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NYT sets new record for nutty climate alarmism

A while back I did a CFACT piece on the problem that teachers who know nothing about science are actively teaching climate alarmism. The piece was based on an ever-alarmist New York Times article praising this problem as a good thing, when it is just the opposite.

Now the NYT has outdone itself, with what has got to be the nuttiest alarmist opinion piece that I have ever seen. The title sort of says it all — “The Climate Crisis? It’s Capitalism, Stupid.”

There is no climate crisis and capitalism is vastly superior to its alternatives, so there you go; no need to read further. But it is worth looking at how these wild alarmist tales are spun and who spins them, because a lot of people read this junk. And in this case the tale spinner is a teacher, at a prominent American state university school no less: The Arizona State honors college.

The author is Benjamin Fong and his field is best described as psychoanalytic anti-capitalism. I am not making this up. His ASU bio says this: “Benjamin Y. Fong received his PhD in Religion from Columbia University, where he was also an Affiliate Scholar at the Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.”

To get a feel for his psycho-thinking, read this Fong essay and try not to laugh. His claim is that pleasure is a form of subjection that is imposed upon us.

So how does Dr. Fong explain the climate crisis? In the usual way really, with a combination of bad science combined with false confidence in baseless conjectures, artful omissions and left-wing politics. Thankfully he is brief.

He begins with a sciency statement, which is a common opening move in the game of climate alarmism. The statement is that human CO2 emissions today are 10 times greater that they were at the time of one of the great mass extinctions, called the End-Permian. This cataclysmic eventoccurred a whopping 250 million years ago, for reasons that we do not understand.

How this is relevant is never explained, because the point is to make a vague scary suggestion. He simply slides into the idea that we are now facing a similar fate (for which there is no scientific basis).

Even worse, the statement is absurd. What is not mentioned is that natural CO2 emissions today are something like 20 times greater than our emissions. So if our tiny emissions are a problem then nature’s vast emissions are a far bigger problem, but thankfully neither is true.

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