Hunga Tonga Blues

In 1815, Tambora, a volcano on Sumbawa (an island in Indonesia) erupted, pumping ten cubic miles of earth into the atmosphere. Those gases and particulates caused enough sunlight to be reflected back into space to cause a "year without a summer," crop failures and food shortages around the globe, and the coldest summer temperatures Europe has seen in the past 250 years.

In 1883, Krakatoa, a volcano in the Suma Strait between Sumatra and Java (islands in Indonesia), erupted. Or, some might say, exploded. With an energy release estimated at 200 megatons of TNT. Or, if you prefer comparative measures, ten thousand times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The ash, sulphur dioxide, and other stuff it pumped into the atmosphere cooled the planet by a full degree Fahrenheit, and chilled the planet for several years thereafter.

Of note - the global temperature record began to be recorded around that time (prior temps are estimated indirectly). When you start recording at an unusual low (also noteworthy - the end of the “little ice age” is denoted around 1850), you really should be suspicious of the trend you extrapolate.

Last year, Hunga Tonga, a submarine volcano about 1500 miles northeast of New Zealand, erupted, pumping millions of tons of water vapor into the atmosphere. Water vapor is a "greenhouse gas," with a more potent effect per unit than carbon dioxide, and the Hunga Tonga eruption is expected to warm the planet significantly for half a decade.

How many of you even heard about the Hunga Tonga eruption, let alone its multi-year impact on the climate?

The Lahaina wildfires in Maui have captured headlines high and low, with most of them either alluding to or overtly declaring that climate change was to blame. And by "climate change," they mean "anthropogenic global warming (AGW)," as in it's humans’ fault for burning the carbon-based fuels that power our lives and maintain our living standards.

The tragic conflation of a passel of other human activities - far more "misdeed" than burning coal, oil, or gas - that not only set the stage for the wildfires, but both caused them and exacerbated the damage and human toll - has gone largely unmentioned but for the conservative press. Money was diverted from infrastructure upgrades to DEI, water to fight the fire was delayed, because "sacredness," civil alert systems were not activated, police prevented people from fleeing... all in all, a colossal mountain of human failure. In a state run by progressives, who promise us that turning control over our lives to the Best-and-Brightest is the only way to save the future.

Even in aftermath, with Biden bungling (again), the finger of blame is pointed away from all the proximate causes and human failures, and at you and me for having the temerity not to want our lives disrupted by the enviro-scolds' demands for privation. Yes, indeed, global warming is to blame for Lahaina, and humans are to blame for global warming.

What of Hunga Tonga, though? What of the proximate bump in temps caused by the volcano, a bump that will dissipate across the next few years? Humans had absolutely nothing to do with that eruption, nor with Krakatoa or Tambora. An inconvenient datum, that many sources pretzel themselves into dismissing as a contributor to current temperatures. America's warm summer is easily pinned on a combination of Hunga Tonga and El Nino, but since AGW is gospel, you can't say that and still be considered part of the cool kids' club.

Many have asked "what percentage of climate change is caused by human activity," because the cost of remediating it via the only "acceptable" means (brute-force decarbonization via wind and solar power) is so severe (let alone Quixotic - most of the world simply won't do it). The common answer is, dismissively, "all of it," which is farcical given that there has been significant pre-industrial variability in global temperatures, meaning that climate change is at least partially natural. And, with Hunga Tonga's 146 metric megatons of water into atmosphere (a 5% increase in global stratospheric moisture), anyone who claims that our current temperature increase is solely anthropogenic cannot be taken seriously.

Meanwhile, even though climate experts have informed us that hurricane activity has not been exacerbated by climate change, Hurricane Idalia has been linked by the usual suspects to AGW. Why? Because that’s how the message that we have to submit to their drastic demands gets hammered into our heads.

Is human activity contributing to global temperature increases? Conspiracists and absolutists notwithstanding, the answer is, at this juncture, "yes." "How much" is less certain, but our "betters" reject our right to ask that question, even as they embarrass themselves by telling us "all of it."

Is the increase caused by human activity bad? We are supposed to presume it is, but given how many doomsday predictions have failed to happen, we are warranted in believing the “badness” is overstated. And, when the models have consistently over-predicted warming, we are given further reason to think twice and react skeptically to continue doomsaying.

Should we, despite all this, still do something!? I've detailed, many times, what I'd do were I in charge, and what I'd do would embrace two principles that should be obvious: "First do no harm," and "do things that will work."

Wind and Solar and Battery Idiocy (WaSaBI) fails on both counts.

Nuclear power, drilling and exporting natural gas, and doing geo-engineering research to find ways to mitigate solar heating, on the other hand, pass both tests. They are also exportable, economically beneficial, don’t require global compliance, and serve America and friendly nations geopolitically.

They also serve the range of future scenarios: If human carbon emissions turn out to be an existential threat, if they turn out to be a nothing burger, or if the “lukewarmist” position I reached after paying attention for a couple decades proves out.

That our leaders embrace WASABI and reject the trio I proffered tells us that it's not really about climate change, but instead about leveraging the specter of climate doomsday for cynical political purposes.

That the press continues to cover for them, as it has in Lahaina, is a big contributor to the rifts in our society and the on-going breakdown of societal tranquility.