The Manhattan Contrarian asks “Can You See The Climate Scare Slowly Fading Away?” and in the National Post Tristin Hopper writes “Climate change – once the animating mission of Western policymakers – has been sidelined and deprioritized with stunning speed.” And a June 17 email from the Heartland Institute (also not available online) chortles “NPR (National Public Radio) announced last week that it laid off its climate editor and is shutting down its climate desk. This follows The Washington Post laying off 14 climate journalists – comprising 75 percent of its climate desk – in February. CBS News laid off four all [sic] its climate reporters last fall and this spring. Climate alarmism is in massive retreat! This is a true David vs. Goliath event. The climate industrial complex takes in literally billions of dollars each year in donations from wealthy leftists and leftist foundations.” Indeed. But in the long run it’s ideas that matter, not money. And here permit us to pat ourselves on the back, because we predicted a year ago that while climate alarmism “caught on so fast and became so popular and… dominant as it may now appear… it’s actually about to collapse.” Leaving the very real question how long it will totter on, a dismal and pathetic zombie. It may be some time, in the policies of governments that consider themselves cutting edge while their convoluted procedures and arrogance trap them in a dusty world of fax machines and spelling out “Short Messaging Service”, as this quasi-animate corpse continues to devour their brains and our wallets.

Our own view, in keeping with our militant conviction that ideas matter, is that the fundamental problem with climate orthodoxy was that as a scientific theory or in Thomas Kuhn’s terms “paradigm” it seemed to hold immense promise 40 years ago. And it seemed to be yielding dynamic intellectual results 20 years ago. Genuinely. Not everyone was convinced but it wasn’t a fraud or a hoax. But it ran out of mental steam about 10 years ago.

Alas, in its moment of apparent triumph it stopped handling data impressively and started mishandling it. Practitioners went from eager open-mindedness to snarling defensiveness. And the fact that it was capturing institutions from academia to media to government couldn’t keep it alive. Of course this view of the matter also ruled out it being a fraud or a hoax, though it certainly gave opportunities to display normal human failings from pride to grift and they were seized upon. And while ideas have consequences, they also have momentum. So newspapers keep telling us stuff like:

“Climate change and the associated warming temperatures are a major force behind the spread of blacklegged ticks in Canada.”

And it doesn’t matter that the phenomenon hasn’t gone on long enough, or been dramatic enough, to justify such a conclusion. At least not yet. But it will. Because facts have consequences too. Including that, another Heartland message argued:

“The signs all over are indicating the media’s focus on climate change is dramatically and rapidly waning. Rather than reflecting an acknowledgment that a realistic assessment of climate facts shows no climate crisis is in the offing, the media’s declining climate coverage seems to be a bow to an economic reality: climate change just doesn’t sell. The media’s flagging coverage of climate change is a lagging indicator, following a trend rather than leading it. Polls have consistently shown climate change is not among the top issues of public policy concern for the vast majority of the public, and global finance, commercial activity, and politics have shifted away from concern about cutting carbon emissions toward bringing more affordable, reliable energy – which means fossil fuels – to the market as quickly as possible.”

The Contrarian takes a similarly reality-based view, at least up to a point. He writes:

“I have often noted that the climate scam and the associated forced energy transition would of necessity go away at some point because the proposals being advocated to ‘save the planet’ could never possibly work.”

And they could not work, we interject, channeling James Mill on the fatuous trope about true in theory but not in practice, because the science was wrong so the engineering was wrong so the policy was wrong. But we take issue with “scam”, before praising his next question:

“But the open question has always been, when that happens, what will it look like?”

Indeed. What happens when a theory runs out of steam, or CO2? In Kuhn’s analysis, with particular reference to science, it’s often a matter of a new generation rejecting the premises of their elders who gradually depart the scene without embracing the revolution. But politicians are more slippery, to put it mildly.

In Canada, as Hopper notes, once-mighty Greenpeace-scofflaw-turned-Environment-Minister Steven Guilbeault announced his resignation from politics and the general reaction was don’t let the doorknob hit you on the way out… or do for that matter:

“Before Steven Guilbeault announced his resignation from the House of Commons, he first had to watch the slow dismantling of his Canadian climate change empire.”

Out went the consumer carbon tax. Out went the aggressive Clean Electricity Regulations. Out went the oil and gas cap on the hydrocarbon sector. Indeed, from the sublime to the ridiculous:

“As the former Greenpeace activist prepares to exit public life this summer, one of the only remaining pieces of his legacy is that it’s still illegal for Canadians to use a plastic straw. His single-use plastic ban, introduced in 2022, remains in force.”

It almost inspires sympathy:

“‘It’s clear to me that there’s been a shift in our approach to climate change. I don’t understand why we decided to take this turn. I can’t explain it,’ Guilbeault said in French to La Presse.”

