Truth in Short Supply…

Dear Editor,

Truth was in short supply at the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, held at Community Hall on Friday, Nov. 17. Out of sheer curiosity, I attended the meeting, having braced myself against what I knew would be an onslaught of tired, shopworn, left-wing/progressive dogma. I wasn’t disappointed. I sat through two hours of a slick, well-oiled, multimedia presentation given to a docile, pre-sold audience of about 100.

Early in the confab one of the presenters asked some in the audience how they felt about the fires this summer, particularly all the days of thick, choking smoke. A microphone was passed around and a few sad tales emerged. The heat, the fires, the wind, the smoke, the lack of rain, and the fact your chickens weren’t laying eggs were all due to climate change, so the narrative went.  Unfortunately, this is where Citizens’ Climate Lobby loses credibility.  Inconvenienced as they might have been, the people who spoke were reacting to weather-related events, not a change in climate. Yet, for CCL, this became a selling point. Nutty weather is now proof of climate change.

The Big Lie is that an excess amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is responsible for our changing climate. What changing climate? Call me when they’re water skiing and swimming in the lake on New Year’s day. There is no proof. There is supposition, there are computer models, there are patterns perceived where none exist. There is a fossil record, and rings around trees. There are rocks with stories to tell, and secrets to be learned from 1,000-year-old ice. But aside from volcanic eruptions, the smoke and soot from which can increase CO2 and block the sun, thereby causing a drop in temperature, there is no proof that the presence of carbon dioxide by itself is responsible for raising or lowering global temperatures, let alone cause a change in climate. And yet, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, with its whacky “Carbon Fee and Dividend” being touted by its hundreds of chapters throughout the U.S., is willing to assist in starting an inflationary depression just because of a blind subservience to an unproven scientific theory.

Don’t be fooled. This rapidly growing movement to levy a carbon tax on our economy has little to do with climate change and everything to do with social change.

Cort Gifford
Sandpoint