Chicken Little likes to walk in the woods. She likes to look at the trees. She likes to smell the flowers. She likes to listen to the birds singing.
One day while she is walking an acorn falls from a tree, and hits the top of her little head.
– My, oh, my, the sky is falling. I must run and tell the lion about it, – says Chicken Little and begins to run.
She runs and runs. By and by she meets the hen.
– Where are you going? – asks the hen.
– Oh, Henny Penny, the sky is falling and I am going to the lion to tell him about it.
– How do you know it? – asks Henny Penny.
– It hit me on the head, so I know it must be so, – says Chicken Little.
In these times of a slow economic recovery, and the threat of terrorism by Islamic fanatics, our president continues to express alarm about “climate change” espousing the view that it is the most important danger that we presently face to our way of life. The idea of us humans causing our world destruction by producing excess of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere goes back to the late 1800’s when a formula to measure CO2 was developed. Indeed, the Washington Post published in 1922 an article claiming the oceans getting warmer, seals vanishing and icebergs melting! Some even considered the abnormal warming trend to be causing Hitler’s aggressiveness and expansionism. Sound familiar? Later on we were told that another “ice age” was imminent an idea that deserved a front page exposure in Time magazine. Unable to sell the idea of warming or freezing, the absurd term of “climate change” started. Of course climate changes, that is why we have four seasons! So what are the facts, and how much of the discussion is politics.
A cursory review of the topic makes it clear that unusual temperature changes are part of nature, and the earth is not a static planet, being influenced by a myriad of factors, so many that it is hard to believe that only one (excess CO2) could be important. Because of technology and recent studies, it is also a fact that every several millenniums this change is so drastic that produces a shift in our poles with catastrophic consequences. These changes accounts for the “ice age”, and the termination of past civilizations, thousands of years BC when emissions to our atmosphere were non existing. Valid questions remain. Are present human conveniences with carbon based electricity, autos, planes, etc accelerating the usual climate cycles and making the inevitable cataclysmic occurrence to come sooner? And if so can we do something about it? The models repeatedly cited by the UN and our EPA have historically overestimated the warming cycles but they have not changed. Reputed scientists that have used more to date formulas show no relationship between using carbons source energy and warming. In fact after a cooling period the world temperature has leveled. Also, the frequent association of natural disasters, droughts, hurricanes, to carbon emissions often cited by politicians is denied by all, including the UN’s IPCC.
Even after all doomsday predictions have not happened and there is no consistent evidence of the human factor in changes of climate, a case could be made of being “better safe than sorry”. Unfortunately, the solutions proposed will not solve the problem if it indeed exists and on this fact all science agrees. It is hard to explain why this topic continues to be exploited. In the short term we could see how a change of subject, as recommended by Alinsky, could help an administration faced with constant criticism in its foreign policy. Not only the regulations proposed by our EPA, will not have any significant impact on our climate, but they could bring an economic world crisis in which the very poor will suffer famine and death. The hypocrisy of our world leaders that in these last days met in Paris a reunion that produced 300,000 tons of CO2, more than what 23,000 average citizens create in a year, brings to mind another more heinous motivation. Can it be that economic ambitions of the few that have billions invested in alternate sources of energy, plus the goal of eliminating the US as a world leader to be able to rule under an international organization like the UN is the reason? Many think so, but I will not go that far. Anyway it has to be considered.
God help us!
Fernando J. Milanes, MD
