Anything Bad Can Be Blamed on Global Warming

Let’s suppose that you stood to make a ton of money if you could get people to believe in man-made global warming, and the more people you could get to buy into it, the more money you would make? How far would you go to convince people that global warming exists and is man-made? Maybe you’d start by blaming one thing on global warming, then if you got away with that maybe you’d blame something else, and as you got away with it your self-assuredness would increase and perhaps you’d end up blaming just about anything weather related to global warming. Well, that’s what’s happening, and CNN has bought it hook, line, and sinker.

Climate change makes island kids bony, stunted – Is that not the saddest headline you’ve ever heard? Global warming (or “climate change” as they now call it, since that way they can have their cake and eat it too whether temperatures go up or down) is now the cause of malnutrition and starvation in Indonesia. As the article says as it describes one child “Maria is fighting to live, wasting away in her remote village where aid officials say climate change has brought on a severe drought in recent years. It’s nearly impossible for residents to live off the land like they have for generations.”

However, what evidence do they have that man-made climate change has anything to do with it? Yes, when a drought lasts longer than usual or the amount of rain from year to year changes this is climate change, by definition, but to bring up the term “climate change” is to say that it is man-made, and of course this lends credence to those like Al Gore who claim we can do something about it, and of course he stands to make quite a load of cash if we try to do something about it.

But could there be any other reasons why this girl is in this pitiful condition? To its credit, the article also cites rising food prices, lack of education, lack of hygienics, but these are listed much later in the article than climate change.

What CNN knows is that; 1) more people will read the headline than the article itself, and 2) more people will read the first part of the article than the article in its entirety. And thus most people will come away with one more bit of construed evidence linking global warming to the problems of the human race. But at the same time they protect themselves from scrutiny by saying “We didn’t say climate change was the only culprit, we put in other stuff too.” Yeah, well, we saw through that, but how many other people don’t?

But let’s be open-minded about this. Could man-made climate change really be affecting West Timor and lengthening the droughts? Where would we find evidence? Luckily, the British Antarctic Survey explored 6,000 of coral records in the area. The scientists involved also seem to believe in global warming, and the subtitle of the article is Coral cores stretching back more than 6,000 years reveal that climate change in the Indian Ocean may mean greater droughts in Indonesia and Australia.

But closer examination of the article reveals two interesting points; 1) that droughts have been happening in this area of the world for thousands of years, and 2) “It remains too soon to tell exactly how this climate system will work under changed conditions and other environmental factors”. In other words, what we know is that droughts happen and so this drought is nothing new, what we don’t know is whether man-made climate change has anything to do with it.

With this evidence, it would seem logical to say “Let’s focus on what we know will make an immediate and obvious difference in the lives of these people,” namely food and healthcare in the immediate term, and education and drought-resistant plants and farming techniques for the long-term. To think that enacting a carbon offset system is going to help these people is not only illogical given the lack of evidence, but downright cruel in that it takes attention and resources away from proven means of assistance and puts it into what is being shown as increasingly flimsy and politically motivated “science”.

Why do articles like this get published and receive these headlines? The point is not to arrive at the truth, the point is to achieve objectives, and those objectives are money and power. When you look at it that way the headline makes more sense.