Global warmism really does seem the most powerful force in the public policy galaxy, closing in on the last futile rebels with inexorable and sinister power. Even politicians who question the zealots’ policy recommendations seem, with one huge orange exception, to be terrified of challenging its premises. And yet Barton Swain in the Wall Street Journal recently declared it terminal, starting with the key point that “Momentous social movements begin to die the moment adherents figure out their leaders don’t believe what they say.” Also, we add, when non-adherents notice that their predictions of the end of days are also better suited to cheap comedy than expensive policy interventions.
Barton goes over some familiar ground about the dogmatic attempts to impose a non-existent consensus, and the reasons why many people were intimidated into silence if not converted. And also how dubious any of this loud certainty really was:
“Were scientists really so confident they understood what was happening with sunbeams in the upper atmosphere, or that they knew how to gauge accurately the temperature of roughly 200 million square miles of the Earth’s surface, or that they knew how to compare present-day temperatures with those that obtained 50, 100, 1,000 or 5,000 years ago? Or, more important still, that they knew what political and economic measures would mitigate the theoretical apocalypse they inferred from these mountains of data?”
Having done so, he turns to something more psychologically convincing:
“Why aren’t the moguls and corporate executives who claim to be unnerved by the predictions of climate science giving up their carbon-heavy lifestyles and living in caves- or at least in simpler dwellings than mansions? If progressive VIPs in media, politics and entertainment believe sea levels are ready to rise precipitously, why do they keep buying properties in Martha’s Vineyard, Bar Harbor, Provincetown, Santa Monica and Malibu? The climate lobby can wave aside these questions if it wishes, but appeals to reports and studies weigh little against the appearance of insincerity. If activists predicting global mayhem really believe what they predict, they would favor an instant transition to zero-emission nuclear power. But they mostly don’t. Every September the transnational elite gather at the U.N. General Assembly to denounce America for its failure to limit carbon emissions—and clog the streets of Manhattan for a week with their privately chartered oversize SUVs.”
Moreover, he writes:
“I don’t call any of this ‘hypocrisy,’ because that term properly refers to the difference between private behavior and public words, and in the case of climate alarmism there is no attempt to hide the behavior or to make it match the words.”
Arguably the Borgia popes didn’t either. Though whether it makes them better or worse is hard to decide. But it’s not just that those in power are eating peeled grapes while preaching austerity. It’s also that we’re getting the austerity. If their grand plans had worked, we might excuse them the Sybarism or Sybaricity or whatever the noun from “Sybaritic” is. Instead we’re confronted with them partying among the ruins, which is galling. Certainly their practical plans have not been impressively successful. It’s true on the small as well as the big things; Barton makes a point also stressed in our video on the LA fires, namely that:
“as thousands of homes are destroyed by fires spread by a seasonal wind so historically predictable it has a name, state and local officials, with the endorsement of a cheerleading media, blame climate change. These same officials have told us for decades that they accept the direst predictions of climate activists, but they have done little to counter what they now purport to be the effects of climate change.”
They really don’t behave as though they believed their own words, or would know what to do if they did.
This is why a lot of people call AGW a 'scam'. It might be that people like Mann have convinced themselves; I've been guilty of falling in love with a theory to explain a data set, but I have yet to believe those feelings, or the theory, without confirming it some other way, but it was his ticket into a stellar career, so the temptation must have been strong. However, I think most of the politicians who rant about AGW (or ACC) believe in it no more than most of what they say, which is not at all. But it still works with my relatives who get all their 'news' from NPR, because they never hear anything different except from me, and never bother to look up any records.
There's not one shred of empirical data that proves the climate alarmists claims of a nearing climate apocalyse.All data that hasn't been tampered with by the likes of NASA or NOAA shows no trend of worsening extreme weather.And only a slight increase in mean temps,probably cyclical,like what happened during Minoan,Roman,and Medieval warm periods.I can't stand the hypocrites who preach sacrifice and austerity for the unwashed masses(that's us!),while they continue to live their jet-setting,wastrel lifestyles.And no,they don't actually believe in what they say about climate change.
Climate change has ceased to be a science, if indeed it ever was, and has become a religion. Religions don't deal in facts or logic, they deal in belief. True believers will be saved, but deniers will be cast into everlasting perdition on the day of the apocalypse. So don't waste your time trying to change climate believers' minds with facts or logic. All it does is to convince them of your inexcusable wickedness.
Given the trillions of dollars spent on pushing the agenda, lavishing rent seekers, and terrifying the masses, CAGW has been arguably the largest scam in the history of the planet and this where it has become, as Roger says, a greater green theocracy. It has been a grand distraction in western (bankrupt) democracies and a ticket to political success, until now. The pursuit of the delusion of net zero would have either killed off the masses or awakened them to the realities of impoverishment sooner or later.
Nickolov and Zeller’s recent papers propose
a provable model for short and long term temperature variation that exclude GHGs as a variable. In short , millennial climate variation is caused by changes in atmospheric pressure and total solar
irradiation and short term variations are
due changes in earth’s albedo ( mainly clouds). Tom Nelson ‘s pod/video with Nicolov worth watching. Long and technical though, but the ruling paradigm that the greenhouse effect causes climate chang is wrong and against the laws of thermodynamics .
Some of these wealthy adherents of the global warming religion were true believers, they sold their Malibu mansions and moved to Duluth Minnesota.....for about a month, then they discovered why warming is better than cooling!
I posted this on the previous thread, but...here goes again:
A politician virtue signalling that s/he will work to 'save your children' is a powerful aphrodisiac. For them.
For you, it's an invitation to join said politician in a concoted fantasy which as it matures, makes them look good, but impoverishes you gradually, until the Green New Deal's inner Hemingway kicks in, and hey, "all of a sudden". All of a sudden everyone has got egg on their face.
How the very basic principles of trade off and physical reality have eluded these people for so long is a story in itself. But daily experience teaches us that these things are real, despite exhortations to the contrary from people who can neither predict nor explain nor square failure of their theory to rebut real data clearly at variance with The Message. A bit like....religion?