Sunday Smiles

David Strom 2:31 PM | July 16, 2023

The smoke from the Canadian wildfires is back, making it look a bit apocalyptic outside.

Climate change is clearly getting ready to kill us all, making those Just Stop Oil fanatics seem reasonable!

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But then I opened the door this July morning and it is 64 and breezy, with a high in the 70s.

It was making me wonder if those global cooling fanatics from the 70s were right. Time to burn more coal!

Whatever the case may be, the real solution is to panic and hand over all the power to “experts” who know so well what is happening and what needs to be done. Fire or ice, plague or famine, and of course climate change wars, the horses of the apocalypse are indeed riding to get us all.

But hmmm. If you know anything about history–and history is only a few thousand years old and hardly a pimple on the butt of Earth’s long past–you know that the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse have always been riding towards us and that disasters are the norm and not the exception.

So rather than notice that disasters happen, we should ask how frequently they do. And the answer is a lot less frequently than at any point in the past. Wildfires have always been around, but modern wildfires that threaten human beings in a big way are largely the result of bad forestry management and are often caused directly by arson. Make some prescribed burns and the problem may not vanish, but will be much smaller than before.

Famines in the modern world have basically one cause: politics, usually war. Unless you live in a war-torn region or a communist country, famine is a non-issue for the first time since agriculture came about.

Weather events kill far fewer people per capita than at any time in recorded history, and societies recover far faster–especially modern industrial societies. Haiti’s CO2 emissions per capita are essentially zero–negligible compared to the United States. Haiti also is still devastated by a hurricane 15 years ago. Well, the hurricane and then the corruption and graft of the Clinton Foundation and the UN, which used Haiti as an opportunity to skim off some wealth at the expense of suffering people.

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Thank God the UN and Clinton Foundation have little influence if Florida. 600 miles difference between Miami and Haiti. 600 years difference in resiliency. Thanks, fossil fuels!

The truth is that modern industrial societies are far far better equipped to ensure human well-being than pre-modern societies, but the Left wants you to believe the opposite. Before capitalism, the world was an idyll. Yeah, right. We are told that heat is killing more and more people (true–more and more people exist on Earth, so yes), and then told to get rid of air conditioning to save the Earth. Makes sense. Maybe if we get rid of air conditioning the high temp in Phoenix will be 112 instead of 114, saving many lives.

Uh-huh. Makes sense. 112 without A/C is far better for human health than 114 with it. Right.

Meanwhile cold is by far a bigger killer of people. It’s not even close: 94% of climate-related deaths are from cold. And fossil fuels save us from those deaths in the West too.

Fossil fuels are the solution to both heat- and cold-related deaths. Even the clothes you wear to keep you warm outside are usually made with fossil fuels.

Same with famine: what saves us from famine is modern farming with machines and fertilizer–both bête noirs of climate alarmists. John Kerry literally said that we needed to close farms to save people from starvation not too long ago. And people think he is right, apparently. Europe is closing down farms, and that policy is coming here too.

We may get to a fossil-fuel-free future, but the only way forward is more wealth, more industrialization, and more nuclear energy. The exact opposite of what the Left is pushing. Here is a graph showing the relationship between energy use and life expectancy. Almost 100% correlation.

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Sure, modern society has caused modern problems. There were no deaths from car accidents in 1850. Let’s ban cars! Not a single airplane crashed in 1900. We must ban airplanes–except the jets necessary to get climate activists to conferences in gorgeous locations.

Why all the apocalypse talk if the modern world makes human societies more resilient? Clearly, it has nothing to do with a comprehensive look at the costs and benefits, so what else drives this climate fanaticism? Whatever costs attach to using fossil fuels–and they are very real–the benefits far outweigh them. So why the hate?

I think we all know the reason. Food for thought, in any case.

Now on to the fun!

Memes and funny photos:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your weekly dose of genius from the best journalists in the biz…

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This week’s dose of cute and interesting tweets:

What Gen Z thinks communism would be like:

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And finally…this is inhuman

 

Tags: SUNDAY SMILES

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