Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series on climate change and the controversial environmental report recently released by the US government. It is based on an interview on Liberty Nation Radio with environmental expert Dr. Bonner Cohen. In part one, Dr. Cohen discussed how the government report has been falsely portrayed as a product of the Trump administration, and how the dire predictions of environmental activists have not come true. Read part one here.
In the 1970s, environmentalists warned of a coming ice age. Just three decades later, they predicted the opposite - catastrophic global warming.
What gives? While we are now warned of human-induced climate change - which has replaced global warming as the left’s operative phrase since the planet has not actually warmed in the 21st century - Dr. Bonner Cohen, environmental expert at the National Council for Public Policy Research who joined us on LN Radio, says the hysteria is entirely misguided, and that a cooling planet is a far greater threat than a warming one.
...we have discerned absolutely no warming whatsoever.
Tim Donner: It does seem that after a period of global warming up to the end of the 20th century, there was no warming for the first dozen or so years of this century, which is why they changed the moniker from global warming, which was apparently too specific, to climate change, which is all encompassing. But that warming has now supposedly resumed. Is this accurate? Has global warming resumed over the last three, four years? And what might have changed in the environment to cause that warming to resume?
Dr. Bonner Cohen: According to satellite readings, we have discerned absolutely no warming whatsoever. It still fluctuates. It'll tick up, it'll tick down. There doesn't appear to be any trend now whatsoever. That shouldn't be surprising, because that's just the way the climate works.
Two hundred fifty years ago, we were at the end of what is known as the little ice age which, aside from being a much cooler planet than what we have now, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide were only around 250 parts per million. Today they are around 400 parts per million. And for that, we should be very thankful because higher levels of CO2 are very good for agriculture and good for greening the planet. The last thing we want to do is keep CO2 levels artificially low because we have eight billion people to feed on this planet, some of whom are right on the edge of starvation, and we need to produce as much food as possible to do that. And CO2 levels are a tremendous benefit to agriculture.
So, just think, in the last two million years, which in geological terms, is nothing, we have had 17 ice ages. On 17 different occasions, the earth has cooled off so much that we had gigantic glaciers stretching from the north pole as far south as Kentucky that were as thick as two miles. And on 17 different occasions, for reasons we quite frankly don't understand, those ice ages came to an end and all of those gigantic sheets of ice melted. We're living now in an interglacial period, which means we're living between the last ice age and the next one.
And that's the real climate change we ought to be worried about, not the climate change of fear mongering environmentalists who are simply trying to create a market for renewable energy, which is one of their biggest sources of funding. But rather, what happens if the earth starts to cool? Because that is something that will be very detrimental to human health and the environment.
Tim: Well do I remember in the 1970s when the big scare from environmental activists was, in fact, about the next ice age, quite the opposite of global warming, which is the tune they sang after that and before climate change. How far is it reasonable, if at all, for the government to go in addressing changes in the climate without damaging the economy to the point where the cure is worse than the disease?
Dr. Cohen: I think it's important to realize that the climate is going to change. It's going to warm up, it's going to cool down. What we need to do is adapt to whatever Mother Nature throws at us. And in so doing, instead of government mandates, forcing us to do X, Y, and Z, we should simply be very careful about how we construct buildings along coastal regions, but that we should continue to have a diversified source of energy making abundant use of the natural resources at our disposal so that people have unimpeded access to reliable and affordable energy. And, that we can use the creative talents of the American people to come up with all sorts of innovations that will protect us from the warming of the planet, if that's what happens, or, and this is a far greater danger, a cooling of the planet. Because, believe me, we will experience both.
