"Pants on Fire"
by Joel Bowman
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
(The more things change, the more they stay the same.)
~ Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808-1890)
Cefalonia, Greece - “Where is that global warming when you need it?” The cheeky comment was overheard at a little seaside taverna near our temporary digs back in Syros a couple of weeks ago... at least by those sitting within earshot of our table when we said it. The summer “swimming season” had officially begun in Greece... but the waters remained unseasonably fresh, at least for our warm, Aussie blood. Those visiting from cooler climes – Brits, Germans and the perennially fearless Scandinavians – waded into these seas like Bugs Bunny slipping into a cannibal's kettle. Then again, when you’re accustomed to Baltic waters and North Sea icebergs...
To the climate anxious ear, our quips may appear insensitive. But then, if the “era of global boiling has arrived,” as UN Secretary-General António Guterres lectured the world back in 2023, surely a little levity is in order... if only to break the awkward silence around the cauldron as we’re all poached and simmered to death.
Privilege Checked: Of course, it goes without saying that, as a white, heterosexual male... with not one but two functional arms... we speak from a position of privilege as unforgivable as it is unearned. As such, the plight of any number of marginalized communities remains eternally beyond our grasp... intellectually... emotionally... spiritually... and otherly. Not that our unfortunate advantages excuse us from “doing the work” to understand things we can never know anyway. There’s always more to be done, especially when the claims made by the high priests of climate alarmism remain beyond conceivable doubt.
In the meantime, here is a smattering of hyperventilating headlines, with which to flagellate ourselves from here to Hades...
"Why Climate Change is Inherently Racist" ~ BBC
""Gender equality is the missing piece in the climate debate" ~ United Nations Development Programme
"Climate vs. War: How Combating the Climate Crisis Can Help Ukraine" ~ Vox
"The Disproportionate Impact of Climate the Climate Crisis on the LGBTQIA2S+ Community" ~ Greenpeace
"Pakistani Trans Community is Especially Vulnerable to Climate Crisis" ~ Global Health NOW
"Climate Change Leaves Transgender Indians Even More Vulnerable" ~ The Washington Blade
"Hundreds of Millions on Verge of Starvation, Billions More Undernourished as Climate Crisis Droughts Take Their Toll" ~ BNE
"Climate Change’s Overlooked Role in Obesity " ~ Global Health NOW
Yes, dear reader... whether the victims are Indian or Pakistani... fat or skinny... female or non-male... black or brown or non-white... gay, trans or two-spirit animal... The climate “crisis” is only making matters worse... and it’s all our fault!
Climate Agnosticism: And yet, for all our immutable characteristics and unpardonable life choices, our inexpiable sins nevertheless failed to raise the sea temperature down the hill even to the seasonal average. From seatemperature.info: "Water temperature in Syros today is 21°C, below the June average of 22.5°C. Based on our historical data, the warmest water on this day in Syros was recorded in 2010 and was 24.8°C, and the coldest was recorded in 2022 at 21.4°C."
Perhaps a few more carbon belching plane flights are in order. (If only we could spring for private jet-setting; then we could aspire to the kind of difference Bill Gates and Leo DiCaprio and John Kerry make daily, without even breaking a sweat.) All of this is merely anecdotal, of course, a few jibes amidst a sea of our own acknowledged ignorance. When it comes to the unquestionable tenets of the Climate Change Cult, your editor remains radically agnostic.
How, then, does one assess some of the above headlines, some of which were presumably not written in jest (or at least not on purpose)? Take the claim that “hundreds of millions are on the verge of starvation, with billions more undernourished.” How does that square with, say, the verifiable fact that hunger deaths have (mercifully) collapsed over the past generation, as global crop yields skyrocket to historical records year… after year… after year?
In 1928, the League of Nations estimated that more than two-thirds (65%) of humanity lived in a “constant state of hunger.” By 1970, malnutrition afflicted “just” one quarter (25%) of the world’s population. And by 2008, the number of people considered “chronically hungry” was down to less than one in ten. The favorable trend is particularly noticeable among children, who are the most vulnerable to the historical scourge of malnutrition. From the Financial Post:
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Please Sir, Can I Have Some More? What accounts for this rapid decline in hungry little mouths? Writes Danish political scientist and “skeptical environmentalist,” Bjorn Lomborg: "Hunger is way down because incomes have risen dramatically and humanity has become much better at producing food. We have more than quintupled cereal production since 1926, and more than halved global food prices. At the same time, extreme poverty has dropped sharply, allowing parents to buy their children more and better food."
And don’t look now, but here’s more positive news... this time from Our World in Data, citing figures sourced from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Their reports show total agricultural output (adjusted for inflation) increasing by over 310% during the last six decades. That’s almost double the rate of population increase, which grew by ~160% over the same period (from ~3 billion in 1961 to ~8 billion in 2025).
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Whether looking at the production of potatoes (+200%), wheat (+245%), maize (+400%), or soybeans (+1,280%), the world’s leading food crops are handily outpacing population growth. And that trend looks set to continue. Lomborg, again: "As we move towards 2050, continuing increases in incomes will almost eradicate extreme poverty. At the same time, food prices will likely decline slightly or stay about the same, as even more people switch to higher-quality, more expensive foods. All credible forecasts see even lower levels of malnutrition by mid-century."
As for the role dreaded carbon dioxide has played in all this, Lomborg is heretical in citing reality: "Carbon dioxide is a fertilizer. Tomato producers routinely pump it into their greenhouses to boost productivity. It has a similar impact across the living world. Since the 1970s, the rising concentration of CO₂ has caused the planet to become greener, producing more biomass. Satellites show that since 2000 the world has so many more green leaves their total additional area is larger than Australia."
Starvation down... crop yields up... biomass expanding... and life flourishing. What on God’s greening earth is to be done?
Deaths in Decline: Meanwhile, death rates from natural disasters – including droughts, floods, extreme temperatures, wildfires, glacial lake outbursts, etc. – are collapsing. In the decade from 1920-1930, 26.5 people per one hundred thousand died from such catastrophic events. The rate a century on: less than half a person per thousand...a non-trivial 98.11% reduction. Again, from Our World in Data:
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Reading through the headlines and parsing the data, it’s almost as though we’re living on a different planet from the Political-Celebrity Industrial Complex...one that is not teetering on the brink of a mass extinction event, but one in which poverty is decreasing precipitously as food production hits record after record...where deaths from extreme weather events have collapsed over the past century, thanks in large part to a general increase in wealth per capita, in which access to cheap, reliable energy in the form of fossil fuels and nuclear power has delivered billions from the grips of poverty and misery.
We don’t claim to know what the temperature will be a year... a decade... a century from now. Nor do we claim to know what should... or even could... be done to alter it, if indeed that were definitively demonstrated to be a net positive outcome.
Moreover, we don’t pretend to understand the myriad opportunity costs involved in such a complex re-tooling of the global economy, administered and enforced by precisely the same clutch of corrupt politicians who have proven themselves least qualified to do so, nor what might be the inevitable and unintended consequences such a project might unleash on the rest of us. Helpfully, the world divides itself into two camps on these – and many other – pertinent questions: those who admit they don’t know all the answers... and liars."
