The Writer's Life: The Writer's Life 9/15

The argument continues. Here are excerpts from an op-ed piece in today's NY Post, edited by yours truly:
"In the run-up to the Sept. 23 UN Climate Summit in New York, Leonardo DiCaprio is releasing a series of films about the climate crisis.
"According to NASA satellites and all ground-based temperature measurements, global warming ceased in the late 1990s, despite the fact that CO2 levels have risen almost ten percent since 1997. The post-1997 CO2 emissions represent an astonishing 30 percent of all human-related emissions since the industrial revolution began. That we’ve seen no warming contradicts all CO2-based climate models upon which global-warming concerns are founded. Rates of sea-level rise remain small and are even slowing, averaging about one millimeter per year in recent decades, as measured by tide gauges, and 2 to 3 mm/year as inferred from adjusted satellite data. This is far less than what alarmists suggested.
Satellites also show that a greater area of Antarctic sea ice exists now than any time since space-based measurements began in 1979. In other words, the ice caps aren’t melting. A 2012 report concluded that there has been no significant increase in either the frequency or intensity of extreme weather events in the modern era. The 2013 report concluded the same. Yes, Hurricane Sandy was devastating — but it’s not part of any new trend. The climate scare has become a sort of societal pathogen that virulently spreads misinformation in tiny packages -- like a virus. And DiCaprio’s film is just another vector for spreading the virus. The costs of feeding the climate-change monster are staggering. According to the Congressional Research Service, from 2001 to 2014 the US government spent $131 billion on projects meant to combat human-caused climate change, plus $176 billion in breaks for anti-CO2 energy initiatives. Federal anti-climate-change spending is now running at $11 billion a year, plus tax breaks of $20 billion a year. Dr Bjørn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, calculates that the European Union’s goal of a 20 percent reduction in CO2 emissions below 1990 levels by 2020, currently the most severe target in the world, will cost almost $100 billion a year, or more than $7 trillion over the course of this century. Lomborg, a supporter of the UN’s climate science, notes that this would buy imperceptible improvement: 'After spending all that money, we would not even be able to tell the difference.' Al Gore was right in one respect: Climate change is a moral issue — but that’s because there is nothing quite so immoral as well-fed, well-housed Westerners assuaging their consciences by wasting huge amounts of money on futile anti-global-warming policies, using money that could instead go to improve living standards in developing countries. That is where the moral outrage should lie. Perhaps DiCaprio would like to make a film about it?"
The piece was written by Tom Harris, executive director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition, and Bob Carter, former professor and head of the School of Earth Sciences at James Cook University in Australia.

I made my Monday sojourn to Park Slope. I squeezed into a parking space less than a hundred yards from my usual spot on 9th Street just below 7th Avenue. If it hadn't been for the high bumper of the truck behind me, my Hyundai would not have fit. As it was, I was wedged. I have no idea how I got it in there other than it being dumb luck. Sales were modest, hardly worth it given the hassles that go with setting up shop there. Just minutes before the end of the session, an elderly woman, cane in hand, approached. Something about her was familiar, which was confirmed when she spoke. When I first started visited the neighborhood, she'd bought several thrillers. She is an Alabama girl. I asked how she'd come to settle in Brooklyn, and I still haven't forgotten her reply, in wonderful drawl: "I would've followed that man anywhere." I may have softened her up by mentioning it, as she purchased three novels. My thanks, and also to the other kind ladies who bought.

Vic's 4th novel: tinyurl.com/bszwlxh

Vic's 3rd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3

Vic's Short Story on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/k95k3nx
Vic's Short Story Collection: http://www.tiny.cc/Oycgb
Vic's 2nd Novel: http://tiny.cc/0iHLb Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/kx3d3uf
Vic's 1st Novel: http://tiny.cc/rP7o9

Vic's Rom-Com Screenplay: http://tinyurl.com/kny5llp

Vic's Horror Screenplay: http://tinyurl.com/cyckn3f

Vic's Blog: http://vicfortezza.blogspot.com/

Vic's Web Site: http://members.tripod.com/vic_fortezza/Literature/