First, an update on last week’s Bob and his battery situation. He bought a new battery, and all was well, except his ‘mechanic’ said that the weak battery ruined his starter, which is a damned lie, but Bob spent $175 for a new one. Aren’t there any honest people in the world?
From Wall Street Journal column on August 1st., with the title of the above headline: “Whatever happened to polar bears? They used to be all climate campaigners could talk about, but now, they’re essentially absent from headlines. Over the past 20 years, climate activists have elevated various stories of climate catastrophe, and then quietly dropped them without apology, when the opposing evidence becomes overwhelming. The only constant is the scare tactics.
“Protesters used to dress up as bears. Al Gore’s 2006 film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” depicted a sad cartoon bear floating away to its death. The Washington Post, warned in 2004, that the species would face extinction, and the World Wildlife Fund’s chief scientist, claimed some polar bear populations would be unable to reproduce in 2012. Then, in 2010, campaigners stopped talking about polar bears. After years of missreprestation, it became impossible to ignore the mountain of evidence, showing that the global polar bear population has increased substantially.
“The same thing has happened with activist’s outcry about Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. For years, they shouted that the reef was being killed by raising sea temperatures. After a hurricane damaged the reef in 2009, the media overflowed with stories about the ‘Great Reef Catastrophe,” and the Gaurdian even published a Reef obituary in 2014. The latest official statistics show the Great Barrier Reef, has more coral cover than at any point since records have been kept.
“More recently, green campaigners were warning that small Pacific islands would drown as sea levels rose. In 2019, UN Secretary General flew to Taviau in the South Pacific, and for a cover of Time, waded up to his thighs, in front of a headline reading, ”Our Sinking Planet.” A month ago, a NY Times piece said that, “Almost all atoll islands are increasing in size or are stable.’
“Today, killer heat waves, are the new climate horror story. In July, President Biden claimed, “Extreme heat is the No. 1 weather-related killer in the United States.” While extreme heat kills nearly 6,000 Americans each year, cold kills 152,000.
“Activists do the world a massive disservice by refusing to acknowledge facts that challenge their intensely doom ridden world view. Scare tactics leave everyone, especially young people, distressed and despondent. Telling half-truths, while piously pretending to, “follow the Science,” leaves all of us poorly informed and worse off.” Not a single word was mine, other than the Bob update.
-Don Stott, don@coloradogold.com