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Climate Alarmists are the Real Science Deniers – The Lowdown on Liberty

Thomas J. Eckert
climate

With the newly-elected congressional candidates all gearing up to take office in January, the democratic media seems to be fulminating to hear all of their new ideas moving closer towards what will be a contentious 2020 Presidential race. The most prominent of these has been up-and-comer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal,” which could be viewed as the magnum opus in the fight against climate change, promising to usher in a new age of clean energy by requiring the US to operate on 100% renewable energy within ten years. Of course, those of us who refuse to submit to our elected officials in quiet, unquestionable fashion, even in the face of our oncoming, climatic doom, have been loosely labeled as “science deniers” for our political heresy. But, as we’ll see, climate alarmists are the real science deniers.

Let’s start with the most obvious problem within the climate debate, which is the overwhelming majority of people don’t actually deny the climate changes. Just about everyone recognizes climates change over time; we know the Earth experienced an ice age at some point in its past, as well as the fact that it’s warmer today than it was during our country’s founding. Much like “flat-Earther’s,” those who think our climate does not or is not changing make up such small numbers as to be irrelevant to the conversation. So, trying to generalize everyone who wishes to examine the evidence and squeeze them into this category is careless at best, and malicious at worst.

Why then, would people who agree the climate is changing not support the valiant efforts of those currently pushing for reforms in energy, agriculture, and ecological fields? Precisely because they are trying to use the cover of climate change to intrude on so many facets of the private market, while shunning those of us who don’t immediately go along with the idea of implementing economic fascism as a solution to protect the environment. And considering the long and perfect track record climate alarmists have of being wrong thus far, it seems reasonable to test these hypotheses before recommending an overhaul of the world’s economy. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has consistently revised its warming projections downward over the years to correct for overestimations, which is a common trend in the climate change field. Renowned experts like Paul Ehrlich wrote before the IPCC was founded that by 2000 the world would be suffering from mass starvation, even going so far as to say England would no longer exist and the US population would drop to 22 million people.

The problem here is not that they’ve made mistakes in their assumptions; they are inevitable in scientific fields, given enough time. The problem is that these people cannot be brought to acknowledge such mistakes or even take them into consideration when advocating for future policy prescriptions. Meanwhile, we are expected to close our eyes and believe whatever we’re being told, no matter the juxtaposition to even their own earlier ideas. On April 28, 1975, Newsweek published an article calling for governments to cover the ice caps in soot, so that it may melt them in order to combat the oncoming ice age. Yet, November 8th of this year, they published a piece calling for the removal of carbon from the atmosphere, lest we face insurmountable global warming! Even the most well-regarded institutions, such as the Nobel Foundation, have these blemishes on their record, too. Al Gore, in 2007, claimed the ice caps could be completely gone by 2014 in his Nobel acceptance speech, which he received for his work on climate change. And it seems that when politicians can’t use the alarmists’ “evidence” to gin up support for new overhauls to the system, they simply misrepresent the works to fit their agenda. William Nordhaus, a professor of economics at Yale and a revered figure by many championing climate change, received the Nobel Prize in economics this year for his work regarding the costs affiliated with combatting climate change. The only issue here is that while it showed government intervention could save over $90 trillion in damage by 2100 caused by the changing environment, it would cost over $130 trillion to accomplish (~$40 trillion more than is would save). Furthermore, it showed that government-funded interventions wouldn’t become budget neutral until the increase of global temperatures accelerated to levels greater than even the most generous estimates currently surmise.

If we reject, then, the idea of governmental overhaul as a solution (or we just recognize the lack of data to justify such actions), what are we left with? The question we must ask, if we truly wish to explore innovative and scientific solutions, is whether or not climate change can be used to our benefit. Clearly, the planet will survive its climatic changes (as it has for billions of years), but what if we could use it to spur economic development and propel living standards to unseen heights, even in the poorest parts of the globe? Warmer climates could mean year-round growing seasons, while warmer oceans could mean larger yields in regard to growing fish and a massive new potential for aquaculture farming. Thankfully, that kind of research is exactly what’s happening with places like the Seasteading Institute and Blue Frontiers; which are just a few of the many people trying to innovate the future of healthcare, farming, living, etc. in a changing environment. And the best part is it’s all being done through voluntary methods; no encroaching governmental body placing an overbearing cost on all of us, and no need to bet on the word of only a few experts who’ve been paid by lobbyists to have your legislator’s attention. The proof regarding the effectiveness of these voluntary means, and also the silver lining, is that, with only the pressure of consumers’ wishes weighing on the shoulders of corporations, the US has already managed to outperform every nation on Earth in reducing their emissions last year, and it’s only continuing to go down from there.

So, before we spout off calling those we disagree with “deniers,” let’s take a minute to realize that, chances are, we all want to see the Earth and humanity flourish; even if we have different ideas. Limiting those ideas to just one, top-down overhaul will negate humanity’s best quality in this fight: the innovation and intuition of each individual to achieve what’s necessary for survival. Even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said exactly that in speech recently, saying:

“In every moment where our country has reached the depths of darkness, in every moment, when we were at the brink, at the cusp, of an abyss, and we did not know if we could be capable of saving ourselves, we have… We’ve done it. We’ve done what we thought was impossible. We went to the moon. We dug deep and we did it. We did it when no one else thought that we could.”

While I disagree with Ocasio-Cortez on policy, I hope she recognizes the depth of her words and the potential lives she is gambling with by stifling that very capability in each of us through her wishful bureaucratic oversight. Because denying that reality would truly make climate alarmists the real science deniers

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Thomas J. Eckert

Thomas J. Eckert is the Managing Editor of Think Liberty and Copy Editor for Being Libertarian. With a passion for politics, he studies economics and history and writes in his spare time on political and economic current events. He is a self-described voluntarist.
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