Cal Thomas - Climate change charlatans

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Today is Thursday, July 29th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Paul Butler.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

If you need a reason to dismiss the worst-case scenarios peddled by climate change activists, commentator Cal Thomas has you covered.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: We have had them among us from the beginning: fortune tellers, diviners, readers of palms. Charlatans, all. They attempt to convince the gullible they have unique powers to accurately predict the future.

When it comes to “climate change,” modern soothsayers are declared legitimate by the media, even when their predictions turn out to be wrong.

The latest is President Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry. His scientific credentials are nonexistent. Nevertheless, he recently predicted we have only “100 days” to save the planet from climate disaster. He made that “chicken little” prediction at the UN Climate Summit a few days ago, so we had better subtract the days that have followed.

In February, Kerry told CBS This Morning that the world has “nine years” before doomsday. What happened in the last five months to advance his forecast? He doesn’t say and reporters won’t ask him.

These kinds of apocalyptic climate predictions are nothing new.

In 1967, Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich claimed, quote—“It is already too late for the world to avoid a long period of famine.” He also declared the U.S. population “too big.” He suggested the government might need to impose involuntary birth control through sterilizing agents put into staple foods and drinking water.

Today, Americans are far from starving to death. In fact, obesity is a major health problem! And last year, the annual U.S. population growth rate dropped to its lowest level in 100 years.

Ehrlich also predicted in 1969: “Everyone will disappear in a cloud of blue steam by 1989.” To quote from a Stephen Sondheim musical, “I’m still here.”

In 1970, a scientist named James P. Lodge, Jr. predicted “a new ice age” by the 21st century. Here we are 21 years into the 21st century and some “experts” are saying the opposite. No wonder critics call it “junk science.”

Apologists claim scientists like Ehrlich and Lodge based their predictions on information available at the time. Yet they want to make changes that would affect our lives and lifestyles, perhaps for all time. It’s all about control, not individual freedom.

In 1972, two members of the Department of Geological Science at Brown University wrote President Richard Nixon with another dire warning. Their letter said, “The main conclusion of the meeting was that a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experienced by civilized mankind, is a very real possibility, and indeed may be due very soon.” Nearly 50 years later we are still waiting on the sky to fall.

And those are just a few of the climate predictions that haven’t come true.

Little has changed since these ludicrous statements were made a half-century ago. And now they are being repeated in new ways by today’s climate fear-mongers.

When will we learn to stop believing these worst-case scenarios?

I’m Cal Thomas.

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