Dakota Beacon

            Today’s hot topic again is “global warming.” Or is it “manmade climate change?” Whatever.

            News flash: “World to End Tomorrow: Women and Minorities Hardest Hit.” Washington Post? New York Times? CNN? Could be any of them. That headline would be laughable if it weren’t so stupid. Yet, the left portrays the gloom and doom of “manmade climate change” in just this way. They peddle fear above a functioning intellect.

            No thorough evidence exists that recent human activity will destroy our planet. To the contrary, NASA reports that since 1880 based on a variety of data the global temperature may have increased 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit give or take a few tenths of a degree. To believe that mankind is causing planet-destroying climate change would require a total discounting of all major historical weather swings over time including the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warming Period. Absent empirical evidence, the case cannot be made. To cite “it’s hot outside,” “it’s colder than usual,” “there are bad hurricanes in Florida,” and “disastrous fires burn in Australia” is not empirical evidence. Those are “heart-over-head” feelings. As the saying goes, “There is nothing new under the sun” (pun intended).

            Compare the news flash above with one from over 100 years ago. “Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again.” That was the headline in the New York Times, February 24, 1895. Check out today’s news stories. Leftwing online news outlets such as Vice.com now proclaim a “high likelihood of human civilization coming to an end” by 2050. Reports based on an Australian think tank, it continues, "On our current trajectory, the report warns, planetary and human systems [are] reaching a point of no return by mid-century, in which the prospect of a largely uninhabitable earth leads to the breakdown of the nations and the international order.” Fathom this. The planet becomes uninhabitable in a few years because of cow farts and cars!

            So, what about this universe that surrounds our miniscule globe like a grain of sand on the seashore? The universe is bigger than the earth alone. The vastness of this universe may be beyond our intellectual grasp or our puny words to define it. The universe within which earth resides is so magnificent, majestic, enormous, and incomprehensibly intricate that it boggles the mind.

            Enormous cosmic forces have been assembled against planet earth for millions of years. Yet, it has survived. But now, within a few decades mankind purports to destroy our fragile planet. Give me a break! The kindest thing one might say opposing the notion of manmade climate change is that it is intellectually bankrupt.

            Nevertheless, leftists are so arrogant, so self-centered, so self-important they believe that just since the 1980s SUVs, air conditioners, cows, and fracking are destroying a planet that has been around for four billion years. That we feeble and impotent human beings can correct the destiny of our infinitesimally, insignificant planet hurling through space illustrates the height of egomania. This is what you get when activists and politicians conceive of nothing greater than themselves, their party, and their movement. In their world there is no God, no Creator, nothing greater than themselves.

            This raises an alternative viewpoint. Faith in God as Creator of the universe and mankind entrusted with stewardship of the earth presents quite a different perspective on the manmade climate change dud. This traditional perspective existed for millennia until recently. Our forefathers expressed it emphatically in our founding principles

            When children return from school with cockamamie tales of environmental doom and gloom, they need to be corrected at home by their parents. Don’t let them labor under the false illusion of manmade climate change.

            There is a very good reason liberals have framed the climate change argument as stated. In the end it is about controlling people’s lives. You can’t have socialism without control. Follow the argument. Blame factories. Blame food production. Blame famers, cows, SUVs, fossil fuels, plastics, transportation, energy production, capitalism, the free market. Stop eating meat, stop driving, and don’t use plastic straws. It’s nuts – until you see the endgame. The leftists create fear. They scare people to death. Once people are conditioned then only liberals have the answers. Only government can save us and they do strive to control government. Listen to the Democrat presidential candidates and their position on manmade climate change.

            Our Founding Fathers believed differently. They believed in Nature’s God as the Great Gift Giver. Their view was that there was a loving God and they viewed life on earth as His great gift. We “…are endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” We owe our Creator a deep debt of gratitude. We can show that gratitude by practicing good stewardship, managing the resources we were given, and adapting to our environment – not changing it.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)