Suppose They Gave a Climate Conference and Nobody Came

We evil climate deniers often enjoy comparing the current uproar over the weather with Stalin’s misuse of science by Trofim Lysenko.  But I think the devotion to extreme climate, or whatever today’s catch phrase may be, is far more in the realm of magic and metaphysics than real physics — Lysenko was, after all, a genuine agronomist — and is much more akin to the story of Sabbatai Zevi, the 17th century Sephardic rabbi many Jews believed was  the long-awaited Messiah but who ended up ridiculing his supporters and converting to Islam.

Climate armageddon is a messianic cult based almost entirely on religion and faith and very little on science.  And, like the Sabbatean movement where many adherents remained devoted to Zevi no matter what he did or how he behaved,  it’s still thriving, somewhat, despite the many blows that it has taken lately — no warming in the last fifteen years, Antarctic ice cap bigger than ever, more polar bears than ever, all kinds of leaks of fraudulent figures and fudged graphs, etc., etc.   The list, available at www.wattsupwiththat.com by scrolling backwards, is almost comical in its extent.   It’s amusing to read the myriad theories for why the ice cap is bigger, motivated, for the most part, by panic on the part of the scientists involved that they might have their stipends cut.

Nevertheless,  your United Nations, at the the behest of your president, is on the case.  On September 23, they are convening a UN Climate Summit.  From their website:

Climate change is not a far-off problem. It is happening now and is having very real consequences on people’s lives. Climate change is disrupting national economies, costing us dearly today and even more tomorrow.  But there is a growing recognition that affordable, scalable solutions are available now that will enable us all to leapfrog to cleaner, more resilient economies.

There is a sense that change is in the air. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has invited world leaders, from government, finance, business, and civil society to Climate Summit 2014 this 23 September to galvanize and catalyze climate action.

Problem is most of those leaders aren’t coming.  Maybe they realize the whole thing’s a shuck.  From Newsweek (apparently back in print — go figure):

But the U.N. Climate Summit, set for September 23, is likely to be hampered by the failure of leaders from the U.N.’s three largest member nations—China, Russia and India—to attend. China’s Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli will represent the country at the summit, as well as the September 24-30 General Debate, instead of President Xi Jinping, and the Russian Foreign Ministry said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will lead the Russian delegation. The top leaders of China and Russia won’t be coming because their schedules are too demanding, Think Progress reports.

So what, pray tell, is going on here?  In a word:  distraction. Although the UN secretary general has pronounced climate “the defining issue of our times” (Obama and Kerry have made similar remarks), everyone with an IQ in triple digits knows that it isn’t — and has for some time. What we do know is that the UN Oil-for-Food scandal was a monumental example of corruption, as was and is the UNRWA housing missiles and other weapons for Hamas, not to mention the possibility that they cooperated in the building of the terror tunnels.

But forget that for the moment. Allow me to share a personal experience.  I went to Copenhagen in 2009 for this website to cover another UN climate conference (COP 15), then considered to be extremely crucial.  Several islands — Micronesia, I think — were supposedly about to go under from the rising tides.  I ran into the representative from one of those islands and asked him if he was worried.  He started to laugh and shook his head.  So I asked him what he was doing at the conference.  I want the money, he said.

So here we go again.  Climate is the real problem.  We know the song — and the motivation. Whatever happened to all those billions spent for carbon offsets…. hmmm?

But the whole climate thing is much more than a mere scam, gigantic as it is. It is the purest example of the use of moral narcissism by and against liberals and progressives. It is the perfect exploitation of the human need to feel good about ourselves.  More opine about matters scientific in our culture than in all of history, probably, while knowing less — and that’s not just because Al Gore got D in geology or because the whole idea of “settled science” is an oxymoron.  “Climate change” is liberalism’s paradigm self-deception.  If you believe that, you can believe anything. It is so, if you want it to be so. With the world in the midst of civilizational struggle, that’s pretty pathetic — and scary.