Climate Change, Looking Back

For John, BLUF:  Climate change is like evolution itself, inevitable.  I am not sure it will be as rapid as some promise, absent a major event, such as the poles switching or an asteroid impact.  Forget the scientists.  What do the engineers say?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Nolte:  NY Times Spread Fake News that East Coast Beaches Would Be ‘Gone’ by 2020

From Breitbart, by Reporter John Nolte, 12 March 2021.

Here is the lede plus four:

“[M]ost of the beaches on the East Coast of the United States would be gone in 25 years,” the fake New York Times told the world 25 years ago, all the way back in 1995.

Fact check: It’s 2021 and America’s East Coast beaches are doing just fine!

Here’s the relevant portion from the original Times’ article:

A continuing rise in average global sea level, which is likely to amount to more than a foot and a half by the year 2100.  This, say the scientists, would inundate parts of many heavily populated river deltas and the cities on them, making them uninhabitable, and would destroy many beaches around the world. At the most likely rate of rise, some experts say, most of the beaches on the East Coast of the United States would be gone in 25 years.  They are already disappearing at an average of 2 to 3 feet a year.

The date of the article is September 18, 1995.  The headline reads, “Scientists Say Earth’s Warming Could Set Off Wide Disruptions.”

I have a Bachelor of Science degree.  I like science.  I like to follow science.  However, not everyone is a scientist.  Some are propogandists.

There is climate change.  At some point it will get colder and at some point it will get warmer.  Examining the artifacts of the past shows that.

It appears to me that we need an engineering approach to climate change.  An engineering approach that is based on the idea that while world populationj will likely peak below the worse expectations, we are unlikely to arbitrarily bump off a couple of billion folks.  We need to avoid pie in the sky hopes and look at what we can do.  And, we need to avoid extremist views, like that from 25 years ago that all the beaches on the East Coast were going away in 25 years.

And yet, New York Times star science reporter, Mr Donald McNeil, exits over "racist remarks", not science reporting.  He didn't actually use the terms in a racist manner, but as a way of giving full context to what he was relating.  I wish he had gone over the Chimate Change coverage of the New York Times.

Regards  —  Cliff