Climate alarmism is not based in reality
By Patrick Gleason • Guest Columnist | The alarmist rhetoric and proclamations found in Mary Jane Curry’s recent column published in The Mountaineer, “A Life Or Death Matter,” (Aug. 15) are certainly worrisome. The good news is that they are completely detached from reality.
Don’t take my word for it. Instead I encourage Ms. Curry and other climate alarmists to read Unsettled, a new book released this year by Steven Koonin, who served in the Obama administration as the undersecretary for science at the Department of Energy.
In his book, Dr. Koonin debunks the apocalyptic arguments made by activists like Ms. Curry. As Dr. Koonin points out, heat waves are no more common today than in 1900, the warmest temperatures in the U.S. haven’t risen in 50 years, there is no detectable human impact on hurricanes, the Greenland ice sheet is not shrinking at an increasing rate, and, most importantly, the economic impact of climate change is negligible. What’s more, despite the recent high-profile fires in California and Australia, Dr. Koonin points out that wildfire activity has declined since 2003.
Ms. Curry touts solar as a cure all without acknowledging the dramatic increase in mining activity that would be required to produce more electricity from solar and wind. Nor does Curry address the fact that solar and wind energy are extremely land intensive and, as such, logistically incapable of powering a modern economy.
“No amount of marketing could change the poor physics of resource-intensive and land-intensive renewables,” explains Mike Shellenberger, founder of the Environmental Progress, a Berkeley-based non-profit, who was named “Hero of the Environment” by Time Magazine. “Solar farms take 450 times more land than nuclear plants, and wind farms take 700 times more land than natural gas wells, to produce the same amount of energy.”
Ms. Curry says she wants to “stop pipelines and fracking.” Yet horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, by increasing the use of natural gas at the expense of coal, have done more to reduce carbon emissions in this century than any government program ever dreamt up by environmentalists.
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Contrary to the doom and gloom spread by Ms. Curry, the fact is that climate-related deaths have plummeted over the past century, despite a rising population and emissions. For the past 100 years, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations rose from approximately 305 parts per million to more than 400 ppm, while global average temperatures rose by about 1°C. However, as the below chart illustrates, a person’s risk of losing their life in a weather-related disaster has declined by 99 percent during this period.
“In other words, despite there being many more people and lots more stuff in harm’s way, the relative economic impact of extreme weather is decreasing,” said Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “It is difficult to reconcile that trend with claims that ours is an ‘unsustainable’ civilization.”
Unsettled and the data displayed within highlights some uplifting facts that contradict Ms. Curry’s catastrophic narrative. This includes the fact that the number and severity of droughts are not rising, nor are the frequency and severity of tornados. A review of the data in Unsettled also demonstrates that the rate of sea level rise is not increasing, but global crop yields are.
Contrary to the environmental apocalypse predicted by Curry and others, in reality many aspects of the environment are improving, even with a growing population and economy. Ms. Curry would do well to stop scaring people and see for herself how the existing data and historical record tell a much different story. While the good environmental news mentioned here won’t garner attention and clicks as well as Ms. Curry’s rhetoric, it has the benefit of being based in fact.
(Patrick Gleason, a resident of Haywood County and Washington, D.C., is vice president of state affairs at Americans for Tax Reform and a senior fellow at the Beacon Center of Tennessee. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)
