Refuting The Environmental
Chicken Littles

by Hal Shurtleff
Director, Camp Constitution
Alton, NH

The University of New Hampshire, in a recent article, reported that our “weather will be warmer and wetter with fifty plus days over 90 degrees and above shorter winters, more droughts and more floods by 2100. From the article:
“This is not something that is just a problem for the future,” said Cameron Wake, research professor in climatology and glaciology. “Human driven climate change is happening now, and we are at a critical crossroads. Those trends could get exponentially worse if we don’t take some action to slow the process and rapidly decrease emissions.”
We can always rely on a state college professor to issue reports advocating more government control over our lives.
Climate alarmists have been with us from our nation’s beginning. Noah Webster, the great lexicographer, refuted his generation’s climate alarmists in his 1810 book On the Supposed Change in the Temperature of Winter. There were some including the brilliant Thomas Jefferson who believed that winters were getting warmer because certain species of animals were found further north.
In this fascinating book, Webster looked at weather patterns in the Old Testament, and diaries kept by colonial America farmers. He concluded that there were mild winters and severely cold winters but that there is no proof that there was any warming trend.
One of the first modern-day alarmists was Rachel Carson. Her 1962 book, Silent Spring paved the way for the banning of DDT-an insecticide that saved millions of lives from Malaria. She made baseless claims that the use of DDT harmed bird life and caused hepatitis and cancer in humans.
Then came Paul Ehrlich’s 1970 book The Population Time Bomb warned us that the seas would all be dead by the mid-1970s, and then came Al Gore’s 1992 book Earth in the Balance which warned that we would all be doomed by the year 2000 unless we got rid of the internal combustion engine. Al was already a multimillionaire but after his thoroughly discredited documentary An Inconvenient Truth that scared thousands of gullible school children who were forced to watch the movie, the movie’s proceeds made him a billionaire.
I recall being taught in my junior high school days that the world is about to descent into a new ice age due to the burning of fossil fuels where we would have year-round winters leading to mass starvation, and extinction.
Between global cooling and global warming, climate alarmists warned that due to acid rain all of the trees and lakes would be dead.
I vividly recall then-Governor Michael Dukakis conducting a press conference at Turners Pond in Milton, MA., sometime in the late 1980s. He claimed that acid rain has killed all of the fish in the pond. I visited the pond a few months later where I observed people catching fish. Around the same time, I read an article in the “Boston Globe” which reported the death of Vermont’s maple trees due to acid rain. A few years later, I was in Vermont and picked up a local paper with an article which reported that Vermont just experienced its largest maple syrup crop in its reported history.
Our forests are alive and well and actually increasing. From Tree Hugger’s website:
“In the United States, which contains 8 percent of the world’s forests, there are more trees than there were 100 years ago. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), “Forest growth nationally has exceeded harvest since the 1940s. By 1997, forest growth exceeded harvest by 42 percent and the volume of forest growth was 380 percent greater than it had been in 1920.” The greatest gains have been seen on the East Coast (with average volumes of wood per acre almost doubling since the ‘50s) which was the area most heavily logged by European settlers beginning in the 1600s, soon after their arrival.”
And ozone depletion? We were all supposed to get skin cancer but somehow it did not happen. Professor Robert Davis addressed the issue in his December 2000 article https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/ozone-hole-much-ado-about-nada:
“As NOAA’s Hoffman explained, “year-to-year fluctuations in the geographical size of the ozone hole and the timing of the ozone production are believed to be related to meteorological factors such as temperature and winds, rather than further increases in ozone-destroying chemicals in the atmosphere.”
Mixologist turned Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned us in 2019 that we had only 12 years to live unless we adopt the Green New Deal. And let us not forget sea levels rising as the elite buy “unsustainable” beach front mansions. Climate alarmists Barack Obama recently purchased a mansion on Martha’s Vineyard.
Despite the academic and media blacklisting of climate realists, the truth is getting out. Groups like CFACT, the Heartland Institute and Climate Depot have helped to expose the fraudulent research of the climate alarmists.
A recent report by meteorologist Anthony Watts discovered that 96 percent of climate data is corrupted: https://www.heartland.org/multimedia/podcasts/96-of-us-climate-data-is-corrupted Another report from scientist Bjorn Lomborg reports that climate deaths have gone down 99 percent in the last 100 years:
“Contrary to breathless media reporting, climate-related deaths have dropped 96+% over the past century 1920s average: 485,000 1910s average: 18,357 2020: 8,086.”
While there are legitimate environmental issues, and we should be good stewards of the Earth, let us not give in to the climate alarmists that see the American middle-class as the biggest threat to the world, and are doing their best to tank our economy as they enrich themselves.”
Camp Constitution is part of New Hampshire’s “Adopt a Highway” program sponsoring two miles of Highway on Rt 28 in Alton. There are many stretches of highway in the area that do not have any sponsors. Perhaps these “think globally—act locally” folks can put their money where their mouths are and “Adopt a Highway.” Those that are interested can contact the New Hampshire Department of Transportation.

Readers that would like a free pocket copy of the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, may contact Hal Shurtleff at campconstitution1@gmail.com