Growing up in the inner city of South East Queens NY was a tough enough experience without having new fears to be concerned about with life in NYC in the ‘70s. In high school my science teacher, Mrs. Alvarado/Morales (I never remembered which was her maiden or married name), told us that we had to get prepared for a new phenomena soon to come in our lifetimes. The phenomena was the new Ice Age. She and others in the scientific community were sure that we were headed to an ice armageddon in our very near future. As is evident by the publications of the time, Mrs. Alvarado seemingly had sound evidence behind her claim — or did she?
This last article in July 1971 claims that in 50 or 60 years (which would be about 4-14 years from current date) we might have to have start growing gills. By now some of that evidence should be seen (it doesn’t exist). Wait. I thought ice freezes water — not liquifies it. So while we were sufficiently concerned, no one was panicking that this was going to happen — at least not anyone I was associated with at the time.
Fast forward to 2017… Now it’s global warming which quickly fell out of vogue. It is now “climate change.” The most important aspect of this new climate change frenzy is if you don’t believe in it as prescribed, many consider you a neanderthal, fool, or as Al Gore said July 13th in Australia, ignoring “the tradition of all the great moral causes that have improved the circumstances of humanity throughout our history.” He further went on to liken the climate change battle to “the abolition of slavery, woman’s suffrage and women’s rights, the civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, the movement to stop the toxic phase of nuclear arms race and more recently, the gay rights movement.”
Wow… Being a black man, I can’t imagine anyone trivializing any of these great struggles, especially slavery to climate change.
Climate change has become a new religion; if you disagree with the so-called faithfuls’ ideas on this subject, you might be shamed or rhetorically stoned. Those who present it as settled science that another dare not challenge, are some of the people who told us about the impending Ice Age years ago. The major difference today is how social media and the internet spread the propaganda.
I recently challenged my educated, knowledgeable cousin to prove how climate change really works; he couldn’t. He referenced many scientists who say it is so, and I mentioned scientists who say it is not. At best we had a draw. I asked him why is it ok to accept the thinking of the scientist who says it is so and not the other way around? Were they not all giving theoretical explanations? Again, we had a tie on the arguments at best.
I then asked him a simple question: “Do you know the Las Vegas Valley (where I live) and part of the Mojave Desert was part of an ancient body of water? What happened to it?”
In disbelief, he shrugged it off that this was a fact. I pulled the information from the UNLV site; it reads: “The Mojave Desert is located in the southwestern United States and is composed of Death Valley, Pahrump Valley, Amargosa Valley, the Las Vegas Valley and some of the surrounding areas.
The Mojave Desert region has oscillated in climate many times in the past. When man first arrived in the Mojave, it was not likely to be as desert like as what we experience today. While, no one is sure when man first visited the region, there is evidence for human activity over 10,000 years ago! That would have marked about the end of the Pleistocene era, a time when the Mojave was a much cooler and less arid environment. Portions of what are now vast expanses of desert, were likely shorelines of lakes, streams and marshes, and plentiful vegetation and animal life.
As the climate became hotter and drier, the lakes dried up, the streams receded, and left behind isolated ground water fed springs that contain species found no where else in the world, or ‘endemic’ species.”
So my cousin asked the same question you might ask, which is what the heck does this all mean?
It simply means that nature changes itself with or without mankind’s intervention. We have been measuring weather and keeping records for the past 150 years. We assume that the last 150 years have been the most significant because we must be the masters of weather patterns. We confuse weather which is constantly going through cycles as climate. Climate takes a significant amount of time to change as indicated above by UNLV. Weather can change day to day, year to year, decade to decade. 150 years is not statistically significant to call it a “crisis.”
I gave my cousin some additional examples, such as theories that say the Earth’s poles have shifted over the life of the planet. In other words, it is quite possible that the North pole now sits where the South pole is. After much debate, he admitted that there surely should be additional investigation and we shouldn’t declare climate change to be a settled matter. That was all I asked him and all I would ask you. I also asked him to follow the money line on this issue. Advocates like Al Gore are now worth somewhere between $100 and $300 million according to varied reports. They have made a considerable fortune, perhaps trying to be the modern Noah of the bible. They do this while often flying in Lear jets, limos and burning more carbon footprint in a year than most of us do in a lifetime.
My final conclusion is either someone was lying to me in the 1970s or lying to me now. Or could it be they are just misguided but believe they are smarter than us? I believe the Emperor has no clothes…
Who remembers Heat Miser and Snow Miser from that Christmas cartoon? They are opposite ends of the same idea… just like the Ice Age doomsday that was predicted and passed, as well as the new climate change.
Respectfully…
DG
