Humanity has only been on this 4-billion-year-old Earth for a “microsecond.
Published June 17, 2024 at America Out Loud NEWS
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), and author of articles and books on environmental, climate and human rights issues.
Ronald Stein is an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for the Heartland Institute and CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations.”
Earth’s climate has changed many times over four billion years, and 99.999% of those changes occurred before humans were on this planet. During that short time, humans adjusted their housing, clothing, and agriculture in response to climate changes. Can we now control the climate?
Except for decades-long droughts or massive volcanic explosions that ended some civilizations, humanity generally adjusted successfully – through a Pleistocene Ice Age, a Little Ice Age, a Dust Bowl, and other natural crises.
After putting our current “microsecond” on this 4-billion-year-old Earth into its proper perspective, we might therefore ask:
- With today’s vastly superior technologies, why would humanity possibly be unable to adjust to even a few-degrees temperature increase, especially with more atmospheric carbon dioxide helping plants grow faster and better, providing more food for animals and people?
- How dare the political, bureaucratic, academic and media ruling elites who propagate GIGO computer predictions, calculated myths and outright disinformation – tell us we must implement their “green” policies immediately and universally … or humanity won’t survive manmade climate influences that are minuscule compared to the planetary, solar and galactic forces that really control Earth’s climate?
- How dare those elites tell Earth’s poorest people and nations they have no right to seek energy, health and living standards akin to what developed countries already enjoy?
Scientists, geophysicists, and engineers have yet to explain or prove what caused the slight change in global temperatures we are experiencing today – much less the huge fluctuations that brought five successive mile-high continental glaciers, and sea levels that plunged 400 feet each time (because seawater was turned to ice), interspersed with warm interglacial periods like the one we’re in now.
Moreover, none of the dire predictions of cataclysmic temperature increases, sea level rise, and more frequent and intense storms have occurred, despite decades of climate chaos fearmongering.
Earth continues to experience climate changes, from natural forces and/or human activity. However, adjusting to small temperature, sea level and precipitation changes would inflict far less harm on our planet’s eight billion people than would ridding the world of fossil fuels that provide 80% of our energy and myriad of products that helped to nearly double human life expectancy over the past 200 years.
Today, with fuels, products, housing, and infrastructures that didn’t even exist one or two centuries ago, we can adjust to almost anything.
When it’s cold, we heat insulated homes and wear appropriate winter clothing; when it’s hot, we use air conditioning and wear lighter clothing. When it rains, we remain dry inside or with umbrellas; when it snows, we stay warm indoors or ski, bobsled and build snowmen.
Climate changes may impact us in many ways. But eliminating coal, oil, and natural gas – with no 24/7/365 substitutes to replace them – would be immoral and evil. It would bring extreme shortages of reliable, affordable, essential energy, and of over 6,000 essential products derived from fossil fuels.
It would inflict billions of needless deaths from diseases, malnutrition, extreme heat and cold, and wild weather – on a planet where the human population has grown from 1 billion to 8 billion since Col. Edwin Drake drilled the first oilwell in 1859.
- Weather-related fatalities have virtually disappeared, thanks to accurate forecasting, storm warnings, modern buildings, and medicines and other petroleum-based products that weren’t available even 100 years ago.
- Fossil fuels for huge long-range jets and merchant ships move people, products, food, and medications to support global trade, mobility, health, and lifestyle choices. Indeed, more than 50,000 merchant ships, 20,000 commercial aircraft and 50,000 military aircraft use fuels manufactured from crude oil.
- Food to feed Americans and humanity would be far less abundant and affordable without the fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, and tractor and transportation fuels that come from oil and natural gas.
- Everything powered by electricity utilizes petroleum-based derivatives: wind turbine blades and nacelle covers, wire insulation, iPhone and computer housings, defibrillators, myriad EV components and more.
Petroleum industry history demonstrates that crude oil was virtually useless until it could be transformed in refineries and chemical plants into derivatives that are the foundation for plastics, solvents, medications, and other products that support industries, health and living standards. The same is true for everything else that comes out of holes in the ground.
Plants and rocks, metals and minerals have no inherent value unless we learn how to cook them, extract metals from them, bend and shape them, or otherwise convert them into something we can use.
Similarly, the futures of poor developing countries hinge on their ability to harness foundational elements: fuels, electricity, and products made from fossil fuels and other materials that are the basis for all buildings, infrastructures, and other technologies in industrialized countries.
