Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson    Red Bluff Daily News   8/22/2023

Man-made but not from CO2

My “national issues” column on my ad-free blog, donpolson.blogspot.com: Were the Jan. 6 Capitol riots intended…by Democrats? Results-changing election fraud; Trump-enomics vs. Bidenomics; Oliver Anthony—Voice of the people?

Heartfelt, well-written pieces on the Maui fires additionally memorialize the unimaginable suffering and valiant recovery of the town of Paradise. Intellectual honesty now requires that we scrutinize the now-known causes, in Paradise, Hawaii and the ongoing Canadian fires. Throughout, we find human causality piled on nature’s random disasters, rather than any theorized anthropogenic global warming/“boiling” or climate change/“crisis.”

Quasi-religious fervor, the “crusade” mentality, has taken hold among impressionable young climate warriors whose objective knowledge could fit in a pamphlet-sized screed to which they lend their passionate, oversized sense of ideological self-importance. Include governmental, non-governmental and scientific influencers whose lack of intellectual honesty belies not-so-hidden agendas of control.

Could all the resources of mankind, in a “whole of governments” campaign, create or neutralize a single hurricane, earthquake, tornado or major river’s course or existence? Irrefutably not! In millions of years of geological history, human existence covers a mere blip—George Carlin used to say that if humans disappeared one day, the earth would shrug and say, “That was interesting.”

Geological, historical measurements of CO2 and temperatures show little correlation. Those measurements show our carbon dioxide levels are markedly low compared to evidence of levels many times current 400 or so parts per million.

Compared to a 100,000-seat stadium the recent rise from 300 to 400 parts per million is like an extra 10 people added to a full stadium. It would not be noticed by the 99,990 other attendees; nor is such a miniscule rise in atmospheric CO2 any more noticeable than the minute temperature fluctuations around your house, let alone your sense of today’s temperatures compared to a fraction of a degree difference a year or two ago.

Fanatics and their scientific enablers are loath to admit the massive failure of their predictions going back 50 years; charts show “computer model forecasts” of temperatures vastly overstating trends compared to actual measurements. A recitation of other predictions—ice-free Arctic, millions of people dead from starvation, vast extinctions of animal life, ad infinitum, ad nauseum—reads like a sci-fi climate horror film. Hollywood trick photography, hidden perspectives and digital, computer-generated illusions, all.

The laughable, seriously-intoned “hottest in 125,000 years” news reports differ little from disaster movie versions: 1) Only weather balloon and satellite readings have consistent reliability, compared to ground-based stations surrounded by “heat islands” of roads and parking lots; 2) Since 1979, balloons/satellites show one or two tenths of a degree increase per decade over 40 years—and negligible rise in most of the last 18 years;

3) No scientifically accurate temperature readings exist before the late 1800s; 4) The same scientists pretending to “read” precise temperatures 100,000 years ago won’t acknowledge the vast fluctuations over millions of years, glacial and inter-glacial periods, the warmer-than-now Minoan, Roman and Medieval Warming periods, or the “Little Ice Age” prior to the 1800s. Computer models are “junk in, junk out” pseudo-science.

I’ve previously cited the Shaver Lake (look it up) example, proving that consistent, decades-long forest thinning and controlled burns provide reliable stop-gaps against fires fueled by overgrowth; it’s the only reliable means of protecting towns and valuable forest resources. It’s said that the only forests immune to fire are those already burned, but forests thinned of “stair-step” layers of tinder are the next best thing.

It can’t be denied that, just as PG&E’s lack of maintenance was partly due to legislatively-driven regulatory demands for expanding “green” energy, environmentalists opposed clear-cutting undergrowth beneath and around power lines. So too was Hawaiian Electric focused on the “transition” to wind and solar to the neglect of rotting power poles seen falling from high winds and sparking grass fires.

Previous Hawaiian fires had been studied and found to be exacerbated by the proliferation of “non-native” grasses, perhaps introduced for animal grazing, but then left to spread, grow and die creating tinderboxes of fuel. Responders left one fire after pronouncing it “out,” only to have it flare up, ultimately destroying the town of Lahaina.

Eighteen years ago, we spent our 20^th wedding anniversary on Maui, in a flat with an ocean view, and a large open balcony inviting birds to nibble in our living space. We marveled at the lack of flying bugs and the daily exploration of beach after beach. Costco sold fish not available here, which we cooked and enjoyed. At a restaurant in Lahaina, we were surprised that it wasn’t as good as what we prepared for ourselves. Memories and photos of that town, including snorkeling off a Lahaina beach, are all that’s left.

Finally, fires in Canada threaten Yellowknife, a town of 20,000 in British Columbia. Over 90 percent of Canada’s forests are government owned. You could say that socialized forests, mismanaged by government, not climate change, are the cause of Canada’s conflagrations.

At donpolson.blogspot.com, you’ll find “How ‘global warming’ causes wildfires--it's called government incompetence,” by David Strom; and “State-Level Incompetence Made the Maui Fires Possible,” by Lincoln Brown.