AS WE VENTURE DOWN LIFE’S PATH, we must acknowledge that there are those who are preordained to be our political leaders. They usually come from the “right” families, and are educated in the hallowed halls of highest wisdom. They are, it seems, predestined to be senators, governors and presidents.

Gov. Brown is an example of one such leader — intellectual and forward thinking, wise in ways that few can comprehend, appreciate or equal.
When the governor speaks, the wise listen.

Are we, mere toiling mortals, qualified to question his well-conceived, obviously thoroughly researched and analyzed proclamations?

If LAX is to be flooded because of a 4-foot sea level rise — the result of man-caused global warming — now is indeed the time to act, and no expense should be spared.

Or not. When advised that LAX was, in fact, 120 feet above sea level, and therefore safe from the encroachment of the angry seas, the governor’s office issued a retraction, best summed up by SNL’s Emily Latella: “Never mind!”

One aspect of the Man-Caused Global Warming Alarmist Crowd (MCGWA) versus just about everyone else is that no matter what history portends, they have a catchy phrase for it:

Getting cold … “Global cooling!”

Getting warm … “Global warming!!”

No change in 15 years … “Climate change” — or better yet, how about “Climate disruption!!”

I can just hear Jon Lovitz: “Climate disruption, yeah, that’s the ticket!”

Rest easy friends. The MCGWA crowd has our best interests at heart (and their eyes on your wallet). But can we trust them — have they ever steered us wrong in the past? In addition to Governor Moonbeam’s comment above, let’s take a look at few (of many tens of dozens) of past predictions:

May Day, now called “Earth Day,” is a time when Green devotees can celebrate Earth Goddess Gaia with song and dance and plenty of Kosher Kush for all. As we reflect on Earth Days past, let’s see what alarm bells were ringing in 1970:

Kenneth Watt, ecologist: “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue … it would put us into an ice age.”

To find out how that one worked out we turn to weather.com: “The summer of 2012 will go down as the third-warmest summer on record for the contiguous United States.”

Again from the earliest days of the “Earth is in dire straits” mantra, we have this from LIFE Magazine: “In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution … by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half.” 

Yes, there will be no need for Ray Bans in the future. Reality dose courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor in 2012: “Although gasoline use in L.A. is almost triple that of what it was in the 1960s, the amount of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the air has dropped from around 100 parts per billion to just 2 parts per billion.” 

Well, let’s be honest here. Those examples are from a long time ago, and the science was not settled yet. Surely further studies honed their climate predicting skills, right?

Dr. David Viner of the University of East Anglia, in March 2000, regarding future occurrences of snowfall in England: it will become “a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”

So how did that one work out? From “English Weather History” we have:

• 2009-10: “More cold and snowy weather greeted us in the New Year …”

• 2010-11: “Coldest December in over 100 years, and there was significant and widespread snowfall …”

In 1990, Michael Oppenheimer of The Environmental Defense Fund predicted that by 1995, “the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots” and that by 1996 the Platte River of Nebraska “would be dry.”

About the Platte, earlier this year the Journal Star reported that “The threat from spring floods on the Platte River was reduced significantly over the past weekend as tons of ice moved through the Ashland and Louisville areas.”

But what look at the accuracy of past predictions from our well-intentioned friends in the Global-Cooling-Warming-Changing-Disrupting crowd would be complete without hearing from the maven himself-Al Gore?

In a 2007 speech, Gore, apparently channeling climate scientist Wieslaw Maslowski, held a crowd in rapture as he spoke of the Arctic’s summer ice, which would “completely disappear” by 2013 because of “global warming caused by carbon emissions.”

As CNSNews reports: “Instead of completely melting away, the polar ice cap is at now at its highest level for this time of year since 2006. Satellite photos of the Arctic taken by NASA in August 2012 and August 2013 show a 60-percent increase in the polar ice sheet. Instead of shrinking, the NASA photographs clearly show that the Arctic ice sheet is much larger than it was at the same time last year.”

Thank goodness the polar bears are safe.

But fear not, friends, as our leaders in Washington are still on the hunt. On the floor of the U.S. Senate, they have found the primary cause of global warming — and we have Harry Reid to thank for shining on a light on the culprits: the Koch brothers.

“(They) are one of the main causes of this, not a cause, one of the main causes,” Reid said.

Skeptical? How dare we question the wisdom of those marching in lockstep on the pathway of self-righteous indignation!

Reid was referring to a study from Amherst College, one of the nation’s hallowed halls of wisdom. It found the Koches to be responsible for adding 31 million pounds of toxic chemicals to the atmosphere every year! This was reported by the study to be more than Dow Chemical, ExxonMobil and General Electric combined.

So how does 31 million pounds annually compare to the world output? According to one environmentalist website, the total amount of toxic chemicals added to the world atmosphere annually is 10 million tons.

Let me help Harry Reid with his math. That means the Koches are responsible for 0.16 percent of toxic chemicals in the atmosphere. In other words: not very much.

In looking at the predictions from legions of self-proclaimed “experts” on weather and/or climate change, I found over 150 predictions made which time has proved to be grossly inaccurate.

There should be no doubt that the earth has, is and always will go through cyclic changes. The potential for man’s ability to impact those fluctuations have been overstated by the MCGWA crowd. Whether this is done for altruistic purposes (true for some) or for the purpose of gaining economic or political control (true for others) is beyond the scope of external analysis.

Wrapped in the lab coats of the MCGWA movement is an almost unmeasurable hubris that will not allow them to accept any explanation for fluctuations in climate and weather that is not the one they have preselected. With a fanatical zealotry, they refuse to accept any questioning of their “truth,” and indeed they openly mock and seek to professionally destroy any who question their conclusions.

But until their accuracy level improves a bit, I will take with a very large grain of salt their “settled science” claims or the other absurdities emanating from so many of our political leaders.

Dennis Lund is a mechanical engineer who lived in Benicia for more than 20 years.

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