For the 80% of humanity in Africa, Asia and Latin America who still live on less than $10 a day – and the billions who still have little to no access to electricity – life is severely complicated and compromised by the hypocritical “green” agendas of wealthy country elites who have benefited so tremendously from fossil fuels since the modern industrial era began around 1850. Before that:
- Life spans were around 40 years, and people seldom travelled more than 100 miles from their birthplaces.
- There was no electricity, since generating, transmitting, and utilizing this amazing energy resource requires technologies made from crude oil and natural gas derivatives.
- That meant the world had no modern transportation, hospitals, medicines and medical equipment, kitchen and laundry appliances, radio and other electronics, cell phones and other telecommunications, air and space travel, central heating and air conditioning, or year-round shipping and preservation of meats, fruits, and vegetables, to name just a few things most of us just take for granted.
There are no silver-bullet solutions to save people from natural or manmade climate changes. However, adjusting to those fluctuations is the only solution that minimizes fatalities which would be caused by the callous or unthinking elimination of the petroleum fuels and building blocks that truly make life possible and enjoyable, instead of nasty, brutish and short. The late Steven Lyazi put it perfectly:
- “Wind and solar are … short-term solutions …. to meet basic needs until [faraway Ugandan villages] can be connected to transmission lines and a grid. Only in that way can we have modern homes, heating, lighting, cooking, refrigeration, offices, factories, schools, shops, and hospitals – so that we can enjoy the same living standards people in industrialized countries do (and think is their right). We deserve the same rights and lives.
- “What is an extra degree, or even two degrees, of warming in places like Africa? It’s already incredibly hot here, and people are used to it. What we Africans worry about and need to fix are malnutrition and starvation, the absence of electricity, and killer diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, sleeping sickness and HIV/AIDS…. We just need to be set free to [get the job done].”
Eradicating the world of crude oil usage, without first having a replacement in mind, would be immoral and evil, as extreme shortages of the products now manufactured from fossil fuels will result in billions of fatalities from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths, and could be a greater threat than any climate change to the world’s eight billion population.
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Adapt: what humans do best, and have been doing successfully for thousands of years. Unfortunately, it would leave the poor social justice warriors, climate warriors, Malthusians, and other petty autocrats bereft of a sense of purpose and that heady feeling of sanctimony for “doing something” by compelling the rest of us happy people to adopt their dreary vision of the future. Sad.
stinkerp, a point not often mentioned…..
We have already built our houses and infrastructure to withstand the “climate change” from summer to winter, a seasonal variation in parts of NA exceeding 60 C…A couple of degrees one way or the other requires little-to-no adaptation at this point already.
Good point, DMK. The global average temperature increase of over 2C that is supposed to kill us all is driven by an increase in nighttime temperature. I am not sure that my house can stand that.
Not only bereft of purpose, but these days also out of a job.
“why would humanity possibly be unable to adjust to even a few-degrees temperature increase”
Especially, since it’s likely that the warming period is likely to turn to a colder period, sooner or later. As it always has.
An increased amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would help plants adapt to the colder regime.
Up to a point. A killing frost is one where it is cold enough to freeze the fluids in a plant, rupturing the cell membranes when the liquid crystalizes. Some bacteria have been found that inhibit frost kills, but that isn’t going to prevent plants from dying when it gets cold enough.
Regardless of what climate-associated problems occur, if there’s money to be made in solving them, chances are excellent that private enterprise will find a solution. And if governments want to get involved with subsidies, that’s fine too as long as progress is being made rather than turning the enterprises into money pits that succeed in doing nothing but burdening taxpayers. This is what we’re currently witnessing with the handouts to wind and solar generation and EV manufacturers. They’re claiming that they’re helping solve the so-called climate crisis but in reality failing to deliver, while much-maligned coal, oil and natural gas are still responsible for rising GDPs, and general living standards accompanied by continuing population growth.
Life expectancy at birth may have been about 40 years because there was a high rate of mortality for children, women giving birth, and men of military age. However, those who made it to 40 could often expect to live at least as long as people do today.
A person reaching the age of 60 was retired from work and given a gold watch because so few made it that far.
Of course the real issue is that people want to adapt to climate change by migrating to countries that are wealthier and cooler but are full of people who object to that solution.
Migrating from Canada to Florida every winter.
UK to the Mediterranean in winter.
The main reason people migrate to place like the UK, and across the US southern border, is because they know they will get treated like princes on the taxpayer’s dime.
