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Letter: Climate-change propaganda

Climate-change propaganda

The Aspen Times May 9 editorial, “Climate-change report validates our biggest fears,” is a pretty sophomoric piece of work.

Its principal purpose apparently is to beat up on a straw man — knuckle-dragging “deniers of climate change” who “simply aren’t paying attention.” Show me one such person. Of course climate is changing, as it always has been. Didn’t the current interglacial Holocene period begin a mere 11,000 years ago? Wasn’t Europe significantly warmer during the Middle Ages than it is now? Didn’t we just have the coldest winter in recorded United States history?



So what? The questions are, to what extent can human activity be identified as a significant cause of the current changes and their projected consequences, and what can the human community practically do about it? The answers to these questions are anything but “indisputable.”

All that your editorial has to say is that “Congress must take action to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions.” Say what? The only possible antecedent in the entire paragraph for the pronoun “it” is “Congress.” Apart from Harry Reid in front of a microphone, what gaseous emissions are emanating from Congress?




And exactly what kind of draconian measures would you have Congress inflict on the American public that, on a global scale, would be tantamount to spitting into the wind, given what developing countries such as India and China will continue to be doing? And since when has government dealt successfully with such a massive enterprise anyway? Does anyone really think that our health care will be both improved and less costly as a result of the trillion-dollar boondoggle called “Obamacare”? Does anyone think that the Federal Reserve’s response to the ongoing recession of 2008 is going to result in anything other than a far greater financial crisis in the not-so-distant future?

But perhaps you’d like to cede American sovereignty and proceed directly to the United Nations — that den of robbers — to enact a worldwide fix. Are pigs flying now?

There’s a centuries-old saying, “Man proposes, and God disposes” — the word “God” signifying everything that human societies don’t control and can’t hope to control.

Referring back to your title, my “biggest fear” — apart from the apostles of Al Gore having their way — is that the world’s largest active volcanic caldera, in nearby Yellowstone Park, is working up to the eruption that will make toast of this continent and wreak more havoc with the earth’s climate than cow flatulence and burning coal ever will.

I am not resigned to passive fatalism, but shouldn’t we be attempting those things that we actually are able to do?

The authors of the U.S. Global Change Research Program are seeking government (taxpayer) largesse for their grand schemes, and before you blithely endorse their propaganda and tell your readers how to think, you might be a little more thoughtful yourselves. Who’s not “paying attention”?

Chad Klinger

Basalt