In its incessant drive to politicize everything, the left has even turned Santa Claus into a hapless whiner about global warming.
The far-left environmental activist group Greenpeace has released a short video featuring Downton Abbey actor Jim Carter (Carson the butler) as Santa. He appears in a dark dungeon-like place, with only a flashlight on his face, the sound of dripping water (presumably melting ice) in the background, explaining that he might have to cancel Christmas because he will no longer have a home.
Greenpeace has taken a mythic figure who is supposed to judge whether children are “naughty or nice” and turned him into a liar.
To begin with, global temperatures have been flat for 17 years. It is certainly possible that they may start an upward trend in the future, but there is no evidence of that now.
Indeed, the sun is transitioning into a period of very low sunspot activity, the lowest in decades, which has many astrophysicists predicting a period of global cooling. (Note that human activity has NO impact on the number of sunspots.)
Second, the Washington Post recently reported that Antarctic ice has grown to a 35-year high. “Antarctic sea ice has grown to a record large extent for a second straight year, baffling scientists seeking to understand why this ice is expanding rather than shrinking in a warming world,” according to the Post.
Um, maybe it’s the assumption—“a warming world”—rather than the science that’s the problem.
Finally, Arctic ice, after several years of melting, began growing this year. As that conservative mouthpiece the New York Times explains, “It is the largest one-year increase in Arctic ice since satellite tracking began in 1978.”
While scientists disagree over just how much Arctic ice grew and what that means, it appears Santa and his North Pole home are both safe for now.
December 10, 2013