In keeping with the notion that it is better to avoid hysteria over a non-existent crisis, it is worth noting that one of the things that has been shouted at us ever more loudly even as it failed to happen is the melting of the Arctic. It was meant to be ice-free by [fill in the blank ten years hence]. Instead since 2007 it’s sort of done the melt-freeze thing.

Other things that have not happened, highlighted by Watts Up With That, include the vanishing of snow and of polar bears. And as our Climate Emergency Tour has highlighted, the rapid warming of Canada is not reflected in temperature measurements in cities from sea to sea to sea. Nor have those seas risen up in wrath as advertised. It’s almost as if the science behind alarmism were deeply flawed. (To say nothing of the statistical analysis when everywhere is warming faster than the average, now including the famously blazing hot desert nation of Qatar.)

When Greta Thunberg told a worshipful crowd in Edmonton that “our main enemy is physics” she spoke more truly than she or the audience realised, as when she said “We teenagers are not scientists”. But as long as we think, or pretend, that they are, it’s going to be very hard to have a calm, fact-based discussion about the impact of human-generated CO2 and related GHGs on climate, about what is happening, what might happen, why, and what we can do about it.