"I See Nothing . . . "

Moscow Sees Its Coldest Christmas in 120 Years

Australia and South America also had cold-weather records. Why is nobody talking about it?

Jon Basil Utley
The American Conservative

Novoandreevsky bridge in the Moscow winter. (Igor Zhilyakov / Shutterstock)

With all the talk about Fake News, little is mentioned about No-News.

Moscow has had a record-busting winter, including the coldest Christmas in 120 years according to Russian reports. Yet there is nothing on CNN. Poland and much of Eastern Europe also are having a record cold winter. It is not reported. Also in the Southern Hemisphere were record cold winters in 2016 and cool following summers in Perth, Australia and New Zealand, which had the coldest winter in a hundred years. Similarly, in 2016 Brazil had the coldest winter in 22 years.

Although everyone can agree that there is “climate change,” the measures most visible for modifying it are all those promoted by the partisans of global warming—namely cutting back carbon dioxide emissions, particularly burning fossil fuels. But should we copy Germany with measures that raised electricity bills to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour, nearly three times what it costs in America? Is it really proven that we should stop building pipelines so as to purposely increase the price of gasoline or home heating gas for millions of Americans? New York State is even trying to prohibit a hundred-mile gas pipeline that would bring cheap Pennsylvania gas to compete with some of the highest-priced gas in America.

These policies to hold back “climate change” became the mantra of Obama’s EPA. But the ideas also pervade elite America. A poll at Harvard University’s alumni gathering in 2016 about the ten greatest threats to America put global warming as No. 1 and nuclear war at No. 10, results that truly terrify any contrarian such as myself. When so many Americans believe in it, some experience their faith in it as a virtual religion. It’s understandable that most of media don’t question it.

Almost every week the Washington Post and New York Times report some more frightening news or government report as evidence of “climate change.” After 2005, with Hurricane Katrina and many others, they told us that global warming was responsible and would bring forth continuing future record hurricanes. Instead there have been very few hurricanes at all. Still any reports or questioning of the so-called “theory” is kept out of their “news.” Isn’t record cold in other parts of the planet also reportable “news,” when Washington spends billions and adds inestimable billions more of costs to our industries because of this theory?

Is climate change really all the fault of humans? Maybe it is partly our arrogance and pride, believing that the world revolves around us. The world is so big and so many places don’t have much human activity. (The BBC series Planet Earth gives some idea of how immense the earth is.) And there is so much false or distorted information. Prof. Larry Bell debunks the myth that “97 percent of scientists” say humans are responsible. The actual survey used to make this claim was a two-minute online questionnaire that mixed the answers of those claiming primary responsibility with those who answered that human influence was marginal.

Another little-reported fact is the growing ice quantities in the Antarctic. After a year the Washington Post finally reported it, but combined with a story about how growing amounts of ice might break off and fall in the Antarctic Ocean and so cause seas to rise.

Why assume that climate change is the same threat as global warming when nearly all of Al Gore’s forecasts of ten years ago were wrong? Climate alarmists’ fears have existed through history. They’ve usually been wrong; there are simply too many variables.

Now we learn that the recent Paris Climate Accords were also based on false information. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration rushed through, just in time for the conference, an unvetted report rebutting one of the warmers’ big problems, that temperatures on earth had not increased during the last ten years. One of their top scientists explained it. So there are more cover-ups of questionable information. One should also remember that Third World nations were promised some hundred billion dollars, mainly from America, to compensate for economic losses in return for cutting back their industrialization and coal-power generation.

It’s all so preposterous when one thinks that we are talking about increases of maybe a few degrees Fahrenheit every century. Shouldn’t there at least be some discussion and debate on the subject?

Jon Basil Utley is publisher of The American Conservative.