Dakota Beacon

There is a reason why loony left environmentalists are laughed at. They brought it on themselves with their foolish proposals to “save the planet.” What used to be known as “conservation” is now a weird and wild playground of the absurd and irrational.

A few representative stories drawn from many, many examples illustrate the silliness of their premise. The British Broadcasting Corporation reported that professor emeritus Stephen Salter of the University of Edinburgh wants to replicate the effects of the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, Philippines, to study the effects of global warming. His idea is to spray massive amounts of sea salt into the atmosphere using wind-powered pumps on ships. The salt would reflect the sun’s rays back into space and thus lower the global temperature. Brilliant! And what happens when salt rain falls on arable land? Crop failure anyone?

On February 26, 2019, Lucas County, Ohio, voters approved the Lake Erie Bill of Rights. Environmental activists prepared the bill to ostensibly “protect the lake, its tributaries, and the many species that live off it.” Accordingly, Lake Erie was officially declared a person with full legal rights. However, some wise guy in the Ohio state legislature put the kibosh on the Lucas County measure. Governor Mike DeWine signed a bill on July 18, 2019, that prohibited legal actions on behalf of “nature or an ecosystem.” Whew! Just in time! The courts could have been tied up sorting through legal questions such as “could Lake Erie merge with Lake Ontario in a same-hydrologic union?” Or, “could Lake Erie someday self-identify as a desert?” Weighty questions to be sure.

The implications of the manmade climate change hoax never end. Now, an adult beverage catastrophe is predicted. Case I. The Washington Post warned that the price of beer could very well double IF the barley yield suffered from manmade climate change. This is a big “IF” when using the climate change activists’ models. Researchers concluded that “droughts and heat waves might occur together in about 4 percent of the years. In the worst-case scenarios…such extremes might occur in 31 percent of the years.” Go cry in your beer. Case II. Bloomberg carried the headline, “Is Climate Change Coming for Your Champagne?” They relate a recent European Academies’ Science Advisory Council report describing “how droughts, fires, freakish weather patterns, and extreme heat waves have more than doubled since 1980.” So, France never experienced these conditions previously? Bloomberg buried another comment deep in the article stating that 2019 will see a bumper crop of grapes.

Here is another weird one from the global warming crowd. Try this environmental, racist gibe. White people are to blame for harming the environment because of the food they eat. This according to The Journal of Industrial Ecology. “[W]hite individuals disproportionately affect the environment…by eating more foods that require more water and release more greenhouse gases [GHG]…compared to foods black and Latinx individuals [gender-neutral term referring to Latinos] eat.” University of Illinois researchers identified “environmentally intense” foods such as potatoes, wheat, milk, and water which is consumed more by whites per capita than blacks or Hispanics. (No comment regarding GHG released from people eating beans in Mexican food.) Good research draws conclusions and makes recommendations. In this case, researchers recommended “awareness training” for food stamp recipients and placing “land, GHG, and water impact data onto nutrition labels.” Problem solved!

Then there is this global warming “fix” to the truly unfixable. The [UK] Daily Mail reported that the United Nations wants to build floating cities. Here is the rationale. “90 percent of the world’s largest cities are vulnerable to inundation as glaciers melt and the oceans rise on a warming planet.” The data comes from the notoriously flawed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which predicts with precision that oceans will rise 30.3 inches by 2100. But then, if we don’t implement Green New Deal immediately, the world will end in twelve years anyway! Even so, MIT, the Explorers Club, and UN-Habitat recommend “modular platforms” which will support “communities” on top of the oceans anchored to the sea floor. One model will soon be anchored in the East River next to the United Nations (appropriately) as opposed to off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard or Malibu.

Reading these stories, one has to laugh to keep from crying. Far left loonies brand the rest of us as climate change deniers! Go fly a kite!

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