Climate Change Is an Ever-Moving Target

Written by Walker Wildmon

[Last] week, over 400 private jets flew into Glasgow, Scotland, for the annual UN Climate Change Conference, also known as the Conference of the Parties (COP26). The entire climate change movement is built on the belief that man is in control of the climate and that we are contributing to the change of the climate because we emit carbon through various common energy sources.

Whether it be driving a gas-burning car, flying a jet that uses jet fuel, or warming your home with electricity that is produced by coal, all of these are modern-day examples of humans polluting the planet and creating climate change, according to those who submit to this belief system.

The drivers of this movement believe that man-made climate change is causing the ice caps in Antarctica to melt, hurricanes to become more frequent, and all other natural disasters to be worse than they would be had man not polluted the earth.

This week, during his COP26 speech, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson stated, “[A] red digital clock ticks down remorselessly to a detonation that will end human life as we know it. And we are in roughly the same position, my fellow global leaders, as James Bond today. Except that the tragedy is, this is not a movie, and the doomsday device is real, and the clock is ticking to the furious rhythm of hundreds of billions of pistons and turbines and furnaces and engines with which we are pumping carbon into the air faster and faster, record outputs, and quilting the earth in a suffocating blanket of CO2.”

If you listen to Johnson’s speech without historical context, then you’d be ready to ditch your car and start riding a bike or Tesla to work. The glaring problem is that people have been claiming a climate change doomsday scenario for decades now.

In 1969, a New York Times story included comments by Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich in which he said the following regarding climate change: “We must realize that unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.”

In 1977, Time magazine predicted another ice age on the horizon by stating, “However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe, they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.”

Fast forward to 2008 when Al Gore predicted that the Arctic would be ice-free within five years because of global warming — another name for climate change. Well, we’re in 2021, and there are still historically normal levels of ice in the Arctic.

It has become clear that the science driving this doomsday belief in man-made climate change is shallow, to say the least, if not outright fraudulent.

Should humans strive to maintain a clean and safe environment? Absolutely. In Genesis, God tasked man with dominion over the earth. Man should be good stewards of God’s creation and that includes not carelessly polluting the earth. That being said, humans have discovered reliable energy sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas, and we should be able to use these energy sources wisely to advance the betterment of humankind.

So-called renewable energy sources, such as solar energy and wind energy, have largely proven unreliable in sustaining energy supply for heavy demand needs. Are these useful in certain scenarios? Yes, but when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining, we still need energy.

My warning to policymakers: Do not rush to wind energy and solar energy. America should take a slow and methodical move to diversify our energy sources so that tragic wind and solar energy failures don’t continue to occur.