Adventures in Climate Change Neverland

By Peter Pavarini

“Your mind doesn’t know the difference between reality and fantasy. Your mind acts on what you feed it. Feed it good thoughts.”

Zig Ziglar

Living in Neverland

When both sides of an argument accuse the other of living in a fantasyland[i], you have to assume you’re “over the target”, to use a well-worn expression.

               It has been a rough couple of weeks for those who sincerely believe climate change is humanity’s greatest existential threat and if, left unaddressed, will leave the planet largely uninhabitable in the near future:

• The DNC’s decision to reject calls for a debate exclusively on the topic
• The departure of Governor Jay Inslee, the climate change candidate, from the primary race
• Viral coverage of the zero-carbon royals jetting hither and yon
• The dismissal of Penn State scientist’s libel lawsuit for failure to release his data supporting the infamous “Hockey Stick” graph[ii]
• Decades-old file photos of fires in California that were falsely attributed to the Amazon Basin

All of these and more have continued to cast doubt on the urgency of the climate change problem, if not its validity.

Searching for the Source of the Climate Change Story

               As I’ve said in at least one previous blog[iii], although skeptical about climate change alarmism, I’m determined to keep an open mind and regularly read every relevant scientific report I get my hands on. My perennial interest in this topic has compelled me to look for the true source of the climate change imbroglio. Like British explorers Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke (pictured below) who searched for the source of the Nile River in the mid-19^th Century, I did this expecting to find the truth about climate change shrouded in scientific controversy and political intrigue. Never did I expect to discover instead a carefully scripted fantasy used by alarmists to gin up interest in their movement.

               Movies.  As I’ve done with other well-publicized cause celebres, I began my search in the library of Hollywood films. I already knew about the blockbusters like “Waterworld” (1995) and “The Day After Tomorrow” (2004), both of which I found to be very entertaining. But I had no idea that the genre of film known as “Cli-Fi” started in the 1970s, if not before. Of course, back then, the popular culture was more concerned about a future Ice Age, as depicted in “Quintet” (1979) starring Paul Newman, which was a dud. More recently, we’ve been entertained by John Cusack and Amanda Peet in “2012” (2009) and Matthew McConaughey and Jessica Chastain in “Interstellar” (2014). I avoided purported documentaries like Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006) because of their lack of entertainment value.

What did I learn from these movies? Frankly, not much.  Although Hollywood is occasionally successful at getting your mind off reality for a couple of hours, it is incredibly bad at providing the factual context for sound policymaking.

               Biome Generating Websites.  As I writer, I was also drawn to websites meant to help authors create fictional climates for their stories. Believe it or not, there are actually people who design imaginary worlds having various weather characteristics – for fun and profit![iv] I especially like one website that gave you a choice of living in “Saudiastana”, “Mosquitopolis”, or “Paris Australis”.[v] Needless to say, I picked Paris Australis for my alternative universe.

               Fundraising Websites.  But why should anyone wait to make it onto the New York Times bestseller list? There is a myriad of ways to extract money from a citizenry worried about climate change. Many have discovered “Go Fund Me” ruses to help pay for protecting polar bears[vi], even though their population is said to have increased by 30% since 2005[vii] (notwithstanding changes in arctic sea ice); phasing out all gasoline-fueled engines by perhaps helping others buy a Tesla[viii]; or simply “empowering yourself” by giving to the Citizens Climate Lobby, which claims to be a “patriotic” and “nonpartisan” group.[ix] I was unable to verify the legitimacy of any of these groups; however, the existence of so many have made me wonder how much of the money they raise actually goes to save the planet.

               Government Websites.  Since none of the above sources appeared to be where the climate change narrative originated, I decided to scour government websites to find the real truth (please forgive me). Discounting the possibility that any federal agency would publish objective information about climate change once Trump took office, I focused on press releases and regulatory issuances during the Obama years. What did I find? A great deal of equivocation on where the climate is headed . . . as well as why. Gina McCarthy, the EPA Administrator under Obama, conceded in her testimony before Congress that her agency’s regulations were more about “showing the climate change flag” than actually tackling the problem of climate change.[x] But if you probed more deeply, you’d find government reports which identified the U.S. as the “world leader” in reducing greenhouse gases (said to be responsible for climate change). In fact, between 2000 and 2015, 41 of 50 states managed to reduce their emissions, causing greenhouse gas emissions in 2014 to drop 9 percent below 2005 levels.[xi]

The news has only gotten better under President Trump. Despite a booming economy (that arguably should mean higher CO2 emissions) and a dramatic rise in climate hysteria among the media and political class, various sources now report that the U.S. has continued to surpass every other nation in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.[xii] Go figure.

