A terrible deal 

The Green New Deal (GND) reminds me of the story about the lover forced to make a choice between three doors, one of which had the love of his life, the other two not so good choices, like a tiger waiting to pounce. In the case of the GND, all three doors have a tiger; there are no happy endings despite the siren song of the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Last week you were urged to "take the deal" ("Take the Deal," March 7). The deal is about as tempting as a personal invitation to a picnic held by the late Reverend Jim Jones in his South American compound. He'll supply the Kool-Aid, all you have to do is drink it. Apparently, many have.

You were told that commentator George Will's assertion that a pause in global warming was a myth; therefore, you should ignore him. I guess that means we should also dismiss statements by NASA scientist James Hansen, no fan of mine or vice-versa, when he was reported to have stated "that nature may conspire [over] the next 10 years to produce the impression of an ongoing pause in global warming."

Hansen is probably the leading U.S. scientist sounding the alarm about global warming/climate change—not exactly a "denier." The temperature records speak for themselves; there's been virtually no measurable or statistically relevant warming of the climate for nearly the last 20 years (since 1998), and the climate models that are predicting an overheated planet didn't foresee this and can't explain it. Perhaps Mr. Will is a more serious person than he is credited to be by the Sierra Club.

Even a previous column of mine was cited ("Green unicorns," Feb. 14) by Andrew Christie of the Sierra Club last week; I'm humbled by the praise. If one cares to do some homework, you will discover that the 95 percent of all scientists who accept that the world is catastrophically warming and that most of it is "human-caused" (anthropogenic) is based on an unscientific survey of just 77 scientists, with two disagreeing. There are many scientists who vehemently disagree, many hundreds who are leaders in their field of atmospheric sciences who take exception to the distortion of their work by a highly politicized United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The leadership of this body is not necessarily made up of scientists but of political leaders, many of whom have no background whatsoever in the field of atmospheric sciences. Some have a craven political agenda and have brazenly stated their goals of "wealth redistribution."

Take the words of United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer: "One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole. ... We redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy."

Edenhofer co-chaired the IPCC working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015. In 2010, Edenhofer stated that "the next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world's resources will be negotiated," (Investor's Business Daily, March 29, 2016).

In 2015, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, made similar statements: "This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution," according to the same 2016 Investor's Business Daily article.

Another report is Lorrie Goldstein's Oct. 10, 2018, Toronto Sun article about Canada's climate lobby and its impact on the Canadian economy, if policy is enacted. The agenda behind the agenda has emerged as the IPCC and other governmental bodies let slip their agendas of enacting radical economic policies behind the screen of climate policy.

In last week's "Take the deal," the author goes on to state that "this is an emergency." Really? If it's truly a "planetary emergency," why is it that environmental groups steadfastly oppose immediate remedies using proven technologies that are currently available to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions? I refer, of course, to nuclear power, large hydroelectric projects, natural gas, and "fracking" technology, which produced a revolution in extracting natural gas from rock formations. Putting fear and irrationality aside, natural gas, nuclear power, and large hydroelectric plants can produce all the greenhouse gas emission-free energy we need without destroying the U.S. economy, but the Sierra Club and others continue to block use of these technologies, even demanding their abandonment, preferring promotion of a climate of hysteria.

Climate alarmists have been predicting disaster, even global catastrophe, since the 1960s with virtually every prediction so wildly wrong that they should be categorized with religious cults predicting imminent doom, sitting on their rooftops, waiting for the end.

One catastrophic prediction that isn't wrong, however, is the economic disaster that the $63 trillion Green New Deal will produce: widespread poverty, perpetual shortages, and the end of hope and opportunity in America. We might even come to envy Venezuela. Δ

Al Fonzi is an Army lieutenant colonel of military intelligence who had a 35-year military career, serving in both the Vietnam and Iraq wars. Send comments through the editor at [email protected].