Indeed. He never was good at understanding why anyone disagreed with him except for them being wretched evil-doers, admittedly a widespread problem in public life. But as Hopper notes, Canadians told pollsters they were very sympathetic to a carbon tax in 2016 but by 2025 expressed indifference to climate, even as Bill Gates climbed down quite frankly. And if you probe more deeply, we are confident that you’d find that people changed their views because the catastrophe wasn’t as bad as we were promised and the remedies were worse, including a general souring of the economy due to overregulation and hostility to key industries.

There’s much talk of hoax, fraud, grift and venal denialism, the specifics varying depending who you talk to but the theme of wicked insincerity being constant. The truth is, however, that as J. Budziszewski says people are logical, slowly, and climate alarmism just hasn’t worked out as a theory or, in consequence, as a program. And because it hasn’t, it has become untenable. Which is indeed awkward.

Thus, the Contrarian continues:

“Would all the big enviro groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club all go on national TV one night and admit that the whole thing was a fake scare from the beginning? In the real world, that’s not how these things happen. People who have staked out absurd positions somehow need to save face. So there would have to be some sort of gradual process of backing down.”

What’s more, he adds dourly but not unfairly:

“And thus we come to the key role of the New York Times for the Left, which is to mold and convey the official talking points to the team’s candidates and influencers. How about sharing some instruction on how to quietly back away from the Green New Deal?”

And they did, in the form of a print-edition item “Democrats Once Vowed to Stop Oil and Gas. Now They’re Not So Sure” that says “As the midterm elections approach, many leading Democrats are rethinking their approach to climate change.” He adds that it first appeared online on June 11, and was then fairly deeply buried in the print version, on A12, because:

“The casual reader may not get that far, but the person who will see it is the party apparatchik who needs direction from central headquarters.”

Again, we think he gives them a bit too much credit for cunning. It was probably buried because other stuff was happening and the journalists knew it mattered but hated it. Because as a way of backing off, it exhibits more Kuhnian stubbornness than Machiavellian slickness. He quotes the piece itself that:

“With voters worried about spiking gas prices and inflation, some [Democratic Party] leaders argue that they should stop trying to throttle oil and gas, which heat the planet when burned…. many Democrats argue that the path back to power means abandoning some of their most aggressive stances on climate change.”

But human brains don’t work that way. The Times staff still think oil and gas “heat the planet when burned” and so do many politicians. So they may soft-peddle their convictions but they will still act on them. As he also writes:

“The piece is filled with useful pointers in how to tone down the catastrophism. Most of that seems to involve an end to vilifying oil and gas, while continuing to promote wind and solar as the “cheapest” ways to produce electricity.”

So same old same old including because, as he does add:

“They still haven’t figured out that by the time you include costs of integrating wind and solar into the grid, those things are a far more expensive way to produce electricity than fossil fuels.”

Right. They really haven’t. Like some aging tenured professor, they can see that the results nowadays aren’t what they should be, but are convinced that if they just try harder in the familiar way it will all work out. Just as Mark Carney is still into industrial carbon taxes, Chinese EVs, massive expansion of the electric grid and so on despite cosmetic changes.

As Dan McTeague of Canadians for Affordable Energy just wrote:

“Prime Minister Mark Carney campaigned on a promise to build things faster than anything Canada has seen in generations. His major projects office was supposed to be the engine of a new era and signal to the world that we are open for business. But, as has so often been the case in the Carney era, the rhetoric hasn’t matched the reality. Faced with backlash from activist groups — whose cozy relations with the government are largely responsible for the glacial pace of these approvals — the Carney government is tapping the brakes on its planned regulatory changes.”

Even though the country is in:

“what I’ve taken to calling the Green Recession — an economic contraction animated by years of self-inflicted wounds: blocked pipelines, various carbon taxes, EV mandates, and other net-zero fantasies that drive away investment.”

Carney’s smooth, even slick. But until he changes his ideas, abstract and intangible as they often are, the same policies will just present themselves in new costumes. Or the same ones, as with “Government of Canada partners with Indigenous communities to address the growing health impacts of climate-sensitive diseases”.

As the Contrarian concludes about the American scene:

“so far this is just about messaging. Even if the messaging changes, that does not mean that the goals of the Democrats on taking power will have changed. Certainly, over in the Endangerment Finding litigation, dozens of enviro groups and all the blue states continue to argue that atmospheric CO2 (the product of use of fossil fuels) is a ‘danger’ to human health and welfare. Where Democrats rule, the destructive policies will continue until either there is some sort of catastrophic grid failure or the costs become too wildly excessive to credibly blame on some bogeyman.”

Exactly. And when facts and logic speak too loudly, the theory will be finished and so will the policies. And radicals will move on to some fresh idiocy, with us in hot pursuit.