3. Finally, no one can show that a warmer climate would produce negative impacts overall. The much%u2013feared rise in sea levels does not seem to depend on short%u2013term temperature changes, as the rate of sea%u2013level increases has been steady since the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. In fact, many economists argue that the opposite is more likely%u2014that warming produces a net benefit, that it increases incomes and standards of living. Why do we assume that the present climate is the optimum? Surely, the chance of this must be vanishingly small, and the economic history of past climate warmings bear this out.
But the main message of The Great Global Warming Swindle is much broader. Why should we devote our scarce resources to what is essentially a non%u2013problem, and ignore the real problems the world faces: hunger, disease, denial of human rights%u2014not to mention the threats of terrorism and nuclear wars? And are we really prepared to deal with natural disasters; pandemics that can wipe out most of the human race, or even the impact of an asteroid, such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs? Yet politicians and the elites throughout much of the world prefer to squander our limited resources to fashionable issues, rather than concentrate on real problems. Just consider the scary predictions emanating from supposedly responsible world figures: the chief scientist of Great Britain tells us that unless we insulate our houses and use more efficient light bulbs, the Antarctic will be the onl
