"The Planet Has a Fever"

The date was December 31, 1999 and I was making a few extra bucks during Christmas break. I worked at Clearwater Systems during the summer and a few holiday breaks. It was decent work. I basically loaded cars with bags of water softener salt and 10 gallon jugs of water. Fun times.

Anyhow, does anyone remember New Year's Eve 1999?

The Year 2000 Problem? Y2K? Millennium Bug? Y2K Bug?

Ring a bell?

I remember sitting at home and waiting for my computer clock hit 12:00am. Was it going to blow up? Was it going to crash? Was it going to evaporate? Was it going to turn into an alien saucer and fly off into space? Would I be sucked into the screen?

You'd be surprised what people thought.

I remember working that day at Clearwater Systems. People were lined up around the building and down the street waiting to stock up on water. We were, as an international body, scared into believing that the world was going to end because of a computer problem. Looking back at that event...man were we stupid.

Today, Barack Obama gave a speech on climate change to the U.N. He talked with an urgency. He talked about change (surprise). He talked about the future of our planet and of our people. Basically, he did something very similar to Y2K. He scared people into believing something that doesn't exist. Think about it. Scientists are warning us about something that science proves isn't happening.

Yes, read that last sentence again.

Climate change is the biggest magic trick ever performed. It is causing people to change his/her lifestyle. It is causing governments to implement legislation that takes away the freedoms of its citizens. It is throwing money (trillions of dollars) at a problem that doesn't even exist. It's a scam and we've been punk'd.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute provides the following:

Obama: “…[T]he threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing.”
Reality: global mean temperatures increased slightly from 1977 to 2000. Temperatures have been flat since then.

Obama: “Rising sea levels threaten every coastline.”
Reality: sea levels have been rising on and off since the end of the last ice age 13,000 years ago. The rate of sea level rise has not increased in recent decades over the nineteenth and twentieth century average.

Obama: “More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent.”
Reality: there is no upward global trend in storms or floods.

Obama: “More frequent drought and crop failures breed hunger and conflict in places where hunger and conflict already thrive.”
Reality: there is no upward global trend in major droughts. Reversals in large-scale cycles have meant that the southward march of the Sahara Desert into the Sahel has been reversed in recent years and the Sahara is now shrinking.

Obama: “On shrinking islands, families are already being forced to flee their homes as climate refugees.”
Reality: some Pacific islanders may want to emigrate to New Zealand or Australia and are claiming that their islands are disappearing as the reason, but shrinkage has been minimal in recent decades because sea level rise has been minimal.

Cliff May said it best:

This is a dangerous game. We blame ourselves for a crisis that may or may not exist: Are we really certain that the world is warming up dangerously, that industrial development is causing it, and that we can “fix the problem” without returning to a 19th-century economy?
Then, we grin as we are criticized by all and sundry.

Meanwhile, those gathered at the U.N. and the media covering them avoid talking about Islamist terrorism, genocide in Darfur, brutal suppression in Iran by a regime that is attempting to acquire nuclear weapons, and similar unfashionable topics.
It’s unreal. Or maybe it’s surreal.