Climatist Jihad

DDP Newsletter May 2015 Vol. XXXIII, No. 3

At the 10^th annual meeting of DDP in 1992, Petr Beckmann spoke about “The Dangers of the (Green) Established Church” (http://tinyurl.com/pwcgl6h). This increasingly powerful religion is waging the equivalent of holy war on all who dare dissent from its dogma.

Upon resigning as chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) because of charges of sexual harassment, Rajendra Pachauri wrote: “For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma” (http://tinyurl.com/lqzcwav).

The dogmatists appear to be followers of Eris, the Greek goddess of discord and chaos, writes Christopher Essex. Eristic tactics, developed by the Greek sophists, are manifested today in the works of Saul Alinsky (http://tinyurl.com/qjtm85k).

The subject matter of climate science, “the field that never was,” appears to be defined by what policymakers want, Essex writes. But the objective of science is to find the truth, not to crush your enemies.

There has been an aggressive assault against scientists who question the basis for the global energy-rationing agenda. “It has been amazingly coordinated, coming simultaneously from a number of fronts: activists, Congress, Hollywood, and even some psychologists,” Essex states, “questioning our ethics, morality, competence, and even sanity.” While accusing scientists of venal motives when they raise questions about climate has come to be what passes for scientific debate, “scientists don’t need to be paid to oppose the ideas of climate orthodoxy, because those ideas are just so…bad.”

Proponents of man-made disaster are also borrowing from the Islamist playbook: silence your enemies. Instead of bombs and beheadings, writes Paul Driessen, they use double standards, Greenpeace FOIA demands, letters from Senator Ed Markey and Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), threats of lost funding and jobs, and constant intimidation and harassment. The climatists themselves, on the other hand, refuse to divulge raw data, computer codes, and other secretive work paid for by taxpayers and used to justify government measures that stifle the economy and reduce living standards (CFACT 2/28/15, http://tinyurl.com/q4z5ban).

Many of their targets, including Willie Soon, have spoken at DDP meetings. Their work “eviscerates climate cataclysm claims and raises serious questions about the accuracy, credibility, integrity, and sanctity of alarmist science,” Driessen states.

“Grijalva’s letters convey an unstated but perfectly clear threat: Research disputing alarm over the climate should cease lest universities that employ such individuals incur massive inconvenience and expense—and scientists holding such views should not offer testimony to Congress,” writes Richard Lindzen. His letters “should help clarify for many the essentially political nature of the alarms over the climate, and the damage it is doing to science, the environment and the well-being of the world’s poorest” (WSJ 3/4/15).

Lindzen has compared climatism with Lysenkoism (http://tinyurl.com/qhpvf6w).

The “silence of the scientists” leaves outrageous climatist assertions uncorrected by government agencies or leading university departments. In what has become the Age of Disenlightenment, “attacks on independent researchers, and the exaggeration or misrepresentation of climate research results” have become commonplace, write William Briggs, Robert Carter, and David Legates, and “are in fact an evil every bit as pernicious as direct scientific fraud” (http://tinyurl.com/p2q5e4l).

The real concern is actually not the climate. At a news conference in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said (Investor’s Business Daily 2/19/15, http://tinyurl.com/q69c9m2).

Forming an unlikely, unholy alliance with the climatists’ green, anti-human faith, the Vatican tried to keep skeptics out of its April climate conference and then to silence Marc Morano, Christopher Monckton, and James Delingpole, who managed to slip into a press conference (climatedepot.com 4/27/15, http://tinyurl.com/o5jkeee).

“The Pope is essentially going to replace Leonardo DiCaprio at this year’s UN climate summit in New York City to speak on behalf of the UN to lobby for a climate treaty,” writes Marc Morano. There is, however, no consensus on climate change within the Vatican, and Pope Benedict warned about prophets of manmade climate doom.

Pope Francis has previously disparaged capitalism, equating it with the cronyism prevalent in Latin America. His political ideology resembles Peronism, under which justice is mandated through state redistribution of wealth (http://tinyurl.com/nqr4zq5).

SOME INCONVENIENT TRUTHS

• Without carbon dioxide levels above 150 ppm, all plants on earth would die, writes Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore. At 400 ppm, our crops, forests, and natural ecosystems are still on a starvation diet. Optimum CO₂ level is about 1,500 ppm, four times the current level (http://tinyurl.com/jwjrywk).
• Ethanol cost $2.40 per gallon at the end of 2014, compared with $1.73 per gallon of gasoline. Since it takes 1.5 gallon of ethanol to produce as much energy as 1 gallon of gasoline, ethanol is twice as expensive per unit of energy. Motorists pay an extra $10 billion annually because of ethanol mandates (TEA, April 2015).
• EPA’s claims that asthma will be reduced by the Clean Power Plan or tightened ground-level ozone standards hardly “follow the science.” A study of more than 23,000 children showed that risk factors for asthma included black race, Puerto Rican ethnicity, and poverty—but not residence in an urban area, where air pollution is greater (J Allergy Clin Immunol, March 2015, doi: 10.1016/j.jaci.2014.11.022). Proteinaceous allergens, such as mold, animal dander, and insect detritus and excreta, trigger asthma—not small particulates or ozone, notes John Dale Dunn, M.D., J.D. (http://tinyurl.com/oncgn5q).
• The year 2014 may be the Year of the Hottest Rhetoric, writes Howard Hayden, Ph.D. (The Energy Advocate, February 2015). According to NOAA, there is a 38% probability that it is the warmest since 1880—by 0.02 °C ±1 °C. It is, however, in the 3% of the coldest of the last 10,000 years.
• But what does a trend mean if temperature records have been systematically “adjusted” to make the past colder and the present warmer (http://tinyurl.com/ot3nqb2)?

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