by Doug Casey, Casey Research:

Not many people would go out on record and say this. After all, the idea of man-made climate change is practically universally accepted at this point, at least among the general public.

But Doug Casey says this notion is nothing more than hysteria. Strategic Investor editor E.B. Tucker shares this controversial opinion.

So I recently got them both on the phone to discuss this matter. Doug and E.B. had so much to say that we decided to run the interview as a special, two-part Conversations with Casey. Look for the second part of this discussion tomorrow.

And if you missed last night’s landmark event – when both Doug and E.B. went on record and revealed the No. 1 way to make a fortune in 2019 – we have a special offer for you at the end of today’s interview.

Justin: E.B., you called global climate change a “hoax” in your January issue of Strategic Investor. I thought that was a bold claim. After all, most people think that, one, climate change is happening and two, that humans are causing it.

Why do you think it’s a hoax?

E.B.: Let me start by saying that I’m skeptical of anything about matters where everyone is in agreement. I’ve been this way my whole life. This goes for things like, “You’ve got to go to college. You’ve got to have medical insurance. You’ve got to vote. You’ve got to buy a house.” Everyone says you should do these things, but those things don’t always work out so well for people.

And climate change has reached the point where there’s universal agreement. On a hot day, the average person will tell you it’s because of climate change. Then, he might say that it’ll be 175 degrees here in 75 years if we don’t do something about the climate.

Just the other day, I was having lunch in Delray Beach and I overheard the guy behind me telling the people at his table how there’s not going to be any snow in Aspen 50 years from now because of climate change. And everyone agreed saying, “I know. I heard the same thing. It’s just awful.”

I just started cracking up. I mean why would there be no snow in Aspen 50 years from now? What would cause that?

The average person has no clue. And yet, there’s now this hysteria around climate change. People are completely sure that humans are causing the planet to warm. The lady at the checkout counter will tell you that climate change is going to be the end of us.

Justin: Sure. But there’s a consensus among the scientific community that humans are causing global warming… The statistic I hear a lot is that 97% of climate scientists think global warming is real and largely caused by humans.

Doug: Yeah, this 97% figure keeps popping up. Regrettably, it’s impossible to properly debunk the number in a brief discussion such as we’re now having. I suggest readers simply google “97% of scientists climate claim debunked” and see what they get.

That 97% number was promulgated by an Australian blogger named John Cook in 2013. It’s as ridiculous, but has as much popularity, as Al Gore’s “hockey stick.” Out of hundreds of thousands of papers that have been done on climate, he chose 12,000 and manipulated and subjectively interpreted parts of their abstracts to support his a prioribeliefs. Many scientists whose names were used subsequently protested. A subsequent recalculation showed that less than 2% of the papers cited actually believe mankind is mainly responsible for any global warming.

But the usual suspects in politics, the media, and the entertainment business picked up on the terms “97%” and “scientists.” They repeated them as a mantra, and now the public assumes – based on almost nothing but repetition – that anthropogenic global warming [AGW] is a critical danger to life on Earth.

Truth in science isn’t determined by consensus. But, for what it’s worth, another survey was taken in 2009 among 31,000 hard scientists, including 9000 with PhDs, who explicitly stated they believed there was no evidence of significant AGW.

Justin: Okay. But data from NASA shows the last five years have been the hottest years on record.

What do you make of this, E.B.?

E.B.: Look, what if today is warmer than yesterday. Does that necessarily justify a trend? I wouldn’t say so. I need to see a lot more than that to be convinced.

The problem is that a lot of times you look at this stuff and they’ll say, “It’s the warmest weather on record back to 1910.” Wait a minute. What was happening then?

I believe that the planet goes through weather cycles. And these cycles have much more impact on the climate than humans. But people are uncomfortable with that because they like to think that humans are the most powerful organism in the universe. I’m not sure that that’s the case.

I think that the patterns of weather are much bigger than human influence.

Of course, the average person doesn’t think this way. That’s because they only hear from scientists what they want to hear. But as Doug mentioned a minute ago, there are a lot of scientists that disagree with the “consensus” view on climate change.

And all these strange things happened to them. They lose grants. Their research doesn’t get published. So you don’t see them in Time magazine, USA Today, National Geographic, or on 20/20 or 60 Minutes, which is where most people get their news.

There are a lot of scientists who don’t buy the man-made climate change theory. But they’re branded as rogue. And you’ve got the whole thing with John Coleman who co-founded the Weather Channel. He was an outspoken critic of climate change hysteria. He said there was no significant man-made global warming and no reason to fear it in the future. The Weather Channel, the company he co-founded, sent its chief executive on CNN to distance the company from Coleman.

The point is, people who come out and say, “Look, I don’t think this is the case,” are not well thought of.

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