THE DANGER OF WARMISM IS NOT TO THE PLANET BUT THE SANITY OF ITS ADVOCATES

Climate change is as grave a threat as the Ebola virus or the terrorists of the Islamic State, Secretary of State John Kerry said in anticipation of the UN conference in New York this week.

All but a "tiny minority" of "extreme ideologues" in the "Flat Earth Society" think the planet is warming dangerously, he said in speeches in Indonesia and Hawaii.

If Mr. Kerry were to attend a meeting of the Flat Earth Society, "his presence might lower the level of discourse," said Myron Ebell, gobsmacked by two in particular of the many things the secretary of state said that aren’t true.

The temperature of the earth has been stable "for literally millions of years," Mr. Kerry said.

When the most recent ice age peaked about 20,000 years ago, there was a glacier where Chicago is today. Lake Michigan is the residue from it. Palm trees once grew in Antarctica. During the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods 2,000 and 1,000 years ago, grapes grew in Northern England and Newfoundland. Only a blithering idiot would say the earth’s temperature has been stable "for literally millions of years."

But it was when Mr. Kerry said greenhouse gases are "a very thin layer of gases – a quarter inch, half an inch, somewhere in that vicinity – way up there at the edge of the atmosphere" that he set a "new standard for utter imbecility," said Mr. Ebell, environmental expert for the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The atmosphere extends 240 miles above the earth’s surface. Greenhouse gases are diffused throughout it – mostly in the troposphere, the first six miles.

The earth is getting hotter "at an alarming speed," Mr. Kerry said.

There’s been no warming for 18 years, according to weather satellite measurements. It’s about 0.4 degrees Celsius cooler now than in 2005, says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This year has been the chilliest since the federal government began keeping records in 1871.

Warming "will make it much more difficult for farmers to be able to grow the regular things we grow," Mr. Kerry said.

Carbon dioxide is to plants what oxygen is to us. Warmer temperatures extend growing seasons. More CO2 and more warmth should mean more food production. The planet’s gotten greener since 1980, satellite measurements indicate.

Warming has caused "unprecedented hurricanes, unprecedented droughts, unprecedented fires," Mr. Kerry said.

Hurricane strikes in the U.S. are at an all time low. There’s been no net change in global drought area for 30 years. Acreage burned in forest fires has been trending downward since 2002.

Warming tends to bring more rain. It’s cold that’s dry. Severe drought afflicts less of the U.S. now than in 2000. Droughts in the 1930s were worse. It’s getting wetter, NOAA says.

Mr. Kerry doesn’t care about the facts. Because most scientists do, more are leaving the warmist camp, swelling the always substantial ranks of the skeptics. It’s no more true 97 percent of scientists agree with Mr. Kerry than that climate has been stable "for literally millions of years."

Alarmists have linked warming to, among other things, Boko Haram, child prostitution, Ebola, the decline of redheads in Scotland, UFO sightings, a fungus threatening French cave paintings – with little or no evidence to support their specious, often hilarious, claims. They’ve fretted about emissions from marathon runners and farting cows.

Now they claim it’s because of global warming winters are colder, summers cooler, more ice is forming at the poles.

As more scientists say there is no crisis, alarmists must rely on dunces like Mr. Kerry, actor Leo DiCaprio, and the motley crew of Marxists in the "Peoples Climate March" in New York last Sunday to spread their increasingly hysterical message.

But shouting it doesn’t make nonsense more credible. Chanting slogans, beating drums and blowing horns is no substitute for evidence and logic. The only impact the marchers last Sunday had on the environment was the mountain of garbage they left behind.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

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