The new hot topic

Is it coincidence or is the Left making a renewed push to make climate change a major campaign issue?

Supposedly this area will be 90% under water by century’s end. Looks like the water has a good head start. Photo taken in Blackwater Refuge, January 2019.

I am active in a local social media board that talks about Sussex County politics where the moderator leans significantly to the left. So does the “group expert” who works for Food & Water Watch. There are a couple of us that are active at the site who are in their right minds, so we have some spirited discussions. The site has its usefulness, though, which is why I remain there.

But it also inspired today’s post.

While it’s very connected to the specter of offshore wind - which is a controversial topic in and of itself - I’ve noticed a few news items have come out recently that talk about sea level rise. One noted that, “NASA’s sea level rise projection tool indicates that sea levels in this area (Blackwater Refuge, where I took the photo above) could rise by between 0.6 and 1 meter by 2100.”

Setting aside the mission creep that puts NASA, which is supposed to deal with space, in the middle of the climate change debate, a little bit of basic math will tell you that we are talking about 1/2” of rise per year - assuming, of course, that their forecast is right when the government has to predict hurricanes in a range of probability a few months out. If they’re wrong by half, it would be 1” a year, if they are wrong the other way it’s 1/4” per year (or the levels may instead recede.) Either way, for most folks with waterfront property it’s a manageable rise.

Yet those who religiously believe in manmade climate change seem to believe that the only way we can deal with it is to radically change our lifestyle: cutting out reliable so-called “fossil fuels” oil, coal, and natural gas in favor of intermittent and capricious solar and wind power that creates the electricity to power the EVs that government is trying to force into the market while eliminating the good old reliable internal combustion engine that gave freedom of movement to millions.

It’s a bunch of points I’ve been making at that forum and elsewhere, but here I don’t have some book-learning “expert” trying to shout me down who believes those who are against these changes are paid off by the oil companies while ignoring the millions of dollars from environmental groups behind the “science” that lines up with his views.

So let’s think about climate change for a little bit. At an absolute micro level, our climate changes each day as it warms up when the sun rises and cools as it sets. However, even that simplistic explanation is incorrect because there can be days and times of year when the temperature rises at night and drops during the day as winds shift and/or a frontal boundary passes. Then, at a somewhat larger level, we have the change of seasons which occur because of the fluctuations in length of sunlight during the day - yet that’s not an exact science either because there’s a lagging effect: while the longest day of the year is in late June and the shortest just before Christmas, the most extreme weather months are January, February, July, and August. And the difference between the two (which is about 40 degrees locally) dwarfs the predicted temperature rise some believe the Earth will have between now and the end of the century. Even if that rise is 3 degrees Celsius, that’s about 5 degrees Fahrenheit, which is about half a month in terms of time. (Put another way, the springlike weather that takes hold here in early April would then arrive in mid-March, while the fall chill will slide from late October to mid-November.)

But that assumes the extremes in change. There’s nothing that says we couldn’t have a series of events that usher in the next Ice Age at that time - after all, we went from overly hot weather during the Depression to a chilly decade of the 1970s, when my home area of northwest Ohio had significant blizzards two winters in a row and some bone-chilling weather.

Certainly some will say that the science shows temperatures continue to rise and the latest scare is that the Gulf Stream will cease because of it. Yet the only solutions that seem to be presented regarding this entail curtailing our lifestyle and paying more for the (lack of) privilege, such as a “carbon tax” that penalizes us if our emissions don’t go down to the amount this (unelected) body decrees they do. If you ask the regular folks, they’ll likely think it a bridge too far. (But see what I said about “those who religiously believe in manmade climate change” above.)

See, I used to believe in an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy, but I’ve been slowly getting off that train as they debate whether to place wind turbines offshore and take up more and more of the land with solar panels built in a nation which points missiles at us.

Robert Bryce

has a good primer on energy density if you care to read it and understand the inherent problem with renewables.

And I think that energy, particularly the focus on renewables and “climate change,” is going to be an issue in 2024, but not in the way that the Left hopes it is. When people figure out it’s costing big bucks to get what’s supposed to be “free” energy from the wind and sun, they’re going to ask why we can’t stay with the tried and true. They’ve stopped believing the tales about climate change because, for fifty years, the dire predictions never came to pass.

Government may not think so, but We the People are pretty smart and we can adjust to what is thrown at us.

In the meantime, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now.