OPINION:
“Saving the world” is the stuff of comic books, and some famous egos are firmly rooted in fantasy. Even the pope. The “global warming” fad has turned a global spotlight on the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, and presidents and prime ministers are primed there to demonstrate their kryptonic super powers by rescuing the world from the depredations of human industry. Mother Nature is not impressed. The old lady offers only a cold shoulder.
Representatives of 195 nations, including 150 leaders themselves, opened their gathering Monday with the goal of signing an agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to prevent global temperatures from increasing more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. They can hardly fail — temperatures began leveling off nearly two decades ago. The cost of the global warming pact could deal a blow to the global economy, but that’s a risk the powerful are willing to take since they can protect themselves from their folly.
Developed nations will be required to curtail the use of affordable fossil fuels for energy production and switch to pricey and unreliable renewable fuels. They will be expected to chip in to a Green Climate Fund of $100 billion annually to pay for “clean” energy projects in poor nations. It’s income redistribution on a worldwide scale that Karl Marx could envy.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has tried for decades to establish a believable link between carbon-dioxide emissions, which they say trap heat to the warming planet. When thermometers refuse to budge, they discard the disagreeable data and tout computer models that conform to their predictions. They’re students of Alice in Wonderland, where the Queen of Hearts famously decreed, “Sentence before verdict.”
Mr. Obama casts “climate change” as a threat more grave than global terrorism. He suggests the Islamic State, or ISIS, will tremble before the image of world leaders standing arm in arm in defiance of the purveyors of fossil fuels. “What a powerful rebuke to the terrorists it will be,” he said last week, “when the world stands as one and shows that we will not be deterred from building a better future for our children.” Who would have guessed that the war on gasoline-powered lawn mowers and wood stoves could have the secondary benefit of saving the world from ISIS? Americans are by nature respectful of the office of the president, but such rubbish pushes the baloney meter into the red zone.
Just as the environmentalists are poised to cheer the global warming deal, NASA scientists announced that the overall temperature of Antarctica has been falling since 2009 and glacial ice and sea ice in the South Pole region has been growing thicker. European researchers have gone off-message with a scientific computer model demonstrating that Earth is likely soon to enter a “mini-ice age” between 2030 and 2040, owing to a decline in solar activity. (As big and as important as we think we are here on Earth, the sun is bigger). Both announcements undercut the global warming hypothesis that the Paris Climate Change conferees insist is “settled science,” and industrialization must be halted to save the world.
Despite the best efforts of the environmental fantasists, Americans are still unpersuaded that returning to the 18th century is necessary. Only 3 percent of the public, according to a Fox News poll, says that climate change is the most important issue facing the nation. Mr. Obama dreams green alone.
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