The planet can finally draw a fresh breath of relief now that the fossil-fueled contrails waft away from hundreds of jumbo jets that transported some 30,000 climate alarm pontiffs and green energy panhandlers to and from their December 2-16 Katowice, Poland COP24 jamboree.
As sub-freezing temperatures at the conference site attest, it appears that once again there remains some slim, albeit brief, measure of hope that a full blown carbon-caused climate calamity can be averted. Also once again, there are a couple of catches.
For one, all developed countries will need to de-industrialize in order to slash carbon dioxide emissions virtually to zero by 2030 in order to prevent average planetary temperatures from rising more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above what they were in 1820.
Incidentally, that was still during the end of the Little Ice Age, shortly after Washington’s troops suffered brutally cold temperatures at Valley Forge in 1777, and Napoleon’s beat a frigid retreat from Moscow in 1812. Conditions were far more comfortable - even warmer than now - about one thousand years ago during the Medieval Warm Period, and also during the Roman Warm Period one thousand years before then.
The other requirement to avoid climate Armageddon is to compel those de-industrializing wealthy nations to give trillions of dollars in “adaptation, mitigation and compensation” money to poor countries they have "victimized" by climate change. China, the world’s largest CO2-emitter, would be given a pass on this.
First to get in the cue for this free money was the nation of Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean following U.N. 1988 warnings that the tropical archipelago paradise along with more than 200,000 inhabitants would become submerged by rising sea levels within three decades.
Republic of Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed upped the alarm amps in 2009, telling the U.N. General Assembly Summit on Climate Change. "You know that with a sea-level rise of 1.5 meters, hundreds of millions of people will be dead."
Again, just last year, Maldives Energy and Environment Minister demanded immediate access to U.N. Green Climate Fund aid before it is too late. He admonished, "There’s no use having a fund somewhere if you can’t access it quickly."
And after all, we should understand the urgency. Those funds are desperately needed to pay for the construction of a new a $400 million two-mile-long sea level runway at the Maldives International Airport – one large enough to accommodate the Airbus A380 jetliner, the world’s biggest passenger aircraft. Its Chinese contracting firm is also building a massive new aviation fuel farm and cargo complex.
The project apparently needs to be completed as rapidly as possible to evacuate the island nation’s current 400,000 people when those waters suddenly rise.
On the other hand, it may not be wise to purchase advance discount-priced evacuation airline tickets just yet. Research conducted by University of Auckland, New Zealand scientists between 1971 and 2014 indicates that the Maldives and other coral island land areas in the region are actually getting larger – not shrinking.
Meanwhile, global sea levels have been rising at a relatively constant rate of seven inches per century without acceleration ever since that last little ice age ended - and before the Industrial Revolution which introduced CO2-belching smokestacks and SUVs began.
Average global temperatures have also blissfully risen by about half of a degree since that time, and will likely to continue to do so with no help from us or permission from the U.N. until the next in an observed pattern series of true 90,000-year-long Ice Ages occurs in a few thousand more years.
So yes, Earth’s natural climate really does change. Regarding any positive political climate change, we can only hope to be so fortunate.
As U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) official Ottmar Edenhofer candidly explained in November, 2010: " . . . one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth . . . "
True to form, based upon repeatedly unreliable climate model predictions, IPCC’s latest Special Report claims governments worldwide must make "unprecedented changes in all aspects of society" involving "far-reaching" transitions in land, energy, buildings, transport, and cities.
Virtually all of this is based upon unfounded representations that we are experiencing a known human-caused climate crisis, a claim based upon speculative theories, contrived data, and laughably exaggerated modeling predictions that even IPCC reports admit (in fine print) can’t be trusted.
The senselessly alarmist climate-reality COP-out in Poland concludes with an ultimatum we have heard numerous times before. America must immediately de-industrialize, pay global restitution for its unfair fossil-driven capitalist prosperity, and put the U.N. in charge of our energy, economic, and societal policy prerogatives.
It is way past time to realize that none of this is really about protecting the planet from man-made climate change.
It never was.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. He is the author of several books, including "Thinking Whole: Rejecting Half-Witted Left & Right Brain Limitations" (2018), "Reflections on Oceans and Puddles: One Hundred Reasons to be Enthusiastic, Grateful and Hopeful” (2017), "Cosmic Musings: Contemplating Life Beyond Self" (2016), and "Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom" (2015). He is currently working on a new book with Buzz Aldrin, "Beyond Footprints and Flagpoles." — Click Here Now.
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