The obsession with climate change has undermined science and, with it, public faith in science. As it has undermined journalism and even politics. And yet instead of backing off, as even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has to some extent from wokery (although her argument ha ha who believes politicians anyway might not be very well-tailored to restoring their credibility), journalists are doubling down. For instance Heatmap’s unintentionally revealing “Climate Is Looming Over the AI Existential Risk Conversation”. You might think it’s an article about the huge energy demand of data centres that seems to have the tech bros in full retreat from their once-trendy climate alarmism. Nope. It’s about how the paradigm for fears of AI running amok is a replay of the alarmists’ favourite conspiracy theory about oil companies conspiring to suppress any mention of the climate crisis to preserve their greedy profits on a planet they knew they were burning up money and all. And it’s as untenable a theory in the AI case as the climate case. For the past 30 years scientists, politicians, the press and just about everyone else, even including oil company executives, have been talking non-stop about the supposed climate crisis which shows that the supposed conspiracy to keep it hidden was a colossal bust. As will be any attempt to stop people from debating the AI-will-destroy-the-world fears.

Robinson Meyer can see it all, unlike normies:

“Imagine, for a moment, a vast and growing firm – a conglomerate that could be said to define its era of American capitalism…. Everyone wants what they have… But there is a problem. One of the company’s researchers has become convinced that the company’s products are dangerous — so harmful, in fact, that their continued use and growth trajectory portends catastrophic risk for humanity. He attempts to alert the company’s executives to this fact. What happens next?”

Surely an allusion to Jacob Coxon isn’t it? Nope. Meyer sees a nail and has his hammer ready to swing:

“Perhaps you know the story. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Exxon’s internal scientists concluded that the ongoing growth of fossil fuels would raise global temperatures and have ‘potentially catastrophic’ effects on the planet’s climate. They presented these results to Exxon’s executives. A senior scientist warned that humanity had a brief window — ‘five to 10 years’ — before ‘the need for hard choices regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.’ Exxon led a large research effort into climate change, affirming its scientific validity. But then in the late 1980s, its CEO decided to go in the other direction. Its executives chose not to warn the public about climate change — and instead began a successful disinformation campaign meant to convince the public that climate change was not settled science.”

The “disinformation campaign” in question consisted of a few full-page ads in the New York Times back in the 1990s, most of which merely asked for proof of a crisis before wrecking the nation’s economy. But if that trifling expenditure was enough to undo 30 years of lavishly-funded alarmist activism (as shown in our Green Money Machine series) then the climate crowd have to admit they never had a case to begin with.

What they do have is paranoia. Could Joe McCarthy have said it better, or Hillary Clinton with her alleged “vast right-wing conspiracy“ against her husband that involved such dirty tricks as accusing him of sexual harassment. Ha ha. As if he’d mess with an intern.

Many years ago Richard Hofstadter wrote a highly influential essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” in which, sadly predictably, he said the left was sane and normal and the right paranoid and conspiratorial and bitter and wicked and insane. Though many of his actual examples were definitely from the populist left. William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech embodying economics as lunatic as Woke 1 thundered against sound money “you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” But even worse was the 1892 “People’s Party” platform advocating the same cause (and Bryan backed them that year and then was their nominee as well as the Democrats’ in 1896 ) said:

“A vast conspiracy against mankind has been organized on two continents, and it is rapidly taking possession of the world. If not met and overthrown at once, it forebodes terrible social convulsions, the destruction of civilization, or the establishment of an absolute despotism.”

Fairly crazy, right? Or rather “Fairly crazy left” since the populists were huge supporters of government intervention in the economy. But is it any crazier than the “Exxon knew” canard?

Meyer goes on and on drawing unsound parallels with monomaniacal determination:

“It seems to me that climate change is looming over the AI conversation and shaping the assumptions, outlook, and behavior of many key players and observers. President Trump, of course, is reading from the old playbook and has deemed AI fears to be a ‘hoax’; [dissident Anthropic researcher Sam] Coxon, appearing on Fox News, has downplayed climate change’s existential risk as compared to runaway AI. Yet even beyond those reruns and revisions, the analogy goes deeper: Just as nuclear non-proliferation agreements structured early attempts to regulate global greenhouse emissions, climate policy is now shaping how people understand AI risk. And not for lack of cause. In some important ways, the problems – or alleged problems, depending on your perspective on AI – resemble each other. For instance, because technology exists in a global commons, any successful AI diplomacy must involve the United States and China. And since China’s AI development currently lags the United States, American politicians must persuade China that their proposals to regulate AI are not just concealed attempts to restrain China’s development. This dynamic has long bedeviled climate negotiations, too.”

Pfui. The rivalry between the US and China over military applications of AI has almost literally nothing to do with Chinese efforts to promote climate alarmism in the West while building coal plants at breakneck speed at home, except the bit where the PRC wants to conquer us and left-wing journalists portray China as afraid of our meddling. And it gets worse. Finally Meyer ditches his analogy in precisely the wrong way:

“Scientists have known that the greenhouse effect is real since the early 20th century. Climate change’s physics are rudimentary enough that Exxon’s in-house scientists could predict the path of future warming with some accuracy. It is a verifiable risk. AI’s alleged existential risks, on the other hand, emerge from a lab pushing the technological frontier too far and drilling, like Tolkien’s dwarves, too deep. AI concern relies not on empirical observations, but on a story about exponential change and runaway growth. In this way, it’s a harder risk to predict, and a harder one to accept.”

So climate change is settled science, AI perils are from Moria. And his other major difference is that while Exxon plotted to destroy the planet they’re living on, and created a vast international conspiracy to hide its suicidal wickedness, many insiders including Anthropic’s leadership are expressing real concerns about AI. Which some might think means that the risks of AI are very real unlike those of mild mostly natural warming.

Not to paranoid maniacs, though. And nobody in the alarmist camp is distancing themselves from Meyer on this point.