CORONAMANIA, CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE BOYS AND GIRLS WHO CRIED WOLF

Some people consider me a tree hugger. I grow organic food for a living. I’ve taken more trains and buses than has anyone I know. Most of my clothes are thoroughly used. My small house lacks air conditioning. I don’t buy bottled water or use disposable cups or straws. Blah, blah, blah.

And I’ll admit it: I do like trees. I think we should use natural resources carefully and foresightfully.

Nonetheless, I’ve long thought that the media and activists have been exaggerating climate change; and/or that any warming may be natural, not anthropogenic. I also question whether Americans can, by driving Priuses or eschewing meat, significantly lessen any warming that may be occurring.

Even if such measures could lower temperatures, mass behavioral modification seems unlikely. When it comes down to it, most people—including the climate panickers—won’t inconvenience themselves by forgoing various carbon-generating activities or products. People love, for example, to travel to hip destinations and to control their indoor climates, year-round. And such energy alternatives as solar panel farms and wind turbines have their own limitations and downsides.

Overall, given how the American—especially Democrat—governments, their complicit media and politically liberal citizenry freaked out about a virus, I’ve become more skeptical about the urgency of climate change and the effectiveness of efforts to curb it. The Coronamaniacs have made me think that the Climate Change People (“the CCP”) are similarly misguided. The same anxious individuals comprise each camp, have the same apocalyptic, group-thinking mindset, rely on similarly superficial information, use the same tactics and are both bankrolled by creepy malefactors like Bill Gates, George Soros and Sam Bankman-Fried. The last three years have deepened my aversion to fear mongering and stampeding human herds.

I work with college students, many of whom are lathered up about the climate. I tell them that, when I was their age, many students—not including me—fretted about nuclear annihilation. In 1984, my leftist International Law professor confidently predicted that a thermonuclear device would be detonated somewhere on the globe within the next ten years. I doubted it.

Here we are, 38 years later. I was right to think that heads of state weren’t crazy enough to nuke each other.

I recently saw a 1972 headline, in which a CCP-ster warned that we had only seven years to solve global warming. Over the past five decades, a series of climateers have continually reset the Doomsday Clock. This week, I saw a prognostication that we now have nine years left to reverse the warming trend. Given all of the missed carbon reduction deadlines, should the climate-panicked just declare that we’re cooked? Or maybe the pessimists should admit that prior forecasts were wrong. Like those who have belatedly and contemptibly switched jerseys and now say they opposed Covid school closures, the climate alarmists know that most people didn’t hear, or will forget, what they said just a year or two ago.

Controlling climate change via governmental interventions seems as unrealistic as the Covid mitigation measures have been. I criticized Coronamania from Day 1 because I knew viruses were ubiquitous, because this virus threatened only those who were already very old and/or unhealthy and because isolating people from each other couldn’t have sustainably thwarted a virus. Similarly, it’s hard to believe that taking web-recommended steps like imposing car congestion pricing or changing one’s light bulbs could reverse a warming trend perhaps driven by solar activity or, if caused by humans, driven principally by mega greenhouse gas emissions in other nations that won’t ever stop burning carbon-based fuel, pouring concrete or raising livestock.

There’s never been a clearer example of mass willingness to believe catastrophic prophecies than during Coronamania. The widespread embrace of the various, theatrical “mitigation” measures has been bizarre. None of these practices could have made a virus disappear. Further, even if the direst Covid predictions had come to pass, global population would still have climbed to 8 billion people, as it just did. Yet, governments profoundly disrupted nearly everyone’s life, and many complied, ostensibly to protect everyone from a virus that threatened only a tiny fraction of the planet’s oldest, sickest people. Analogously, regarding climate, why take a sledgehammer to human societies and economies on the off chance of slightly lowering global temperatures? And why didn’t climate activists point out that the trillions of dollars wasted on the Covid overreaction could have instead been spent on various forms of enduring environmental protection? To begin, plant more trees.

Throughout the past 33 months, I’ve wondered why Coronamaniacs have acted so concerned about old people dying. Instead, one might have expected the Coroanamanic climate-alarmists to appreciate the virus’s ostensible culling of some of the greenhouse gas-generating population. I’ve also wondered why the climate crew insisted that everyone inject experimental mRNA and wear masks. If they were sure that we regressive, unmasked non-injectors would perish, why not just let us die and take our carbon footprints with us? If the shots and masks worked, what threat did the shot/mask-averse pose to Team Panic? Or did Team Panic demand all to mask in order to build fear and to jab so as to expedite mass death? If so, it’s kind of working; excess mortality has increased 15% in highly-vaxxed, cf. less vaxxed, nations.

