Cal Thomas: Cooling the rhetoric on climate change

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is September 7th. 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. Commentator Cal Thomas now on recent pushback against climate change activism.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: It’s been a good summer for climate activists who are pushing the false narrative of “climate change.” We had the Canadian wildfires with smoke drifting into parts of the U.S. Then there were hotter than usual temperatures in many parts of the country, followed by a devastating fire in Maui and Hurricane Idalia.

Never mind that the fires in Canada might have been prevented with proper clearing of underbrush and removal of old trees. The same goes for Maui, which could have benefitted from better management of the fire when it first broke out.

Consider this: According to the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, "98 percent of wildfires are human caused.” Maybe it’s time to bring back Smokey Bear who said: “Remember, only YOU can prevent forest fires.”

Returning to Canadian wildfires, which are common across that country during summer, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that half were caused by lightning strikes while the other half had causes ranging from discarded cigarette butts to sparks from passing trains. While the newspaper includes “climate change” as a contributing factor, better forest management would have helped reduce the risk.

Much of the media hauled out one of their favorite words – “unprecedented” – to describe Idalia. That’s despite the fact that hurricanes routinely happen during the summer and early fall and some of the worst ones occurred long before the Industrial Age. According to a study on the webpage Advancing Earth and Space Sciences: “Global hurricane counts and Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) have significantly decreased since 1990 likely due to a trend toward LaNina.”

CNN went full crisis mode when its top climate “expert” Bill Weir said: “The cost of [using fossil fuels] is becoming bigger with every storm. Science has been warning about this for a very long time, in many ways it has been predicted…”

Not all “science” and not all scientists would agree with Weir, especially those who don’t receive grants from the federal government, which could skew the credibility of their findings. The organization Climate Intelligence has published a letter signed by more than 1,600 “scientists and professionals” who say there is no climate emergency. Their letter is loaded with scientific facts and not statements by politicians and reporters who repeat familiar lines.

In addition to their citation of scientific facts, they write: “To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in. This is precisely the problem with today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. Should not we free ourselves from the naïve belief in immature climate models?”

It’s a good question and one purveyors of the “climate change” storyline should contemplate.

I’m Cal Thomas.

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