Beware! If you have oceanfront property, or even live near the ocean, you’re in big trouble. Your house will be underwater in ten to fifteen years. If your mortgage on the house is not paid off by then, you’ll owe money on a worthless, underwater asset – literally and financially.
These rising sea levels will occur, of course, because of so-called man-made “climate change.”
Sen. Edward Markey, long-time politician from Massachusetts and Senate sponsor of the Green New Deal, just gave such a warning in a recent speech to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He used a prominent example to illustrate his warning of floodwaters by claiming President Donald Trump’s home in Florida will soon be a casualty of climate change. “Within 15 years, Mar-a-Lago’s going to be underwater for at least 100 days a year; it’s going to Mar-a-Lagoon, not Mar-a-Lago.”
Press the laugh button. Who knew Sen. Markey was such a comedian, and a facetious one at that?
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) likes to portray itself as a serious, powerful, and prominent group. Selling a gloom-and-doom climate scenario to an audience like this is rich. There have always been conspiracy theorists who think groups like the CFR control the world, with world leaders as their puppets. Perhaps Sen. Markey was hoping the Council could control the climate, too?
If Sen. Markey wants to convince anyone about the dangers of climate change, he could start by addressing two questions. First, why did he not vote in favor of his own Green New Deal on the Senate floor back in March? If we are supposed to take him seriously, why did he not back his own plan to address climate change? Second, why should his or anyone else’s prediction on climate have any credibility now after countless predictions—often using computer modeling or U.N. studies—going back decades have proven false?
The list of climate predictions is a long one and was recently chronicled by Climate Depot’s Marc Morano. Notwithstanding so much error, the predictions keep coming from climate alarmists who often feed off the latest government or university warning about climate catastrophe.
One of my favorite bogus predictions was not from a movie actor—people who almost never should be taken seriously on anything outside of their day job—but from former Vice President Al Gore, recently highlighted by CFACT. In 2008, Mr. Gore predicted the north polar ice caps would be gone in five to seven years. By 2015, there was more ice measured at the North Pole.
Nowadays the alarmists’ cottage industry of predictions is more nuanced. On the one hand, their predictions give more room in the out-years, which of course will take longer to prove such predictions were false. But, such warnings now come with the demand we must act today to turn things around before we pass the point of no return in, say, 2030 or 2040, when we can supposedly no longer avert disaster coming decades afterward.
One recent example of this was on display last month, and discussed by CFACT, when a New York City Councilman warned that several familiar areas of the City will be underwater by century’s end. In 2100, Coney Island in Brooklyn, parts of Staten Island, and the Rockaways, which are located by JFK Airport in south Queens, will be underwater due to climate change. This was justification for adopting a restrictive Green New Deal for New York City.
Most of New York City is comprised of islands. Based on the booming construction of more skyscrapers these days, it appears no one in the construction industry or business world (or the politicians who give permission to build) is taking climate change seriously enough to stop building. Surely the expense of borrowing to construct and operate a single new commercial building would require it not being flooded by Long Island Sound in the 2030’s, as Sen. Markey predicts, or later, if ever.
One can be for energy efficient buildings, fewer cars in congested areas, more mass transit, and better recycling of plastics, to name a few environmental issues, while being skeptical of self-interested politicians making climate predictions. Such predictions are purely designed to manipulate and control our choices and lifestyles today, while predictions won’t be proven false for decades, long after they stop running for office or die of old age.
Certainly no one living paycheck to paycheck should be forced to pay more for “renewable” energy, especially when cleaner energy—natural gas and nuclear—is in such abundant, long-term supply. Until the political class and wealthy actors start curtailing their own lifestyles and the carbon footprint that goes with it, and even start living near massive wind turbines, their sensational climate predictions should be ignored.