I have been watching with bemusement the high priests of our most recent faith as they continue their frantic environmental prophesying. The invocations of Kyoto have been particularly bewildering. Few seem to regard the actual facts, or take a moment to reflect. With reverent fingers (frequently crossed), the cream of our political and cultural establishment point the new way to salvation — a salvation that can be bought and sold. Have you sinned, my son? Ego te absolve — with these fine carbon credits go in peace. This simony in new clothes has made respectable a climate alarmism that is truly apocalyptic: Western Europe is going to freeze (go figure), polar bears will be aquatic, and there won’t be enough ice left in the Arctic for a good stiff drink. Worse yet, coastal property will go the way of Atlantis — so much for resale value! And don’t even get me started on methane clathrates — death by flatulent ocean has left me in a state of saturnine shock. So, with all this “sturm und drang”, what are we to do? Mock the acolytes of Suzuki and say “shout louder”? Thank you, no — they are quite capable of doing that, and things are ridiculous enough.

The UN has just released its latest climate change summary blaming it all on homo pollutus, as blessed by scientific consensus. The consensus, though you would not know it from reading the popular press, is not near so monolithic as is presented. It is also now a matter of public record that process of establishing popular belief in anthropogenic global warming bordered on the scientifically fraudulent. All justified, of course, by the potential seriousness of the situation, yet seldom does a good end come out of a bad beginning. Few actually dispute the fact that man affects his environment, but the ideological rigor of the global warming fanatics has made any reasoned discussion of the subject fraught with difficulty. Noting that calculations are referenced to times near the end of the little ice age (1400 - 1800 AD), and that the preceding medieval warm period is ignored, makes one no friends in this particular congregation. Suggesting that the correlation between greenhouse gases and putative temperature trends might not be strictly causal is well nigh grounds for excommunication. Raise concerns about an over reliance on model-driven science and over simplifying a highly-coupled complex system and you get gnashing of teeth. Doubt the representative accuracy of actual physical data — and have the audacity to propose further measurements and reanalysis — well, the stones just fly.

In the matter of climate orthodoxy, no dissention may be brooked. And what is the result? Public policy is twisted from the good that may be attained to our present ill, all because the economy and the environment are rendered adversarial. Yet we still listen to these smooth-tongued wizards…