"ECO-GUILT is a first-world luxury. It's the new religion for urban populations which have lost their faith in Christianity. The IPCC report is their Bible. Al Gore and Lord Stern are their prophets."
(Ian Pilmer, quoted in James Delingpole, "Meet The Man Who Has Exposed The Great Climate Change Con Trick," Spectator.co.uk, July 8, 2009)
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What if climate change has little or nothing to do with human activity? What if enacting cap-and-trade means incurring excruciating costs in exchange for infinitesimal benefits?
Hush, says Obama. Don't ask such questions. "There is no longer a debate about whether carbon pollution is placing our planet in jeapardy," he declared [recently]. "It's happening."
No debate? The debate over global warming is more robust than it has been in years . . . .
(Jeff Jacoby, "No climate debate? Yes, there is," boston.com, July 1, 2009)
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The costs of weanig the U.S. economy off much of its reliance on carbon are uncertain, but certainly large. The climatic benefits of doing so are uncertain but, given the behavior of those pesky 5 billion [in the developing world], almost certainly small, perhaps miniscule, even immeasurable. Fortunately, skepticism about the evidence that supposedly supports current alarmism about climate change is growing, as is evidence that, whatever the truth about the problem turns out to be, U.S. actions cannot be significantly ameliorative.
(George F. Will, "Climate Fixers' Hard Sell," Washington Post, July 23, 2009)
Credit where due: The Chronicle ran Will's column on July 24.
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At a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars annually, [the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill] will have virtually no impact on climate change. If all of the bill's many provisions were entirely fulfilled, economic models show that it would reduce the temperature at the end of the entury by 0.11 degrees Celsius . . . reducing warming by less than 4%.
. . . .
Is it really treason against the planet to express some skpeticism about whether this is the right way forward? . . .
. . . . Wanting to shut down the discussion is simply treason against reason.
(Bjorn Lomborg, "Treason in the Air," Project Syndicate, July 24, 2009)
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Ideologies often credit man with either more nobility or more venality than he deserves. In reality he is a mundane creature. He wants a home for himself and those he loves, stocked with food. And he wants . . . the right to control his own destiny, own his own stuff, and . . . acquire more if he can without interference or fear of imminent death. Such low-level acquisitive desires support high concepts: property rights and the rule of law, without which there would be no foundation for democracy.
My desire to live a free, mundane life is a fundamental cog in our messy, glorious, capitalist democracy. . . . Red-filtered, my desires are despicable and bourgeois and must be beaten out of me with indoctrination or force. Green-filtered, my small desires are despicable acts of ecological vandalism. My house is a carbon factory. My desire to travel, to own stuff, to eat meat, to procreate, to heat my house, to shower for a really, really long time: all are evil.
The word evil is used advisedly. Both the green and red positions are infused with overpowering religiosity. . . .
(Antonia Senior, "Blunt warning about greens under the bed," timesonline, July 25, 2009)
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. . . . The fact that the developed world went into hysteria over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating [read drumbeating], many others as well. . . .
. . . .
With all this at stake [referring to the interests of the environmental movement in gaining power, influence, and donations, of bureaucrats in justifying taxes, of enviro-businesses that hope to profit, and of the psychic welfare of well-meaning individuals], one can readily suspect that there might be a sense of urgency provoked by the possibility that warming may have ceased and that the case for such warming as was seen being due in significant measure to man, disintegrating. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed. However, for more serious leaders, the need to courageously resist hysteria is clear. Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever present [read ever-present] climate change is no substitute for prudence. Nor is the assumption that the earth's climate reached a point of perfection in the middle of the twentieth century a sign of intelligence.
(Richard S. Lindzen, "Doomed Planet," Quadrant Online, July 26, 2009)
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The state of international negotiations presents a huge dilemma for climate change activists. Most genuinely believe that a failure to achieve an international agreement in Copenhagen would be catastrophic. But they also know that, even if a deal is reached, it is likely to be feeble and ineffective. If they admit this publicly, they risk creating a climate of despair and inaction. But if they press ahead, they are putting all their energy into an approach that they most know is highly unlikely to deliver.
(Gideon Rachman, "Climate activists in denial," ft.com [Financial Times], July 27, 2009)
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And here are some cherries on the whipped cream:
The National Weather Service says 2009 has seen the coldest July [in Chicago] since the official recording station was moved away from the lakefront in 1942. The average temperature this month in Chicago has been 68.9 degrees.
. . . .
[Chicago has] also failed to reach 90 degrees at any time this month.
("Chicago Sees Coldest July In 67 Years," CBS, July 28, 2009)
Here are similar stories from Cincinnati, Louisville, Iowa, the Peoples' Republic of Madison, Missouri, Portland, Maine, and New York City.
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