True, the ice is thin. The mother and child may fall through and drown in the freezing water. But in a few months summer will be here, bringing with it the threat of global warming. Surely that is the greater danger, is it not? Perhaps the mother was so preoccupied with global warming that she ignored the warning sign. But who could blame her? She was only following the example of liberal politicians, who try to distract us from actual current dangers by focusing on possible future dangers such as climate change.
We’ve all seen people like that, obsessed with the irrelevant while ignoring what is truly important. In ordinary work, this is annoying. But it is really dangerous when human lives and well-being are at stake. This is obviously true in a hospital or in the military. It is equally true, though perhaps less obvious, in politics.
This November we will decide the fate of our republic, and perhaps that of the free world. Choosing who will lead us at this critical time is a heavy responsibility, among the heaviest we will face in our lifetimes. But what are the airwaves, the Internet, and the newspapers filled with? What are so many pundits squandering their time and energy discussing?
Global warming.
Oh wait, I mean climate change, which includes warmer and cooler, wetter and drier, as well as stormier and calmer. Unlike “global warming,” which can easily be disproved by current temperature records, “climate change” can never be disproved – any evidence whatever supports it, while no obtainable evidence can ever disprove it.

Another thing I must point out is that you cannot prove a vague theory wrong.
– Richard Feynman, Nobel laureate in physics

“Climate change” is a pseudo-religious dogma, not a scientific hypothesis. Those who disagree with a scientific hypothesis can be argued with on the basis of evidence. Those who disagree with the dogma of “climate change” are called “deniers,” treated as heretics, and shunned at best and threatened with imprisonment or death at worst.
“Global warming” yields 57,700,000 returns on Google, while “climate change” yields 151,000,000. But do these massive numbers of hits translate to a massive amount of public interest, much less a massive amount of real importance? Not really. Polls reveal that 24% of Americans believe that terrorism is our chief problem, and 21% believe it is the economy, while only 3% believe it is climate change.
Yes, global warming may be a problem – assuming it exists and continues – in 50 or 100 years. But what about current problems? If we don’t solve them, we may not be around in 50 or 100 years, no matter what the climate will be then. Instead of taking a common-sense approach, some politicians – including President Obama and Hillary Clinton – emphasize “climate change” in an effort to gloss over the crucial issues on which they have done so poorly:

● They gloss over an ever-larger government usurping the rights of our citizens. Isn’t this a moral as well as a political issue?

● They gloss over the expanding nanny state that controls everything from light bulbs and toilets to dishwasher detergent to what our kids eat for lunch. Yes, this is a moral issue. It means the demotion of the individual human being created in God’s image to a mere servant of the state. It means the demotion of citizens to subjects.

● They gloss over a government that spends money it doesn’t have, and never will have, by heaping debt on our children and grandchildren. Did children and the unborn vote for this? Talk about taxation without representation. And this too is a moral issue.

● They gloss over the threat of radical Islam. Major Hassan kills 14 at Fort Hood while shouting “Allahu akbar”? It’s “workplace violence.” A Muslim couple kill 14 in San Bernardino and die in a shootout? Police “search for a motive.” An American Muslim who visited Mecca and Cairo shoots a Philadelphia police officer and declares he did it “in the name of Islam”? The mayor states that “It had nothing to do with Islam.” Lincoln said that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. Removing all doubt, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders link terrorism to “climate change.”

● They gloss over plans to cut our national defense in an increasingly dangerous world, where fanatics scream “death to America!” while building nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. Iran, North Korea, and ISIS present deadly threats that are ignored or minimized only at our peril. Look at these graphs – we have been cutting muscle, not just fat.

 

 

Source: InFocus Quarterly, Winter 2016

             

Defense spending as percent of GDP
Source: Heritage Foundation

These are serious problems our next president will have to face. But who is best qualified to do so? Who will be the best wartime leader? And we are at war, whether or not we are willing to face this unpleasant fact.

You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.
– Michael Walzer (misattributed to Leon Trotsky)

Is Hillary Clinton an experienced public servant, or merely Bill Clinton’s wife who never did anything successfully herself? Is Bernie Sanders the harbinger of a socialist future, or the relic of a failed socialist past? Is Donald Trump a gutsy leader who says what others fear to say, or a loudmouthed gate crasher? Is Ted Cruz a dedicated American, or a Canadian impostor? Is Marco Rubio a thoughtful conservative, or a stooge for open borders? Let us discuss these important issues.
But instead, some people ignore these vital issues while wasting their time and energy on other issues that may (or may not) become important decades in the future, but are not crucial today. There is no perfect candidate, so we must choose between imperfect candidates. At least let us choose one who addresses issues that are crucial today, rather than trying to distract us with peripheral issues. And even if there were a perfect candidate, he or she would want perfect voters, which surely leaves me out.
Yes, I know what climate-change activists would say about the image at the start of this column: The ice is thinner than usual because of global warming. On the other hand, the ice could have formed where it usually does not because of global cooling. It depends on one’s point of view. Instead of looking at the evidence, then forming their opinion, many people take their pre-formed opinion and try to force the evidence into supporting it. But this isn’t science – it is the opposite of science. It is activism and propaganda disguised in the mantle of science.

If you torture data sufficiently, it will confess to almost anything.
− Fred Menger

For many liberals, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, global warming serves as a convenient tool for distracting us from crucial problems that they have failed to solve – or actually have made worse by their clumsiness and neglect.
For more information on what “climate change” is and is not, read “A Disgrace to the Profession,” edited by Mark Steyn. The people who are on really thin ice are the politicians who incite exaggerated fear of “climate change” in order to divert attention from their own incompetence and wrongdoing.

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Contact: dstol@prodigy.net. You are welcome to publish or post these articles, provided that you cite the author and website.
www.stolinsky.com