CNN this week published a huge story saying the source of the migrant caravan wasn’t so much corrupt Central American governments, violence or lousy economic policies. It was climate change. This is just the latest attempt by environmentalists to blame any and all bad news — even acne and animal bites — on climate change.
The CNN story, complete with pictures, videos and charts, claims that climate change is responsible for the drought in parts of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua that forced thousands to flee for the U.S.
Well, not “responsible,” exactly. The author admits part way through that “Studies have not definitively tied this particular drought to climate change.”
Story Is Bunk
In other words, the entire premise of story is pretty much bunk. The best the CNN reporter could come up with is that “computer models show droughts like the one happening now are becoming more common as the world warms.”
Why would you need computer models to tell you what is supposedly happening right now? Probably because in the U.S., at least, there’s been no increase in droughts since the 1890s.
Unfortunately, playing fast and loose with the facts and jumping to wild conclusions is now the standard operating procedure when it comes to global warming.
This week also saw a bold headline declaring that “climate change was behind 15 weather disasters in 2017.” Again, not exactly. These events were “influenced” by it, the story said.
That’s a bit hard to swallow, too. Every adverse weather event is now somehow attributable to climate change. Whether it’s a big snowstorm, heavy rains, a dry spell, unusually cold weather, unusually hot weather, or anything that can be labeled as “unusual.”
At least those have something to do with the weather. These days, virtually anything bad that happens gets blamed on climate change.
Blaming Climate
Pick a topic and add “climate change” to it in a Google search and you’re likely to find some article or study suggesting a connection between the two.
This week, CNN ran another blame-climate-change-first story. This one claimed that the rate of animal bits “has increased over the past 10 years, according to Dr. Joseph Forrester, one of the authors of the study published Tuesday in the BMJ. He anticipates that it will continue to rise, partially because of climate change.”
Time magazine blamed mental health problems on climate change. “Trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression all rank among the ailments linked to climate change,” the story said
Another story argued that global warming was connected to sexual violence.
EcoWatch warned pet owners that climate change was probably the reason their dogs have fleas because “climate change is creating an ideal habitat for pests.”
The Denver Post claimed that climate change was partly responsible for the decline in fertility rates.
Another article claimed a few years ago that “various skin disorders such as acne scars are the result of global warming and climate change.”
One website had collected examples of just about everything that’s been connected to global warming. There were hundreds of examples.
Why The Avalanche?
A beer shortage, a building collapse in England, the creation of ISIS, rising insurance premiums, kidney stones, prostitution, teenage drinking and homelessness are but a few.
Why the avalanche of such claims? One obvious reason: If you want to get attention to your story or cause, the best way to do so is to claim there’s some climate change connection.
Yet despite these endless tales of woe, the public remains indifferent. France had to back down on a modest increase in fuel taxes it had imposed specifically to fight global warming, after protests consumed the nation. Liberal Washington state overwhelmingly rejected a carbon tax. Countries that made solemn pledges to cut CO2 emissions three years ago as part of the Paris climate change agreement aren’t close to living up to them. Fighting climate change continues to rank at the bottom of the public’s list of priorities.
Common Sense
Most likely that’s because the public has far more common sense than environmentalists or the mainstream media. They know that bad things have always happened. There were devastating hurricanes, floods, droughts, starvation, deprivation, wars and other terrible tragedies — including acne — long before mankind started burning fossil fuel.
They also know that the climate is always changing. (Take a trip to the Grand Canyon if you don’t believe it.)
And the public knows that not everything bad that is happening today can possibly be the result of a less-than-1-degree Celsius increase in average global temperatures over the past 100 years.
Trying to convince people otherwise just exposes what a hoax the whole climate change mania has become.