The next great sucking sound

President-Elect Trump has pierced the veils surrounding the holy of holies wherein reside the eco-dogmatists of the EPA and the U.N. and promises the rightful return of respect to the essence of scientific research…skepticism. In 1746, philosopher Denis Diderot penned, “Skepticism is the first step towards truth.” Billions of taxpayer monies have been spent by our progressively bent government and its crony supplicants to turn that concept on its head. Mass media acolytes wordsmithed “skeptic” into a dirty word. Emulating the harsh but masterful government propaganda machine of 1930s Germany, they successfully convinced much of the public and ruling class that the life-sustaining trace gas, carbon dioxide, is an earth-destroying pollutant. Federal agencies promoted the concept and dispensed billions of dollars in lavishly funding those scientists and commercial interests willing to pervert the term “climate change,” a constant feature of geohistory, into a man-made threat and a money-making commercial enterprise. Classical scientific inquiry relies on axioms governing the formation of a tentative hypothesis, a nascent theory, and subsequent rigorous comparisons of predictions based on such a theory and real-world observations. Climate computer-derived forecasts have consistently failed to match long-term climate reality. Much of the error results from the dogmatic insistence by activist researchers that the model is reality, rather than a much simplified theoretical construct. A trusting public expects the tax monies and gifts showered on universities and researchers to result in scientific reports and validated findings based on an impartial process. What did it get?

It got Al Gore putting the carbon dioxide temperature change before the global temperature change horse. It got “ClimateGate.” It got a Supreme Court that ruled that the Earth’s greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. It got the “carbon dioxide endangerment finding” by the EPA administrator du jour that gave legal power to the federal bureaucracy to regulate greenhouse atmospheric concentrations because they “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” It got “ethanolized” gasoline, to the delight of corn farmers, but also a gas tank brew that gives lower mileage and more net pollution. It got wind and solar power advertised as “clean and free energy sources.” It got to see the resultant mountaintop destruction of natural habitats, and the conversion of farmland into automobile fuel stock. It got to see wind turbine slaughter of eagles become a federally countenanced collateral damage cost. It also thereby got needlessly more expensive and less reliable electric energy. It got higher tax bills as complicit state legislators mandated increasing use of highly subsidized renewables. It got “free solar” residential electricity subsidized by federal and state tax giveaways paid for on the backs of the poor. It got to see the oxymoron “crony capitalism” in action. It got to see scientifically illiterate Hollywood stars become climate and energy experts, forgetting that great actors become great by making the audience believe that what is not true seems true, and by mouthing words written by others. It got to see the dire computer-generated scare stories of coming climate catastrophes fail to materialize on schedule. It got to see a progressive waning of sunspot activity, and now a renewed concern about an approaching period of significant global cooling such as characterized the “Little Ice Age” of the 15th-18th century. Echoing Ross Perot, the next great sucking sound should be that of the Washington, D.C. swamp being drained and taking away the accumulated detritus of pseudo-science coopted in the service of false dogma and political favoritism, with the subsequent restoration of “skepticism” to its place as a benchmark for the advancement of scientific knowledge. Soon to be ex-president Obama is throwing as much sand as possible into the energy machinery on his way out the door. What can only be interpreted as a petulant and defiant act of sabotage, he is poisoning the well of energy and environmental reform promised by president-elect Trump. Labor employment figures may take a hit for a bit, as the newly unemployed bureaucrats, non-tenured university researchers, renewable energy businesses shorn of governmental subsidies, commercial mega-farmers of corn-for-ethanol, and the supporting cast of radical environmentalists and NGOs look for gainful employment. Charles G. Battig, M.S., M.D., Heartland Institute policy expert on environment; VA-Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment (VA-SEEE). His website is www.climateis.com.