March 02, 2020

When a poet is a better prophet than the prophets

It would be difficult to be a worse prophet than the Greenies.  Starting from Paul Ehrlich, they repeatedly make these confident prophecies that in some number of years disasters will befall us unless we do something that they want. But it just doesn't happen.  When the prophesied year rolls around, life just goes on as usual.

During Australia's recent summer bushfire season, all sorts of Greenie-influenced people screeched that the fires were the result of global warming and unless we shut down our our entire electricity generation industry the fires would get worse. They were so shrill about their claims that PM Morrison came under great pressure to "do more" about global warming.

And then came something that no Greenie had prophesied -- showing how little they understood of the events concerned.  It rained. And DID it rain!  Concerns about fire were rapidly replaced with concerns about flooding. The Greenie prophecies that the fires would go on until we did something about global warming were thoroughly falsified.  The Greenies basically did not know anything about how Australia's climate worked.

But a poet did.  In 1908 Dorothea MacKellar described Australia's climate with limpid simplicity, as being "Droughts and flooding rains".  She knew how Australia's climate went even if the Greenies did not.  It happened this year exactly how she said it always does: Drought followed by flood.  She was a good observer.

The Greenies were no observers at all.  We were constantly regaled with assurances that the recent fires were the worst ever when in fact the 1974/75 fires consumed a much bigger area.  Lies on top of ideology were all the Greenies had to offer.

And there is no doubt that the drought contributed to the buildup of fuel in the forests and made the fires worse.  Dry vegetation burns well.  But what was the cause of the drought?  Was it simply a recurrent feature of the Australian climate?  No way! said the Greenies. It was caused  by global warming.

For instance we have the opening sentence from a recent rather emptyheaded article in a prestigious medical journal (JAMA) which says: "There is increasing scientific consensus that climate change is the underlying cause of the prolonged dry and hot conditions that have increased the risk of extreme fire weather in Australia".

But that is magical thinking. Global warming would cause MORE rain, not less.  Warmer oceans would evaporate off more water vapour which would come down as more rain.  The temperature that causes drought is cooling, not warming.  So again the global warming faith flies in the face of the facts

Most global warming activism is purely political with agitators  such Thunberg and Occasio-Cortez knowing nothing of the detailed climate statistics. And it is mostly from them that the wild predictions come. Scientists  -- such as Ezekiel -- who do know the facts are much more cautious in their predictions.





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