The Earth is doomed!  The Earth is doomed!

Such is the famous cry of the prepper.

Now suppose there is a prepper.  Not a garden-variety prepper who believes the Earth will cease to exist soon, though at an unspecified date and time, but a prepper who seriously believes that the earth will end at a specific date and time.

Your reaction might be: “That is silly!  The Earth might come to an end at some point in the future, but no one has the necessary skills needed to be able to nail this down to a specific date and time. This doesn't stop the prepper making the forecast, and making it public. 

And then the prepper waits. 

Some of the people who hear about exactly when the Earth is supposed to end get caught up in the possibility that the prepper could be right.  The news media follow the story with varying degrees of skepticism.

Everyone waits and then waits some more.  Finally, the forecasted date and time arrives.  The Earth keeps going just like always even though the day and time passes without anything even a little bit odd happening.  The prepper, of course, realizes that a reputation is on the line.  He's sad that the Earth did not end when his forecast said it would.  Some of those who got caught up in the forecast seem very sad, too.  Something needs to be done for the prepper to be able to save face.

A prepper and the building entourage are not interested in anyone telling them that the forecast is downright silly.  They are not interested in hearing from anyone who doubts the forecasted date and time, only in converting other to the fundamental “truth” that the Earth will cease to exist at the identified date and time.

Once the date and time have passed, the prepper’s only way to save face is to say that the Earth will still end but that the calculations were slightly off, so the corrected date and time is now about 10 years from now.  With the corrections this new forecast surely is accurate.

This could go on for multiple cycles, not just two.  Eventually and sadly, the prepper dies without ever experiencing the earth’s demise.

What does this have to do with climate change and climate change mitigation?   Climate change activists behave exactly like the preppers do.  “The earth will be doomed if the global temperature rises 2 degrees C.  Not only that.  this will happen in 10 years, 2 months and 5 days.  After all, this is settled science (whatever that is!).   But unlike a prepper who has no choice but to face doomsday on a specific date and time, of course we can do something about it.

Climate change is definitely caused by the fact that there are too many people on earth who are burning fossil fuels, eating hamburgers and otherwise messing up the earth’s climate.  We can put off the date and time when the earth’s temperature increases by 2 degrees but only if we drastically change how we pursue our daily lives.  No more motor vehicles that run on fossil fuels, plant-based foods only, solar panels on all the house roofs, and a host of other drastic changes that we need to make right now if we are to have a chance to survive. 

After all, all of this is “settled science.”  And there is the matter of the 50 trillion dollars the federal government needs to spend on federally-funded climate change mitigation strategies.  For example, out-of-work coal miners and oil-well drillers need to be retrained to become computer programmers using government-subsidized funding. 

The entire Earth is at stake.  Never in history have scientists been in such total agreement if we do not do all of this.  After all, this is what the settled science tells us exactly what we must do.  We cannot tarry.  We cannot believe that any other government-funded programs are worthwhile pursuing so long as climate change mitigation is the hippopotamus in the room.

Time passes.  Just as with the prepper, the public reaches come the year and date that the activist forecast that the global temperature would increase by 2 degrees C.  The Earth is doomed.  Even though we gave it our best shot, there were skeptics who thought the efforts were silly.

Maybe the temperature did increase by 2 degrees, the claimed  point when the earth was surely doomed.  People who thought they were smart about climate change said so.  Maybe not.  But whatever the global temperature was on the date when everything was supposed to be doomed, the earth’s life somehow went on pretty much as normal.

The activists and their willing followers, like the prepper and the followers, are sad because things did not quite play out as the settled science had forecast So, like the prepper and the followers, the activists need to come up with a plausible excuse as to why the forecast (and the settled science on which the forecast was based) was wrong.  No wait!  All that is needed is to note that the earlier forecast was somehow based on incorrect data.  A new doomsday forecast, another 10 years out, is what is needed!

Life in all its forms continually adapts in response to changes in the external environment.  There are short term adaptations linked to today’s weather.  Any form of life that is unsuccessful in doing this is now extinct.  But new species with successful adaptations are also continuously evolving.

Human beings are the smartest of all life on earth.  We live in all sorts of climates.  We build shelters to survive and live comfortably when the outside temperature is -30 degrees F.  Air conditioning we invented copes with extraordinarily warm temperatures.  But somehow, human beings are not smart enough to be able to find adaptations needed to cope with a 2 degree C increase in the global surface temperature?  That is just incomprehensibly silly!

Just as convincing a prepper that the forecasted specific time and date for the destruction of the Earth is wrong, climate change activists do not want to hear of any evidence that conflicts with what they clearly believe is doomsday based on what they call settled science.  The only thing that will convince them that they are wrong will be for the date to pass without anything drastic happening.  But the response will likely be to set a new date another 5-10 years out instead.

David L. Debertin is a retired Professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of Kentucky