Our chief executive officer, Barack Obama, has again shown that any leadership he might exercise is based on fear. It’s an ancient ploy: make people afraid of something, and then tell them that you (and only you) can save them.
Like others before him (Al Gore comes to mind), Obama appealed to fear by saying in a Feb. 14, 2014 news conference: “A changing climate means that weather-related disasters like droughts, wildfires, storms, floods are potentially going to be costlier and they’re going to be harsher.”
That is, in my opinion, duplicitous to the point of being a lie.
Here’s what science says: “The frequency and intensity of drought has likely decreased in central North America”; and, looking forward, that there is high confidence in soil surface drying in the southwest USA by the end of the 21st century if conditions remain the same. [Climate Change 2013, IPCC, emphasis added]
Nor is this Obama’s first “climate change lie.” For example, on Nov. 14, 2012 he said, “… the temperature around the globe is increasing. Faster than was predicted even ten years ago … the Arctic ice cap is melting, faster than predicted even five years ago … there have been … an extraordinarily large number of severe weather events here in North America, but also around the globe.”
His two statements, “faster than was predicted,” are lies. They are inconsistent with facts, science, and the truth.
His statement, “extraordinarily large number,” is a lie, unless we allow him to define “extraordinarily large” in his own terms. (Reminds me of one of his predecessors: “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”)
California Representative Devin Nunes, responding to Obama’s Feb. 14 visit to California, said, “Global warming is nonsense.” This, too, is a lie. It is no more accurate than Obama’s lies.
Please, get the facts and lose the bias that may cause you to reject information and science that doesn’t fit your current beliefs or worldview.
Please read at least the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) October 2013 “Summary for Policymakers” at www.ipcc.ch, and their “Special Report on Extreme Events” (nicknamed SREX) at http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/ and form your own conclusions. These documents, a consensus of hundreds of scientists from more than 60 countries are not alarmist, unlike people on both the right and the left who have lied, exaggerated, and cherry-picked data.
Do I believe in global warming or global climate change? No, I don’t “believe,” but I have (just) enough knowledge of science and of the sciences of meteorology and climatology to understand the conclusions of science, of the IPCC, and of the hundreds of papers published in legitimate journals and on university websites.
Earth is warming and climate is changing — but not in the way or with the results the politicians and pundits would have us believe.
The only thing extreme about climate change is the lies from the right and the left.
Paul Lentz
Peachtree City, Ga.
