Forest fire out West caused by global warming
Which is a worse way to die, by water or fire?
The way things are going, future generations may have to choose between living where the ocean swells beyond the shoreline and swallows them, or far inland where forest fires fry them.
Oh, but those are the pathetic prognostications of scientists who don’t have faith in the Bible. At least that’s what U.S. Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), who is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy, said in 2009. At a congressional hearing, he quoted Genesis 8:21-22, God’s promise to Noah after the flood: “‘Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though all inclinations of his heart are evil from childhood, and never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.’”
Shimkus didn’t say anything about man destroying himself.
Dr. Frederic Wagner, an expert on climate change, noted a few years ago that a senior U.S. senator, who calls global warming a fraud, received major funding for his re-election coffer from a major oil company and also that “this company spends millions of dollars on disinformation campaigns.” Sen. James Inhofe, a right-wing Republican from Oklahoma, was honored in 2004 for his “work in promoting science-based public policy” by the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy, a think tank that disputes the scientific consensus on global warming. The think tank was receiving $658,575 from ExxonMobil since 1998. Inhofe, one of the top congressional recipients of oil money, received $662,506 from oil companies between 2000 and 2008. He also received $152,800 in coal contributions during the 110th Congress, 2007-08. As a ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, he dubbed himself the “most outspoken critic of man-made global-warming alarmism in the United States Senate.” He has called global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
Inhofe joined U.S. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, three years ago in introducing legislation overturning the scientific finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that greenhouse pollution threatens public health.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), on a TV political show
Then there’s U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), announcing only days ago: “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it. I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy.” This is a man who would be president of the United States.
Such persons are able to persuade a sizable percentage of gullible, ideological Americans that the scientists who declare global warming is real and man-made – 97 percent of the thousands of climate-change scientists – are wrong. It’s a controversial subject, say these debunkers. Yup – that 3 percent may have something. But of course, even if we grant the possibility that the tiny minority is right, what happens if it’s wrong? We’re in deep doo-doo, that’s what happens.
Would we board an airplane that had cracked bolts holding its engines, figuring, hey, there’s no proof the plane will lose its wings? Do these nay-sayers have any concern whatever for their children and other members of generations to come? Or are they so fixated on the almighty dollar that they’re willing to sacrifice those who succeed them in order to keep the costs of doing business low?
Recent developments show the situation is, as predicted, getting worse. The Associated Press reported two weeks ago that at least three studies and reports in the previous three months said climate change was the reason wildfires were getting bigger, and the problem would only get worse. “We are going to see increased fire activity all across the West as the climate warms,” Philip Dennison of the University of Utah said.
Ice falls away from melting Antarctica glacier
Then came the news that two independent research teams, using different methods, concluded the West Antarctic ice sheet’s slide into the ocean, though its continuation probably will be at a slow pace, had reached the point where it was irreversible. Too late, folks. A sharp rise in sea levels will occur, and there’s nothing we can do to prevent it.
But, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote, “the Republican Party’s commitment to (climate change) denial just gets stronger.” After all, it’s the government that supports the consensus of scientists, and government must be minimized. Because it often sets off alarm bells that we just don’t want to hear. They’re too inconvenient.
