Experts Urge Climate Alarmists to Pump the Brakes

Has the use of fossil fuels increased the amounts of carbon dioxide and created an existential threat to planet earth? Ivan Pentchoukov of The Epoch Times reports that Petteri Taalas – Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization – says, “No.”

From Pentchoukov’s report:

“The head of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) issued an unprecedented rebuke to climate alarmists in an interview published by a Finnish magazine on September 6, Petteri Taalas, the secretary-general of the WMO, told Talouselämä magazine that he called for a calm and rational approach to the climate debate, and disagreed with those who are promoting end-of-the-world scenarios.”

This is not the only instance of Taalas pouring cold water on climate alarmism, “Now we should stay calm and ponder what is really the solution to this problem,” Taalas told Talouselämä magazine. “It is not going to be the end of the world. The world is just becoming more challenging. In parts of the globe, living conditions are becoming worse, but people have survived in harsh conditions.”

Rather than staying calm, 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are proposing radical change to America’s use of fossil fuels, which would have an incredibly adverse impact on American lives. Take Elizabeth Warren for example:

“On my first day as president, I will sign an executive order that puts a total moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases for drilling offshore and on public lands. And I will ban fracking—everywhere.”

Of course, Senator Warren was only keeping up with and trying to out-do Bernie Sanders, who two days previous claimed he would install a “full fracking ban on public and private lands.”

As a result, the radical environmentalists were ecstatic that leading Democrat candidates were adopting their demands to stop all fracking. However, the environmentalists ultimate objective is the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, which they claim is an existential threat to life on earth. Do these radical know that carbon dioxide has been greatly reduced because of advancements in horizontal drilling and fracking? According to Robert Rapier in Forbes, “As production rose, natural gas prices collapsed. This price collapse was a major factor for utilities switching from coal to natural gas, which in turn resulted in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions declining by more than any other nation.”

Hence a Warren or Sanders ban on fracking will abruptly increase the use of coal, which will increase carbon dioxide emissions. Worse, a ban would destroy the oil and gas industries in America. University of Colorado professor Roger A. Pielke Jr. said that Ms. Warren’s plan would force the nation to rely on foreign fossil-fuel imports.

“This is a big promise, both to ban fracking and to do it everywhere on day one of a Warren administration,” tweeted Mr. Pielke. “Banning fracking would kill off the entire US oil and gas extraction industry and turn the US into a major importer of fossil fuels.”

Thus, the proposed ban on fracking by Warren and Sanders will increase carbon dioxide by increasing the use of coal to supply America’s basic energy needs, and will destroy the oil and gas industries and millions of jobs. Besides creating a disastrous economic depression, and destroying the standard of living for every American, the bans will make America dependent on foreign oil and natural gas imports, which will cripple our military power to protect ourselves and other civilizations on earth.

Thank goodness for Secretary-General Taalas properly castigating these climate alarmists.