by Rex Murphy
December 15, 2015

from NationalPost Website
 

 

 

 

 

Note

The Global Warming creed smacks of high religion, where the shamans hide behind a curtain even though they are the very ones who are creating doctrines that everyone else is expected to believe without questioning.

 

Christianity has been banned over separation of church and state issues, but the High Church of Global Warming has become the new state religion that the Feds will enforce without remorse or guilt.

Source

 

As this edition of the Post hits the stands, the great Conclave of Catastrophists in Paris will have concluded.

 

The last goose will gladly have surrendered its swollen liver - foie gras does not come without exertion - to the last epicure environmentalist. We have been told that the French did not stint on lending all the arts of its fabled cuisine to assist the Great Deliberators.

 

State dinners took on something of the largesse and abundance last recorded by Gibbon in his descriptions of the Emperor Heliogabalus, who is reputed to have served up the tongues of hummingbirds, peacock brains and mice sautéed in honey, to the jaded appetites of his decadent court.

The reference here to far earlier times is not accidental or flip.

 

Just as in the early centuries of Christianity, when the patristic Fathers struggled with various heresies and sought to stabilize the dogmas of the then-nascent Faith, held their great Councils to parse the finer points of esoteric doctrine, the Parisian analogue gave itself over to even more subtle ruminations:

  • whether, for example, it was best to "commit" to ensuring the planet's temperature doesn't rise more than 1.5 degrees by the year 2100

  • or whether it was best merely to hold the thermometer to a more expansive two degrees

How much mental energy must have been expanded over that winsome 0.5 degrees, 80 years down the road?

 

The subtleties involved, the logical intricacies deployed, would have outpaced Aquinas and sent poor Augustine to bed early with a migraine.

 

However, the modern monks of the High Church of Global Warming have resources that the early philosophers and theologians could not even dream of - they have computer models that dance in the direction wished of them.

And when what they deliciously refer to as the "settled science" does not serve their needs, they have always about them the ancient texts of Earth in the Balance by Reverend Al Gore, or the early press releases of the Dun Scotus of Global Warming, Cardinal Emeritus George Monbiot.

And where the scholiasts of old, wrestling with imperfect transcriptions and dubious translations of Holy Scripture had only prayer to guide them on the knotty questions of global warming - such as how many polar bears can dance on the edge of an ice floe - the priests of Climatology can always consult the Oracles of Greenpeace and the Sierra Club.

 

 

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right,

walks with advisors at the Paris climate conference.

Mandel Ngan Pool via AP

 

 

Or when in deeper need - say on the relationship between the decline of the coral reefs and bovine flatulence - refer to the obiter dicta of Bishops Tutu or Suzuki, on which matters such authorities speak with a Truth beside which that of Scripture is a mere contrail.

Not having been in Paris myself, I cannot speak of how they marked the end of their tormented consultations, whether they wafted a few puffs of invisible carbon dioxide over the steeple of the Eiffel Tower, or burnt a few outdated physics texts to mark the beginning of the new era their meeting signified.

 

But they surely could not have ended without pointing to the example - the evidence-based example I should stress - of what happens when governments take the Dogma of New Green seriously.

The experience of Ontario, as underscored by the very timely report of its auditor general - released as the great Throng was chewing over these very questions - had to have been an inspiration and a comfort.

 

For Ontario provides, as it were, a case-study of what happens to reason and policy when a government truly gives itself over to the new Meditations.

 

Ontario as all the world knows went Green with fervor, with former premier Dalton McGuinty and his successor, Premier Kathleen Wynne, fancying themselves something of the Copernicus and Tycho Brahe of the New Green Learning.

 

And was it not learned from the auditor general that their great dive into a solar and wind powered future has cost the innocent citizens of Ontario a mere $37 billion more than it should have, which could give rise to another, extra $133 billion by 2032?

If one wishes to learn the true value of what a commitment to the New Learning actually involved, then Ontario is both laboratory and experiment. By what fraction of a degree did the world's temperature actually lower itself - was it 0.01 per cent, 0.001 per cent or any fractional mite in between? - for that $37 billion?

Could it even be - Heresy of Heresies - that maybe the global temperature moved not at all, or - Good Gore, save us - went upwards?

 

We cannot know, for it is the nature of this subject that substantive answers are never possible nor welcome.

 

When dealing with the "airy subtleties" of the new Faith, we must settle for ignorance, but as long as it is for the Great Cause, as long as 50,000 can jet to Paris, Rio or Beijing annually, who cares that we have no certainty?

 

As long as the faith holds, there is no call for certainties...

Save the one more important than all the rest:

the idea that the vastly imperfect governments of this world, who between them cannot guarantee anything six months out, can speak with serene confidence on the Whole Atmosphere of our Great Dynamic Planet nearly 100 years from now?

I do not wish to end on a cynical turn here...

 

There has been on undeniable improvement wrought from this great Conclave. St. Leonardo di Caprio, patron spirit of The Yachts of the Monaco Basin, learned for the first time this week that there is such a thing as a chinook.

 

So we now know that there is a least one fact in that well-photographed head of his, and that probably makes it superior to many of those other heads that met so urgently in Paris.

 

 

 

 

 

 
 COP21 - Climate Obstacles Emerge Soon After...

Paris Summit 2015 Concludes
by Pilita Clark in Paris and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington

December 14, 2015

from Technocracy.News Website

 


TN Note:

For all the hype and hoopla put out by the United Nations itself, just about everyone else has something bad to say about the "agreement."

 

The environmentalists say it doesn't go far enough in saving the planet. Oil and gas executives are shrugging it off as a farce that will have little to do with the real world.

 

 

 

 


The obstacles facing this weekend's historic global climate change accord were thrown into relief on Sunday night when businesses and government officials downplayed the impact of the deal and US Republicans underlined their opposition.

The Paris agreement, which requires all countries to regularly publish plans to deal with global warming, has been hailed by international leaders as a turning point after more than 20 years of effort to make this century the last to be powered by fossil fuels.

German chancellor Angela Merkel said the deal was,

"the first time that the entire world community has obligated itself to act - to act in the battle against global climate change",

...while Pope Francis also praised the,

"concerted effort and generous dedication" of those involved.

It was adopted by nearly 200 nations.

But coal and oil industry executives shrugged off any suggestion the new agreement sealed in Paris on Saturday night would have any immediate impact on their businesses.

The agreement's goals include driving down carbon-dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels as soon as possible in order to limit global warming to "well below" 2°C from pre-industrial times and perhaps as little as 1.5°C, a target requiring much deeper emissions cuts than most countries are currently planning.

Amber Rudd, the UK energy and climate change secretary, described the 1.5C goal as merely "aspirational" while defending the UK government's decision last month to scrap £1bn in funding for carbon capture systems that could hold emissions down.

"I don't think it was a mistake," she said. "They are still expensive."

Benjamin Sporton, head of the World Coal Association, said he did not see the new agreement spurring a "massive change at the moment" for companies that produce coal, one of the dirtiest fossil fuels, because so many developing countries still plan to keep burning it.

He said the pact was likely to force governments to focus a lot more on the carbon capture and storage systems the UK had just de-funded because they would be vital for meeting its goals.

The American Petroleum Institute said it was still reviewing the Paris accord, but Amjad Bseisu, chief executive of EnQest, an oil explorer in the UK North Sea, said the oil industry had more immediate concerns beyond the Paris Agreement.