The nature of political power

I get a sickly feeling when I see the Climate agenda backed by raw political power, as it has been from the beginning, as anyone who could read between the lines of the Climategate emails should have come to understand. I gets a bit sicklier when I see scientists throwing numbers and papers at one another, as if it were all just a debate among good scientists and less good ones. It’s about changing the world and the way we live. It’s got a good dose of climate imperialism built in, in case anyone wonders if anything ever really changes.

We live in the high Rockies, and have to look hard to see if anything has changed at all. Other than perceptions (it snowed every Christmas till seven years ago) nothing has changed, not here, not in Pakistan. But the beat goes on day in and out, made up news, disasters, distorted realities. Nothing has changed. Look out your window if you don’t believe me.

I posted the above comment at The Honest Broker, a Substack hosted by Roger Pielke, Jr., under his article The Takeover of the IPCC. I don’t know if the comment is still there or only visible to me. Pielke Jr.  is a prolific writer, and gathering as I can from his past work, supports the IPCC framework and the idea that Climate Change presents and existential crisis. He departs from the mainstream in that he doesn’t think there is any way to change it. It will take decades, he asserts, to make a noticeable difference. For that reason he was labeled a climate skeptic, aka, a “denier,” the propaganda term used to demonize honest science and dissent. 

Pielke Jr. left his position as tenured professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and subsists now on his Substack and other writing, I suppose. Tenured professorships carry pensions with them, though I’d be clueless about that, not understanding how they vest.

But in my heart of hearts, I am naturally suspicious of anyone who leaves a cushy job to join the side not funded or subsidized in any way. I am reminded of Wendell Potter, who left an executive position at Cigna and wrote a book, Deadly Spin, harshly critical of health insurers. He then turned around and supported ACA. He now leads various groups who support universal health care and true reform, reminding me of Lenin’s famous quote, “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.

That would be a harsh conclusion to defend concerning Pielke, Jr., but I’ve read everything he’s written since forming The Honest Broker, and while I don’t dispute most of it, I don’t take much comfort in his being on our side.

In just a recent post he came out in opposition to rescission of The Endangerment Finding, citing, as I understand it, legal technicalities in opposing a regulation that followed a Supreme Court ruling. His reasoning is more complex than that, but he ordinarily asserts that CO2, aided by water vapor, leads to warming, which is true in theory though tough to prove due to noise. There is too much other stuff going on in our atmosphere. True, our planet is warming, slightly, and has been since long before the Industrial Revolution. He trades jibes with the other scientists on the other sides of the issue, but if he’s on our side, I’d rather he do something else with his time now.

I’d rather have on my side people who are not afraid to attack then enemy where they are weak, in the case of climate alarmists, science. Since they have nothing in current climate and weather to bolster their case, they are forced to engage in deceit,  reliance on unfathomable concepts like “tipping points”, and political power. 

_________________

Speaking of political power:

I was trying to come up with an analogy for political power, as I alluded to in my opening comment on the Pielke Jr. piece. Here’s what I came up with: Political power is the ability to exert a force that coerces everyone to pay attention, against their will and even despite that power advancing issues of no merit or substance. The power exists in control of media, pundits and politicians, and even entertainers. 

Imagine that you are in a noisy bar with loud background music where people are drinking heavily. In such a setting, I am lost. I can speak if I am within four inches of someone’s ear, but I cannot get myself to do what most everyone else is doing, speaking louder and louder until heard. Eventually the gatherings are under control of the noisiest people around, the ones with sharp grating voices and loud laughs. Those of us soft-spoken, even though intelligent and worthy of anyone’s ear, slip into silence. I almost wrote “a coma” there instead of silence. If I can, I leave. 

At my age I’ve seen this aplenty, not just sports bars, but with any issue where there is a decision made behind the scenes that a course of action will be made front and center using news, spokesperson, teacher and professors, intellectuals, and even movie stars and comedians. The noise takes over, eventually drowns out everyone and everything else.

Just in recent history, this happened with AIDS/HIV, a retorvirus never proven to exist, much less cause illness, which was remedied by antiviral poisons that killed people, initially use of AZT. It was, at some level beyond mere ignorance, murder. 

It appears that AIDS/HIV was a mere practice run for Covid, another virus never proven to exist, but placed front and center using news, politicians, spokespersons, teachers and professors, intellectuals, and even movie stars and comedians. It was obviously done to promote a stampede to vaccines of unknown origin and true purpose. Anyone voicing a dissenting opinion was banned from social media, exorcised from polite society, and left to fend as isolated souls carrying lanterns in search of honest human beings. There were but a few of us who saw through the whole charade, and sprinkled among them were Lenin’s false leaders. Right Andy?

Climate change operates on the same principle, but the underlying message, that we are in an existential crisis due to the planet heating up, has not caught on. It’s too bizarre, even stupid. Most of us, thankfully, can look outside and see no change, only weather variability.

But we are in a sports bar, the crowd is loud and getting aggressive and drunker, so even though opposition to the idea that the Climate is changing in any threatening way is drowned out by the noisemakers, the news readers, politicians,  teachers and professors, intellectuals, and even movie stars and comedians. Governments all over the world, which Covid demonstrated were all on the same page anyway (speaking of raw power), implement damaging and expensive policies that harm us. 

That was my message to Roger Pielke Jr. in the comment above, and since he “liked” the comments before and after it, I know he read it. I’d like for him to defend himself from the accusation of false leader, which I do not believe, but also that of an intellectual fellow traveler. He prides himself on being the internal cutting edge of the science surrounding climate change, but until be boldly goes, that is, steps forward and says that the movement is a product of political power, and nothing more, he is in my view not of much use to anyone but our opponents.  

Imagine without the political power behind the Climate Change movement where we would be: Scientists would take note that the climate is indeed getting slightly warmer over time, both before and after the Industrial Revolution. They might include CO2 as a contributing factor, but would also note all the uncertainty around that proposition. They would take note of the amazing benefits of increased CO2 in our atmosphere, such as greening and crop abundance. They would not be screaming at us, hiring Thunbergs to shame us, or enlisting movie stars to parade their limited intellects before us. 

It would be a quiet discussion, with no one frightened or worried.