Paul, I think you have very well summarized the politics that drive many, maybe even most, serious and organized AGWarmists. My compliments. Added to that, I think that there are now great herds of upper-class and upper-middle-class people, their old gods dead and searching for another, who always want to see themselves as doing something positive about the condition of the world, even if what they actually do is mostly symbolic, or even entirely disconnected and contrary to their desired outcome; they mostly want to bask in self-referential feelings of virtue by reciting the mantras of received opinion on the issues of the day. These people, who only “mean well,” and are being manipulated by the recent AGW campaign in the news media, public schools, universities and popular entertainment, are like a giant Petri dish for the growth of AGW alarmism. If the warmist campaign succeeds in translating its propaganda into solutions that give its adherents bureaucratic control of the levers of energy production and consumption, we will be in for a rather large spot of trouble that will undoubtedly come as an astonishing surprise to those same people now so taken with the AGW campaign; they will not enjoy the diminution of their freedom and standards of living that such control will bring, but may not be able to easily reverse them.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that the American people are now entirely sold on the AGW agenda. Thank goodness for the recent colder weather trends. Even if they don’t as yet represent a statistically significant event in the overall temperature history of the earth, I think they have given many ordinary Americans reason to bring a new attitude of skepticism to AGW dogma. This will, I hope, at least give us a chance to pause, study and consider rational and positive outcomes rather than blunder into some needless and catastrophic reordering of our economy.