Who Had the Worst Year?

If you go by John Podhoretz (and you’d be wise always to do so), or the National Enquirer (“Obama: ‘Everybody Hates Me!’”) Obama had the worst 2013.  But a clear rival would have to be the climate change crusade.  The Daily Caller sets out the “seven global warming alarmist setbacks of 2013” including sharply rebounding Arctic ice, record low temperatures (but wait!—record high temperatures this week! proof that we’re doomed!), another busted UN climate conference, and credible new forecasts for a period of global cooling ahead.  It’s enough to make Reddit follow the lead of the Los Angeles Times and ban any expressions of climate skepticism.  Yeah—that’s a real sign of liberality and confidence in your position. And another good way to keep your last ten readers (at least in the case of the Times).

But leave it to The Onion to put its finger on the central defect of the entire climate campaign from the beginning: even if the catastrophic scenario could be proven, and while Bill McKibben is trying to find a handful of enemies to demonize, there’s still the pesky little problem that it’s not the fault of fossil fuel companies, as this Onion headline captures:

New Report Finds Climate Change Caused By 7 Billion Key Individuals

WASHINGTON—In a landmark report experts say fundamentally reshapes our understanding of the global warming crisis, new data published this week by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that the phenomenon is caused primarily by the actions of 7 billion key individuals.

These several billion individuals, who IPCC officials confirmed are currently operating in 195 countries worldwide, are together responsible for what experts called the “lion’s share” of the devastating consequences of global warming affecting the entire planet. . .

According to policy analysts, urgent regulation is needed in order to monitor and govern the behavior of these targeted individuals, who experts say collectively commit as much as 100 percent of violations to the environment each year.

Heh.  Actually this isn’t to far removed from Salon.com offering this headline:

Thanks for Killing the Planet, Boomers!

Any time someone wants to slam us baby boomers boomers, I’m down for it.  But the job should be left to P.J. O’Rourke.  But still, this is fun:

Unfortunately, the world as we know it is ending, and no one can reasonably hope to avoid the constellation of catastrophic, ecological and social disasters that are all but certain to manifest, exacerbating one another’s horrific, deadly consequences. And yet our politicians can’t be bothered to care, a substantial portion of Americans aren’t convinced that it’s even happening (despite overwhelming, unimpeachable evidence to the contrary), and the enormity of the issue is downplayed basically everywhere outside the bounds of the largely-ghettoized “environmental/green reporting,” uniformly marginalized and dismissed by the mainstream press.

Yeah, that’s some great stuff.  I’m sure it makes young Tim Donovan, the author, feel much better about himself, as he “blogs about Millennial issues” (as his byline proclaims) from somewhere in Manhattan (natch), on a site called “The Suffolk Resolves.”  Hasn’t anyone yet made the connection between the so-called “Millennials” like Donovan and Millenarianism? Apparently not; that would require being minimally educated, and just a tiny bit thoughtful.  Which is seldom found among Salon.com writers.  (Donovan’s bio says he has a BFA in “Writing, Literature, and Publishing”—that’s a degree now?—from Emerson College, which I believe indicates that he knows nothing about anything.)

But every once and a while the environmental “free lunch” crowd lets the mask slip and show their innermost desire:

Avoiding dangerous climate change demands de-growth strategies from wealthier nations

Here’s what the authors say:

 “for a reasonable probability of avoiding the 2°C characterisation of dangerous climate change the wealthier (Annex 1) nations need, temporarily, to adopt a de-growth strategy.”  Central to our conclusion is the express and clear assumption that the near-term development of poorer (non-Annex 1) nations should not be stifled by an overly constrained carbon budget. This widely accepted position, allied with the maths around 2°C carbon budgets, has grave repercussions for the scale of the response required to address climate change. Put simply, for the wealthier nations, “the necessary levels of 2°C mitigation and short-to-medium term economic growth are incompatible”.

Yeah, I’m sure it would only be “temporary.”

The climate campaign is maybe the only thing in worse shape than Obamacare. Except maybe that that building that fell over in China, which is a perfect metaphor of the climateers:

China Building copy

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