The catastrophe du jour

Honestly, if you can't trust the king, whom can you trust?

It's always good to be reminded of predictions like this and whether any of them — even just one — has come true. If not, why would we put our faith in them? One might as well consult a palm reader, a horoscope, or a fortune cookie to get similar results.

The International Energy Administration has released a new report that finds since 2020 governments around the world have spent $1.34 trillion investing in clean energy. The result has been negligible to nothing in reducing global temperatures. In 2022 global CO2 emissions hit their highest levels ever. Canadian forest fires are likely to increase carbon emissions, countering whatever progress has been made by the wind and solar energy industries.

The British doomsday clock is not original. During the Cold War, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists had a similar clock which predicted how close they believed we were to nuclear self-destruction. Now they've added what they call "dangerous technologies" in predicting a world without humanity. One of the benefits of being a liberal is never having to admit you were wrong about previous predictions and with the media's help you can just move on to the next one.

The solutions to "climate change" have regressed from the quasi-serious to the ridiculous. Consider this from a recent article in the respected journal Scientific American: "It takes a lot of water and energy to make negronis, Manhattans and margaritas. Could we do with less ice?"

It's not enough for the climate "experts" to demand governments regulate everything from light bulbs, to meat, to gas stoves and the cars we drive. Now they have gone too far by suggesting governments should regulate our cocktails.

Perhaps we could learn something from the Germans, or at least their Socialist/Green Party, which wants to ban fossil fuel furnaces from every home and building in the country by forcing everyone to install heat pumps. The delicious irony is that the Greens haven't been able to get heat pumps working at their Berlin headquarters. Costs have run into the millions.

It gets better (or worse). Politico reports: "The White House offered measured support for the idea of studying how to block sunlight from hitting Earth's surface as a way to limit global warming..." If this comes true, we might have to take many more Vitamin D pills. The suntan lotion industry will likely go bankrupt.

Every Chicken Little prediction about the environment — from forecasts by scientific "experts" in the 1970s of a coming Ice Age in which we will all freeze to death, to the current alarmists who have made various wrong predictions about us burning to death — has failed to deter those who want to increase government's power over our lives.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute lists just some of the failed predictions of global Armageddon over the last 50 years.

They would be laughable if they weren't serious at the time. A personal favorite was a prediction of worldwide famine. Now our main problem, at least in America, seems to be obesity. Again, why would anyone put their faith in such stupidity?

The late comedian W.C Fields said, "A man's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another drink."

I'll have mine with lots of ice. A toast: Long live the king!

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Cal Thomas, America's most-syndicated columnist, is the author of 10 books.