In 2006, former vice-president Al Gore published a book entitled An Inconvenient Truth, in which he warned of catastrophic changes to the world as we know it due to what he called “global warming.” Liberals flocked to his side, immediately seizing upon this doomsday message to institute, under President Obama, draconian measures to prevent the devastation that global warming was sure to wreak upon the world. Under Obama, increasingly stringent regulations were put upon the coal industry, forcing many mines to close and putting thousands of workers out of jobs. Millions in tax dollars were poured into so-called “green energy” companies to produce giant wind turbines, solar panels, and electric cars. And after all of the hype, the hysteria, the billions of dollars, what has happened? Nothing that Al Gore predicted.

For example, he predicted that the polar ice caps would melt, raising the levels of the oceans, driving the polar bears to extinction, and turning thousands of miles of ocean front land into foaming waves. In his speech accepting his Nobel Prize for the “global warming” initiative in 2007, he said again, “The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff. It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.”
Yet, the reverse has occurred. The polar ice caps are actually increasing in size from 43% in some areas to 63% in others. An article in Globe and Mail relates, “An area twice the size of Alaska – America’s biggest state – was open water two years ago and is now covered in ice.” Needless to say, the polar bear population has actually increased in the past ten years. As for the warming of the globe, according to NASA, the average temperature of the world has increased by .36 degree Fahrenheit since they began keeping records in 1979. Moreover, the increase occurred before 1998. Since 1998, the world temperature has actually dropped by 1.08 degrees Fahrenheit. Even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has finally admitted that global temperatures have been static for the past 17 years, despite rising atmospheric CO2 levels, and that their theoretical simulation models have grossly exaggerated climate sensitivity to CO2. And Patrick Moore, the past president of Greenpeace says, “There is no definitive scientific proof through real-world observation that carbon dioxide is responsible for any of the slight warming of global climate which has occurred during the past 300 years.”
Other predictions that Mr. Gore made which have proven to be false include that there would be increased tornado activity. We have seen less. He predicted that Hurricane Katrina was the harbinger of many more devastating hurricanes, but while we have had hurricanes, in the last 10 years, there have been no more F3 hurricanes – the longest period without such devastating storms that we have seen. Other predictions of an ice age in Europe, the drying up of the Southern Sahara, horrendous floods in China – none of these has taken place (Charisma News).

Then what has happened since his dire predictions in 2006? Money has been made, lots of money, and equally money has been lost. According to Forbes, “The Small Business Administration estimates that compliance with such [anti-carbon emission] regulations costs the U.S. economy more than $1.75 trillion per year — about 12%-14% of GDP, and half of the $3.5 trillion Washington is currently spending.” And how will we benefit from this drain on taxpayer money? According to Bjorn Lomborg, former director of the Danish government’s Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, there will ultimately be minimal impact on the world’s temperature. “Even if every nation in the world adheres to its climate change commitments by 2030 the only difference it will make to “global warming” by the end of this century will be to reduce the world’s temperatures by 0.048°C (0.086°F)” (Breitbart). Not much of a change considering what we are paying for it.

On the other hand, Mr. Gore and a host of others have become very wealthy and Democratic congressmen have had their coffers kept full. Mr. Gore left the Vice Presidency with an estimated worth of $2 million. But through his book on “Global Warming,” the subsequent movie and the sequel, his speaking fees, and profits from the 14 green-tech firms that he is connected to, his net worth is now estimated at over $100 million. “He’s on his way to becoming what one congressional leader called ‘our first carbon billionaire’” (Larry Tomczak).

Green energy companies, of course, have been the big winners, raking in billions in tax dollars under Obama’s administration, and often, failing. As of 2012, the list of failing or bankrupt green energy companies and the amount of federal tax dollars they had received included the following:

1. Evergreen Solar ($25 million)*
2. SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
3. Solyndra ($535 million)*
4. Beacon Power ($43 million)*
5. Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
6. SunPower ($1.2 billion)
7. First Solar ($1.46 billion)
8. Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
9. EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
10. Amonix ($5.9 million)
11. Fisker Automotive ($529 million)
12. Abound Solar ($400 million)*
13. A123 Systems ($279 million)*
14. Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)*
15. Johnson Controls ($299 million)
16. Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
17. ECOtality ($126.2 million)
18. Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
19. Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
20. Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
21. Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
22. Range Fuels ($80 million)*
23. Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)*
24. Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
25. Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)*
26. GreenVolts ($500,000)
27. Vestas ($50 million)
28. LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million)
29. Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
30. Navistar ($39 million)
31. Satcon ($3 million)*
32. Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)*
33. Mascoma Corp. ($100 million)
*Denotes companies that had already filed for bankruptcy as of October 2012 . (The Daily Signal).

Not only did these companies fail, but before doing so, “the firms doled out six-figure bonuses and payouts to top executives” according to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News. (2012). And while both Republicans and Democrats have benefited from donations made by renewable energy companies, Democrats by far raked in the most in support ($584,835 in that year alone) with $257,699 going to Hillary Clinton. (Center for Responsive Politics).

So, if all of this is true, why do most scientists support the theory that mankind is creating a dangerous upward climb in global temperatures? Perhaps they don’t all believe that. In a tweet on May 16, 2014, President Obama claimed that “’97% of scientists agree: climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.’ In outrage, a petition was signed by more than 31,000 scientists that states ‘there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of . . . carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate’” (Newsmax). According to the Wall Street Journal, further review shows that the percentage of scientists who believe in man-made climate change is closer to 1%. But as John Casey, a former White House space program advisor, consultant to NASA Headquarters, and space shuttle engineer explains, “If you work for the government and you stand up and say, ‘Man-made climate change is all nonsense’ you can kiss your government job goodbye. They’ll either make it hell to work there, or fire you outright” (Newsmax).

Global Warming has been renamed “Climate Change” by its supporters, since, despite their tampering with the figures (see Climate Gate and the tampering by Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies with the record of temperatures in South America in 2015 as reported by The Telegraph UK), the globe is clearly not warming.

But of course, climate change is real as evidenced by the ice age, the warming of Europe between 1000 – 1200 AD which allowed the expansion of European civilization, the Little Ice Age in Europe between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the drying up of the Western Interior Seaway that once stretched from the Gulf of Mexico through the middle of the U.S. and Canada and reached the Bering Sea, and even the dust bowl of the 1930s. But it is both natural and cyclical. The actual effect of mankind on the changes in the climate are about 0.28% (Geocraft). The climate will change with or without our interference, and although finding renewable energy sources to use when fossil fuels have been used up seems a wise move, it hardly requires the frenzied, hysterical, and horrendously expensive push that we are experiencing. Were there not billions to be made from the “Climate Change” hysteria, the issue would soon fade from view. And the world would go on as it always has.