Ship of Fools: Risking Lives to Promote Climate Change Hype

A new SPPI original paper:

For the Full Report in PDF Form, please click here.

[Illustrations, footnotes and references available in PDF version]

Will global warming alarmists ever set aside their hypotheses, hyperbole, models and ideologies long enough to acknowledge what is actually happening in the real world outside their windows? Will they at least do so before setting off on another misguided adventure? Before persuading like-minded or naïve people to join them? Before forcing others to risk life and limb to transport – and rescue – them? If history is any guide, the answer is: Not likely.

All these intrepid explorers tried to put the best spin on their failures.  

All of this raises serious questions that most media have ignored. How could Tourney put so many lives and vessels at risk? How did he talk the Russian captain into sailing into these dangerous waters? Who will pay for the rescue ships ad their fuel and crews? What if one of the ships sinks – or someone dies? 

This may be the most glaring example of climate foolishness. But it is hardly the first. It’s been said insanity is hitting your thumb repeatedly with a hammer, expecting it won’t hurt the next time. It’s also believing hype, models and delusions, instead of real world observations.

Despite steadily rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, average global temperatures have been stable or declining since 1997. Seas are rising at barely seven inches per century. And periods of warmer or colder global and polar climates are nothing new.

Climate change is certainly real. It’s been real throughout Earth and human history – including the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, Little Ice Age and Dust Bowl, and through countless other cycles of warming and cooling, flood and drought, storm and calm, open polar seas and impassable ice. 

 Humans clearly influence weather and climate on a local scale – through heat and emissions from cities and cars, our clearing of forests and grasslands, our diversion of rivers. But that is not the issue. Nor is it enough to say – as resident Obama has – that the climate is changing and mankind is contributing to it. 

The fundamental issue is this: Are humans causing imminent, unprecedented, global climate change disasters? And can we prevent those alleged disasters, by drastically curtailing hydrocarbon use, slashing living standards, and imposing government control over industries and people’s lives? If you look at actual evidence – instead of computer model forecasts and “scenarios” – the answer is clearly: No.