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Are we underwater yet?

August 3, 2023   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory.

Well, maybe not everyone, but a lot of people do follow the information leaked from buried, hidden, re-routed sources, or in some cases, totally altered from reality.

There are conspiracy theories that are so ridiculous a person with any kind of common sense can figure out it’s an urban myth created from a rumour that came from a story that came from someone’s relative who knew a guy who knew a guy it happened too.

There are other theories that are plausible, however, not likely.

Then there are theories that do have indicators that there is more to the story than we have been told.

Many conspiracy theories, at least the well-researched ones, do have a grain of truth or some kind of path that leads to other information.

The national and international media picks up on many of these stories and runs with them for years. Many of these stories are based on ‘expert’ opinions. All it takes is one published opinion to get the ball rolling, and a lot of other people jump on board.

A look at the petroleum industry over the past 120 years provides a good example of this nonsense. The information and stories are there; you just have to look for them.

Numerous times over the past 100 years, the experts predicted the world was running out of oil. In some published papers, it was suggested there was less than 20 years’ worth of oil remaining on the planet. Yet, here we are, 80 and 50 years later, and there are still massive oil reserves capable of powering the planet for hundreds of years.

For around a decade, starting in the mid-’60s, the big concern was the ‘population explosion.’ The experts predicted dire consequences and mass starvation if the world’s population didn’t get under control.

That hasn’t happened. In 1968, the world population was a little over 3.5 billion. That figure has more than doubled in 55 years to over 8 billion.

There has been no mass starvation; in fact, countries like China, with huge populations, have increased food production to meet the needs of a growing country, and they lead world production in many food products.

During the 70s, scientists came up with the idea that the earth was heading for a new ice age. I was even taught this in high school by a science teacher who was convinced we were all going to be freezing to death in less than ten years.

I do recall having a bleak conversation with several friends who were convinced they would never have a beach house because everything would be frozen solid.

Apparently, the ice age didn’t happen.

A few decades ago, there was the great ozone layer scare. The ozone layer in the atmosphere was shrinking. Up until that announcement, most people didn’t even know there was an ozone layer.

But there it was, a giant hole in the ozone layer that threatened all of humanity and doomed us all to a scorching case of skin cancer if you dared to go outdoors on a sunny day.

I’m sure many people wished they had shares in a big suntan lotion company prior to that announcement because we were all warned to slather on the lotion before even thinking about going outdoors.

Mothers would pour lotion all over their kids before letting them play in a park for 30 minutes.

Again, the dire predictions did not come true. The ozone layer is now doing fine. Apparently, it was partly a natural phenomenon that occurs every few years.

However, I don’t recall any news stories about that.

So now, as we all know, we are in a period of climate change – formerly called ‘global warming.’ The ice caps are melting; New York will be underwater in a few short years.

I’ve heard the theory of rising ocean levels for years, and so have many people. And yet an enterprising photographer photographed several well-known locations around the world, including the Statue of Liberty, which should be up to her ankles in seawater by now.

He was detailed and captured the exact same picture of photographs taken at the exact same spot around 110 years ago. The water levels were exactly the same.

I know a lot of people won’t agree with me, but I think in 20 or 30 years, people will look back and say, “do you remember when they told us the climate was changing? Yet, the climate now, is the same as it was in 2023.”

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