Rep. McClintock Predicts, Future Generations Will Look At Us as Nuts for Our Climate Panic

Aug. 13, 2019 (EIRNS)—Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA), ranking member of the Water, Ocean, and Wildlife Subcommittee in the U.S. House of Representatives, mocked the predictors of an “apocalypse now” climate crisis as akin to superstitious medieval peasants, in his keynote presentation to the Heartland Institute’s July 25 International Climate Conference. The Heartland Institute quoted McClintock in its conference summary:

“During the Little Ice Age from the 16th through the 18th centuries, superstitious locals would have exorcisms performed on the edges of advancing glaciers and would go on witch hunts to punish those responsible for the famine and disease and suffering that this era of prolonged cold produced.

“We laugh at the superstition and folly of those who blamed witchcraft for the severe climate change of the Little Ice Age, but I’m convinced future generations are going to be looking at ours in precisely the same way, except our generation won’t have the excuse of ignorance. With all of our knowledge and technology, we’ve allowed ourselves once again to be thrown into panic over forces that have been at work shaping our planet since it formed.”

At an earlier May 22 oversight hearing of his subcommittee on the subject of the UN’s “Global Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services,” McClintock, after challenging its unproven assertion that nearly million species face extinction, continued:

“There have been periods within both recorded history and throughout paleo history when scientists tell us temperatures were much hotter—and also much colder—than they are today. Science tells us that carbon dioxide levels have varied widely throughout the planet’s history, including periods when they were many times higher than today. Science tells us that at the peak of the last ice age, ocean levels were 400 feet lower than they are today. Hurricane activity is much lower than recorded in the 18th century.

“And despite what we are told, there is a vigorous debate within the scientific community over how human activity compares with vastly more powerful natural influencers that have driven climate change for 4.5 billion years....

“History, and especially recent history, is filled with apocalyptic predictions about the end of the world. We’re still waiting. The irony is that we look back and laugh at each generation that succumbs to these fits of hysteria.... Just imagine how future generations will view us.”