A massive step up from their own countries.
Nothing to do with the climate…
I am betting you are well aware of that fact, and are just flapping your jaw as usual.
Weather conditions above the northern 48th parallel are fairly brutal for ~ 8 months of the year.
Which is why ~ 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US – Canada border.
And a large cohort of them flee to Florida and Mexico between October and April every year.
Let’s call them “climate refugees” shall we?
Genuine ones for a change.
I don’t care where Izzy lives, but you can bet it is not somewhere like Alaska,
… and you can bet he uses fossil fuel powered heating during winter.
He used fossil fuel to make his post.
In Latin America drug gangs fueled by US drug use have taken over the countries where the immigrants are fleeing from.
The businesses welcome them since they work hard, are cheap, and are easy to manage.
They also are willing to do the dirty, dangerous, and demeaning work that others shun.
The US has also lost around a million workers due to COVID-19 deaths and long COVID disabilities and the US birthrate is declining.
There were about 1 million covid related deaths in the USA, true. But heavily skewed to the infirmed and elderly. The USA did not lose 1 million workers.
One of the reasons birth rate is declining (one of several) is due to the climate fearmongering. Kids are being told they will not live to be adults. Young adults do not want to bring kids into the world when told the world is doomed.
The number of people who fit the category described in your loonie sentence is ZERO.
Bloomberg’s green energy research team estimates $US200 trillion to stop warming by 2050.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-07-05/-200-trillion-is-needed-to-stop-global-warming-that-s-a-bargain
Bloomberg investors want $275 trillion spent.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-21/investors-call-for-policy-unleashing-275-trillion-for-net-zero
With a part of that research could probably find a way to stop most human diseases and increase our lifespans by many years.
For $2 trillion every one of the 2 billion households in the world could be provided with a $1,000 air conditioner.
Probably for less than a trillion dollars solar-powered air-conditioned jackets could be developed using solid-state cooling devices.
Meat that tastes better, is more nutritious, and is cheaper than natural products could be developed.
The list is endless for better uses of $200 trillion.
People live happily from near the Arctic, in Alaska and other places, to the Tropics.
I moved once from Cleveland, Ohio in November where the average high temperature is 52F(11C) to Los Angeles, California where the average high temperature in November is 73F(23C) a 12 degrees Celsius difference, and liked the weather in both places. The IPCC’s 1.5 C limit is nothing worth spending large amounts of money on.
Probably outside of the Tropics people spend 95% of their time in controlled environments like buildings and cars or busses anyway.
Also, “climate” has been redefined by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization to be 30-year weather so it is, like the weather, always changing. That changed definition is seldom mentioned in the media.
We are not in a climate crisis, CO2 is not the control knob for our climate, we are not going to reach a tipping point and suffer irreversible global warming. There is zero need for net zero, wind and solar are not suitable for the grid, fossil fuel and nuclear are the obvious choice for power generation and diesel fuel and gasoline are the ideal choices for transportation. End of story this is all you need to know.
While most are on the gravy train for personal gain or support it because it aligns with their world view, those who are at the top of the pyramid are pushing the agenda in order to kill the billions useless .
It’s the only way to save the planet. And the lifestyle of the elites obvs.
What do 20 something Australians do when experiencing a new ice age?
Australians wake to coldest June morning in almost 20 years (msn.com)
Prolonged cold snap in south east to last at least a week | Watch (msn.com)
They turn up the RC aircon at mum and dad’s place for sustainability.
Not all that keen on COLD weather. 🙁
Gloves, wool caps, thick coats etc
Much prefer it warmer.
Atm the question might be posed: more money to ‘battle’ climate change or for war machinery? Or to mitigate economic woes for that matter?
You cant do all of those things at the same time. Now, imo the first 2 should be let go and concentrate on the economy (stupid!).
People are in general fed up w talking heatpumps and carbon tax etc. We went peak Woke, now we are beyond peak Green. The Alarm went elsewhere..
The only adjusting needed is to SLR which is natural and/or subsidence, which likely is manmade. Much of it is plain common sense. Don’t build in flood-prone areas, or at least build higher. The greatest factor in allowing mankind to thrive is in fact wealth, which is the very thing that the carbon canuckleheads are attacking.
The G in ESG is “Governance.”
It is bad governance to replace and existing energy system with one with lesser or intermittent capacity.
After all, ::Energy is Civilization::
Where in the Constitution does it give power to the government to dictate investments?