Today People Blame Cars for Changing the Weather, They Used to Blame Witches

A new book predicts "100 Million Climate Refugees by 2050." 

Disagree, and you're likely to be labeled a "climate denier" because, we're told,  "the science is settled."

No Climate Debate Allowed

When NBC's Meet the Press did a special on climate change recently, skeptics were kept off the program. 

Host Chuck Todd told viewers, "We're not going to debate [climate change]. We're not going to give time to climate deniers. The science is settled, even if political opinion is not."

These Top Climate Scientists Are Skeptical

But the science of climate change is only settled for those who believe the climate models, or those scientists afraid of losing research dollars by denying it's a problem. Several of America's top climate scientists, like Dr. Roy Spencer, say it's not settled at all.

Before becoming a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Dr. Spencer was a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

"What's ironic," Spencer says, "is that those of us who are skeptical and outspoken about climate change, for instance, myself, John Christy, MIT's Dick Lindzen, are more credentialed than most of the alarmists you will find in the media being quoted today.  A lot of those people have degrees in geography or they don't have any kind of science degree at all.  These are people that really don't know what they're talking about." 

"We are the credentialed ones. They are not," Spencer told us.

What is Causing the Warming?

Spencer agrees the earth has warmed, and that carbon dioxide warms the atmosphere, but there are still too many other possible natural causes of the earth's warming.  Is it from deep ocean circulation, or is it simply a rebound from the period known as little ice age? 

Spencer said, "We don't understand natural causes of climate change, and since we don't understand them, we can't put them in a climate model.  It's entirely possible there are cyclical changes probably related to deep ocean circulation that are causing these things, but we don't know."

Weather is Not Getting More Severe

We're told in the media that climate change has made weather more severe, even though the statistics say otherwise. The number of large tornadoes has gone down dramatically since the 1950s. Hurricane activity in the US is still at a historic low.

Spencer said, "There's been no long-term change in global hurricane activity in the U.S. We went for almost 12 years without a major hurricane strike in the United States. That was something that a NASA scientist had calculated is about a one-in-250-year event for us to go that long."

What Caused Huge Hurricanes Centuries before the SUV?

In fact, some of the worst hurricane activity in the eastern United States was long before the widespread use of fossil fuels.  

The Atlantic coast of the United States was reformed by monster hurricanes that struck between the 1600s and 1800s, long before so-called greenhouse gasses and SUVs. Some were much more devastating than hurricanes that we see in the mid-Atlantic today.

A piece of land at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay is geographic testimony to the great hurricanes hundreds of years ago. Willoughby Spit in Norfolk, Virginia was created by those hurricanes. Hurricanes pushed 800 acres, more than a square mile of sand into place to create the peninsula. 

Climate Change and Witch Hunts in the 1500s

Today people blame cars for the weather. They used to blame witches. Records show that during little ice age, beginning in the 1500s, a lot of people were executed for the charge of using witchcraft to change the weather. 

Steve Goreham, author of Outside the Green Box: Rethinking Sustainable Development said: "We had crop failures shorter growing seasons and it's recorded that hundreds of thousands of people were executed in Europe for the crime of witchcraft; people literally thought their neighbor was causing the shorter growing seasons. Today we have computer models that say your neighbor's SUV is affecting the storms and the climate. "

French philosopher Pascal Bruckner says the climate change movement resembles "a pagan religion" that pushes an apocalyptic narrative.

"Because it uses all the traditional elements of traditional religion, especially the theme of the apocalypse, Bruckner told us.

In pushing her multi-trillion-dollar "Green New Deal," Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says the world only has 12 years to prevent the worst effects of climate change.
 
Spencer says that kind of government policy will achieve nothing. He said, "You could get rid of the United States entirely. It would not have a measurable impact on future temperatures by the end of this century.

Meanwhile, the big loser is science, which has been corrupted by a system in which Spencer says grant money is largely only given to scientists who believe in manmade climate change. 

"Climate science is definitely being damaged," Spencer said, "When we talk about climate science because the scientists involved I think are twisting the truth."

And Spencer wonders what will happen when skeptics such as himself eventually pass from the scene, while an entire generation of young people is being raised to believe the earth faces doomsday.