Green Doomsday Cultists

So the world is going to end tomorrow. Perhaps when it doesn’t the religious doomsday cultists will finally shut the hell up, at least for a little while.

I have to wonder, though, whether the doomsday scenarios of the environmentalists make much more sense.

Following in the footsteps of the global cooling and global warming scares comes the “climate change” scare. This latest iteration seems altogether too convenient, because the climate is always changing and has always been changing since the formation of the earth. Ironically, environmentalists blast critics as “climate change deniers,” when those critics are the ones pointing out that climate change long preceded humanity and, thus, obviously is driven largely (if not entirely) by non-human factors. Even Al Gore’s book provides ample evidence of non-human caused climate change, and Nova’s “Becoming Human” shows that humans evolved in an African climate that gyrated wildly between rain forest and desert. Yet environmentalists insist that, while pre-industrial climate change was caused entirely by natural factors, post-industrial climate change is caused mostly by human activity.

Also notice how environmentalists (and their lap-dog media) routinely latch onto any short-term weather pattern as proof of long-range “climate change.” If the weather is a little warmer, or a little cooler, or a little dryer, or a little wetter than average, then sound the alarms! Human-Caused Climate Change Invades New York! (Or wherever.)

It’s been raining in Colorado quite a lot over the past few days, and snowing in the mountains — allowing Aspen Mountain to reopen for the weekend and contributing to 25-foot drifts on Independence Pass — so obviously the reason is human-caused climate change. But just a few years ago, the environmentalists warned us that human-caused climate change would lead to drought and shorter skiing seasons.

That’s a pretty convenient theory that fits any and all possible weather and climate variations. At a certain point I think it’s reasonable to wonder whether claims of “human-caused climate change” remain theoretically open to challenge.

I do not doubt that, at certain stages of very-long-running climate cycles, the weather gets jumpier (more varied) than at other times. We might even be in one of those stages. But proving that would require quite a lot of evidence about present and past conditions — and good record-keeping on such matters began fairly recently. Proving that more variable weather is caused by human activity would require a far more robust set of facts. But notice how frequently we are urged to jump, without any substantial evidence, from “climate change” to “humans obviously caused it.”

In Biblical mythology, Adam and Eve lived in a technology-free state of environmental perfection. Then man sinned, setting off a a chain of events that some think will climax tomorrow. The environmentalists seem to concoct a similar ideal state — a climate paradise untouched by man — thrown into chaos by human industry.

But the climate has always been in a state of flux, and people have always suffered natural catastrophes, including wild weather patterns. It is only industrialization that has allowed us to protect ourselves from the fickle and destructive forces of nature.