Cal Thomas: Climate alarmism yesterday and today

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, July 6th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. Next up, climate change. Commentator Cal Thomas says bad ideas by politicians today follow an old playbook. Here’s Cal.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: King Charles III has launched a catastrophe countdown clock. It will tick for the next six years, a point that will mark serious consequences if the world doesn’t effectively address climate change.

Honestly, if you can’t trust the king, whom can you trust?

It’s always good to be reminded of predictions like this and whether any of them—even just one—has come true. If not, why would we put our faith in them? One might as well consult a palm reader, a horoscope, or a fortune cookie to get similar results.

The International Energy Agency reports that since 2020 governments around the world have spent $1.34 trillion investing in clean energy. The result has been negligible to nothing in reducing global temperatures. In 2022 global CO2 emissions hit their highest levels ever.

The solutions to “climate change” have regressed from the quasi-serious to the ridiculous. Consider this from a recent article in the respected journal Scientific American: “It takes a lot of water and energy to make negronis, manhattans and margaritas. Could we do with less ice?”

It’s not enough for the climate “experts” to demand governments regulate everything from light bulbs, to meat, to gas stoves and the cars we drive. Now they have gone too far by suggesting governments should regulate our cocktails.

Perhaps we could learn something from the Germans. Their Socialist/Green Party wants to ban fossil fuel furnaces from every home and building in the country by forcing everyone to install heat pumps. The delicious irony is that the Greens haven’t been able to get heat pumps working at their Berlin headquarters. Costs have run into the millions.

It gets better (or worse). Politico reports: “The White House offered measured support for the idea of studying how to block sunlight from hitting Earth’s surface as a way to limit global warming…” If this comes true, we might have to take many more Vitamin D pills. The suntan lotion industry will likely go bankrupt.

Every Chicken Little prediction about the environment – from forecasts by scientific “experts” in the 1970s of a coming Ice Age in which we will all freeze to death, to the current alarmists who have made various wrong predictions about us burning to death – has failed to deter those who want to increase government’s power over our lives.

One of the benefits of being a liberal is never having to admit you were wrong about previous predictions. With the media’s help you can just move on to the next one.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has a list of just some of the failed predictions of global Armageddon over the last 50 years.

They would be laughable if they weren’t serious at the time. A personal favorite was a prediction of worldwide famine. Now our main problem, at least in America, seems to be obesity. Again, why would anyone put their faith in such stupidity?

I’m Cal Thomas.

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