When the shots they harangued everyone to take, failed, the Corona/Climate Crew pivoted to Ukraine, even though they had ignored wars and atrocities at other times in other nations. It seems that liberal alarm about Coronamania, climate, Ukraine and the next thing—whatever it may be—manifests generalized anxiety and an eagerness to scapegoat, and to control, others. Further, such abiding alarm is an attempt to opportunistically galvanize a Democrat coalition and to artificially build markets and hand out contracts for government-sponsored and subsidized Covid and climate products: PCR tests and vaxxes on the one hand and solar panels, electric cars and multiple studies/consultancies on the other.

During both their Coronamania and climate diatribes, Team Panic invokes the “Science is Real” mantra. But the Science devotees regarding either cause tend to have taken or read very little science, nor scrutinized “the data” on which they purport to rely. Instead, these Gender Studies, Anthropology or English majors rely on phony stats or some story they heard on NPR. Anyone familiar with the Covid data knew the virus threatened only a small, clearly definable demographic and that locking down, masking up, testing and injecting everyone didn’t work. But just as every 90 year-old in a nursing home who died with, not from, a virus was considered proof of a global public health crisis, every hot July day is cited as proof of climate change.

I suspect that the data used to support the notion of rapid climate change are gamed, just as many of the central Covid data re: death rates, infection rates and vaxx success rates have been crassly distorted. I know the downright dishonest tricks brought to bear on Covid stats; I’ve described these in prior posts. Examining the climate data would likely disclose similar, agenda-driven distortions.

The Corona/Climate-Panicked derived their gloomy perspectives by watching slanted documentaries, viewing or listening to biased news coverage or their friends. They’re sure they’re right because a cherry-picked “scientist”—such as the habitually wrong Fauci, Birx or Pfizer reps, or some climate counterpart—said so. They ignore the many anti-panic scientists in both the Corona and climate contexts. As do their beloved late-night talk show hosts, and as a way of concealing the gaps in their knowledge, Team Panic members sarcastically disparage those who raise questions re: Covid or climate management. They figure that irony preempts reason or discussion.

The fear mongers peremptorily invoke/wield the shibboleths “Pandemic” and “Climate Change,” as if to foreclose rational discussion of these topics. The propaganda techniques in both contexts are remarkably similar. Corona panic was shaped by images of people hooked to respirators, which, by the way, turned out to cause deaths. Similarly, climate panickers envision stranded polar bears, even though many say that polar ice sheets are actually growing. Predictably, some climateers blamed Covid on climate change; another Theory of Everything.

Both the Coronamaniacs and the CCP have manifested hypocrisy throughout. To begin with, many of the climate change-focused and the Covid fearmongers are wealthier, and generate far more carbon, than average. Instead of Zoom calling, the latest international climate conference attendees traveled to Egypt in over 400 private jets. Many climate activists have multiple homes, including houses along beaches they predict will be submerged. They resemble Newsom socializing with a crowd at a restaurant, Birx with her Thanksgiving gathering and maskless Fauci during the lockdown/mask madness. The alarmists flout rules that they enforce against others.

In general, various behaviors connote deficits of judgment. For example, I question the general judgment of those who get big-ass tattoos, are habitual video gamers, attend Barry Manilow concerts or keep rodents as pets. In the same way, those who have stridently supported lockdowns, masks, tests and shots have displayed poor thinking that lessens their credibility on other topics, such as the climate. As did the boy who cried wolf, the climate-panicked lost credibility by freaking out about a respiratory virus that threatened only a tiny fraction of the population that was already not long for this world.

In general, the Coronamaniacs and the climate-focused like to get worked up about things. Fanny Lou Hamer, the 1950s-60s Mississippian Civil Rights activist used to say she was “Sick and tired of being sick and tired.” But whether it’s nuclear war, Coronamania, climate change, Ukraine or any other liberal cause, some people never get tired of thinking and warning that catastrophe is imminent. These exponents of fear not only waste their own time and emotion; they damage other peoples’ lives.

Team Panic members fail to see that they’ve been played by the “elites” who profit and gain more power from these scams. But the panicked don’t mind being codependent chumps; they love the drama.