Don's Tuesday Column

              THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   7/26/2022

Hot enough for ya? It’s just weather

What better time to engage in agenda-driven “climate crisis” hype than during summer heat waves? Do scary stories about floods serve the purpose? Focus on monsoons and areas predictably subject to bursts or weeks of rainfall. Want to use the ravages of wildland fires and the misery of people burned out of their homes to paint a dire picture of a world on fire? Just look to overgrown forests resulting from decades of illogical suppression of forest-floor cleansing blazes, add any spark or lightning—wildfires happen, not because of a warming planet but because of irresponsible forest practices.

Consider power lines and how clearing undergrowth impacts conflagrations; some of the worst recent fires started from PG&E’s equipment failures. Overgrown, thick forests with layers of fuel are the difference between a minor, contained and easily extinguished blaze, and a massively destructive “fire-nado.”

Has there been any analysis of PG&E’s legal and agency mandates that required their limited budget to build the most expensive power sources: “green” solar and wind turbines? Was their maintenance budget cut back in deference to the “green” items? I suspect so.

As we drove through powerline-laced central Oregon, there were 100 yards-wide areas cut down to grasses under the towers and lines. Would any attempt in California to clear that width of foliage under power lines be subject to environmental restrictions, reports, legal obstruction and years-long delays? The removal of some trees would add significant safety around the lines, but if their diameter is larger than enviros tolerate—can’t have that. Just sayin’ it’s “green policy,” not global warming.

In “Wrong, legacy media, climate change is not causing summer heatwaves in the U.S. and Europe,” meteorologist Anthony Watts (website: wattsupwiththat.com) deconstructs the hype over what are historically regular heatwaves. He posted a temperature map that includes all of Europe, not just the western and U.K. parts experiencing hotter-than-normal days.

“You won’t find reported in the BBC or in the newspapers/Internet media the fact that, while record heat was going on in Western Europe, Eastern Europe was experiencing well below average temperatures.” The UK reporting media also add to the “scary factor” by using red and dark red colors to indicate temperatures that turn out to be…the same as daytime highs 10 years ago with no “alarming colors.”

Every day, some localities will have record daytime highs, record nighttime lows, record daytime lows or record nighttime highs. It’s natural variation with marginal contribution from human activity.

“As reported in Climate at a Glance: U.S. Heatwaves: …in recent decades in the United States, heat waves have been far less frequent and severe than they were in the 1930s. The all-time high temperature records set in most states occurred in the first half of the twentieth century. The heat wave of 1936 was far deadlier. To their credit, The Washington Post got it right in this report: ‘The killer U.S. heat wave of 1936 spread as far north as Canada, led to the heat-related deaths of an estimated 5,000 people, sent thermometers to a record 121 degrees Fahrenheit in Steele, N.D., and made that July the warmest month ever recorded in the United States.’

“A search of the term heatwaves, on Wikipedia, for instance, finds that a heatwave and drought in 1540 in Europe lasted for 11 months, and that a heatwave in 1757 was the hottest in the past 500 years until 2003. Also, Netweather Community TV called the 1906 heatwave in the U.K during August and September, ‘one of the most exceptional heatwaves to ever occur in the UK.’ A 1911 heatwave in France contributed to more than 41,000 premature deaths. [Note that this all occurred long before the obsession over “greenhouse gasses” took hold.]

“More recently, in Europe, there was a massive months-long heat wave in 1976. This came at a time when the Earth was experiencing a 30-year cooling trend, that led many scientists to warn the next ice age was looming. Wikipedia’s entry on the 1976 event reports: The summer of 1976 was considered to be the hottest summer in Europe, and especially the United Kingdom, during the 20th century.”

Even when media like the BBC and NYT scream headlines about the “hottest ever” day in UK history, 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), they ignore that that recording was at a Royal Air Force base covered with heat emanating asphalt and tarmac runways. It’s the same as the global warming alarmists refusing to admit that many weather recording stations have had parking lots, pavement and heat-producing AC build up around them.

The hype, alarm and catastrophe-izing must continue so that the (made-up) “crisis” doesn’t go to waste, so they can do things they couldn’t do otherwise (per Rahm Emmanuel). You have to be scared into not noticing the price of “de-carbonization” in energy costs, reduced standard of living/economic abundance and travel options. 

Hence, Biden’s threat to unilaterally use “executive orders” to shut down our oil and gas industries; and the SEC’s proposed rule, “The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors.” It's intended to exact market and monetary punishment on companies over supposed environmental noncompliance.

In June, Professors William Happer and Richard Lindzen published a 28-page paper, “As career physicists, science demonstrates there is no climate related risk caused by fossil fuels and CO2, thus no scientific basis for the proposed [SEC] rule and, if adopted, [it would cause] disastrous consequences for people worldwide and the U.S. because it would reduce CO2 and the use of fossil fuels.”

More next week.