Doubling down on crises

If a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, how terrible would it be to waste two simultaneous crises?

While still in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis and the Delta variant (isn't "crisis" overused and thus losing its power?), comes a report from a panel of scientists assembled by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organization that provides governments with information intended to shape their climate policies. The Sixth Assessment Report, "Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis," repeats what we have heard many times before: climate change is going to fry us all if governments don't do something to drastically reduce greenhouse gases.

To borrow from Ecclesiastes, "there is nothing new under the sun."

The IPCC report predictably calls on nations to "commit to climate finance," meaning spending more money we don't have and driving us further into a real crisis of deepening and massive debt.

Former Vice President Al Gore, an apostle of global warming — the preferred term before it morphed into climate change — admits the report was "torqued up" so as to promote political action. It sounds like the TV hurricane forecasters who so often hype storms that turn out to be duds.

The Biden administration's climate czar, John Kerry, whose preferred mode of travel is a carbon-emitting private jet, admitted to The Washington Post: "The United States could go to zero tomorrow. I mean we can't, but if you, figuratively speaking could go to zero. We'd still have a problem; the world would still have a problem. If China went to zero tomorrow with the United States, we'd still have a problem."

Over many recent decades and, in fact, dating back to the 19th century, there have been apocalyptic predictions and doomsday scenarios claiming that if we don't do something about the weather and pollution Earth would come to resemble the lifeless planets in our solar system. As noted in a previous column, Kerry himself has changed his climate crisis predictions.

In February, he told us we had just nine years to avert catastrophe. Two weeks ago, he had whittled that down to a mere 100 days.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who, like Kerry, has zero scientific knowledge or credentials, claims we have only 12 years before we self-immolate. The climate change hyper-ventilators are as inconsistent as the COVID-19 messages on masks and vaccinations coming from the CDC and the administration.

If all of the promises and predictions of the climate change and disaster cult prophets have failed to come true, why would we put any faith in the next prediction, or the one after that? We might as well base our life decisions on horoscopes, psychics and fortune cookies.

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In his book "The Politically Correct Guide to Climate Change," Marc Morano writes that the "UN IPCC is a purely political body posing as a scientific institution."

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Isn't this really just another excuse for government to take even more control of our lives and impart only those liberties government in its beneficence allows us to have? Aren't we seeing those liberties threatened when it comes to wearing or not wearing masks or choosing to get vaccinated or not?

Selectively imparting information to the public, including misinformation, while ignoring information that contradicts a desired political outcome is the stuff of cults. It also leads to a further reduction in the credibility of government and "experts" in the eyes of people they most hope to influence.

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