In Disney’s 2005 adaptation of the tale of Chicken Little, the squawking bird that for over a century had been the symbol of the follies of alarmism becomes the heroine for sounding the alarm – turning the moral of the venerable story on its head.
Half a century ago, our first climate fears, as described on the covers of Time, Newsweek, and many other avant garde “news” magazines, were of “a coming ice age.” But when a warming trend ensued shortly afterward, the mantra turned to “global warming.”
It is almost laughable, therefore, that the trillion-dollar climate change industry today (including the self-appointed fact checker Snopes) has gone the extra mile to disclaim those early stories. In 2015, Scientific American cried out, “For Its 40th Birthday, Let’s Retire Newsweek‘s Global Cooling Story.”
Whoa? Trillion? Chump change. The United Nations says we need $8.1 trillion by 2050 to successfully tackle the interlinked climate, biodiversity, and land degradation crises.
Chump change again. The International Energy Agency, in its “Net Zero by 2050” report, estimates that annual clean energy investment needs to more than triple by 2030 to over $4 trillion. Over the next three decades, that represents well over $100 trillion total in clean energy investment.
Just imagine the profits from financing that level of investment. George Soros has.
Soros, long known as a disruptor of economies, now says that the entirety of civilization will collapse if all humanity fails to rally around the Net Zero by 2050. He claims that the certain (yet delayed) rise in world temperatures will have “disastrous consequences” for the planet. “The climate system is broken,” he says, “and it needs to be repaired.”
Soros claims the melting of the Greenland ice sheet “would increase the level of the oceans by 7 meters [about 22 feet].” But CBS reports that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet would trigger “nearly a foot of global sea-level rise.” History agrees. When Viking villages thrived in Greenland a millennium ago, the Dutch merely built dikes and continued life as usual.
Soros exaggerated this single projection by 21 times! Yet moneymen colleagues like the IEA’s Fatih Birol and the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab, prancers like Al Gore and John Kerry, and even the brainwashed Greta Thunberg spout that equally outrageous malefactions will befall all of humanity if we do not do as they say (not as they do).
Back in 2016, the Obama Interior Department warned that “climate change could lead one day to the Statue of Liberty being “underwater” due to sea level rise and storm surges.” [You’ve seen the imagery.]
In the real world, numerous cities from ancient times are now under water, from Dwarka, India, to Alexandria, Egypt, to Wanaku, Bolivia, and even to Japan. All were submerged long before humans began burning fossil fuels in measurable quantities.
Carnegie Institution for Science researchers Patrick Brown and Ken Caldiera conclude that, without drastic actions, global temperatures have a 93 percent likelihood of rising by a whopping 7.2o F by the year 2100. Our tax dollars support this nonsense.
Given enough time, changes in climate brought even the separation of Gondwanaland into smaller continents. Glaciers once covered much of the American Midwest; the southwestern deserts were once wetlands. Humans were not burning fossil fuels back then.
Modern-day Chicken Littles cannot cope with scientific and economic evidence that grandiose schemes to “transform” the entirety of human society in 25 years cannot succeed (especially without massive reliance on nuclear energy). Or that the sky is not falling.
A brand-new report from the Geological Society of Finland should sober up these Kool-Aid drinkers. Whereas most Net Zero studies have focused on estimated costs of production and of carbon dioxide reduction, the Finns based their conclusions on physical material requirements.
Just for starters, the Finns found that an extra 221,594 new power plants must be constructed and commissioned to enable an equitable transition to Net Zero – all-renewable electricity for an all-electric, all-peoples society. That’s nearly a five-fold increase in barely 25 years. A tall order.
But the world is far short of the minerals needed to replace the world’s 1 billion gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles. Even if mines could be planned, permitted, constructed, and commissioned in record time, total current global reserves of four critical materials — nickel, cobalt, lithium, and graphite — are sufficient to make only 21.1, 8.9, 23.3, and 49.2 percent, respectively, of the batteries needed, even when barring all other uses of these materials.
Pity Greta, who like far too many of her Chicken Little imitating peers, has never been taught critical thinking. Pity the myriad of world children who have been indoctrinated into the climate change religion. The Big Bad Wolves of Wall Street and Davos who mandated and are exploiting their ignorance will soon have them for dinner – just as they realize they bet on the wrong horse.
Which brings us to the Boys Who Cried Wolf. Soros, Birol, and Schwab all know that the world cannot just switch to all-renewable, all-electric in 25 years – or even 50 years – without forcing the hoi polloi into greatly transformed lifestyles (and leaving the current poor even poorer). Gore has gotten rich from pandering, and Kerry loves the sound of his own voice.
Unfortunately for the Net Zero snake oil salespersons, their wolf-crying days, too, are numbered. There are just too many Little Red Riding Hoods beginning to notice their big eyes, ears, and teeth. There may also be a handy woodsman out there to corral the wolves that have preyed on the gullible for decades.
Author’s note. Wolf-hunters will be gathering in Orlando this weekend to ponder how to communicate the increasingly obvious answer to the question, “Is the true crisis climate change – or climate policy?” Speakers will discuss why are we making life poorer and more miserable for most of the people on the planet when there is no climate crisis – and consider ways to end this needless suffering. Stay tuned for my forthcoming reports on the proceedings.