By Dr. Peter Vincent Pry
The House Climate Crisis Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee recently held a rare joint hearing to air views of teenagers terrified by impending extinction of mankind from “global warming” and “climate change.”
Democrats and liberal mainstream media claim environmental apocalypse will become irreversible in 12 years — unless the Democratic Party is empowered to radically transform the economy, cultural values and lifestyles of the United States and the world.
Teens testifying before Congress and other forums express anger and hopelessness. Some are celibate, because the future for children is too horrible to contemplate.
They feel betrayed by government, society and parents too stupid, and probably too late, to rescue the world from climate change. Many young people really do feel that they are the last generation — so thoroughly have they been brainwashed by the climate hoax.
An antidote to climate hysteria, that should be required reading in every high school, is “Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions” by Myron Ebell and Steven Milloy (Competitive Enterprise Institute: Sept. 18, 2019). According to the authors, “Modern doomsayers have been predicting climate and environmental disasters since the 1960s. They continue to do so today. None of the apocalyptic predictions with due dates as of today have come true.”
For example:
In 1968, Stanford University Professor Paul Ehrlich’s book “The Population Bomb” started widespread panic among liberal scientists and the media that it was “already too late” to avoid worldwide famine by 1975.
To avert the overpopulation crisis, Mr. Ehrlich advised in 1967 that:
“The United States is already too big, that birth control may have to be accomplished by making it involuntary and by putting sterilizing agents into staple foods and drinking water, and that the Roman Catholic Church should be pressured into going along.”
In 1969, a New York Times headline predicted “Everyone Will Disappear In A Cloud Of Blue Steam By 1989” because of an alleged scientific consensus over impending apocalypse from environmental pollution.
In 1970, environmentalists predicted, in another newspaper headline “America Subject To Water Rationing By 1974 And Food Rationing By 1980.”
In 1970, scientists working for NASA and the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research warned of an impending New Ice Age by the year 2000.
A 1974 Time magazine headline warned of “Another Ice Age?” and the U.K.’s The Guardian science reporter headlined “Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast.” Brown University’s Department of Geology warned of an imminent New Ice Age in a letter to President Nixon.
In 1988, environmental scientists predicted disappearance of the Maldive Islands: “A gradual rise in average sea level is threatening to completely cover this Indian Ocean nation of 1196 small islands within the next 30 years.”
In 1989, U.N. environmental experts told the Associated Press “Rising Seas Could Obliterate Nations” by the year 2000. Part of New York City was supposed to be submerged by 2019.
In 2004, climate hoaxers predicted Britain would be like Siberia by 2020.
And so it continues. See RealClimateScience for more fair and balanced climate reporting, and to discover there is no “scientific consensus” about an impending climate doomsday.
Even if there is a slight uptick toward “global warming” of the Earth’s climate, that would likely be good news.
Historically, warming periods in climate have been associated with greater food production, population increase, and the rise of civilizations, as during Europe’s Renaissance and the flourishing of Native American cultures such as the Aztecs, Inca and Mississippians.
If you are determined to be a “climate nut” then worry about a New Ice Age — the most credible climate boogeyman. After all, the old Ice Age was only 11,000 years ago — the blink of an eye in geological time — and lasted nearly 2 million years.
However, don’t think becoming a green socialist will save you from the next Ice Age. If catastrophic climate warming or cooling happens, there is nothing we can do about it.
Climate change, when it happens, is driven by titanic natural forces far beyond mankind’s puny control — like changing radiance of the sun or titanic volcanism over an area the size of Siberia lasting centuries that alters oceanic and atmospheric dynamics.
During the last Ice Age, much of North America was buried under an ice sheet 3 miles high.
Banning lawnmowers will not stop the next Ice Age, which is not expected for another 40,000-50,000 years anyway.
Young and old terrified of climate apocalypse would better spend their time and energy on projects really beneficial to humanity and the environment:
- Elect Republicans to run Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Baltimore and other major cities that under decades of Democratic stewardship have been transformed from national treasures into environmental cesspools of poverty, drug addiction, violence and urban decay.
- Support President Trump’s EMP Executive Order to protect the nation’s critical infrastructures from solar or manmade electromagnetic pulses that can cause mass starvation, disease and societal collapse.
- Support President Trump’s modernization of U.S. nuclear forces.
Deterring nuclear war should be environmental mission No. 1. To reduce fear of climate change, maybe we should reintroduce “duck and cover” exercises in kindergarten.
Dr. Peter Vincent Pry was chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission. He served on the staff of the House Armed Services Committee and at the CIA. He is the author of “EMP Manhattan Project: Organizing For Survival Against An Electromagnetic Pulse Catastrophe.”
