. BOMB DEFUSED: There have always been devastating hurricanes. Galveston Texas, September 1900, 8,000 drowned in massive hurricane, largest loss of life ever from a hurricane or anything else in the US. In September 1935 over 400 killed in Florida Keys by hurricane with winds near 200 miles per hour. September 1938, the “Great New England Hurricane” kills more than 600 in the northeast with winds gusting to 160 miles per hour. Increases and decreases in the numbers and strength of hurricanes in the Atlantic come and go in response to a cycle of warming and cooling of Atlantic Ocean water temperature known as the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation. Since 1970 there has been no increase in the number of global tropical storms or hurricanes. Recently the intensity of hurricanes around the world has been the lowest since 1960. Claims that hurricanes would become more intense and more frequent were wrong and the opposite has been the trend. Today the environmentalists continue to insist that global warming is making hurricanes worse.
Climate Time Bomb Claim #3 in 1994… Many climate scientists expect that global warming will increase the intensity and severity of storms in the middle latitudes. December 1992: “The Great Nor’ Easter of 1992″ wreaks havoc along more than 900 kilometers of US coastline and floods the New York subway system. March 1993, The “Storm of the Century” causes hurricane force winds and 2 to 4 feet of snow in the Appalachian Mountains along with severe damage from Cuba to New England. BOMB DEFUSED: The 1950 “Super Storm” brings wind gust of 108 miles per hour at Newark New Jersey and 110 miles per hour to Concord New Hampshire. La Guardia Airport in New York flooded by storm surge from hurricane force winds. The storm causes massive forest blow down and 2 to 3 feet of snow in the Midwest and Appalachian Mountains. The “Blizzard of 1888″ brings hurricane force winds and two feet of snow to New York City. Hundreds die as temperature falls below zero. Up to 4 feet of snow bury Southern New England with hurricane force winds. The claim that mid-latitude storms are becoming more severe is not supported by historical facts. There have always been severe mid-latitude storms.
Climate Time Bomb Claim #4 in 1994…Best guess forecast of the IPCC (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) for sea level rise is a global average of 3-10 millimeters per year. As more than 70 percent of the world’s population live on coastal plains, the potential for massive personal, economic and physical dislocation becomes clear. BOMB DEFUSED: Tide gauges from around the world show that sea level has been rising for more than a century. The rate averages out to about 8 inches per century and that rate is not accelerating as the environmental movement claims. Satellite measurements of sea level rise since 1993 show a rate of 3 millimeters per century but that has slowed to 2 millimeters per century in the last 6 years. Any estimate about climate and its effect on sea level rise from the United Nations can’t be trusted. In November of 2010 a leading UN IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer said in an interview “But one must say clearly that we (the UN IPCC) re-distribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.” He went on to say “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost northing to do with environmental policy anymore.” Anything that comes out of the UN’s IPCC is tainted by its political advocacy and its use of global warming fear to propel their Agenda 21 forward. There is no real world evidence that the rate of sea level rise is changing.
Climate Time Bomb Claim #5 in 1994…Global warming would reduce global food production, increase prices and cause new uncertainties about food supplies. BOMB DEFUSED: The environmentalists can only see the negative side of increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, they are blind to its benefits. “Thousands of laboratory and field experiments have demonstrated that atmospheric carbon dioxide enrichment (increases) significantly enhances plant growth and water use efficiency. And because those benefits have positively impacted crop yields in the past, there is ample reason to believe that future increases in carbon dioxide concentrations will produce increases in crop yields.” There will also continue to be scientific innovations that will increase food production. Bad policy decisions based on fear of global warming have increased food prices by using corn to make ethanol.
Do not be fooled the next time you hear or read that global warming or climate change is accelerating the temperature upward. Don’t be tricked into believing that hurricanes are getting bigger and more frequent. Remember that sea levels are not rising at an alarming rate. Do remember what an infamous Nazi said about the use of propaganda more than 70 years ago.
