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Conspiracies and Climate Change: Hopelessness vs Hope

Say “conspiracy theory” and you kill dissenting opinions. Concerning climate change, however, you either slumber or choose your conspiracy. On one hand, there is impending global destruction that demands world government, resource rationing and severe population reduction. On the other hand are accusations of bogus science and scare tactics. You choose between the depression of humanism’s man-made climate change and a Creator God’s planet with people who are under still-current instruction to populate and subdue it.

The two perspectives define hopelessness and hope—for the planet and mankind. The humanist argument says resources are limited; their exhaustion looms. Man is destructive, a spoiler; control him, reduce his numbers, curtail his activities to prevent exhaustion of the world’s essentials. Each new baby gobbles resources. Man-made climate catastrophe preaches scarcity. Doomers say earth is fragile and delicate and can’t handle its human occupants so we must tiptoe on its tender turf.

The opposing philosophy—call it creationism—says the earth is for man’s use, to grow and prosper. It instructs us to enrich the land and make it better. Resources are plentiful and liberty is paired with the duty to subdue and improve the earth. Every baby is a welcome, never-before-seen collection of anticipated contributions. Creationism is faith-based—in mankind, in the planet, in its creator. The planet is strong and resilient; it has, and will, deal successfully with physical disruptions. Creationism carries the hope of growth and productive prosperity based on man’s wise use of natural resources and private property.

The humanist philosophy makes man so powerful that he can throw a planet off course, yet collapses his individual productivity and liberty by declaring his personal choices to be selfish. Humanism holds the political purse strings, occupies university podiums, buys the media, and stifles opponents. Creationism, by contrast, says that man makes mistakes and things aren’t perfect, then frees him to use earth’s bounty to make improvements and embrace opportunities.

Philosophical ruminations aside, gloom gurus say 97% of scientists accept their speculations. Many scientists originally saw the flaws in the theory, but have given up under peer pressure. Their support for natural, rather than man-made, climate change was shown by the signatures of 31,487 scientists on the Petition Project’s drive to reject man-made climate doom. The petition drive was conducted 15 years ago after Vice-President Al Gore signed the deeply flawed Kyoto Protocol of 1997. This inept treaty, which the Senate wisely refused to ratify, would have chained America to the UN’s global initiative to limit resource use.

The reality of a planet that can deal effectively with its occupants is common sense. “The alarmist predictions of man-made planetary doom are based on hypothetical mathematical models that have never been validated against the real world” according to Steve Milloy, founder of the Advancement of Sound Science Center and voice of junkscience.com. He and others point out that if the data used as the foundation of research are flawed, additional research mimics the flaws. The creators of The Petition Project decried “seeing the accomplishments of science demonized and one of the three most important molecular substances that make life possible – atmospheric carbon dioxide (the other two being oxygen and water) – denigrated as an atmospheric “pollutant”.

While the two conspiracy camps clash, both agree that climate change is occurring. The salient question is why, with disagreement centering on man’s involvement in the change. The famous “hockey-stick graph” that “proved” man causes destructive climate change, was disqualified for “methodological flaws”, i.e. phony science, a few years ago. This major scientific turnaround displayed a real boo-boo. Deep errors were found by two non-professionals, resulting in a Senate hearing on the matter. The thorn in the gloom-and-doom theory is a centuries-long medieval global warming/cooling period called the Little Ice Age, beginning about 1000 AD. Doomers must eliminate the Little Ice Age to validate their theories, so they manipulate data and graphs to silence the damning evidence that earth changes on its own from time to time.

We are arrogant if we believe our puny knowledge encompasses all the reasons our planet could change. Many known and unknown events such as volcanic eruptions change our climate. We are doubly arrogant to declare that we are sure of the cause of climate change and then manipulate public opinion and policy to enforce our speculations. Idaho Falls high school student Nathan Zohner uncovered widespread fears of a fragile planet with his 1997 science project titled “How Gullible are We?” He asked 59 fellow students if they favored banning “dihydrogen monoxide” from the planet and 43 answered yes. Guess again: dihydrogen monoxide is water. His story circled the globe with headlines such as “Scientific ignorance is no laughing matter.”

The mantra that people are polluters rather than contributors to a workable world offers big money and government control to those who preach fear. While we must insist on local enforcement of a clean environment, we are unwise to buy into “hypothetical mathematical models” that strip our right to use our resources. Earth was made for man, not the other way around.