Paul Craig Roberts on climate change

It seems that Paul Craig Roberts has not been persuaded by the climate change denialists

Global Warming Wrapup

Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts,

27 March, 2017

The mental convolutions in which some will engage in order to ignore the evidence that the polar ice caps are melting—and if not from warming from what?—is as astounding as the convolutions and denial of basic facts that characterize those who believe the government’s official 9/11 fairy tale.

If all science is rigged, as a few of you say, by the Bilderbergs, Rockefeller, or the Rothchilds, then where does your science, your information come from? If there is no reliable scientific information about climate change, what is the basis for your argument? Why are only carbon industry spokespersons honest? How come the Rothchilds didn’t rig them also?

Yes, the carbon tax is another way of following the money, but it obviously leads in the opposite direction of where a few want to take it. The carbon tax is not a solution offered by climate scientists. It is the industry solution backed by the industry’s free market libertarian allies and Wall St, which sees it as another profitable trading vehicle. The industry sees it as a replacement for regulation and emphasis on alternative green energy sources.

The readers who assured me that the polar ice always melts in summer and refreezes in winter did not know that more melts than refreezes and that the polar ice cap is shrinking dramatically.

The readers who said that there is no global warming now say that it is natural and not man-made, that it has happened before, and so on, which means next to nothing. The biosphere evolved in a way that supports life. When the delicate balance is altered, life dies out. With 150 years of deforestation while 1,500 gigatons of CO2 are dumped into the atmosphere, why is anyone surprised that the biosphere alters? If warming, whatever the cause, can result in the sudden release of methane equal to 1,000 gigatons of CO2, why would this have no effect?

Some readers assure me that global warming is the result of US geoengineering for war or against humanity; others say it results from the particles released in chem trails.

Some readers are exasperated with global warming denial:
“I fish 150 days a year minimum for decades now. Being an outdoorsman I notice the environment as do all of my hunting and fishing friends in upstate NY and MA. Not one of them denies global warming anymore, though it took more time for most of them to come around. But if you spend time outdoors eventually it washes over you – something ain’t right! In the late ’90s in western NY in November I stood in a Great Lakes Tributary in neoprene waders and the temperature hit 85 f. This killed the fishing because the snowmelt lowered the water temperature to the point the fish became lethargic while I broiled and had to run for the parking lot to change into my jeans and drink some water. I had already been noticing that winters came later and lasted for a shorter duration while summers were definitely hotter. The heatwaves threatened inland fisheries in the Catskills that never had problems before with heat induced fish kills. I started researching global warming and it didn’t take too much to convince me that what I had been experiencing was at the very least a substantial break from what I had grown up with and heading one direction – toward warming. There is so much natural evidence for observant outdoorsmen – the range of former primarily southern birds like Cardinals and Red-Bellied Woodpeckers that never wintered here are now established year-round in Northern climes. Range expansion due to global warming goes for plants and insects as well. I am so very tired of being told to ignore my lying eyes, to ignore common laws of physics and common sense, to accept ever more implausible explanations for obvious causes of events. This is truly the age of deception sponsored by the forces that constitute US corporate rule.”

Funny, isn’t it, that everyday experience corresponds with global warming.

Some readers do not understand that the measured rising temperatures are not products of a global warming model, but are actual measurements. The models can be as wrong as you like, and they have underpredicted the melting of the polar ice caps, but the actual measurements show warming. Are the Rothchilds paying or ordering all the measuring stations to report higher temperatures?

What is the point of telling me that you disagree with climate scientists? What does that mean? Are you more knowledgeable than climate scientists?

What is most amazing is those few who believe carbon industry climate science, but not other climate scientists. It is certainly the case that there is peer pressure in every discipline to stay within the paradigm of the profession. In economics, for example, just ask me or Michael Hudson about closed neoliberal minds. My Oxford professor’s theory of chemical absorption was suppressed for 4 decades because it did not fit within the existing paradigm. There is no doubt that the climate scientists could be wrong that CO2 emissions are the cause of global warming. But their explanation is the best that we have and is the only explanation that we can do anything about. So, should we just ignore what we do know, or think we know, on the basis of faith that God or nature will turn it around? The consequence of the information being correct, yet doing nothing is apocalyptic.

Keep in mind, also, that the same peer pressure that exists in science and academic disciplines also exists among carbon industry-financed climate science. How many scientists warning about global warming do you know who are financed by the Koch brothers?

It is also amazing that a few readers are so desperate to convert me to carbon industry propaganda. I simply reported on a report in a scientific journal. Why do I need to be shielded from reporting on a scientific report?