Don’t Sell Your Beachfront Property!

  As the title suggests, you really don’t need to call your real estate agent if you own property looking out on an ocean–Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf of Mexico, whatever!

 One website (www.CO2Science) estimates that, according to satellite radar altimetry, sea levels may have risen .05 to .03  millimeters per year in recent years.  At this rate, it would take over 20,000 years to raise global sea levels by one meter.

According to Alarmist-in-Chief Al (“The ocean’s at your door”) Gore, we should be worrying about an ocean rise of around 20 feet in the next few years, due to global warming.

The mantra about “global warming” has been hammered into our heads so much recently that many are beginning to believe it is the gospel truth.  

In this regard, it might be good to refer to some alarmist prophecies of recent years, as quoted in a recent book, “Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming” by Christopher C. Horner, a senior fellow at Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Paul Ehrlich, one of the foremost “prophets” of impending environmental disaster, said, in 1968:  “The battle to feed humanity is over.  In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”  In 1969, he had this dire warning to offer:  “Hundreds of millions of people will soon perish in smog disasters in New York and Los Angeles…the oceans will die of DDT poisoning by 1979…the U.S. life expectancy will drop to 42 years by 1980 due to cancer epidemics.”

Undeterred, Ehrlich offered the warning in 1974 that “A situation has been created that could lead to a billion or more people starving to death.   In another bit of “green wisdom” offered in 1978,  Ehrlich opined that “Giving society cheap, abundant energy…would be equivalent of giving an idiot child  a machine gun.”

Horner quotes many other such gems of environmentalist panic in his book.    Actually, there is no way to accurately determine the mean average temperature of the world.  One thing that has apparently skewed recent averages slightly above preceding years is that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union,  thousands of Russian measuring stations closed, many of them in cold regions.   What some declare “the hottest decade” (1992 to 202) coincided with the closing of a huge portion of surface measuring stations.

Media alarmism about climate change has run in cycles, with some overlapping,  as follows: 1895-1932, catastrophic global cooling; 1929-1969, catastrophic global warming; 1954-1976, catastrophic manmade global cooling; 1981-present, catastrophic manmade global warming.

But, on the other hand, a ”Newsweek” feature article in 1992 warned that “The advent of a new ice age, scientists say, appears to be guaranteed.  The devastation will be astonishing.”

Well, the news media thrives on disaster headlines.  And many scientists, vying for grant money, go along with the global warning mantra, even when they know a lot of poor science is involved.   

Al Gore comes across somewhat as a has-been politician desperate to stay in the lime-light and finding the platform of global warming a good way to remain there. 

Whatever the case may be, Horner’s book shatters much of the green gloom hysteria and reminds us we don’t need to quit breathing quite yet (and thus breathing out too much carbon dioxide.)    One environmentalist opined that the world would be a lot better off if about two billion of us would simply die!  He did not offer to be the first to go. 

The Bible tells us there are disastrous events ahead for this troubled world.  However, they will come according to God’s timing, not according to Mr. Gore’s.    Jesus commented on a couple of seemingly random events in Luke chapter 13; events not unlike the Minneapolis bridge collapse, or the Utah mining disaster.  He indicated that such things can happen to any of us.  He did not offer any explanation except to say, that no matter what happens, we need to be prepared now to meet our Lord.

Well, we also need to be excellent conservationists; not alarmist environmentalists.   Glaciers are shrinking in some places, but growing larger in others.   The toughest “glaciers” are often our hardened human hearts.