An extensively footnoted response addresses 10 “alarmist assertions” made by the Environmental Defense Fund.
The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) raises money by scaring Americans about global warming., including in its latest fundraising letter. Read the article disputing the EDF letter in the Heartland Institute’s Environment & Climate News, Vol. 18 No. 8, September 2015 and is written by James M. Taylor, vice president for external relations and Senior Fellow for environment and energy policy at The Heartland Institute.
It’s not unusual for the environmental Left to make false assertions to attract media attention and raise money. But the recent mailer from EDF “may have set a new low,” writes Taylor in a 12-page response to EDF.
“The only good thing about EDF’s preposterous mailer is that it can be used to show open-minded people the difference between global warming alarmists and global warming truth-tellers,” he writes.
Taylor’s extensively footnoted response addresses 10 “alarmist assertions” made by EDF:
1) Bats Drop from the Sky – In 2014, a scorching summer heat wave caused more than 100,000 bats to literally drop dead and fall from the sky in Queensland, Australia.
2) Lyme Disease Spreads – Warmer temperatures are contributing to the range expansion and severity of tick-borne Lyme disease.
3) National Security Threatened – The impacts of climate change are expected to act as a “threat multiplier” in many of the world’s most unstable regions, exacerbating droughts and other natural disasters as well as leading to food, water and other resource shortages that may spur mass migrations.
4) Sea Levels Rising – Warmer temperatures are causing glaciers and polar ice sheets to melt, increasing the amount of water in the world’s seas and oceans.
5) Allergies Worsen – Allergy sufferers beware: Climate change could cause pollen counts to double in the next 30 years. The warming temperatures cause advancing weed growth, a bane for allergy sufferers.
6) Beetles Destroy Iconic Western Forests – Climate change has sent tree-killing beetles called mountain pine beetles into overdrive. Under normal conditions those beetles reproduce just once annually, but the warming climate has allowed them to churn out an extra generation of new bugs each year.
7) Canada: The New America – “lusher” vegetation growth typically associated with the United States is now becoming more common in Canada, scientists reported in a 2012 Nature Climate Change study.
8) Economic Consequences – the costs associated with climate change rise along with the temperatures. Severe storms and floods combined with agricultural losses cause billions of dollars in damages, and money is needed to treat and control the spread of disease.
9) Infectious Diseases Thrive – The World Health Organization reports that outbreaks of new or resurgent diseases are on the rise and in more disparate countries than ever before, including tropical illnesses in once cold climates.
10) Shrinking Glaciers – In 2013, an iceberg larger than the city of Chicago broke off the Pine Island Glacier, the most important glacier of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. And at Montana’s Glacier National Park glaciers have gone from 150 to just 35 over the past century.
Taylor concludes:
There you have it. These are the 10 best arguments global warming activists like EDF can make, along with the objective scientific facts that prove them wrong. No wonder global warming alarmists are so terrified of people having access to both sides of the debate.
Here’s the link to Taylor’s rebuttal: www.heartland.org/sites/default/files/edf_rebuttal_final.pdf.
The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) raises money by scaring Americans about global warming., including in its latest fundraising letter. Read the article disputing the EDF letter in the Heartland Institute’s Environment & Climate News, Vol. 18 No. 8, September 2015 and is written by James M. Taylor, vice president for external relations and Senior Fellow for environment and energy policy at The Heartland Institute.
It’s not unusual for the environmental Left to make false assertions to attract media attention and raise money. But the recent mailer from EDF “may have set a new low,” writes Taylor in a 12-page response to EDF.
“The only good thing about EDF’s preposterous mailer is that it can be used to show open-minded people the difference between global warming alarmists and global warming truth-tellers,” he writes.
Taylor’s extensively footnoted response addresses 10 “alarmist assertions” made by EDF:
1) Bats Drop from the Sky – In 2014, a scorching summer heat wave caused more than 100,000 bats to literally drop dead and fall from the sky in Queensland, Australia.
2) Lyme Disease Spreads – Warmer temperatures are contributing to the range expansion and severity of tick-borne Lyme disease.
3) National Security Threatened – The impacts of climate change are expected to act as a “threat multiplier” in many of the world’s most unstable regions, exacerbating droughts and other natural disasters as well as leading to food, water and other resource shortages that may spur mass migrations.
4) Sea Levels Rising – Warmer temperatures are causing glaciers and polar ice sheets to melt, increasing the amount of water in the world’s seas and oceans.
5) Allergies Worsen – Allergy sufferers beware: Climate change could cause pollen counts to double in the next 30 years. The warming temperatures cause advancing weed growth, a bane for allergy sufferers.
6) Beetles Destroy Iconic Western Forests – Climate change has sent tree-killing beetles called mountain pine beetles into overdrive. Under normal conditions those beetles reproduce just once annually, but the warming climate has allowed them to churn out an extra generation of new bugs each year.
7) Canada: The New America – “lusher” vegetation growth typically associated with the United States is now becoming more common in Canada, scientists reported in a 2012 Nature Climate Change study.
8) Economic Consequences – the costs associated with climate change rise along with the temperatures. Severe storms and floods combined with agricultural losses cause billions of dollars in damages, and money is needed to treat and control the spread of disease.
9) Infectious Diseases Thrive – The World Health Organization reports that outbreaks of new or resurgent diseases are on the rise and in more disparate countries than ever before, including tropical illnesses in once cold climates.
10) Shrinking Glaciers – In 2013, an iceberg larger than the city of Chicago broke off the Pine Island Glacier, the most important glacier of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. And at Montana’s Glacier National Park glaciers have gone from 150 to just 35 over the past century.
Taylor concludes:
There you have it. These are the 10 best arguments global warming activists like EDF can make, along with the objective scientific facts that prove them wrong. No wonder global warming alarmists are so terrified of people having access to both sides of the debate.
Here’s the link to Taylor’s rebuttal: www.heartland.org/sites/default/files/edf_rebuttal_final.pdf.
