To the Editor:
The scientific debate over global warming is not over. According to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, only 20 percent of likely U.S. voters believe the scientific debate about global warming is over, while sixty-three percent disagree and say the debate still continues. Seventeen percent are not sure. Neither is it true, despite numerous news reports, that 97 percent of scientists agree human activity is causing a climate crisis that demands we move on to government directed "solutions" to the crisis.
An article published in the Pioneer Press (the "Lake Forester") on April 9, "Cherokee students, state experts talk renewable energy," captured my undivided attention. What is happening in a 4th grade class at Cherokee Elementary School in Lake Forest School District 67 is not unlike what is happening in classrooms around this state and nation. Students at Cherokee Elementary School have been learning about renewable sources of energy. In the process they are being encouraged to become young political activists through interaction with their Lake Forest City government and their local Democrat state representative, Scott Drury (D-58th).
Most likely the same 4th graders fell prey to the polar bear ruse in an earlier grade, upset when polar bears sank into the arctic seas because of melting polar ice caps. Polar bears can swim!
Do parents know what their children are being taught in their classrooms? The Common Core Science curriculum teaches that global warming is manmade and that the science behind global warming is settled. By 8th grade students are expected to accept that human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature. How is this so when on a per-decade basis there has been no global warming for 18 full years? Accordingly, it is becoming harder and harder to maintain that we face a “climate crisis” caused by our past and present sins of emission.
When 4th graders at the Cherokee Elementary School, through research, settled on wind and solar power as the best power methods for the City of Lake Forest, were they ever encouraged to research the drawbacks inherent in wind and solar power before they went vocal with their conclusions? Not likely, as the purpose of their research was to ascertain that renewable energy sources are good for the environment, while fossil fuels are bad and cause global warming.
The sun and the wind might be free, but converting them to reliable electricity is expensive, if not impossible to do. Even when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow, we still expect electricity for all our needs requiring backup power on demand. Coal presently supplies 40 percent of Illinois' power and is needed for low cost energy. Mandating renewable energy, while curtailing the use of fossil fuels, will result in higher costs for energy and for all goods we purchase and periods of blackout when existing energy supply cannot meet demand.
Already the EPA's absurd restrictions on limiting CO2 emissions have forced the closure of many coal-fired plants that are needed to provide low cost electricity. Does it really make sense for the EPA to impose draconian measures here in this nation, while leaders of the European Union are moving away from green policies that have resulted in driving up the cost of electricity across Europe?
Representative Scott Drury, in keeping with the expressed goal of the Cherokee 4th graders - how to have their research influence lawmaking - didn't disappoint the young students. Drury informed the young students of a bill he is proposing that would require 35 percent of Illinois's power to come from renewable sources by 2030 and to further reduce the amount of energy used by 20 percent by 2025.
Mandating renewable energy, while curtailing the use of fossil fuels, is but a pipe dream and will result in higher costs for energy and for all goods we purchase, also for periods of blackout when existing energy supply cannot meet demand. It is estimated that on the whole, global warming legislation would result in raising energy costs for a typical family by $3,900 every year. As such, Scott Drury's bill would be an economic disaster for Illinois and a economic hardship for its Illinoisans.
John Coleman, the co-founder of the Weather Channel, shocked academics by insisting the theory of man-made climate change was not scientifically credible.
According to Coleman, what "little evidence" there is for rising global temperatures points to a "natural phenomenon" within a developing eco-system. In an open letter attacking the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, John Coleman wrote:
"The ocean is not rising significantly."
"The polar ice is increasing, not melting away. Polar Bears are increasing in number."
"Heat waves have actually diminished, not increased. There is not an uptick in the number or strength of storms (in fact storms are diminishing)."
"I have studied this topic seriously for years. It has become a political and environment agenda item, but the science is not valid."
Consider Patrick Moore, who as a co-founder and leader of Greenpeace for 15 years is now a skeptic. As noted in his article of March 20, 2015, "Why I am a Climate Change Skeptic":
"My skepticism begins with the believers’ certainty they can predict the global climate with a computer model. The entire basis for the doomsday climate change scenario is the hypothesis increased atmospheric carbon dioxide due to fossil fuel emissions will heat the Earth to unlivable temperatures.
"In fact, the Earth has been warming very gradually for 300 years, since the Little Ice Age ended, long before heavy use of fossil fuels. Prior to the Little Ice Age, during the Medieval Warm Period, Vikings colonized Greenland and Newfoundland, when it was warmer there than today. And during Roman times, it was warmer, long before fossil fuels revolutionized civilization.
"The idea it would be catastrophic if carbon dioxide were to increase and average global temperature were to rise a few degrees is preposterous.
"Recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced for the umpteenth time we are doomed unless we reduce carbon-dioxide emissions to zero.
"Effectively this means either reducing the population to zero, or going back 10,000 years before humans began clearing forests for agriculture. This proposed cure is far worse than adapting to a warmer world, if it actually comes about."
It is indeed a credit to the American people that many aren't stupid enough to buy into the manmade climate change crisis narrative that is being aggressively advanced.
Quite telling is that those who do believe in manmade global warming, including Al Gore, refuse to debate experts who disagree with them, preferring instead to label and further sensor those who challenge them as global skeptics "skeptic." The fear of global warming is seemingly being advanced by the Obama administration and politicians in Washington D.C., and our state capitols, to justify higher taxes, new regulations, and huge subsidies to insiders and major donors to their political campaigns.
A sure sign that the push by government and other environmental organizations isn't working, despite frantic efforts to convince the American people that global warming left unchecked will produce all manner of future catastrophic happenings, is that advocates of global warming have started to call for the arrest and punishment of those they label as climate-change liars.
To most Americans the continued obsession over the effects of manmade global warming, when in reality man has little if any ability to control the climate, should be a no-brainer.
Nancy J. Thorner
Lake Bluff, Ill.