               Despite all this, we continue to hear from climate change alarmists that it is a “virtual certainty” that rising temperatures and sea levels will inflict upon humankind the equivalent of 25 Holocausts, i.e., the death of 150 million people.[xiii] Now, who should you believe?

Climate Zombie Myths and Unanswered Questions

               Others have done a thorough job of summarizing all the evidence for and against anthropogenic climate change, so I would simply refer you to websites like ProCon’s “Is Human Activity Primarily Responsible for Global Climate Change?[xiv] However, I would challenge anyone reading this to explain away the following “climate zombie myths” and “fantasy strawmen”[xv]:

• Climate change skeptics never claimed CO2 doesn’t cause warming. They only point out that things like the water in clouds has far more impact on temperature than any greenhouse gas.  Even the IPCC agrees.
• Climate scientists have admitted their climate models didn’t predict the 15+ year pause in global warming, yet no one has done very much to explain why that happened.
• Scientists agree that 250 million years ago CO2 levels rose dramatically and probably caused the Permian Extinction; however, armed with 800,000 years of ice cores and modern satellites circling the earth every 24 hours, the only proof we have that CO2 causes rapid warming comes from something that happened a quarter of a billion years ago. Huh?
• Granted there are other factors equally as important as agricultural yields, but you can’t argue with the fact that plants grow faster, handle drought better, need less water and produce 15-30% more food in atmospheres with higher concentrations of CO2.
• There are hundreds of peer-reviewed studies from every continent that show that Medieval times were as warm or warmer than they are now, a time when human population was a fraction of what it is today. Climate change believers claim these were just local anomalies (like Greenland), but no one has been able to identify a single continent or region that was cooler 1,000 years ago. How come?
• No one has a good explanation for why the world was colder at times when CO2 levels were higher than they are today.
• No one can deny that the $1.5 trillion dollars in economic incentives supporting climate research has resulted in confirmation bias. What scientist would be willing to be blackballed, terminated or dragged into court for going against the herd mentality?

               So, until I come up with better answers to these and other questions about climate change, I’ve decided to await the Apocalypse creatively. If there really is a growing market for climate fiction, why not write a short story, maybe a whole novel, about the Inferno/Flood that will soon be upon us? I’ve even found a few places to submit my work.[xvi]  Because I’m busy working on my third novel, “Shaken Not Stirred – A Jazz Age Tale”, it may be awhile before I find time to do this. But I have a hunch I have plenty of time.

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[i] Steve Cohen, “Climate Fact and Right-Wing Fantasy”, Earth Institute, November 26, 2018, www.blogs.ei.columbia.edu ; Tess Bonn, “GOP Spokeswoman Calls Sanders Climate Change Plan ‘Fantasy Land’”, The Hill, August 26, 2019.  

[ii] https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-27/creator-global-warmings-infamous-hockey-stick-chart-loses-climate-science-lawsuit

[iii] https://alessandrocamp.com/2019/04/04/comfort-for-those-concerned-about-climate-change/

[iv] “Biomes Generation and Rendering – Fantasy Maps for Fun and Glory”, June 30, 2017, www.azgaar.WordPress.com; Karen Pon, “Weather and Worldbuilding 101”, www.fmwriters.com  

[v] http://www.city-data.com/forum/weather/1531407-fantasy-climates-one-would-you-pick.html

[vi] http://polarbearsinternational.org/

[vii] https://www.thegwpf.org/as-polar-bear-numbers-increase-gwpf-calls-for-re-assessment-of-endangered-species-status/

[viii] www.coltura.com

[ix] www.citizensclimatelobby.org

[x] “Weather Facts v. Fantasy”, March 28, 2016, Washington Times.

[xi] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/us-greenhouse-gas-inventory-report-1990-2014

[xii] https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonlack/2018/08/23/guess-whos-most-effective-at-combating-global-warming/#305bfbff5cdb

[xiii] David Wallace-Wells, “The Paris Climate Accords Are Looking More and More Like Fantasy”, New York Magazine, March 25, 2018; Igor Bobic, “A Dire U.N. Report Warns of Ruinous Global Warming. Republicans Say It’s Fantasy”, Huffington Post, October 11, 2018.

[xiv] https://climatechange.procon.org/?gclid=CjwKCAjwqZPrBRBnEiwAmNJsNkn9nB54hnDjm_NsOb9aCPoaPC5qgetCcA5ueG6rQcGI29YDKu2SjxoCsAsQAvD_BwE

[xv] https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-07-27/climate-change-denial-zombies-killed/11291724

[xvi] Request for papers, “Fantasy & Myth in the Anthropocene”, www.fantastic-arts.org