A Convenient Lie

And here is Part II of John Stossel Day, where one of my favorite debunkers goes after the hype about how the Kyoto Treaty can save us all, particularly if we destroy the US economy in the process.

I have long maintained that the Kyoto Treaty was a sham, particularly since it only targets successful developed nations while giving a pass to other nations that already pollute far more than the US or Western Europe.

When he was in college, atmospheric-science professor John Christy was told, "it was a certainty that by the year 2000, the world would be starving and out of energy."

That prediction has gone the way of so many others. But environmentalists continue to warn us that we face environmental disaster if we don't accept the economic disaster called the Kyoto treaty.

[...]

Christy says, "Doomsday prophecies grabbed headlines but have proven to be completely false. Similar pronouncements today about catastrophes due to human-induced climate change sound all too familiar."

But the media can't get enough of doomsday.

That's part of the problem. Doomsday sells because it generates fear, and the media wants to maintain a “state of fear”, much as Michael Crichton described in his novel of the same name.

It doesn't matter if the doomsday scenarios can't be backed up with science - theories that we have no way of testing any time soon. The media and those with the most to gain by such hysteria are pushing them for all they're worth. Who among them cares if it's true or not? It sells papers, magazines, TV advertising, and generates funding for those within the scientific and pseudo-scientific community pushing these doomsday warnings.

Such an atmosphere makes it almost impossible to have a truly intelligent debate about global climate change, its effects, and its causes. Hysteria reigns and the more moderate or dissenting opinions are drowned out, many times with the doomsayers denouncing those that have the temerity to disagree with them as crackpots, sellouts, or stooges for their corporate masters.

Crichton mentions another doomsday scenario that created quite a stir during the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries: Eugenics. Even though it was later debunked, the theory caused immeasurable harm, eventually leading to the so-called “Final Solution” by Hitler and his cronies – extermination of millions of those the Nazis considered undesirable and genetically inferior.

Am I saying that the global warming hysteria will lead to mass slaughter by those abiding by the numerous doomsday theories out there? No. But I have heard of more than one of the more extreme environmentalists suggesting that 90% of humanity should be eliminated in order to “Save-The-Earth.” Just remember that the Final Solution started out as a “what if” speculation. It's not too far a trip from idle speculation to implementation.