OPINION:
The Tuesday weather forecast for Manhattan calls for sunny skies with temperatures in the 70s. World leaders gathered to hear President Obama complain about climate extremes and urge them to abandon the pursuit of prosperity to do something about the weather. He might find it difficult to hold their attention.
The wealthy West preaches the need to make carbon sacrifices to Mother Earth so that, once satisfied, she will bestow cold weather on us. The world leaders, who aren’t dumb, will say whatever it takes to get aid money, but many of them rightly recognize that giving up affordable energy sources that emit carbon dioxide — that’s the same stuff that everybody exhales — kills all hope of achieving prosperity. It makes as much sense as giving a man dying of thirst a salty cracker when what he needs is a cup of water.
Several European nations, in fact, have turned out to be fair-weather global warmists. They talk a good game, but attempts to impose a binding worldwide treaty collapsed in Copenhagen five years ago.
Mr. Obama has trouble with strategy, and he’s likely to have as much success restoring the coalition of the unwilling as he has in devising a coherent strategy to defeat Islamic terrorism, which is real indeed, and goes by its new name, the Islamic State, or ISIS.
Even Hollywood is bailing. Benjamin Schmidt, a historian at Northeastern University, created an online tool to search for specific words and phrases in movies and television shows. “Climate change” is no longer hot among screenwriters.
Such global warming “mentions” as there are usually appear in animated television shows like “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy” and then as the punch line for a joke. It’s still a staple in documentaries designed to stoke the fear of imminent disaster. Movie mentions peaked shortly after Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” debuted in 2006. The James Bond movie “Quantum of Solace,” for example, made global warming a villain. By last year, the fad had run its course, and the phenomenon was reduced to supporting roles in G.I. Joe and Smurfs movies.
The purveyors of global warming are as determined as the Third World leaders gathering in Manhattan to preserve the grants and aid that flow to those who continue to toe the line. Last week, New Scientist magazine responded to the inconvenient truth that Antarctica sea ice has been growing at record levels. The ice, the magazine says, is made by global warming. The warming winds in the Southern Hemisphere pull cold air onto the Antarctic sea ice, causing it to expand. This is from New Scientist, not The Onion.
The world ice levels are actually in balance, and the oceans aren’t rising. Island nations such as Fiji and Vanuatu that were supposedly in danger of disappearing are still there.
Earth is a resilient place that has survived asteroid strikes, tidal waves, the fury of volcanoes and the jolt of earthquakes. It’s the ultimate in presumption to assume that the planet will be thrown hopelessly out of balance by a few extra puffs of the stuff that makes plants grow and flowers bloom.
The world’s diplomats should give Mr. Obama the polite applause due a president, but if they value their prospects for prosperity, they shouldn’t listen.
