“By now, it’s some people’s job, if not personal vocation, to enact these rituals of denunciation simply because it helps prop up the green corporate welfare….” (Holman Jenkins, below)

Holman W. Jenkins, a columnist at the Wall Street Journal, is a straight-shooter on many things climate, including the blanks fired from alarmist science. Yes, he defends a CO2 tax, which is considered a “moderate” position within the climate-industrial complex. (Even Homer nods.) But his November 3rd column was powerful.

Jenkins latest column coincides with a new book by Javier Vinos, Climate Puzzle: The Sun’s Surprising Role, summarized at Judith Curry’s Climate Etc. [1] And the climate intelligentsia is upset with such upstream distractions when the downstream of their campaign, Net Zero, is on its last legs. Climate science? We are still stuck in 1980s, sorry to say, when it comes to climate sensitivity and the ecological impacts of anthropogenic warming.…

“The doomsters’ favorite subject today is climate change. This has a number of attractions for them. First, the science is extremely obscure so they cannot easily be proved wrong. Second, we all have ideas about the weather: traditionally, the English on first acquaintance talk of little else. Third, since clearly no plan to alter climate could be considered on anything but a global scale, it provides a marvelous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism.” – Margaret Thatcher (2002)

Margaret Thatcher changed her mind on climate alarmism–against. Current UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, responding to “populist sentiment,” is backtracking on his country’s aggressive climate policies, a long overdue, pragmatic mid-course correction.

One could tie the two events together to explain why public policies making energy more expensive and less reliable are anathema for a country that produces only one percent of global emissions.…

Ed Note: The erroneous, agenda-laden ExxonKnew narrative was again in evidence in last weekend’s WSJ News Exclusive, “Inside Exxon’s Strategy to Downplay Climate Change.” For other rebuttals involving the author, (see here).

“Exxon doesn’t ‘know’ anything. It’s a collection of people and just like any other organization with many people, there are many views and understandings on almost every topic imaginable. I worked with Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, and Libertarians.” – Glen Lyons, former employee (below)

A sober look at the “ExxonKnew” campaign reveals an anti-fossil-fuel agenda inspiring a myopic view of the company’s old investigations into carbon dioxide (CO2).

There are many corrections to this leaky narrative. First, note that the company assigned the CO2 studies to individuals with their own personal motivations and did not partake in studies on the offsets to CO2 (from sulfur dioxide) or the benefits of CO2 (plant growth and resiliency, global greening, warmer winters).…

“Climate deniers are often simply awful people.”

Michael Mann, September 15, 2019

An army of climate denier bots & trolls have been released to deflect attention from the unprecedented climate change-fueled extreme weather we’re witnessing. If you encounter, report first. Then block. Don’t engage!

Michael Mann, July 19, 2022

Not people. Mostly bots.  July 19

In response to a Sierra Club study, “Climate Deniers Are More Likely to Be Racist. Why?” Michael Mann answered: “Because, in general, they’re pretty awful people. Racism, misogyny, climate denial often come bundled:   September 3, 2019.

Jonathan Watts, “Climatologist Michael E Mann: ‘Good people fall victim to doomism. I do too sometimes‘” The Guardian, February 27, 2021.

The Victim

“For more than two decades I was in the crosshairs of climate change deniers, fossil fuel industry groups and those advocating for them – conservative politicians and media outlets.…