President Trump has embarrassed me again. Visiting California to see the damage done by the devastating wildfires, he said they were not caused by climate change but by bad forest management. In a TV interview he predicted that ‘things will get cooler’. The problem is that he is certainly right about the wildfires and that his prediction might be right.
Trump, like most politicians, knows nothing about climate science, or about any science at all, and can talk complete rubbish. He seems to rely on instincts, and his instincts are that the climate hysteria is nonsense. Here, he happens to be right but comes across as an ignorant crank.
Trump was also right to withdraw from the ridiculous Paris Climate Accord, which abandoned targets of reducing CO2 in the atmosphere and instead wanted to ensure that global temperatures were kept no more than 1.5 deg C above ‘pre-industrial levels’. Nobody has a clue how to do this, and there is no reason why we should want to do this. Temperatures were about 2 deg C higher than now when Julius Caesar was born (100 BC), which is surely pre-industrial enough. Trump did well to pull out of this farcical accord – but he gave stupid reasons for doing so.
A brief recap of climate science. Mankind, mainly by burning fossil fuels, has increased CO2 from about 280 ppm (parts per million) in the 19th Century to about 420 ppm now. It’s the best thing we’ve ever done for the planet, making plants grow better and greening the arid parts of the world. CO2, a weak greenhouse gas, has never been seen to have any noticeable effects on global temperatures over the last half billion years, when CO2 averaged about 2 000 ppm but with huge variations. It was rather warmer, worldwide, a thousand years ago when CO2 was about 280 ppm, and even warmer a thousand years before that, with the same low CO2. In the last fifty years, there has been no increase in extreme weather events, including hurricanes, storms, floods and droughts, which happen down the ages. There is no climate crisis. There is no reason to reduce CO2. Climate alarm is a false scare which diverts resources away from real environmental dangers, such as endangered wild animals.
Mismanaged
California, like the Western Cape and parts of Australia, has a Mediterranean climate, and is subject to natural wildfires, which are essential for the propagation of certain plants, such as proteas. Centuries before the Europeans came, the indigenous people of America and Australia used fire to manage the bushes and forests. In recent years, under green pressure, they have been mismanaged.
There has not been proper controlled burning. A great mass of dead and dry vegetation has been allowed to build up, like a gigantic pile of tinder waiting for a spark. Access roads have not been built and maintained properly for reaching the fires. California has always had spells of dry, hot weather. The present one is not exceptional. Trump is right.
Trump is perhaps the strangest president in American history. He comes from outside the political ruling class, which is the main reason he is so hated by its smug and arrogant members. He is rude, loud and impulsive. He doesn’t seem to read his briefings or listen to his advisors. In Professor William Happer, a physicist with expert knowledge of climate science, he had the perfect advisor on climate science, who could have told him exactly why the scare is nonsense, but it seems he never listened to him. He acts on whims and prejudices. Yet he has had remarkable achievements as president. Under him, until Covid-19, the US economy boomed as never before, with record low unemployment, including record low black unemployment.
Foreign policy is mixed
His record on foreign policy is mixed; his instincts to withdraw America from foreign conflicts are right but his methods were not always right. On Covid-19, I don’t think he was any more stupid than most politicians around the world or than Democrat leaders in local governments in the US.
The great problem for America is that Trump’s Democrat opponents are much worse than him. Joe Biden, the Democrat candidate for the presidency in November, seems bereft of ideas and simply repeats dull jargon and slogans in an unsteady way. He talks hysterical nonsense about climate change. He has been cowardly and dishonest on the violent Black Lives Matter riots ripping through US cities. Kamala Harris, Biden’s running mate, is a spiteful and inconsistent politician, who was appalling in the Democrat debates, where she tore into Biden and accused him of racism. Now she cackles with laughter about it.
Trump predicts – in other words, guesses wildly – that there might be global cooling ahead. My own prediction is that, if the Sun remains quiet, 2100 will be rather cooler than 2020. If the Sun resumes the high activity of thirty years ago, 2100 will be less than 1 deg C warmer than now.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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