As noted elsewhere in this newsletter, climate alarmists keep complaining that nobody is talking about climate. Since we spend our days collecting news items in which people talk about climate we are skeptical. Although headlines like “Even Democrats Don’t Talk About ‘Climate Change’ Anymore” (from Heatmap on Sept. 15) do raise an interesting point that, to us, actually increases our faith in democracy for all the idiocy involved including when people enter a voting booth. Just possibly endlessly shouting “wolf” when there is no wolf causes sensible people to stop listening. And just possibly the ones doing the shouting are beginning to understand people have either changed the channel or hit the mute button.

Though not without first denying that they ever said wolf and that they should now start. Gwyn Dyer in the insider publication The Hill Times wrote under the headline “It’s time to stop sugar-coating the climate crisis/ We are trapped on the up escalator, and we need to stop the warming now” that:

“El Niño is being supersized before our eyes,” said United Nations Secretary General António Guterres. “The science leaves no room for doubt: the planet is in uncharted waters, and those waters are heating up. The world is in the danger zone of extreme...

Yeah. Why hasn’t anyone quoted Guterres being totally insane on climate before? Oh wait. When he said “Humanity has opened the gates to hell” media from the Guardian to Global News reprinted it as if it were reasonable. Global’s headline, for instance, being “Humanity has ‘opened the gates of hell’: UN climate summit hears grim warning”. And if that’s sugar-coating, what would bitter or fiery be?

And in the Grauniad Angela Eagle, Britain’s aptly-named Environment Secretary, just insisted that:

“A Britain of wildfires and flood risks: be sure, the climate crisis is real, and we will deal with it”.

And being a politician, spewed partisan venom:

“No one who has experienced this summer in the UK should be in any doubt that our climate is already changing. We know the future holds warmer, wetter winters, hotter, drier summers, and more extreme weather. Honesty about what is required to deal with this changing reality is the least we should expect from our politicians. But last week we saw an astonishing response from Reform UK’s deputy leader, who told people to ‘enjoy’ the scorching heatwaves and described this government’s efforts to combat the climate crisis as ‘arrogant’. This response isn’t just ignorant; it is insulting.”

Well hang on a moment. First, saying you know what the future holds is arrogant, especially when you and all the others yapping thusly have been surprised again and again. Second, boasting “we will deal with it” when all the politicians yapping in this wise for the past 20 years have plainly not dealt with it because now you’re promising to do it again is arrogant. Especially since she goes on:

“This government’s response is not to throw in the towel and accept the chaos caused by extreme weather. It is to work to build and manage landscapes so they are resilient enough to withstand it and recover.”

If planning to build Britain’s green and pleasant landscape so it can finally withstand weather is modesty, give us arrogance. But also, if that’s silence, or sugar-coating, give us noise and malic acid.

And is this one silence? Heatmap complains that “Nine House Democrats from the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition published a sweeping federal policy blueprint on Tuesday called the Thriving Economy Project.” And their objection isn’t House Democrats having policy ideas, though some might discourage it. Rather, it’s the comedown from the Biden glory days:

“The last time House Democrats published a major energy and environment policy document was in 2020, when the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis released the aptly titled report ‘Solving the Climate Crisis.’”

So maybe the problem is that (a) there is no climate crisis and (b) you didn’t solve it so you shouldn’t say both again? Actually, no:

“The Thriving Economy Project covers many of the same themes as that 2020 platform — energy, agriculture, disaster recovery, innovation. It even contains some of the same policy proposals. But as the contrast in titles suggests, the approach is markedly different. The 2026 version doesn’t call itself climate policy at all.”

So “Lupine canid! Lupine canid!” Except maybe the problem is the need for a thriving economy, and the answer is to stop wasting time and money on a non-existent climate crisis.

Nah, we just need better marketing slogans. Heatmap’s Jeva Lange wrote on September 14 that:

“Americans Still Love the Environment/ Heatmap’s latest poll adds urgency to one of the biggest questions facing the climate: Can the environmental movement come back?”

Or not, because after proclaiming herself an environmentalist, and who isn’t these days, she missed the point with grace and skill:

“The environment, in fact, ranked a full 17 points higher than ‘climate change’ in a battery of potential voter issues, despite the latter’s much more obvious existential threat.”

No. No no no. The whole point is that this obsession with climate change as an existential threat is what’s sucked all the oxygen, or CO2, out of environmentalism. So she wants to do it again:

“Given that the environment still seems to be a way for policymakers and communicators to reach people – including some of the most entrenched climate skeptics, who need the most convincing to back renewable energy – it appears to be a golden opportunity for a modern environmental movement to emerge and advance some of the overlapping goals of the climate movement. But … where is it?”

Huddled in the carbon pollution echo chamber, that’s where. Along with her Heatmap colleagues like Robinson Meyer, who tried to explain on September 10 “Why Saying ‘Climate Crisis’ Falls Flat” and fell flat. Not least because in their poll, while just over 50% of Americans called climate change “very” or “extremely important”, that number put it dead last among the 11 issues they listed. And as usual, poll answers cost the respondent nothing so you can say you care because it sounds good. However, as he adds, 70% considered “the environment” to be extremely or very important. So maybe the message is that the electorate wishes you’d lose the carbon obsession and get back to saving nature?

Oh dear me no. Instead he notes that of their three “buckets”, namely registered voters already persuaded, registered voters who are “persuadable” and “skeptics”, possibly aka deplorables, the first group thought climate mattered far more than the environment. And were left-wing and Democrats. A followup built into the survey found, however, that this group found the language of “crisis” or “catastrophe” discouraging, whereas the rest apparently thought something along the lines of there you go again.

Meyer concludes his piece:

“That message sits at odds with how Democratic politicians and issue advocates talked about climate change in the first few years of this decade, obviously. And it points to another interesting finding: Even when American voters are skeptical of climate change as an issue area, they still generally care about the environment.”

Which would surely lead most people to conclude that the American public, mostly, realizes “climate” and “environment” are not synonyms. But the zealots chant on.